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Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Light at The End of the World

Law stood over an open wide abyss. He was where no man nor woman–nor in between–had ever been. The frigid End of the World, where, he supposed,  only cursed things such as him dared to peek to greet the familiar darkness. 

The ‘natural monument’ was just a stop before they went to Sabaody to enter the so-called ‘New World’, which had nothing new to begin with. The World Government had a funny way of twisting the narrative even with the names it stamped on geography. That is why the cold, winter island where they were currently stationed on, had a crevice on a glacier called just like that: The End of The World. 

Law could have not missed the chance to visit it, since he liked to assemble scenes of dramatic irony from time to time. Perhaps, it had something to do with the fact that he was about to face the last three years (the final act) of his long plan against Doflamingo.

He let out a dry—devoid of hope—chuckle that reverberated against the walls of the profound land wound until it became a cracking sound muffled against the piles of ice and snow where he was positioned. 

“Captain!” a voice behind him called. 

Law did not turn. 

“Lower your voice, Bepo” hissed Law “Or we could be dealing with an avalanche” 

The sun had begun its descent in between the mountains, some rosy speckles of its rays created a bloody path on the ups and down that made the snow covered terrain. 

He had talked enough with darkness and as always it has answered in its own way. 

“Let’s go, Bepo”

The reason why they were losing a couple of days in a godforsaken winter island before having to pass through Sabaody was because they had received a distress call.

Usually, Law had the submarine’s Den Den Mushi turned off in case it could be traced. His ever-present paranoia made him very adamant to listen to the chatter it received from near islands when they passed through; but after extensive modifications it was able to filter and transmit certain key words such as: medical intervention or medical emergency. 

Winter islands were unforgiving in the Grand Line, almost as unforgiving as the North Blue, in which for a long period of the year there were perhaps only four hours of light in the entire day. 

Rarely have government sanctioned doctors made to Winter Islands; and even more so after whipping from the face of earth the country that formed and distributed the best doctors of the world. Suffice to say that it was a miracle if a Winter Island got  a doctor at all. 

Law chose to disembark only with Bepo as a safe ward, leaving Shachi and Penguin to take care of things on the submarine. Supposedly, at the other side of the island, there were two people that required medical attention. In case it was an ambush, of course, Law had Kikoku with himself. 

Not even half an hour after they left the glacier they saw emerge in between the white a little village made of stone and wood. They made it to the central street–albeit of course discreet for a central street–until they saw someone. A woman in their mid-fifties spotted them, she was dressed in a long dark gray coat. She did not seem intimidated by Law’s sword or even surprised in seeing Bepo. She raised one of her thin eyebrows.

“Who are you?” her face wrinkled in suspicion.

“I’m a doctor. I received your radio call of distress. Where are the patients?” She reacted to the word doctor faster than Law imagined. 

“Come with me, quickly!”

Two streets inside the narrow street structure of the town, the woman knocked on a green wooden door. A heavily pregnant woman answered almost immediately. She had brown eyes and brown hair tied neatly on a braid. 

“Are you the doctor?” she inquired, her voice was trembling, she began fuzzing with her hands as if she didn’t know where to put them. 

Law nodded.

“Come with me, please, to this bedroom” she opened the door frantically. 

There was a man on a bed, in visible pain. He was the same age as the woman, no more than forty years old perhaps, his forehead was covered in cold sweat. 

Before Law could even try to enter the room a man who had been seated on a chair near the bed arised, he had been partly covered by the door, that was why Law hadn’t noticed him at first. 

“What are you doing, woman? Don’t you know who he is?!” roared the man, he was taller than Law, with broad shoulders. “Look at his fucking tattoos!!!” Of course, Law had already removed his gloves to treat the patient as soon as possible so the word ‘Death’ was very visible. “This is the surgeon of death!!”

Law didn’t even flinch, he had become sadly acquainted with being received with coldness, fear or both. 

“Are you really a doctor?” pressed the woman, ignoring the other man. 

“Yes” simply answered Law. He was not surprised that these people knew about him, so close to Sabaody, the Government might have been bombarding every little village with thousands of posters with the faces of the newest Supernovas. 

“Please, can you save him?” She wore a ring. The man was probably his husband. The yelling man was probably a political relative. 

Law ignored the tensed body of the woman’s relative, who seemed prepared to jump him at any moment–if he did so, Law would separate his mouth and extract his tongue–and came forward until the patient was in front of him. The poor man was in a state of almost unconsciousness. 

“Room” the blue light expanded, engulfing the postrated man. “Scan” 

“It is appendicitis” declared Law after a few seconds of observation “Easy to treat on time but if left alone it can kill a person in hours” 

The woman gasped, clasped her hands over her mouth.

“Are we on time?” two tears went down her flushed cheeks. 

“Yes” The situation though, needed not to waste a single minute. “Bepo, I need my tools”

“I’m out, if this ends poorly, this is on you” said the tall man to the pregnant woman, before leaving the room. The other woman, the one that had directed them to the house, went out with him and they closed the door behind them. 

“Room” announced Law, he opened the man and extracted the intestines and the appendix at the end of them. It was pretty inflamed, but there was no sepsis. He had been very lucky. 

“Why is he not in pain?” the woman murmured, she was trembling, apparently she had not been able to avert her eyes. 

“Because I used my powers on him, but he would be later on when I close him, do you have morphine or something similar?” 

“No” she answered. 

“Bepo leave them enough for a week, sorry, we can’t spare more”

“It’s fine” her eyes were covered on a thin veil of tears. 

The surgery was an easy quick one, so in fifteen minutes everything was sorted out without complications. Law turned to leave, the woman positioned herself in his way, but in a delicate gesture trying not to come off as threatening. 

“You have saved my husband’s life, how could I repay you?”There was eartness gratitude in her eyes. Law realized she had never once judged his appearance or status as a pirate. Apparently she didn’t care as long as he was a competent doctor. 

“How far along are you?” asked Law.

“Me? Oh?” She put her hands over her belly in an unconscious gesture “I don’t know…seven months, perhaps? Why?” 

“Room, scan” 

When the blue light engulfed her, though, she was petrified for a second, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“You two are fine I do not see any complications coming, I would say you are seven months and a half, you’ll deliver in one month and a half” 

“Oh” the woman muttered, the beginning of a small smile appeared on her lips.

He retired the Room.

“Now, where is the other emergency?”

At the other side of the quaint little town there was a decent sized house, apart from the rest. The house was surrounded by a ring of trees, its branches were full of strange adornments. Some of them were shells in long strings with different symbols painted on their interior. 

“What are those things?” asked Bepo, incapable of not voicing his curiosity. 

“It is to keep the bad spirits away” said the woman in the dark gray coat. 

“The next patient is the seerer of the island, a very well respected figure amongst us” informed the woman. “She had an accident while tending her garden”

The front door was open. The interior was a made of a single room with a lit fire on the chimney. There was an old woman on an ample bed at the bottom of the room. Law imagined she could not move. 

“Leave us alone” there was a rasping voice coming out of the woman on the bed. 

“But!” tried to protest the woman that had directed them there.

The old woman made a gesture with her hands, ushering the other woman away. She obeyed, not before directing a glare at Law as if she could intimidate him with it. 

“Bepo, go outside” Law could not be sure that the other woman could not make her friends on the island come after them once they were done with the patients. Perhaps even try to claim for themselves the many berris there were to Law’s head. Bepo knew exactly what Law was asking of him with that very generic order. So he went outside to wait. 

Once they were alone the old woman smiled at Law. She was very thin, she had an infinite number of wrinkles covering her face, and the most extensive crow feet Law had ever seen. 

“I knew you will come, children of the North” 

He decided to ignore her, he didn’t like the knowledge that the people from the town could do something to cause a scene. 

“Let me see your leg” if she could not get up it had to be something with her lower limbs. 

“Room, scan” He murmured. “Broken hip. This will take time.” he murmured to himself. It was not ideal. He did not like to let patients without healing but if he had to protect himself and Bepo he would. He also preferred not having to announce his presence before arriving at Sabaody, it was against the Plan. 

“Tell me your name” said the old woman. He turned on the bed to face Law despite the fact that he had already begun to disassemble her legs. Her expression was beatific, as if nothing could perturbe her.

“Trafalgar Law” he answered, while he moved his hands to perform the surgery. 

She let out a short melodic laugh. Her long white curled lioness like hair shaked with her laughter. 

“I know who you are. I can sense it. You are a children of D”

Law stopped his hands, he stood for a moment without moving an inch. He had the broken bone in between his hands. He could kill her if he wanted. 

“Who are you?” his tone was ice cold, his amber eyes scanned through the woman’s face. 

“No one” she smiled. “A woman who owes you her life. But I was not scared of the fall. I knew you would come.”

Law started, he decided to reach to one of her principal veins just in case, if she was dangerous, three minutes would be enough to make her silent forever. She certainly didn’t look as a Doflamingo spy, she was bedridden. But it could be some sort of taunting on Doflamingo’s part. The son of a bitch enjoyed those sick mind games. 

“I have a message for you from the Grand Beyond” the woman continued, unphased and seemingly unbothered that Law had her life literally in between his hands. 

Probably she was going to extort him or something, talking or rather guessing about dead family. It was nasty that he was using even grannies against him, but well, taking into account that he was a professional groomer of children it wasn’t that surprising at all. 

She did not do so. 

“You’ll bring with you the Sun, that’s what they told me.” she began, and there was something akin to adoration on her tone “A healer would bring the Sun to the lands that never saw the Sun. A healer will bring the drums of liberation to the sunless lands.”

Law let out a tedious, exhausted sigh. So she was just a batshit crazy fanatic of some kind. He continued the surgery until everything was at his place. She had been good at guessing or perhaps she was very much against the Celestial Dragons, so close to their place they might have suffered some abuse from them. She was of the cult of Nika, probably and therefore, believed those things. 

“Here are your painkillers, ration them wisely, I’m not a pharmacy” he finished, putting the medicines over a free space of the cluttered bedside table. 

He exited the house, it had begun snowing again. Fortunately for them, there were not furious townspeople with torches and a plan but rather noisy neighbors. 

At least ten of them were waiting outside the house and had been gaping openly and unashamedly at Bepo, who was trying not to tremble under the scrutiny. 

“This is what I want for my services” Announced Law, getting the attention of everyone present “Secrecy. I was never here. Not one word” the ‘or else’ was implicit in his tone. 

“Of course” finally settled on an old man with a very long beard. Nobody dared to offer or add anything else.

“Let’s go, Bepo” resolved Law and they got on the move, the townspeople made an ample gap for them to pass, he could feel them gawking, amazed or inquisitive, or both.   

They were already half of the way towards the central street and towards the outskirts of the town when a familiar voice stopped them on their tracks. 

“Wait!”  it was the pregnant woman. “The sun is gone, traveling at night it’s extremely dangerous, stay at my house” 

Behind her the woman on the dark gray coat strode down the street. 

“Amelia!!!” begged the woman that had directed them to the Witch’s home.

“Shut up, Marcelle. He has saved my husband’s life and your mother’s. If he hadn’t risked his life to act like the doctor the government never sent us, we would be down two people today in a matter of hours” chidded the pregnant lady.

The woman was right, it was dark, Law could not see in the dark even if Bepo could, they could not risk it. A nocturne avalanche could be catastrophic. 

“Bepo is coming too” he needed to make that very clear.

“Of course” agreed, Amelia. 

Once they got to Amelia’s house again it was already dark. 

Law took his hat off to shake the snow off its top. 

“We only have a spare room” informed Amelia, in an apologetic tone.

“It would be enough” after all, it was more than Law was expecting.

After they took off their coats, they were seated in front of a fire in the living room. Law took out his boots, subsequently he massaged his toes to improve circulation. 

The woman, Amelia, was moving in and out of the kitchen, she was very active, his pregnancy didn’t seem to bother her movements much. 

“Are you from the North Blue? I think I recognize the accent” she broke the silence.

Law nodded. 

“Is it as cold as it is here?” 

The poor woman was desperate to make some light conversation with a pirate who was accused of killing thousands of people. Well, if there was something that the World Government liked was manipulating data. 

“Sometimes more, depending of the time of the year” 

“Is your friend…Bepo also from the North?” Law directed a blank look to the woman he hated when people treated Bepo as if he could not answer by himself. Mostly, it was done without malice, but specism was so prevalent everywhere it was difficult for Law to pretend it didn’t make him want to tear the world apart. 

“I imagine you people have never seen a mink” Law didn’t tear his eyes apart from the fire. His tone was clearly recriminatory. 

“Yeah, sorry we were staring a lot, right?” this time she directed her apology directly to Bepo, the bear shivered again.  

“Sorry” he blurted.

“Oh no please, don’t apologize! I’m afraid we have behaved in such a horrid way…I mean, we haven’t even been attacked by pirates but, there are just so many stories from islands around ours that we live in perpetual fear.”

“We have no issues with civilians” intervened Law, he was not defending himself, just stating a fact “I have no interest in pillaging villages like an uncultured brute. We are pirates by virtue of operating outside the World Government laws, nothing else”

“So you aren’t interested in making the riches of the world? Gold, power, women…” her eyes were not meeting his. There was a minuscule glint of fear at the bottom of them.

It had been a calculated question of course, that Law deeply respected that. He let a half smile curve his thin lips, almost in recognition of a good strategy. 

“The only richness I value is knowledge, the only power I want I already have it and I’ve never been interested in neither men nor women” 

Finally, she met his eyes, there was a warmer smile on her lips. 

“You are then a strange pirate” she resolved, all initial cautiousness gone from her body language. 

“I guess that I am” shrugged Law. 

“What a terrible host I am, I almost forgot  I had some food in the fire” she went up and Bepo fretted like a mother hen until she let him help around in the kitchen. 

Law allowed himself to think about a good thing. This type of thing would have made his father proud of him. 

They left the town at dawn. An orange glow reverberated across the ice that descended to the coastline. Amelia had made them an apple pie and insisted they share it with the rest of the crew. 

When they crossed again back the glacier Law didn’t stop at the famous mark on the land. He fixated on the way the light danced in between the particles of snow. Law imagined that even in a godforsaken gelid island some light could incidentally–or rather accidentally–reach the End of the World. 

End of Chapter one

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: A man on Fire

There is barely a man on his operation table. His face, too young and vulnerable to qualify as such. He is barely anything, his life literally in between Law’s hands. 

He is repairing a bleeding heart, in between two hands that under the globes have its fingers marked with the word: Death. 

Trafalgar D. Water Law always found a way to create dramatic irony in his life, or rather it came running towards him and he was never the wise to stop it from keep happening. 

Currently, his whole self has shifted into overdrive, every single breath he takes is measured, his concentration, absolute. A heart is a heavy thing to carry, for sure, even more so if it’s the heart of another ‘D’. 

Monkey D. Luffy is an amalgamation of hurt: lesions in almost every surface of his body, bruised bones, residual poison in his veins, lacerations, internal bleeding, burns. The list goes on and on. It is a miracle that he has arrived even barely alive to Law's hands. It is even more so a miracle that the only doctor that could fix such damage was the one to rescue him. 

When the operation is over, Law is cold to the bone due to the overuse of his devil’s fruit. He allows himself a moment of rest, falling on a chair beside the pallet, where Strawhat’s body is resting, unconscious. 

He had been careless. Extremely so. (There is blood on his face, hands and clothes all of it belongs to Monkey D. Luffy)

Law cannot even savor the medical miracle he has just performed or even allow himself to relinquish the fascinating details of Strawhat’s strange anatomy. 

Because Doflamingo was there. Doflamingo had seen him for the first time in a decade. He knows he had chosen this particular moment to make himself present. That he has chosen this particular boy to rescue. Doflamingo knows he never does anything without millimetrically making a calculation before doing so. He knows it well, because it was him who taught him that. 

In Flevance, his father had recognized Law’s intelligence, used it to teach him everything he knew about the world and about medicine–the learning had been cut short before Law was eleven–Doflamingo had recognised the same and used it to teach him how to use it to manipulate, the most strategic way of hurting, the most twisted and unexpected way to do so. 

Cora-san had taught him how to love the world again.

The rescue had been unplanned, sloppy, and impulsive. Passionate and emotional. Everything Law was supposed to forsake for the sake of the Plan. 

He can’t fathom what had possessed him to do so. 

What was worse, Doflamingo would make his own assumptions about it. 

None of those assumptions are good, neither for him nor for Strawhat.

He snaps out of his dark thoughts when he hears Bepo been talked to submission by Boa Hancock. He gets up, hesitates for a moment, then leaves Kikoku leaning against Strawhat’s medical bed. 

He finally gets out to the submarine’s deck. 

He notices the looks on everyone present, realizing that they are looking at the blood stains, he talks before anyone can make the wrong assumption.

“I did all I could do. He is still alive but he’s accumulated an unbearable amount of damage. I can’t say for certain if he’ll survive”

That’s how he learns that Strawhat had been gathering wounds since his incursion to Impel Down. He is not surprised and at the same he is. There he is, surrounded by Revolutionaries and fugitives of justice both. A former Shichibukai and an actual one-The Empress Boa Hancock–all of them already in debt with Strawhat. 

So the question he receives next is not a surprise at all.

“By the way, are you a friend of Strawhat’s or something, sweetie?” Ivankov’s face is both sympathetic and worried with a touch of tenderness, as if the mere imagining that a friend of Monkey D.Luffy had been forced to be covered in his blood is a harm to be soothed. 

“...No” answered Law “I had no obligation to save him either…but if kindness makes you uncomfortable, shall I make up some reason?” he promptly adds.  

“No, it’s fine! There are times when instinct moves our bodies after all”

Instinct. Interesting choice of words.  

Jinbei appears on deck as well, apparently unable to stay bedridden. 

“Trafalgar Law, from the North Blue…I thank you for saving my life” he begins saying, with his hands sprawled over his makeshift bandages, Law has still to suture but apparently Jinbei is too worried about Strawhat to care about his own delicate state.

“I can’t even begin to fathom Luffy’s heart condition, perhaps his fainting was a copying mechanism but what I fear the most is the moment when he wakes up…”

There is a long meaningful silence.

The empress proposes to go to her island.

Once they disembark in Amazon Lily, the Empress interrogates him with open, almost accusatory glares. Law thinks he can understand why; the Empress has been calling Strawhat all types of pet names. It is not unseemingly that there are romantic relationships formed between pirates in the Grand Line. He is the doctor who tended to his lover, so perhaps she is just assessing him on his care of his patient. 

Law is cautious enough that he doesn’t allow himself to react.  

“Why don’t you bend to my powers?” she finally hisses. Law arches a brow, puzzled.

“What do you mean?” he tries not to sound confrontational, it is reasonable that if your partner almost dies you’ll be on edge, truly he doesn’t want to confront a Shichibukai. 

She huffes, pouting at him.

“Creepy” she decided as if it’s anything but validation to Law’s self esteem. Whatever that was, better creepy than appear to be an easy prey. 

Unfortunately for the health of his patient, Monkey D. Luffy awakes the next morning. The first thing he does is ask for his dead brother. 

Law is too exhausted, having slept little despite being tired to his bones, to stop him. So, he observes the thin line of the horizon, his hands still on the straw hat. He doesn’t need to imagine what Strawhat is going though. He knows he is not the right person to stop it. After a few minutes, he feels the presence of Jinbei to his right side.

“He is going to kill himself if he goes like this” he comments, he wants the former warlord to understand the gravity of the situation. “He is suffering from a psychological crisis, probably also a mixture of an anxiety attack and a meltdown” Law knows that pretty well, he has experienced many of them, unfortunately. 

The fisherman runs to Strawhat, Law lets out a measured exhalation. 

He knew exactly what it was to survive while the person who saved your life died in front of you. It was as simple as that. He meditates to distract himself from the sounds of frantic desperate cries as well as the destruction that comes from the nearby forest. 

What a strange creature Monkey D.Luffy is. Law kept trying to figure him out without any success yet. One thing is for sure, there is a nameless affinity between the two of them.

This is it, he is a portrait of grief to the past; Law’s past. He is a portrait of a house on fire, both the bleeding trace of it–all that was lost forever–the fury and the wailing sound of the spectator seeing it, the inescapable knowledge that it is too late, always too late–Law remembers his own always cremating in his nightmares–. He knows there is no end to that sadness, as a profound crevice on a glacier, always being snowed in, each night, the cold solitude of being the only one that survived. Law is well aware that he is simultaneously the best one to understand Strawhat’s cries for his brother, and the worse to attempt to make it better. What can he say besides what he knows is true?: ‘The luck of a D’ might well be the curse of surviving.

The sun is down when Jinbei, the first son of the sea, goes back to him. His shoulders are sunken, with exhaustion, with a smidge of defeat.

“I’ve tried to make him move, or at least let me carry him, to no avail” said the Fisherman, he took a seat on the seashore. 

“I need to check on his injuries with urgency” Law got up, dusting the remains of sand from his pants in the process.

It wasn’t difficult to find him, following the trail of destruction that he had left in his mad grief. He found him on a clearing. 

He was there, lying against a rock, his expression vacant. His skin was pale, almost gray, his eyes unfocused and red rimmed. 

Law kneeled in front of him.

“Strawhat-ya, I need you to come with me to the Polar Tang”

The other captain didn’t answer. He didn’t even react to Law’s presence. 

Monkey D. Luffy had been a bright thing the first time Law saw him. He was determined, it seemed to him that that boisterous laughter that came to him while fighting was easier than breathing. Now, his eyes are sunken in despair, his entire demeanor captive of grief. 

This is what the World Government does with people. It pushes and pushes, takes and takes, destroys and despreys, rinse and repeat. Until there is nothing left, only the broken bones of dreams, hopes. Only the hollow imagery of what once was. 

Law still has the straw hat in his hand. 

Law makes a decision and puts the hat on Strawhat’s black hair.

Strawhat opened his eyes disproportionately, his head moved upwards, his eyes meeting Law’s, unblinking. There was a strange emotion permeating his features. 

“My…hat” his voice sounded hoarse, with a tinge of incredulity. 

“I kept it” Law explained. He deduced it might have been important, like Law’s was for him. “Now I return it yo you”

Strawhat’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, without letting out a single sound, he seemed shocked in a way Law could not understand. 

“You…” he began before closing his mouth with a click of his teeth. His eyes were shining with a thin veil of tears. 

“Come with me to the Polar Tang” insisted Law now that he had his attention “I need to give you a medical bath and change your bandages”

“I…can’t move” recognized Strawhat. 

Law turned himself around to offer his back to carry him, he didn’t like the solution but he could not risk losing the chance now that Strawhat was responsive, he could not guarantee he would not go back to being nonverbal or in a fugue state. 

Strawhat puts his arms around his neck, Law positions his legs in between each side of his torso to finally get up.

Strawhat has lost muscle mass, he weighs too little for the strength of his punches. Law hardly has any issue carrying him back to the Tang. While they make their way back following back the path to Law’s submarine, he feels Strawhat getting his head loll until his cheek is on Law’s head.  

“You…put my hat on my head” he repeats, his voice tremulous with wonder. 

“Yeah, I did that” Law could not understand why he was fixated with the gesture.

He tasks Bepo with giving Strawhat a medical bath. Once he is out of the shower he has fallen again into his non-verbal state. Law changes his bandages carefully. But when he attempts to make him recline back to the pallet, Strawhat resists. 

“Cold” he mumbles as if talking that single word is an extreme effort to make “Hard bed” he adds before he falls again into silence. Law supposes he is right. Probably it is not a very comfortable bed to sleep in, more so if you have been operated in the same place, now that he pays some attention to it…The palled kind of smells, badly. 

“Come with me” since he knows Strawhat can’t move yet he holds him in between his arms. He tries not to think about the name of their position: ‘carrying bridal style’, it is a stupid name to call just carrying someone from one point to another. 

The space is quite organized in the Polar Tang, there is no extra space that is not designed for patients, and he is not going to let Strawhat to the crew’s cabins, they are hardly peaceful. So he does the only thing it comes to his mind at the moment: He brings him to his own room. It is sound proofed, one of the only quiet parts of the sub. After all, the patient desperately needs to rest, his life depends on it. 

Once they arrive in Law's room, Strawhat is asleep in between his arms, probably exhausted himself both physically and emotionally. He reclines him on his bed, covering him with clean, fluffy blankets. Law had a selection of them, he is quite particular with textures. He imagines he would have to sleep with Bepo today. Not a rare occurrence, but when he gets up to leave the room a hand grabs at the rim of his shirt and stops him in his tracks.

Law turns around. Strawhat’s hand is trembling like a leaf to the winter winds, his knuckles are white in his desperate grasp. There’s already a track of tears inundating his dark eyes, his mouth is turned downwards, barely containing the clattering of his teeth. For a moment, Law has a flashback, of himself, almost a decade ago. 

“Don’t leave me alone” begged the other. Law found himself automatically kneeling in front of him, clustered against the bed. 

“We don’t know one another” Law muttered, trying to rationalize the absurdity of the situation. 

“We do!” wailed Strawhat, his eyes were wide, desperate, searching for something in Law’s expression “You are the one that helped us in Sabaody, Tra…Troao…Torao, right?”

Of course Law helped. Any act against the Government normally inspires in him some sort of sympathy. 

“Uh…uh…” Strawhat stutters, he again seems incapable of talking. He lets go of Law’s shirt and begins to gently rock back and forth, trying to soothe himself. 

Law’s heart lurches inside his chest. How someone as luminous, easygoing as Strawhat has been reduced to this?

This is what the World Government does. 

Unforgivable.

“I’m staying” he capitulates, he is not unsympathetic enough to overlook suffering caused by the parasitic World Government and his hounds, The Marines. He gets his boots out, his belt and hat on the chair of his desk. 

His bed is ample enough for two people, he designed it like it because he moves a lot during his nightmares, it is also delimited with a raised rim, as a barrier, to prevent himself from falling to the floor during one of them. He lets himself inside the bed, his back pressed against the hard wooden rim of it, giving the other space enough so that even another person could fit in between them both. 

Monkey D. Luffy looks small, as young as he is, his head of riotous black spikes half swallowed by the pillow, the heavy blankets on top of him up to his chin. After some minutes of heavy silence in which he had been closing his eyes, clearly dozing off, he opened them again, slowly, probably aware of being observed. Law can’t take his eyes off on time and pretend he wasn’t staring, it is too late for that. 

“Torao” his voice is still raw, scratchy from when he was intubated only two days ago. 

His eyes are red, puffy, he has a trail of dried saliva all the way from his lips to his chin. 

“Go back to sleep” coldly advises Law, trying to strangle the tenderness the scene inspires in him.

“Nu-uh” mumbles Strawhat, shaking his head. Law sighs. He almost can feel the restlessness permeating the entire figure of the other.

One of Strawhats arms sneaks under the sheets to try to reach for Law’s. Law involuntarily flinches, rapidly moving his arm away from the other. 

“Are you bad with touch, Torao?” his tone is not judgemental, only mildly curious. 

Law doesn’t answer. What could he say? That every time someone had touched him with care that person had died? That the only touches he's got for a time were attempts at violence? That he had a complicated story with it because he swung from touch aversion to touch starvance to absolute terror of it to the point of reacting violently if someone tried to touch him? That he still has nightmares about having to escape Flevance under a pile of dead people who were their neighbors, acquaintances, schoolmates; rotting, worms festering on them and crawling through Law’s skin?

“Zoro sometimes is like that” continued Strawhat, unaware of Law’s internal turmoil. “But he is getting better at it”

Strawhat didn’t elaborate further, he just kept looking at him.The surgeon realized that Strawhat was waiting for permission. 

“You don’t have any issues with it, I gather” he managed to mumble trying to fill in the silence. 

“I like cuddling a lot” there is the shadow of a smile on Strawhat’s lips. 

Of course he does , thought Law, with an undertone not dissimilar to fondness. Which, on oversight, means that he is probably accustomed to that type of touch to calm himself down. 

“Torao, please?” Strawhat’s expression is sincere, open and expectant. There is not any undercurrent of hidden intentions. For once, Law is commiserate with his own inherent distrust. Moreover, who is him to deny such a simple consolation? Would have rejected such kindness if it had been offered to him when Corazón died? 

Law slowly, hesitantly, closed the distance rolling through the bed until his left side touched Strawhat’s. He was cold, an effect of blood loss; as effectively as Law was able to substitute that blood loss his whole body was dysregulated. 

He told himself he was agreeing to this only to secure the patient’s health, only that.

He snuggled closer to him until Strawhat’s head was tucked under his chin, his head just adobe his own heart. 

Luffy-ya let out a contented exhale. All the tension in his muscles disappeared. 

Law was surprised that he was comfortable. Perhaps due to the nature of Strawhat’s body, made of rubber? 

Strawhat closed his eyes and so did Law.

He was asleep within seconds.

Law woke first, he disentangled himself from Strawhat’s vice grip, deciding to bring the food from the kitchen to his room. 

When he got back Strawhat was already awake, blinking owlishly. 

“You get only soup until your intestines can handle solid food, you also need to take medications orally” 

“Bitter” he protested once he finished his soup and was presented with the medicines, he stuck his tongue out of his mouth.

“It is in a syrup it should be easier to swallow this way” explained Law.

“Hu-uh” Strawhat responded, with a sound expressing faint protest. 

“Will it make it better if I take them with you?” After all, this wouldn’t be the first time that he had self-medicated and wouldn’t be the last. Law served in two little cups two takes of the syrup, it was mainly painkillers the next shot would be antibiotics.

“One for you, and one for me…” Law’s father used to do that when Lami and him catched the flu at the same time and had to take some sort of medication, he would make a game of it to make the bitter taste of them more palatable. “And another one for you because your body does have a weird resistance to painkillers” Law finished deciding to add an extra dosage. 

“Come on, we’ll take it on three, okay? One, two, three, now”

Strawhat drank the medicine at the same time as him. After that they took a glass of water. Strawhat was almost copying everything Law did, actually following instructions. 

“You're truly a good doctor, Torao” said Strawhat after he was cleared to go out to see the light of the sun; there was a pleased, tender smile tugging at Strawhat’s thin lips. 

When they finally get up and exit Law’s room together he can feel the stares of his crew on his back on their way out of the submarine.

Penguin and Shachi are going to give me hell for this.

The rest of the day, Strawhat follows him like a little lost duckling. Law feels as if he needs to monitor him closely, just in case he makes another attempt at self harm. 

He entertains him by reading out loud his Sora comics, they are very easy to follow and usually light hearted enough not to think about them.  

There is a curt, almost shy smile on Strawhats’s lips. He is listening but only partially or incidentally, perhaps. 

They are sitting back to back, Law supporting all (insignificant) Strawhat’s weight. Law is reading him a scene in which Sora is tortured, he is worried for a moment that the theme is too dark for Strawhat to handle at the moment–given his current circumstances– so he passes a few pages to when Sora is recuperating. 

“What does exscurciating mean?” interjects Strawhat. 

He means excruciating. He corrects him gently and explains it in the most clear way he can, almost citing the dictionary definition by heart. 

“You are smart” Strawhat musses. “Like Robin”

Nico Robin, he had heard all about her. The government had tried to find her since she was a child, they tried to kill her and she had survived. Law admired that.

“Thanks” he curtly answers, for some reason he genuinely feels complimented. 

“I like your reading voice” continues Strawhat, still not meeting his eyes, as if the rouge dirt of Amazon Lily is amazingly interesting “It is even better than Usopp’s when he reads us stories” 

His coherent talk doesn’t last long, though. Strawhat moves until they are sitting next to each other, his knees touching. He stops himself, makes grunts some noises and then adds: 

“Ne, Torao, você tem irmãos?

That answers a question Law didn’t even know he had, Strawhat is from Goa. Law has read a little about the story of that kingdom, knows one thing or two in that language. 

“Eu tinha uma irmã” he knows his accent is atrocious, he isn’t even sure if he is using the right conjugation. 

Strawhat laughs, it is a cold and broken sound. Law involuntary shivers. 

“What was her name?” His tone is devoid of any emotion. Law knows better than to take it as a lack of internal emotions. 

“Lami” Law finds himself answering. It’s the first time he has said her name out loud in years. 

She can still hear her in his dreams, laughing, calling him. His love for her had come so easily, so effortlessly. He didn’t remember how he had done it, he could not repeat the result, despite how much he loved Shachi, Penguin and Bepo. Strawhat’s thin voice interrupts his thoughts. 

“One of my nakama has a similar name. Nami. She says she is not my sister, but she behaves like one”

He decides to humor him, continuing the conversation. It is better to keep him talking than to see him consumed by black bile. 

“Big sister or little sister?” Law asks. 

“Big sister” nods Strawhat, there is an almost smile playing in his lips, Law decided that despite him being the worst person in the world trying to cheer up a broken heart he at least could make him reminicin his loved ones, that had to count for something, right?

“You are from the North Blue, right?”

Law nods.

“Torao, say something in your language” requests Strawhat. 

“You are not going to understand it”

“Who cares” answers the other, his tone is flat, nonetheless Law recognises that there is some curiosity in apparent deadpan expression. 

Indeed, who cares. Nobody but him remembers. It’s cadence, it’s beauty, its accuracy, how 

his father had read complicated poetry to him every night before sleep. It didn’t matter if Law understood it or not. He could remember the cadence of his father’s voice,the way the words were right, perhaps they were right because it was his father who said them. 

Law had memorized the whole thing. His memory, what a cursed thing it was. Sharp as a blade. He remembers the fire, the blood, the smiles and warmth both. He doesn’t know which one is worse. 

He fixes his eyes in a distant point of the horizon, tracing along the calm belt, he begins reciting:

“Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme, 

ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme, 

welche die Welt begrenzt, 

indem sie glänzt

für irgendeinen Kreis, 

aus dem heraus kein Wesen von ihr weiß.

Aber die Dunkelheit hält alles an sich: 

Gestalten und Flammen, Tiere und mich, 

wie sie’s errafft, 

Menschen und Mächte –

Und es kann sein: eine große Kraft 

rührt sich in meiner Nachbarschaft.

Ich glaube an Nächte.”

It was appropriate then, that the world had become silent. The stars were up, and the distant fire lit up by the Heart Pirates lit up Strawhat's eyes.

“What does it all mean?” he asked, tilting his head. 

Law shrugged, pretending nonchalance. 

“For me it means that I shouldn't still love it. But my father did, so I must keep loving it, because he did. And that, sometimes has to be enough to make it live still”

Strawhat’s eyes were fixed on his face. As if he was trying to decipher him. Law suddenly feels restless. Perhaps it was the cold of the night or the voice of the dead haunting his memory, but the body hair on his arms standed. He changed the subject. 

“Are you hungry?” 

“A little” admitted Monkey D. Luffy, he seems a little disappointed that he can’t be enthusiastic about it. 

But he wants to eat, that is a win in Law’s books. 

They get back to Law’s room, this time Strawhat doesn’t protest while taking his meds, he is already dressed in comfortable clothes. Law goes to the bathroom and changes into comfortable joggers and a sleeveless t-shirt. He feels underdressed but for a northerner Amazon Lily is way too hot and humid. He enters his room, Strawhat is already inside his bed looking at him intently. He is about to open his mouth to say ‘goodnight’ to go to Bepo’s room when Strawhats interjects: 

“Torao, come back to bed”

Law sighs. Of course Strawhat would make a habit out of something that happened one night ago. Law knows he is still in shock, probably has imprinted in him somehow. It might be some sort of misplaced sense of attachment because Law was there in a crucial moment, nothing else. For a moment, Law feels bad for Strawhat’s partner, Boa Hancock. While she is patiently waiting for Strawhat’s recuperation to reunite with him, Law is somehow fulfilling a role of emotional support to which neither belongs nor suits him. 

“Toraoooo” Strawhat whines. 

Damn him.

Law knows when to admit defeat. He closes his room’s door, flicks the lights off, climbs to his bed, turning the sheets to his chin.

After almost ten minutes of silence, Law is already dozing off.Then, Strawhat’s voice wakes him completely. 

“Hum, Torao…I want”

“Don’t tell me you want a cuddle again” breathes Law, not even attempting to mask his sarcastic tone. 

Then, Strawhat’s fingertips are on his face. 

Law suppresses a gasp. He manages not to make a sound. The gesture takes him entirely by surprise. It was barely a touch, but he didn’t ask. He feels as if he is going to bolt at any moment. The word ‘Room’ is almost rolling in his tongue.  

“Want to feel skin” finishes the other.

There was a long moment of silence in which Law asks himself if he had abused some substance again–without remembering doing so–to satisfy his own curiosity, and if that was the case, he was seriously doubting the quality of the stuff. Or perhaps it had only made him prone to bad trips. 

“Torao” Strawhat’s voice takes him out of his dissociative state.

“What” he rasps. It is only the fingertips of two fingers that are still barely connected to his cheek, Law realizes. It felt as if it was so much more. 

“I want to feel your heart. Skin.”

Law deduces that what Strawhat means is that he wants to listen to his heart, skin to skin. 

Once, when they had just begun sailing the North Blue, they stopped to pass the night in some ugly low-life flophouse. That night a girl entered Law’s room when he was asleep. She was one of the girls that worked there, who had been serving him Penguin and Shachi, the worst beer ever known to man. He woke him up, Law was too stunned to even ask why she was there and she took it as permission. She sat on his lap. 

He didn’t have time to even activate a room, he moved almost involuntarily. Law had shoved her so hard she ended up on the other side of the room. He didn’t mean to. Her arm broke with the impact against a cabinet. 

Law didn’t do anything like that to Strawhat. Instead his mouth moved quicker than his brain.

“How do you propose we make that happen, Strawhat?”

What the hell is going on? Am I really doing this?

How the hell could I pretend I am calm about this, why am I not freaking out, why I’m not flipping Strawhat off, what the bloody hell, what the actual…

“Torao, we’ve talked about this, call me Luffy” No, they haven’t talked about being on a first name basis. He had just decided to give him a nickname and call it a day. 

“I want to feel…the last thing I remember is Ace’s skin…melting…” he can’t see his face expression, the moonlight that enters through the porthole is deficient, only enough to make up silhouettes. His breath is becoming ragged, though. 

Scheiße, verdammt. He is hyperventilating again. I need to act. 

Before he can talk himself out of it, because he would, he digs his own grave. 

“It’s okay, Luffy-ya. I’ll take my shirt, you can listen to my heartbeat. Try to breathe in and out slowly while you do so.”

There, sentenced. 

Law mechanically removes his tank top. The act should be weird, it should make Law want to crawl out of his skin. Because this is something similar to intimacy even if it’s only to alleviate Strawhat’s internal unrest. 

There was the sound of fabric, a movement to Law’s side as Strawhat, like some sort of spoiled house cat, began crawling to Law’s side to gather body heat. 

Then, an explosion of touch. 

Luffy’s hair tickled the skin of his sternum. His ear is pressed against his left pectoral, one of his arms is pressed against his right side. His hand to his chest, the rest of it down his ribs. That is a lot of skin against skin. Luffy-ya isn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of shorts. 

Law could feel goosebumps on his arms. It’s too much, it’s weird. It’s a lot to take in. His brain begins segregating serotonin like mad. A shiver travels from all his vertebrae to his brain. He almost forgot he could do that. Law had read about it when he was still a child, when his father was teaching him the basics of the human body. 

Skin to skin contact made the brain segregate all types of bioproducts. He had known the theory but he had never done this with anyone. Not any human being. Sometimes if they were on a summer island he would nap with Bepo without a shirt, but this was substantially different.

Luffy-ya’s skin was warm, soft. Of course it was, it was human skin. 

He can hear his own heart beating. Luffy-ya is following his rhythm to inhale and exhale. He is actually making good use of his advice. 

“Better?” he finds himself asking in a hushed voice. 

“Hm” gently nods Luffy-ya against his chest. 

The things I’ve done for the medical field. 

Next morning, in a very somber post-inappropiate-skin-to-skin-cuddling-with-a-fellow supernova serotonin drop hangover, Law arrives to the conclusion that it all makes perfect sense:

Lully-ya is somehow conscious of his disrepaired mental health and doesn’t want to worry his partner, Boa Hancock. Many men make their girlfriends or wifes responsible for the entirety of their emotional well-being, overloading them with that responsibility, making them carry all the weight of the emotional part of the relationship. Seeing the type of friends Luffy-ya has, he probably is more open minded than most. Therefore, most probably he has taken the course of seeking help from someone related to the medical field to deal with his grief until he is well enough that he doesn’t constitute a burden to his partner. 

While Law has been put in a peculiar position, he understands that this unreasonable to most demands are not born out of bad faith, but mislead good intentions. Luffy-ya is of course not interested in anything but the easy solace of human warmth even if he doesn’t know he is asking the worst person on the planet to provide that. 

Next day passes almost in the same way that the previous one: Luffy-ya demands to be tended. He is dressed, fed, Law reads to him about beetles on his petition–which seems to be a recurrent interest of his–Law shows him his coin collection and before they know it is night again. 

Law doesn’t bother with either wearing a shirt or making the attempt to go to Bepo’s room. Luffy-ya is hugging him before he can leave the bed after taking dinner on it. Law goes through fifteen minutes of being almost overstimulated with how much sensory overload he is receiving, before he can finally fall asleep. 

A cry wakes him up.

Luffy-ya disentangles of his arms, the scream dies on his throat and turns into harsh breaths that make way to gagging sounds.

Law sat up, he turned Luffy-ya’s face to the side, gently directing him where there was a washbowl. Luffy-ya was very lucky that Law had the oversight to put it there. He held him under his armpits until the little dinner Luffy-ya had taken was on the basin. Law waited until Luffy’s breathing was a little under control to leave the bed. He brought back a towel and cleaned Luffy’s sweat, then he graved a wet antibacterial wipe and cleaned his face. 

“Shhh” he heard himself saying, trying to soothe Strawhat. He was still crying, his face was a mess of snot and tears.  

“I never told him that I loved him!” he wailed, his entire body shaking almost violently. It was very clear who was referring to. Law felt as if a dagger had  pierced through his stomach. He inhaled to steer himself. 

“He knew it, you know he knew it.” He told Luffy-ya. He thought of Cora-san’s smile before he died. I love you Law , he had said. Law never had the time to answer. “He knew” he repeated, he didn’t know anymore if he was reassuring Strawhat or himself.

“I always forget to tell people that I love them!” his hands were grabbing Law’s arm as if it was a lifeline. 

Words stuck to his throat. Wasn’t he the same? Had he ever told Bepo, Shachi or Penguin how much he treasured his brothers? 

“With Sabo…with Sabo happened the same!” continued Luffy-ya. 

“Sabo?” 

“He was…he was my other big brother” he whimpered. 

Oh , thought Law. Shit. So this was the second time? Law had lost two parents and Strawhat two brothers, the symmetry was, if not uncanny, cruel. 

“I’ve always been alone…Alone until Ace and Sabo…and…and….They are not here anymore!!!”

Strawhat broke in helpless cries, bending himself over Law’s arm as if he could not support his own weight. Law felt a prickling to his eyes, his throat constricted. 

“There are many people out there, you still have your crew and even more than that” he was very conscious of how strained his voice sounded but Luffy-ya had almost recuperated from the worst of his wounds, he couldn’t relapse to self-destructive tendencies he needed to think about the people he still had–it was more than Law had when Cora-san was murdered–rationalized Law, like the Empress, Strawhat’s partner. Law could not forget that she is waiting for him at the end of this grief trance.  

Strawhat nodded but he was still shaking, wailing while Law supported him.

“Shh, it’s fine” “It’s fine, I’m here” babbled Law, he felt so inadequate, so hypocritical, trying to soothe a pain he knew would never disappear. He had to try.  He is not a monster. Cora-san would have wanted this. He doesn’t promise everything would be alright, he knows he would be lying, but he can try to be good, he can try to at least attempt a modicum of tenderness for the sake of a mourning boy. 

He holds Strawhat until his cries die out little by little, until he is bended by absolute exhaustion, falling backwards to his chest. 

“Stay” murmurs Luffy-ya, barely conscious. 

“I will, I promise” answers Law in a whisper. 

When he wakes up the sun is painting a tapestry of light over their bodies. Law is holding Strawhat back, their legs are entangled, he realizes he had been resting his head on Luffy’s shoulder, that their chests are even touching, that’s how close they are. 

Then, there was a single terrorized thought trapped like a moth in a jar catapulting itself against a flame:

What the hell am I doing?

That very day Dark King Silver Raleigh appeared on the island. 

He had a chat with Strawhat, offering him his assistance. 

Meanwhile, the Empress–who had come to see her lover’s rapid recovery–looked at him with an expression of open disapproval and jealousy, her arms crossed over her bosom. Law hated the position Strawhat had put him in when he decided to make him his cuddle-buddy. It was unseemingly, strange, inappropriate. They were captains of different crews, they weren’t even in a formal alliance. It broke all the rational norms of the pirate world. They weren’t even friends or chosen family for fuck’s sake. It was even against the Plan. 

Another thought inside him answered, tinted with deep recrimination: You allowed him to your bed.

He could not draw the wrath of a Shichibukai only because he had given too much of a good patient care to a boy who had the same disregard as him for both the Celestial Dragons and the World Government. Political affiliations–or affinities–aside, it was unwise. It was time to make himself scarce, probably to reevaluate his life and choices.

You wanted to save him.

It was unequivocally time to go. 

Despite wanting to leave without much fuss, discreetly, it was impossible to try to be stealth about it when Luffy-ya had so much instinct to find him that one might wonder if he already mastered haki. 

He catched them when they were just about to pull from the coast, preparing everything to submerge. 

“Torao!!” he called, from the rim of the seashore, he barely had to scream, the Polar Tang was just some meters inside the water.

His dark eyes were on Law’s, there was a trace of sadness on them, the rest was something akin to conviction. 

“Will I see you again?” he asked, with a gentle undertone of hope.

“Who knows” answered Law, with a tone as neutral as he managed to get it out. 

Luffy-ya smiled. This time the smile reached his eyes, illuminating his entire face. 

An unwise, traitorous voice inside Law sighed: 

If I am lucky.  

They finally submerged, leaving behind Amazon Lily. 

“Captain, what have you done?” asked Penguin, his voice tremulous with equal wonder and worry.

Law could feel the beginning of a headache brewing in between his eyes. 

“I think I am asking myself the same question”

He could only pray it would not become something worse, like consequences. 

If only Destiny had ever listened to his prays. 

End of chapter 2

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

__Robert Frost 

He held it between his hands. It was erratically beating. Bleeding down to his forearms to the rolled sleeves of his hoodie. Cutting into it had been so different, that’s how he had learnt that he was elastic even on the inside. All of them were made of rubber. It was the first time he had operated on a paramecia with the intent of saving his life. The consistency of his blood was different as well and once the external blood entered his blood vessels it got converted almost immediately. It was one of the most interesting things he has ever seen in his life. 

He had grasped into his long prolonged intestines until he was elbows deep into him, that’s how he got the blood stains on his face. He had repaired him as best as he could given the circumstances, piercing his organs had been similar to piercing a latex glove or any appliance with a similar base in materials. It smelt like burnt rubber. He had been unable to take the odor of his clothes even after washing them several times. 

He was so warm, all of him that even straining his devil’s fruit power to continue operating on him for hours he hadn’t realized he was getting cold until he had ended the operation.

What a wondrous thing he was on the inside. What…

A crashing sound.

The howling wind battering against the metallic walls of the laboratory wing he was currently staying in, wakes him up. Again, he has fallen asleep on the same old gray coach under the same wool raspy blankets. Only a fuzzing electrical lamp illuminates the spacious frigid room. 

The tendrils of the dream leaves his cheeks warm, his heart beating up fast. While he processes the memory he comes to a conclusion:

He had performed another miracle that day. 

For once, the World Government had not won. 

Not completely. Because he had used the ‘luck of the D’ to save Monkey D. Luffy. 

Not many newspapers arrived to Punk Hazard but he had been following Strawhat’s progress, he seemed to keep provoking Yonkos, stealing territory from under Big Mom’s nose. Stirring chaos whenever he went. 

Meanwhile, Law had sent his crew to Zou. After becoming a Shichibukai, to proceed with the next phase of the Plan. 

The past two months he has spent here in Punk Hazard felt like eons. Each day dragging its frigid feet around his knees like chains. 

It had been months of playing pretend. His position of Shichibukai is only temporary, a movement to keep the Marines out of his back until he had created a strategy to blow up the Sad Industry, the first step to make Joker’s house of cards collapse.

But at what price.

He doesn’t want to think of all the people he left behind without a heart to gain the current post he is defending. 

He always knew that executing the Plan would neither easy nor pleasant but having to endure the constant double-edge phrases from fucking Cesar the Clown, knowing that he was very close to be able to destroy one of the most important and not being able to move was excruciatingly 

During all that time, Monet had been subtly trying to taunt him, with phrases and insinuations. She should have known better, Law had never been interested in those things. It had been to his own good. Law had seen other pirates being led to their destruction by petty desires, where they failed, Law endured. 

Which didn’t mean it had been easy. He expected the ‘drop’, the restarting of his ever cyclical melancholy. Precinding of his crew had been hard. He had been relying on them for support since he met the core of them in Shallow Island. There was no one to be there when he had nightmares, no one to remind him to eat or to sleep when he got lost in his strategic musings for hours on end. Today’s dreams had been exceptionally good, for a change. He left the ratty coach, gathered enough strength to go to the rather clinical bleach white bathroom to make himself at least decent. 

Once out of the bathroom he took some pills. His father had never been a psychologist, but he had studied the chemical imbalances in the brain, he had instructed Law on which changes on the human body could cause disruption extending to the body. 

He was going through hell. He could not sleep at night. He could not sleep during the day. 

He often thinks of them. His crew. He had been trying to make peace with the fact that perhaps he was never going to see them again.  

He missed them, there was no other way to put it. The past months since they separated had been difficult. It was the first time since he was thirteen that he passed more than a few days separated from Bepo, Shachi and Penguin. 

Again, Law’s memory came to haunt him with, perhaps not easier, but simpler times. 

He remembered their first days sailing on the Polar Tang with fondness. Despite the chaos, the difficulties, the inexperience of those days.

Because all in all, after those years living with Wolf they had become a family. An actual family. Even if they were a very unconventional one. Law found that these days he could only feel something when he remembered the scenes from that time. 

For example, there was Shachi and Penguin’s relationship. Which had evolved in front of his eyes. From two scared boys fiercely clinging to each other, surviving each day from mistreatment and hunger, to his two friends. Law had learnt that they had been born only within a few months of difference between them. Their mothers had been best friends. Before Law had met them they already were so intertwined they didn’t know where the other began and the other ended. Best friends or perhaps more than that but without a word for it. Once they left Swallow Island something changed between them.

They had been sailing on the Polar Tang for just a couple of weeks when it happened. It was a calm night but given that Law had a very light sleep it wasn’t surprising that he caught them in the spot the first night it probably happened. They had been in the room next door and before opening the door he could hear them fumbling under the sheets, letting out ragged breaths, kissing noisily. He had chosen that moment to enter the room.

“I hope you are using protection”

Penguin had gasped like an old woman clutching his pearls, Shachi breaked from Penguin putting him at the safe distance of ten centimeters between them. They were equally mortified. Shachi’s cheeks were as red as his hair. There was a tense second of silence.

“The…what?” Penguin’s voice squeaked.

“Don’t tell me you don’t even know what you are doing” or trying to do, thought Law, they didn’t seem to be doing much, just probably sticking their toes into unknown waters. 

“Uh…no?” Shachi confessed, finally “Our parents died before explaining anything?” 

“Oh my fucking god” complained Law, with a deadpanned tone. In his case, of course Law had known how sex worked before he had lost his parents. He was already in advanced courses at the local medical school. He had been explained coldly and methodically how every type of human sex interaction worked, their risks and how to prevent them. As well as the different methods to secure those interactions without catching any STI. 

“Don’t do anything else until you’ve been instructed about it, you are going to hurt yourselves trying penetrative sex” had advised Law, very conscious of how annoying he was being.

“Please, for the love of the four seas don’t say anything else, Shachi is already regretting all of this” Penguin begged, digging his forehead in the heels of his palms.

“Yes, I’m even regretting even being born right now, thanks, Captain” bemoaned Shachi. 

“You are welcome” answered Law snickering before closing the door and going back to sleep. 

After that and a couple of very instructive manuals they were granted clearance to continue their relationship, with the only condition that if they were going to have sex they did it when Law’s precious few hours of sleep couldn’t be disturbed. 

The ache of missing them was what was keeping him awake at night. He wished he could be disturbed by the sound of their voices. 

All in all, the fateful day begins with howling frigid wind and snow. After a marine incursion on the laboratory he sees him in the middle of the chaos preceded by his unmistakable voice. 

“There’s someone over there!!!”

Strawhat had been as he was the first time he saw him. His dark spiky hair under his ever present hat, though he was wearing ear muffs under it, and a long white and red coat. 

“It’s you!!!” his dark eyes were illuminated by recognition. A big dazzling smile formed in his mouth. 

“Hey, it’s me! Thanks for what you did back then!!” he waved. As if Law could not recognize him immediately. Law felt as if the veil of monotonous melancholy that he had been immersed in for months had suddenly been lifted. 

Of course, Strawhat is followed by various members of his crew who vocally question his identity as well as murmur between them with various degrees of suspiciousness. To Law’s surprise Strawhat immediately responds to their inquiries by defending Law. 

“He helped me escape from the war with Whitebeard and healed my wounds! I owe him my life!”

Strawhat’s voice resonated in Law’s mind for a moment. Owning his life? Law only acted as a doctor, he just did what he had to. At the same time, he remembers the week he spent in Amazon Lily with Strawhat, how could he not? 

He feels lighter than in months. It is as if the sun has finally touched his skin. 

“You look good, Strawhat, as I see you've survived. But for what I did, there is no need for you to feel indebted. I just acted on a whim.” He tells him. Although he represses the other thoughts that assault his mind. Of how glad he was that it was him to appear on that day on that island. Of how glad he is doing fine again after how sick he had looked back then. How close to dying he had been. He remembered his tears, his immense pain. He was glad he was smiling again. 

See Cora-san? There are people out there that even the World Government with its infinite cruelty cannot break.  

Strawhat’s grin got even bigger in his face.

“Shishishi, I get that we might be enemies if you go for the One Piece but you are one of the people I am indebted for what happened two years ago. I’m really lucky to have met you. Thank you so much!!” Strawhat’s nose is brightly red due to the cold, as are his cheeks. Albeit this, he is radiating warmness, Law can almost feel the raw sincerity of his words. For a moment he observes him, speechless. 

But of course they are interrupted. The White Hunter’s crew have invaded the island, it is as if chaos always follows where Strawhat is, or perhaps he is imagining it? For whatever reason Strawhat bows him goodbye. 

“We’ll meet again!!!” he says, all the time he hasn’t stopped smiling at Law. 

Law smiled despite himself. He was glad, perhaps, of a work well done. He was glad that the tension of that hostile infected island had been completely broken by Strawhat’s smile. 

That day at Punk Hazard was going to be the last day that Law spent in that godforsaken glorified piece of shit that people insisted on calling an island. It was going to be the last day he would chase that fucking pathetic shadow of a clown that called himself a scientist. 

So that's what they had been hiding from him all this time. Experiments. on. bloody. children.

Fucking hurensohn.

Law knew that he could not stop him by himself. Then, he remembered Strawhat liberating slaves, without being asked, risking all that he risked at Sabaody. He freed imprisoned people, it was just the kind of direct action that Law mildly admired. Too direct perhaps for his own taste, he preferred to plan things carefully to avoid any loose thread, but Strawhat's action had been proven effective . 

He remembered how much Strawhat had fought to free as many people. He also knew he was a wild card. Had Strawhat not made the impossible, possible?

What would happen if two ‘D’ united strength?

Most importantly, Doflamingo would be fucking livid. 

The last piece to his puzzle had come to him. He didn’t believe in Destiny but…

But…

He looked at the infinite white sky.

“I would…” he began saying, then he stopped himself, it didn’t matter what he thought it could be possible or not, what mattered was this: “I know you’ll tell me to trust another ‘D’, Cora-san”

Penguin often had called him “delulu” for his highly complicated stakes, and perhaps he had a point on that, smiled Law. He had held Strawhat in between his arms while he was breaking, while he was broken from both on the inside and the outside, and yet…He had risen again. Stronger. 

Perhaps he was not what he expected but perhaps he was the right person for this part of the plan. 

Next thing he knew, he had saved the Strawhats’ navigator without much thought but he was regarded by Strawhat’s voice, resounding in the middle of the scuffle.

“Torao!” he called, waving, his breath came out in white puffs. “You saved Nami?!”

Law took a breath, it was the moment of truth, he couldn't wait any longer, he had to say it, he knew that if he waited any longer he risked losing his chance. 

“I was just thinking. I actually came to talk to you about something Strawhat…You may have come here by accident but there is a secret truth sleeping here; on this island there is the key to throw the New World into chaos” Law turns his back to Strawhat for a moment, unsure of how he will receive the following. “There are only two ways to survive in the New World. Either you survive under the radar of the emperors or you challenge them.” Albeit his hesitation, he turns to face the other. “I know you aren’t the kind of man who wants to work under someone”

“Yeah, you are right” He answers Strawhat, straightforward as always.

“Then, make an alliance with me!” finally declared Law.

“An alliance?” Strawhat’s mouth opens forming a little ‘o’, his cheeks do seem to turn more rosey than they were at the beginning of the conversation. 

“If you and I team up we might be able to do it. I have a plan to take down the four emperors” explains Law. 

“Luffy don’t do it!! Don’t be taken in by him!!! It’s madness!!” Law it is not surprised that one of the Strawhat’s crew mates reacts like this to his proposal. There are nightmarish tales about pirate alliances all around the Grand Line and the New World. Backstabbing, treason left and right, and even the more peaceful of them had ended up at least with one side stealing more of their accorded sharing of riches. Despite knowing that he will most likely be rejected he needs to insist. The chance has presented itself in a perfect way to just let it pass. 

“I never said it would be something done without a feasible strategy and of course we’ll go through it step by step, what will it be, Strawhat?” He fixes his eyes on Strawhat’s. 

“That emperor…which one is it?” asks the other pirate. 

“Hold on there Luffy!! What are you getting so interested in, we can’t trust him!!” his comrade continues screaming, moving frantically. 

Law tells him.

“Ok, I see. Let’s do this!!” proclaims Strawhat with a big smile. 

The protests of Strawhat crew didn’t stop just there and the one with a long nose complained:

“How can I sleep like night when we are collaborating with that suspicious guy?”

“I think Torao is a good guy!!”

Well, since he is being defended, Law decides to collaborate with them to save the children. Before going to that mission, though he wants to make sure that Strawhat understands that this would be a rapid action:

“Once we kidnap Ceasar there won’t be going back.” Warns Law, he needs Strawhat to have know this as clear as possible “If you want to change your mind now it’s the time”

“It’s fine, it’s decided. We’ll team up with you guys” Strawhat’s cheeks are rose tinted by the cold but his smile is warm, full of trust. 

“Then of course I’ll help you with your request”

Of fucking course the rest of the day had been pure unadulterated chaos. A chaos that Law had navigated as well as he could. It had been surprising that even the White Hunter, Smoker had demonstrated respect towards Strawhat. Even their men seemed very enamored with the Strawhat’s cook, Blackleg-ya, to the apparent very well concealed jealousy of the Strawhat’s swordsman. 

As easy going and carefree as Strawhat was, Law was forced to rest to take a rather delicious soup. 

Then, to his utmost surprise, the White Hunter asked him about his intentions with Strawhat. 

God gracious, what brought that up? Possibly, since Strawhat was probably some years younger than Law and certainly acted rather childish sometimes, the White Hunter’s sense of justice moved him to act as a fatherly figure. Strawhat was certainly a prodigy in attracting people’s loyalty towards himself even across such different people. 

But Law taking advantage of Luffy-ya? Law had to laugh about it, truly, him taking advantage of someone as stubborn as Strawhat? He would be very lucky if he is capable of making Strawhat follow basic instructions. Law makes the White Hunter know as much. 

Once they sail, Luffy tells his crew that they are in an alliance. Objections to it fly left and right, almost immediately. Strawhat insists that the decision is made which seems to make most of them stop complaining. 

Law left out a sigh of cautious relief. So far, Strawhat had defended him in front of his crewmates, cementing the decision to create an alliance. Of course, nose-ya and Blackleg-ya had come to him to warn him about his captain’s weird conceptions of what an alliance was. 

Once Cesar was secured and a system of guarding the prisoner was established a second lighter supper was served and everyone was sent to their cabins. Apparently the Strawhats slept almost in their entirety in one big cabin, even Luffy-ya went there. When some of the crewmates began speculating where to send Law to spend the night Strawhat resolved it almost immediately saying: 

“You can take my room Torao! I don’t use it!”

Apparently there was a Captain’s cabin, but being the odd-ball he was, Strawhat had never used it. Law was promptly given instructions on how to get there by Nose-ya. 

The room was hardly equipped with more than an ample bed, a clearly unused writing desk, a chair and an empty wardrobe. Law emptied part of his bags inside. Law keeps the lights off and only guided by the silver ways of the Moon through the porthole.  

Law is exhausted. The acceleration of the Plan was to be expected at this point but the contrast between the ample brutalist spaces of Punk Hazard and the little quaint cabin where he is stationed now are so extreme that he feels a moment of discombobulated fugue. 

There is no use in thinking now, he reigns his mind into a semblance of quietness. 

He is down to his jeans and socks already half of his body in bed when the door opens with some hesitation. A flash of yellow light filters by the crack as well as a familiar head, a familiar mischievous grin. 

“What are you doing here?” Law crosses his arms around his chest, the scene had an air of familiarity despite two years having passed. 

“It’s cold and I want a cuddle” answered Luffy as if it was the most normal thing in the world. 

Law sighed. Of course he wanted a damn cuddle. Strawhat was practically a cuddle machine; he and Bepo could have a competition to see who was more clingy in that aspect. 

Strawhat didn’t move from the edge of the door though he was, as always, almost shimmering with restlessness, his fingers moving, he was balancing himself with his toes back and forth. In contrast, Law didn’t move externally, though his mind was the one bustling with thoughts. 

Even if Luffy-ya was only over affectionate because he is grateful towards him, Law needed to set boundaries. Or at least set the record straight in respect to some concerns he had with the issue at hand. 

“Luffy-ya, do you think this is a good idea? It is one thing that you have the habit of sleeping in the same bed as other crewmates but we are on different crews. I do not want to cause any misunderstandment with your partner” calmly explained Law. Even if Strawhat didn’t mention anything else, he did not want to create more friction than the one he had already witnessed the previous day, when many of Strawhat’s crewmates objected to their alliance. 

“Uh? What partner?” Strawhat tilted his head to one side with a finger up to his mouth. 

“Boa Hancock” clarified Law.

“Uh-uh, we are friends” declared Strawhat his brows bended together in a comical expression of bewilderment, as if he could not fathom why the question was even relevant.

“You mean…aren’t you in a romantic relationship with her, Luffy-ya?” Pressed Law. Having into account that Strawhat calls basically anyone their friend it could be the case that his partner is also considered a friend. 

“Uh, no? But why would that be a problem?” Strawhat shrugged. 

Law was shocked to his core, his previous theories landing flat, useless against the last revelation.  

Law needed to reorganize his thoughts. So, apparently Boa Hancock had declared herself in a romantic relationship with Strawhat without telling Luffy-ya? He truly didn’t understand people. Why in the hell would someone do that? 

His blood pressure rose a little. There was still another possibility:

Even if they weren’t in a closed established relationship, Law needed to rule out every other romantic circumstance. He had, before, inadvertently mistook or misunderstood social cues in the past so he needed to be absolutely sure that that didn’t happen again. He could not risk any mistake (even if it was only for the well-being of the alliance) so close to his goal. 

“All right.” he began, soldiering up “You aren’t…you aren’t in a casual relationship, aren’t you? With her?” He found it unlikely, Strawhat was too straightforward with his interactions to do something that would give her the impression of being in a formal relationship if it wasn’t the case. But he had to know. He needed to know. 

“What do you mean, Torao? I don’t get what you are talking about?” 

Well, apparently he would have to spell it.

“I mean like in the way some people have sex with other people without strings attached. So, I was asking if you had that relationship with her and if it was exclusive or something.” Law internally cringed at his own phrase, it sounded nosy, so sketchy. 

“Sex? Ugh, noooooo” Strawhat’s nose wrinkled, as if the notion was unsavory to say the least. 

That had been a very direct question and a very direct answer. 

“Torao you are very weird, why would you ask me soooo many questions just to cuddle with me when it. Is. soooo cold outside!” Luffy-ya protested, he kept fidgeting, flapping his arms back and forth as if he was resisting the urge to throw himself at Law. 

Weird, indeed. Thought Law. He didn’t want to throw one of the only people he tolerated human contact with or to deprive himself from it when the last time it happened had some good feelings associated with it. Even when he refused to examine the reasons why. 

“Come to bed, I’ll explain it to you. It has to do with social customs. It is boring, perhaps this way we’ll fall asleep”

Strawhat’s face illuminated as if the sun was going out directly in front of it, he threw himself on top of Law and he fell on his back against the mattress. Strawhat’s arms were everywhere. Truly, a cuddle-machine. 

Law felt an immediate sense of deja vu. Two years had passed since they shared a similar situation on the Polar Tang, half a world away from when they were now. 

“So, you remembered me” spouted Law without thinking. He blamed his weariness, the remnants of a long fatigue accumulated for months without a single soul he could trust to talk to. 

“Of course I remembered you, Torao!” mumbled Luffy against his chest. Law maneuvered to gain some space, he got under the covers, followed by Strawhat. After some adjustments they ended up in a similar position that they shared once in the coasts of Amazon Lily. Luffy’s arms were around his waist, they were facing each other. His hats were on top of each other on the bedside table. 

“Can I feel your heart again?” asked Luffy-ya, again with a mixture of candid trepidation and bashful excitement.  

A revel thought gnawed Law’s attempt at stoicism.  

I could die. I’m prepared to die to fulfill Cora-san’s wish. If I have just one moment of respite before it…so be it. 

“Yes” he whispered, the word almost stuck in his throat on his way out. 

Strawhat got rid of his red flashy vest. He did not waste a single second, adopting the same posture as when he cuddled with Law to quiet his sorrow. His head went directly on Law’s breast bone, one of his hands over the hooks of his chest heart tattoo. 

Why did Law feel so much peace being with Luffy-ya in that way? He could not say. Touch came as a difficult thing for Law, as well as a new situation with people he barely knew. But with Strawhat he felt…A strange connection. Was it because both of them were orphans? Was it because both of them were victims of the World Government’s cruelty? Was it because both of them were of the ‘D’? Or was it because they both knew grief in a way not many people knew it? Because they had survived when others didn’t? When they had been loved enough to be protected by their family to the cost of the lives of the people they loved? They were the objects of that particular kind of survival. 

Whatever the explanation was, for a moment, Law didn’t care. He felt the strange texture of Luffy-ya’s skin on his and everything became quiet in his mind. The cold that he had been feeling for months was relegated to no more than a distant memory. Law exhaled, he closed his eyes, in seconds, he was fast asleep. 

He could not say how many hours passed but it wasn’t dawn yet when the sound of footsteps woke Law. The door, which of course Strawhat had left half closed, opened ajar showing the familiar figure of Black-leg-ya. The cook stood at the edge of the door looking at him with his eyes open like plates, his mouth wide open in surprise. 

From his point of view, Law could imagine what strange picture he was looking at: His captain sharing his bed with the captain of their alliance, hours after it had been consolidated. It wasn’t a nice picture. One could very easily end up reaching one conclusion, which was the same that the White Hunter had speculated about: That Law was taking advantage of Luffy-ya. 

Blackleg-ya audibly gulped, turned around and walked away fast until Law stopped hearing the sound of his footsteps. 

Nonetheless, the situation got into Law’s nerves, so the remaining hour before the sun begins to cast his rays on the cabin he remains awake, thinking about the possible consequences. 

During the chaos that is breakfast with the Strawhats Law receives some stares, as well as some side eyes but no one dares to say anything directly to him. 

The day was too hectic for anyone to approach him or probably they were not interested enough. Who knows, most of them might be familiar with Strawhat’s weird way of showing affection to everyone he crosses his path. 

The day progresses rapidly, the hours he shared with the Strawhats don’t have a single second of quietness. 

After dinner, Law rapidly bows good night, enters the cabin he has been given, divests down to his underwear and falls to the bed like a stone on a river. He covers up to his chin with blankets and immediately falls asleep. 

He is woken up at an imprecise good forsaken hour in the middle of the night when he hears some voices arguing over the next room. The first mate’s cabin, which is next door, supposedly empty, or at least it was the previous night. It is impossible not to hear the conversation loud and clear now that Law is awake. In fact, given that the vice-captain cabin is just adjacent to the captain’s one, Law is privy to the entire conversation. 

“Oh my fucking god, Luffy!! How many times have I told you to fucking knock?!” Complains the voice of the Strawhats’ cook.

“But Zoro is sleeping here too!! I also want to!” whines Luffy-ya in that now familiar tone of complaint. 

Finally, the aforementioned swordsman responds.

“Luffy, we’ve just fucked, sorry, not today”

“Why don’t you go to your beloved Torao and let me fucking sleep in peace?!” interjects Black-leg-ya in a display of his habitual bad-temper. The word ‘beloved’ is spouted with a touch of contend and sarcasm. Law feels a jab to his chest. What does everyone think that he is favored by Strawhat? He does treat everyone the same way. 

Just seconds later, the door to the captain’s cabin opens, Luffy-ya sticks his head inside the room with a demure little smile on his lips. 

“Hi, Torao, Sanji and Zoro don’t want me to sleep with them because they just had sex”

“Too much information” murmurs Law, already half sitting up on the bed. 

“Robin doesn’t want to because she is having the menstoatrion” adds Luffy-ya, pouting. 

“Do you mean menstruation? Oh, okay” it makes sense that she might want some private solitude. 

“Franky and Brook snore too loudly and I never sleep with Nami because she kicks me out saying that I smell and that she only shares bed with cute girls” 

“Aha” Law can’t say he is surprised to hear that, he has heard the rumors of the romance between the Strawhats navigator and some princess. 

“And Usopp says he is processing ‘having survived another arc’ whatever that means”

“I see…”

There is a short silence in which a similar scene as the night before plays out in front of Law. Strawhat waits by the door, now with considerably more pouting. 

“This is your room, you know?” conveys Law. 

“Shishishi, can I sleep here, Torao?” asks Luffy-ya. 

“Yeah, yeah, come here” yields Law. 

Once again, the hats are left together in the same table, one on top of the other as if following an unscripted ritual. Covers are thrown, then put back to cover both of them. Luffy rests his head on his shoulder. This time, Law risks putting his arm over him. Instant warmness engulfs him, he lets out a sigh of relief, as if being here could make better the fact that death is close, more closer than ever. Nevertheless, he is fairly surprised that it is the first moment in all day that he has thought about how close he is to Doflamingo, and hence, everything that monster represents. Being in the middle of this boisterous, ever loud raucous crowd in which between them there is so much love it is palpable just by looking, just by being in the same space as them; makes Law understand that the Strawhats are similar to the core of his own crew. Bepo, Penguin and Shachi. 

His musings and drawn similarities between crews are interrupted by Luffy-ya’s soft, half-sleep voice.

“Torao, I am very happy that we saw each other again and that we are in an alliance” They are facing each other, Luffy-ya’s eyes shining in the dark. He, as always, exudes sincerity. 

“Well, it was fortuitous” Law declares, he lacks a better term to describe it, or rather, he refuses to voice the other one he could choose. 

“You and your words, hehe” it is dark in the room and only a flash of moonlight illuminates Luffy’s smile. 

“Go to sleep, Luffy-ya” Law mumbles, nuzzling a little into the other’s riotous black hair. He is becoming accustomed to Luffy-ya’s smell. It’s always salt from the constant exposure to the sea’s wind, of clothes exposed to the sun, sweat and faint smell of whatever food there was for the day with a hint of something that could only be described as ‘Strawhat’s smell’ he smelt a little of rubber and a little of something similar to moist cedarwood. 

Once, before the fall of Flevance, when Law had been a little luminous thing he had had moments such like this. In which he could simply take what his senses felt as it was, to enjoy the simple things in life without having to make any complicated calculation of its cost. Or take the small blessings of being alive without having to think that someone’s death had paid for him being there. Sometimes, when he was in Swallow Island before taking on go with the Plan he had moments such as this one, in which he could take pleasure in the simple act of hugging Bepo, or laughing at Penguin’s acidic jokes. This –whatever it was, with Luffy-ya–was the most similar thing he had felt as that easy happiness he felt when his parents and Lami were still alive. 

Here he was: Trafalgar D. Water Law, the prisoner of borrowed time. A time he didn’t even deserve to have, paid by much better people than himself. 

Luffy-ya’s breath was even out. Fast asleep in between his arms. It was safe now to let go. Just for a moment. Law inhaled and exhaled measuredly. He found that looking at Strawhat’s sleeping figure, he felt something agitate in his thoughts:

I didn’t realize how much I had missed his joy. 

He stepped closer to inspect his feelings, in the hopes of disentangling why he felt so overwhelmed. It was because he didn’t know if he was going to survive fighting Doflamingo? It was because he had left his friends at Zou, waiting for a coffin – as if Doflamingo would do something like that, he was more likely to end up impaled on a pike for everyone to see what happened to traitors–was it because he was again in this unseemingly position? 

He could not understand Strawhat. Why would he trust him so easily? Well, he could think of a theory. He learnt how to trust Cora-san because he wanted to save his life. Luffy-ya seemed to value the same. He was able to feel enormous gratitude and honor it because he was a good person. 

He was almost sorry that he was going to leave him with the difficult choice of running away salvaging his mortal remains or not. He needed to write a note, perhaps leave it where it could be easily found somewhere on the ship, with instructions. It wasn’t worth it to go back or lose time to retrieve a dead body when you have to escape a furious sociopathic piece of shit like Doflamingo. 

Luffy-ya was a good person. A good person surrounded by other good people who loved him and supported him. He had already lost two brother-and since he hadn’t mention a father or a mother it wasn’t difficult to extract the conclusion that he was raised by them–

Luffy-ya was a good person and deserved to be happy.

If only the World Government and their abhorrent corrupt dogs would leave people like him alone.

Exhaustion won the battle, this time when he closed his eyes he fell asleep.

Next morning after breakfast the other shoe did drop. He was cornered on his way out of the kitchen after breakfast just when he was about to wait for the newspaper to see if Doflamingo had renounced his title. 

“If you are here to give me some misguided shovel talk you are late, The White Hunter already did it before leaving Punk Hazard” he said to Blackleg-ya, who stood in the middle of him and the kitchen door. 

“Smoker did?” “Well, I don’t care, tell me what are your intentions with our captain”

“A pirate alliance. I didn’t lie in Punk Hazard. That’s all” he promptly answered, trying to use a calm cold tone. 

“Sure, and sleeping together naked on a bed is part of the deal or what?” Blackleg-ya’s brow twitched with irritation, he was practically munching on his ever present cigarette. 

Black-leg-ya could be irritating to say the least. 

“We weren’t naked, we were just not wearing shirts. So, no.” Law corrected him, not bothering to cover the annoyance on his tone anymore “Your captain has an addiction problem with cuddling and you and the swordsman were too dirty with fluids to act as his plushies for the night”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY BASTARD?!!!” Squeaked Blackleg, his cheeks red with embarrassment. 

Nico Robin chose that moment to very politely interrupt their quasi-argument. 

“What’s going on, Sanji-kun?” she opened the kitchen door.

“Nothing! Nothing Robin-chawn, I was…I was going outside right now”

Once the cook was out of the kitchen to the deck, Law made a little salute to Nico Robin with his hat. The other answered with a little smile, offering the way out of the kitchen making an ample gesture with her arm. Law promptly followed her out to the deck. 

Only a few seconds later, the newspaper arrived. The game was on.

Time to get the most crucial part of the Plan done. He had to come to terms with his own death in the next minutes before Doflamingo called. 

If he had lived another life, a longer one perhaps, he would have wanted to be friends with Luffy-ya. 

But enough of that. He had a blood debt, his life wasn’t worth more than the borrowed time Cora-san gave him. 

I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.   

End of Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: O preludio de luar 

The pain is as blinding as high is the voice that calls him.

“TORAO!!!!” 

 For a moment he has an uncanny sensation, as if his body is discombobulated from his mind. Law attempts to open his eyes, only to realize the futility of the action, his own blood getting into his eyelids. He wheezes, there is a pression on his chest against the one he can’t fight. As he opens his mouth trying to breathe, Doflamingo’s cruel voice says:

“Look at this, Strawhat. How pathetic your lover is” He sounds disdainful, almost bored, Law knows better. That’s the tone he has always used to try to manipulate someone into doing exactly what he wants, in this case, to get Strawhat to react. 

This situation is exactly what Law had been fearing could happen, his Plan completely out of track, leading them to confront Doflamingo directly. The usurper of the Dressrosa throne it’s not done talking:

“Though I wonder why would you like an eunuch like this. Without blood in his veins.” he comments cruelty creeping in his tone. Law can imagine his torrid, grotesque smile facing Luffy-ya. He feels nauseous by the mere thought. The next sentence is directed at him “In all these years trying to find who he fucked to extort him, apparently he doesn’t have it in him to do it, traumatized much, Law?” He lets out a high, ragged laugh. 

These are the conclusions Law was so afraid Doflamingo would make after he saved Luffy-ya from Marine Ford. 

Law can’t defend himself, he is overpowered, exhausted from running through the Green Bit trying to get out Caesar, he accomplished that but the rest of the strategy is on thin ice. He forces himself to turn his head, trying to face the same direction from where he has heard Strawhat’s voice. A blurred image comes to him of Luffy-ya on the first floor of the Colosseum, eyes as wide as plates, pale, grinding his teeth with so much strength Law can almost hear the crack of his jaw. 

“Shut the fuck up, Mingo!” Luffy-ya cries, his knuckles white from how hard he is grasping at the iron bars. 

Doflamingo laughs and laughs. 

There is an image rapidly flashing in Law’s mind, the smell of putrid wood, a closed lid in front of him, of cold, of blood against the snow. The sounds of shooting blooming in the mists of white silence. 

Everything comes to focus at once. Doflamingo has a gun to his chest. 

This is how Cora-san died. This is how Cora-san died. This is…

Law is quite aware that he is hyperventilating, his heart hammering against his chest. He is suffocating he…

“Or perhaps is it that you don’t even know what you are lacking in your life, Strawhat?” Continues Doflamingo. He turns to address Law, a deformed open wide smile curbing his lips, unnaturally “Of everyone you could have chosen, you choose this retarded kid” 

The words echo in Law’s mind, cutting straight into his panic, turning it into something dark, angry, curling in his stomach until he can feel bile up in his throat. For a moment, his body is not his, his throat just growling the words as if all the rage he has been accumulating against Doflamingo has possessed his voice.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU MISERABLE FUGLY PIECE OF SHIT! LEAVE LUFFY-YA OUT OF THIS!” He scrambles against the floor, trying to get up, he is going to kill the son of a bitch. 

“You have pushed your luck” says Doflamingo flatly and pulls the trigger. 

White-hot pain blinds him, he doesn’t get a respice, next thing he knows he is shot again. 

“TORAOOOO!!!”

The only thing he can think of before he loses consciousness is that Luffy-ya had sounded so scared, almost heartbroken. And that he forgot to tell him to run away and to leave his corpse behind. 

Law wakes up when Baby 5 slaps his face. She looks the same as she did in Punk Hazard, which is to say miserable and obliging as only someone who has been brainwashed to serve without questioning can look like. Law takes an inventory of his injuries. He has been shot two times, he has superficial cuts and bruises if he is able to get out of the seastone cuffs he could survive.

In a display of Doflamingo’s sickening sadism, Law has been seated on the Corazon seat. In addition, Doflamingo is already in the middle of one of his narcissistic discourses. 

The disgusting diatribe goes on and on, Doflamingo has always liked to listen to himself more than anything else, the usual for a sociopathic self-centered asshole, Law guesses. His attention is picked when Doflamingo brings the topic of Strawhat-ya again. 

“But really Law? Strawhat? I bet he rarely even bathes, a low life for a supposedly sophisticated brat like you. Though having into account that he doesn’t seem bothered by your lackings in the sexual department perhaps he is a freak meant for an celibate like you”

Law is sentenced, he knows it, he has made peace with the fact that he is going to die but that doesn’t mean he is going to go quietly. At the very least, Doflamingo would get a piece of his mind. 

“I am not surprised that you are an acephobic piece of shit. And unsurprisingly, you can condone mass murder, grooming of children and killing both your father and brother in cold blood but you draw the line at this, uh? Well, guess you are truly going to be fucked by an asexual who doesn’t give a flying fuck”

Baby 5 gasps, the rest of Doflamingo’s minions express various degrees of shock at his audacity. Doflamingo’s face turns dark, contorted in a grin full of spitefulness. 

“Impertinent ungrateful brat” growls Doflamingo. 

The scene comes to a halt when Strawhat appears followed by none other than Princess Viola and some other guy who attacks Doflamingo’s cronies incapacitating them. 

“Torao!! I came to save you!!!” Luffy-ya is smiling, dirty as if he has been rolling through mud, his knuckles covered in blood, for a split second Laws almost finds the sight endearing. 

“You are alive!!!” Strawhat continues, he seems so relieved. As much as Law is likewise relieved to see him alive this is his actual worst case scenario. He can feel his stomach drooping at the thought of Luffy in the same room as Doflamingo. This was never supposed to happen. 

“You have nothing to do here!! If you let me escape I’ll kill you!” Law cries.

Doflamingo is here you can’t be here, please, please, please go I don’t want him to hurt you, please, please… 

There are some punches thrown, Doflamingo gets sidetracked enough for Luffy-ya to approach Law. 

“Don’t move Torao, it’s difficult to take these cuffs!” between his hands he holds nothing else but the keys to Law’s freedom. Nonetheless, Law can’t be alleviated by the sight not when they are so close to utter disaster. 

“Are you even listening to me?!” He pleads, aware of how desperate he sounds. “Our alliance is over!!!” he adds. It’s his last card, he needs it to work. 

“Eh?! You can’t say that! I’ll be the one to decide when it’s over, just shut up” Luffy-ya’s expression is full of stubbornness with a pinch of disgruntlement, making his brows come together. At the bottom of his eyes there is also something similar to fear. Law hates to be the one causing it. 

“The alliance is over, we are enemies again!” he insists, his voice already hoarse. 

“No! Shut up, Torao” Luffy-ya insists. 

Pica, another of Doflamingo's underlings, of course intervenes and helps Doflamingo to get up. Of course, Doflamingo is furious and he punches Strawhat right on the face. 

Law’s mind shuts down. Law feels the birdcage, an oppressive force that makes the air tremble, become stale, immobile, capturing even the sounds of faint cries in the distance. 

The scene was so similar to what had happened on Minion Island that Law stopped breathing for a moment. Until he got lightheaded. 

Walls pass through his eyes on a swirl of mixed colors and motion. He doesn’t realize he is being carried until they are out of the castle. 

There is pure, unadulterated chaos in the streets as citizens scatter in panic. 

“I’ll kick Doflamingo’s ass! Stay close to my friends!” Law hears Luffy-ya talking with someone over the Den Den. 

Law thinks of how close they have been to absolute disaster. He forces himself to snap out of his fugue state. 

“Do you understand what would happen if you do that, Strawhat? My strategy was to leave Doflamingo alive and make Kaido clash with him. If you kill him now, Kaido’s rage would be upon us. We’ll have to fight directly against a Yonkou”

“We can talk about that later. Look at this country, Torao!” For once, Luffy-ya seems centered enough to sound almost logical even if emotion is overcoming his tone once again “Do you know what will happen if I stop now?!”

He closes his eyes. Law’s too much of a brain, some might say he has turned too cold in his constant calculations. It is evident that he had trained himself out of emotions, emotions are dangerous fiery things that can blow up your entire life in a second. Luffy is too much of a heart, unwise, tender. But he is right. Law has never had the benefit of allowing himself to be kind. Kindness could be always taken advantage of, or worse, put those who have been kind in the path of tyrants, sociopaths or the likes of it, as it has just happened in the castle. He also knows it is too late to minimize the costs of his own kindness to Luffy-ya, of his own inadvertent push of him in front of Doflamingo, by virtue of helping him, of making an alliance with him. He has known that he was in direct collision with Doflamingo for a long time but now the entire country is in direct collision with Doflamingo and if they don’t stop him thousands upon thousands of innocents will die.  

Can I have a heart again? Even if that means I die here, with him?

The tender hearted, bleeding heart of his adoptive father, who loved Law enough to die to save him. If he could do that, Law could die for the country Cora-san failed to warn against Doflamingo. 

They are going through a vertical wall on a bull when Law finally makes a decision. 

“Strawhat” he calls him “I know we’ve got no choice but to push for survival” he inhales preparing himself to share the next bit “But I’ve made up my mind, the plan I suggested you was a detour to crush Doflamingo” he swallowed, there was no other option but to trust Luffy-ya with something he had not even completely shared with his own crew “But the truth is…I wanted to repay him once and for all. I lost to him previously but not this time!” Luffy-ya’s eyes are fixed on Law’s face, he is listening to Law intently. 

“Thirteen years ago I had the most important person for me taken away from me by Doflamingo” Law’s voice tight, choked with a compound of dread and sadness. 

“His name was Corazon,” it hurts him saying his name again out loud “ and ex-member of the Don Quixote family”

“Eh?! He was his comrade” Luffy-ya seems surprised, shocked as if the notion of someone betraying his own family seemed outlandish and absurd, he has yet to know how disgusting Doflamingo can be, how inhuman. 

Cora-san had been more to Law that any of the family had cared to acknowledge. Law could only define him as…his benefactor? No, he is certain that he was more than that and for the first time in his life he knows he can tell someone. What a wretched feeling to know what was trusting someone with your secrets and lose them only to talk about them with the next person you decided to trust your secrets again. 

“He was my adoptive father. That’s right…and Doflamingo’s biological brother” he finishes.

Luffy-ya’s lips part in a mixture of displeasure and surprise. Law is moved by the fact that all of it it’s for him, that Strawhat is able to feel empathy. 

“Torao…” he says his name, or rather his ‘special name’ chosen by Luffy-ya, and it sounds soft, worried, when he says it. 

“Please, don’t say anything else, just promise me that you’ll let me take my chance at vengeance” . It's been years since he has allowed himself to be this vulnerable with anyone else that is not Bepo or Shachi and Penguin. The last time was with Cora-san. 

“Mingo killed your dad, of course I’ll help you!”

Of course, he says. As if anyone would just help someone that easily without expecting anything else in return.

They get ahead of Strawhat’s new allies, some of the fighters of the Colliseum which of course, had been enslaved by Doflamingo. 

So far, Luffy-ya’s strategy has consisted of running away with him from Pica and Doflamingo carrying him and that is making him slow, Doflamingo is going to catch up with him for sure if they go on like this. 

“Strawhat-ya, let me go to fetch the keys of my handcuffs, it is a suicide to go like this to Doflamingo, we need to get separated”

“We’ll think of something but we are not separating, Torao!” 

Law can’t understand what’s going through Luffy-ya’s head. 

“Are you crazy? So you understand that in this match we either win or die?” 

“No, I’m not getting separated from you Torao” Strawhat tensely insists. There is something glimmering behind Strawhat’s eyes, a feeling perhaps, that Law can’t identify. 

They enter the tunnel underneath the sunflower garden at the top of the castle. Immediately, Law spots some, friends, allies? Of Strawhat guarding the door.

The Den Den Mushi rings again, Law asks Luffy to answer it. Ath the other side of the line Nico Robin’s voice answers them. Apparently, Viola had found the keys and they were on top of the castle waiting for them. 

“See Torao, is it all good?” smiles Luffy-ya after hanging up the call. 

“It was a coincidence! We can’t depend on those!!” utters Law, already fed up with Strawhat moronic way of extracting conclusions “More importantly, this corridor is a dead end”

There is darkness in front of them, something cold creeps up Law’s senses. There is water everywhere, he can’t help but feel like this is fertile terrain for a trap. 

Law was right.

Doflamingo appears in the midst of the darkness.

“Look at these weaklings gathering, pathetic” he looks confidently aloof. He can afford it, the situation looks bleak for Luffy-ya and himself “Poor Law, shouldn’t that be easy to uncuff? I guess your intelligence was a bluff”

“Stop insulting Torao!!!” Strawhat tries to punch him but of course Doflamingo is full of tricks. 

The bull that Luffy-ya sort of adopted is the next victim. The poor animal dies in a puddle of blood, not a surprising end to anything that comes in contact with that son of a bitch.

Of course the dire situation is the cue to another of Doflamingo’s taunting and narcissistic rants. 

“You have such a poor sense of danger, anyone could kill you. So I’ve heard that there are some stupid people out there trying to get my head on a plate, as if that could happen. Look at what sad pathetic state you are in. I still can’t understand why you choose this one, Law. I thought you were smarter than this!” he laughs at his own turn of phrase “I guess I was wrong, you are as retarded as this one, aren’t you? Even as a child you appeared to be more crafty and cruel, whatever happened to that, uh? Who turned you into this pathetic mess, into a puritan eunuch without a single ounce of blood on your veins??! Disgusting!” 

Law remembers Cora-san’s amicable smile, their conversations in those long cold nights in which he talked to him about what he remembered from his parents. They share that, they had kind parents who wanted to be better, to help people. Doflamingo destroyed that heritage. 

He thinks of all the guilt Cora-san carried on his shoulders because he blamed himself for not being able to stop Doflamingo from becoming the monster he was. There it is, he feels cold desperate fury just thinking about the injustice of it all. 

“Shut the fuck up! I’m not interested in becoming like you! I was saved!” Law snaps.

“HEHEHE You mean by my brother, Corazon? You’ve gotta be kidding” Doflamingo’s tone is full of scornful disdain. 

The taunting, surprisingly for Law, has even more effect on Strawhat who immediately attacks Doflamingo viciously. Unfortunately, It was a string double. Even after having gotten rid of at least something that had Doflamingo’s image seems to be still overcome with anger. 

Strawhat is fuming, gesticulating heatedly. 

“I won’t forgive him for the things he said to you!” he declares. 

“Strawhat…that’s not important” exhales Law. He is so tired, so absolutely tired. 

“I’m beating his ass!! Mingo we are coming for you now, bastard!!!” Luffy-ya continues, almost shouting. 

Law grabs one of Luffy-ya’s arms by his forearm, forcing him to turn to himself. 

“Luffy-ya…promise me that you won’t let him play into your anger” 

Luffy-ya seems to deflate a bit, his expression battling between contrition and the remnants of outrage against Doflamingo. 

“But…Mingo did horrible things!!” he reasoned. 

“Yes and he’ll do worse things, but please, promise me you won’t let him play you” Law knows how he works, showing emotions like they have they are already playing his game. 

“Alright I promise” assents the other. 

They were finally there, together on top of the battlefield. After Law was able to take out the seastone cuffs he transported him and Strawhat to the new battle ground. 

He wanted to protect Luffy-ya, even if he insisted that they were together in this. 

Once facing Doflamingo they stated their shared intentions. 

“I came here to kick your ass!!!”

“Same here!” exclaimed Law.

The battle began. 

To the surprise of no one, Doflamingo used Bellamy as a human shield. Unsurprisingly as well, since it was what Doflamingo wanted in using Bellamy, Luffy-ya lost his temper and began attacking without caring to reserve his haki to last until they faced Doflamingo together.

“You promised me!” told him Law “Losing your head is the same as losing your life! Doflamingo is a cruel cunning man”

The resident narcissistic sociopath decided that Law’s reminder to Luffy-ya was his cue to yet another rant. 

“You know Law, I’m pretty mad at you, you know? You two have destroyed my Sad industry, ended Vergo, Monet and took Caesar. You freed my toys, you disrespect me. I’ve had enough. To top it off, you dare come here to me.” Doflamingo declaims with that horrid wry expression. 

Law has been accumulating hatred against this monster for more than a decade, the least he can do is make him shut the fuck up with some facts. 

“I hope you feel some degree of despair about what you did thirteen years ago, since all of this is a payment for it. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t be here in front of you right now! So you did this to yourself, piece of shit” Law sputtered through his teeth without bothering to hide his contempt. 

“Yeah, if it weren’t for that you would have been the third Corazon” Doflamingo smiled in his habitual disturbing way. Then, he decided to change the strategy, this time addressing Luffy-ya: “Do you know who you are with, boy?? How many lies has this involuntary celibate has told you??”

“Shut it, Mingo. Just shut it” Strawhat grinded his teeth. 

“Oh, they are soo patheticcc together Doffy!!!!” Laughs the mucus piece of shit. 

Doflamingo top it up with another of his disgusting comments:

“Hehehe, laughable, or perhaps you have already tried to fuck him and learnt that he is too much of an idiot to know how to do it? HAHAHAHA!”

That last bit made Luffy-ya lose it. He moved so quickly Law didn’t have the chance to stop him. Strawhat was able to land a punch right on Doflamingo’s stomach with enough strength that Doflamingo was visibly affected by it. 

“It hurt, didn’t it you fucking bastard??!!!”

Law was surprised, he had never heard Strawhat being so vocally vicious against someone.

“Careful, he is still alright, you can’t use the same trick against him twice!” warned him, Law.

The time for trading insults was apparently over. From then on a vicious fight began. 

Law is about to kill Trebol when Doflamingo attacks him. Suddenly, he feels an acute pain, his chest turning red with blood. Doflamingo’s chords had been through his chest in its entirety and only missed his heart by millimeters. 

“Torao!!!!!!” he hears Strawhat’s voice again calling to him, desperately. Law’s mouth is full of blood when he warns Luffy-ya of a Doflamingo’s attack against him

“Run away, Strawhat!!!!”

Doflamingo slams Luffy-ya’s body against the floor. 

“Do you remember the thing I hate the most, Law? It’s being treated like a fool. It is insulting that you punks think that you can defeat me. You forget your place, scum. I’m the world’s most noble bloodline. A WORLD NOBLE. My birth alone is the rarest of powers. My foolish father forced me to live in this junkyard and GAVE AWAY THE POWER I ALREADY HAD. What a damn fool. I had to kill that stupid piece of shit. After killing my father I brought back his head to Mariejois but the celestial dragons never accepted the family back because my father made traitors out of us. I will destroy this world. DO YOU GET IT? MY LIFE IS SUPERIOR TO YOURS I HAVE NO TIME TO PLAY WITH BRATS!” Screams Doflamingo while he holds Strawhat’s body against the broken floor. 

The brutality with which Doflamingo disposes of both him and Strawhat is absolute. They can not get a respice, it is a continuous show of violent viciousness. 

All is covered in a thick veil of blood, Law can tell in the mists of the intense pain that traverses all his body where one injury ends and another begins. Law and Luffy-ya can only defend each other and try to return the blows. 

Unfortunately for Law and Strawhat they get separated by Doflamingo, it was probably part of his plan to deal with them. Everything has gotten so messy that Law isn’t controlling anything that happens anymore and even though it fills him with a mixture of nervousness, anxiety as well as dismay up to this point it is about fighting for their lives and hope for the best. So while Luffy-ya is still fighting a controlled Bellamy, he tries to get Doflamingo to talk to win some time until Luffy-ya can join the fight again.  

“Why I don’t get is why you continue to have the influence you have” comments Law.

Law has always theorized that Doflamingo has secret knowledge and that’s why the Dragons are supporting him. Nonetheless, Doflamingo is cagey in his answer so Law decided that it is time to do some taunting of his own.

“You know…What do you think that I had brought here a ‘D’, Monkey D. Luffy? Strawhat is here by the will of Destiny!!!”

Doflamingo seems only to grow more irate by the minute, his attacks getting even more unpredictable. Law keeps attacking, adding more fuel to the fire with his comments. 

Finally he drops the bomb:

“You know? I’m a ‘D’ as well. Trafalgar D. Water Law and I’ll do what Cora-san couldn’t because he was too kind to do so, I’ll pull the trigger”

Doflamingo reacts to this declaration by changing his expression from confidence to outraged madness. He looks absolutely unhinged, there is even a vein in his ample forehead palpitating, he exudated bloodlust. 

The dance of blows that Doflamingo and Law are exchanging is too similar to the training sessions they shared in the past, when Doflamingo was trying to create a loyal follower in Law. During those trainings Law had always ended up attacked by a dark premonition. Law had always been certain in those small moments of lucidity that something was really wrong. That what was in front of him was not a human being. That his life was genuinely in danger. At that precise moment, Law's body panicked. He was tired, clumsy, something in his brain got stuck and then Doflamingo was able to catch him. Law's heart was going a hundred an hour, he began to sweat, his whole body was trembling and he was only able to barely held back a scream that was already peeking out of his throat.

“Don’t bore me with your useless attacks. If you were serious about killing me you should have put Kaido against me. Letting your feelings for Corazon take the best of your intelligence. Stupidly disgusting. From the moment you decided to mess with my plans you dug your own grave”

Despite the fact that Law is trembling, from effort, from vertigo, from the certainty that this is his end with all the impotence that this entails. He is also certain that if this is the end then the last thing he will do will be for the benefit of his adoptive father. To extol all that he was in front of his murderer.

“Everything that I’ve done so far, everything I’ve achieved was all for him, for Corazon” 

What awaits him, however, is a ruthless, icy, and unapologetic response.

“Bohoo it sucks to be you, ahahah, You deserve this for daring to defy me”

Doflamingo has grabbed Law’s dominant arm and by sheer brute force rips it off above his elbow. The pain that follows the next attack is so virulent that Law vision goes completely black. He pulls Law's arm down, throwing it below, as if it were nothing more than pure garbage to get rid of.

That’s it he is going to die.

Cora-san.

“Fufufuf, all of this, so you truly have been influenced by that other ‘D’, right? Nothing says execution like lead bullets, amma right?”

It may be that all the previous fight and flight was nothing more than a prelude to returning to the same position. To die just as Cora-san did. For a moment Law remembers his brothers: Bepo, Shachi, Penguin. And he's glad they're not around to see something like that. They are safe in Zou. And it is the best decision I could have ever made to keep them away and protect them from seeing such a highly grotesque scene.

After that he loses consciousness once again.

Law is against something. He coughs blood, realizes that he must have been shaken and thrown against one of the debris created during the fight. He's against a large rock, Doflamingo in front of him with a gun to his chest.

“Give up Law, your stupid lover won’t get here on time to rescue you. Even if he had the guts to kill his own ‘friend’ what makes you think he would still want a failure like you? What a pitiful life, uh? Born in hell, without hope and came here just to die a pathetic death. I do pity you.” He makes a short pause, pressing the gun harder against his wounds “Since you are about to die anyway, how about you do something useful for a change, for old’ time’s sake. You’ll turn me immortal and in exchange I’ll grant you a wish, anything you want! Am I not compassionate?”

In a display of his mythomania, of course, Doflamingo has decided to spout one last affront against Law. But at this point knowing that he is going to die, Law doesn’t give a single flying fuck. If he is going to die he is going to die as what he has always been, an anarchist against the system that has oppressed and ruined the lives of so many people, by tyrants such as Doflamingo. 

“Anything I want? Then go and lick the boots of every person in this country, cunt. Give me back my father, you son of a bitch. You delusional sociopathic piece of shit you are the one who doesn't understand what is going on here!” Law flips him off, he would die with a smile, defying someone who tried to make him compliant and complicit of horrible things “The strawhats are capable of making miracles happen, even if you kill me they won’t get defeated by a supremacist scum like you, your future is already-”

With an animalistic angry fueled scream-growl Doflamingo shoots at him repeatedly while he rants about something Law can’t even make sense of. 

There is an inconceivable amount of pain and then nothing. 

Law heard a hustle and bustle beside him, barely being able to get out of his unconsciousness, he felt those gentle fingertips on his cheek, he thinks, rather deliriously, that he could recognise them by tact even in death. 

“Torao, Torao, what’s all of this blood?!! Torao please!!!” Luffy-ya’s voice breaks at the end of the sentence. 

It’s Luffy-ya, he is back. He is so covered in dirt and blood he almost didn’t recognize him at first, but he must have a worse look right now, he is very sure that Doflammingo ripped his arm apart. 

He can’t make his vocal chords even speak so he makes an inhuman effort to use his perception haki to convey to him that he is alive and what he plans to do next. Because now that Luffy-ya is here, at least he can try something else before dying. 

Both Luffy-ya and Law coordinate to attack Doflamingo. Eventually, Law manages to pierce Doflamingo with his sword, but he also lands a blow that impacts Law. The truth is that Law is completely destroyed. He is missing an arm, has lost too much blood and has been carrying accumulated exhaustion since he first set foot on the island. So, he falls to the ground and surrenders. There's blood everywhere and Luffy-ya trembles as he watches him in that state.

“Bastard, you bastard, how dare you do all of this to Torao?” Luffy-ya is beyond enraged. He is trembling, his fists closed tightly. 

“Strawhat, please, let me” interrupts him, Law, crawling, using his forearm against the ground in a rather pathetic desperate way.

“Torao, you are losing too much blood, can you even move in this state?” Luffy-ya makes an  attempt to help him to his feet, but Law won't let him. He knows that he has long since exceeded the limit of what his body can withstand and can only keep moving thanks to the energy of his fruit and yet he only has energy left for one last blow.

Doflamingo seems tired for the first time since the battle began, he is on the floor, for once he is silent so Law advances towards him.

“You only call ‘family’ those you can manipulate. You killed your own brother, you disgusting monster.” says Law.

“He betrayed me, he pointed a gun at me” he wheezed. 

“You knew Cora-san wouldn’t pull the trigger, he couldn’t. But I would have done it. To save all of these people from your craziness. You should have been the one to die that day” Law's voice sounds constricted, he is aware that his exhaustion is letting his feelings bleed into the tone of his voice, his eyes permeated in a veil of tears.

“Hahah…" laughs Doflamingo full of disdain as always "Should I say what I always thought of your beloved Corazon, Law? He meant nothing to me, he was an annoying piece of garbage that’s all he could ever be, I did make a favor to him by killing him that d-”

Law decided to shut his mouth.

“Counter shock!!” he attacks him with the last of his strenght pouring every bit of rage that had consumed him for more than a decade “DIE YOU MONSTER!”

Unfortunately for everyone present, Doflamingo has one last card up his sleeve. He fixes himself using his own power to sustain his broken internal organs. That surprise attack, the fact that Law is already completely depleted of strenght makes it impossible to escape.

That’s it, all of this, all of those years he sacrificed, nights without sleeping, all of his planning, more importantly, Cora-san’s life. Was everything truly for nothing? Is going to witness 

an entire country being destroyed in front of his eyes again? Is this really all? 

There is only so much desperation, ire and dread a person can carry for more than a decade.

“ Verdammt noch mal! ” screams Law, condensing all of the feelings that are choking him. Doflamingo cruelly smiles, raising his leg to literally crush Law under his heel. 

Luffy-ya stops Doflamingo’s foot with his own. 

“Hehehe, why did you stop me, all I did was trying to crush his head… INTO LITTLE PIECES ”

“This is the last time you touch Torao.” warns him, and then he coldly adds “Never again”

At that moment, Law senses a surge of conqueror's haki coming from Luffy-ya. Taking advantage of the growing confusion, Law decides to attack Trebol and manages to leave him incapacitated.

But that is the last crack of struggle that Law has left in the body, it is evident that he cannot fight anymore. Luffy picks him up and carries him out of there in his arms. When they reach the plain below the castle, Luffy-ya carefully deposits Law on the grass, where Robin-ya and two Fools are waiting for him along with another of Luffy-ya's allies whose name Law does not remember.

Law again feels Luffy-ya’s hands against his cheek. 

“Torao I made you a promise, so don’t die, alright?” his tone is calm, soft almost tender.

Law wants to cry, wants to scream, wants to stop Luffy-ya from going against Doflamingo alone but he can’t move. 

It is a good thing he can’t even gather strength to talk because he feels as if he would have said something very stupid to him. 

After Law is healed by a little Tontata Princess a man called Cavendish begins to move him away from the battlefield. 

“Put me down” he asks the man.

“What are you talking about?” 

“I’ve lived all of these years for one purpose…To exact revenge on Doflamingo. I’ve done all that-” he harshly coughs, he can’t even breathe, his wounds to grave to do so without an extreme effort “All that I could have done… The only thing I can do now is to leave the rest to Luffy-ya. If he wins, I need to be there to see it with my own eyes. And if he loses then I want to die with him” he feels tears down his cheeks “It was me who got him involved in this fight, it’s my fault, just leave me here!”

“I think you got it wrong” gently prompts Robin “Our captain is not someone that will fight a battle unless he truly wants to do it” 

The only thing that Law has now for certain is that he has a need gnawing at his entrails, overcoming and impossible to ignore. He needs to stay with Luffy-ya until the end. Both of them together. Whatever that end might be, Law needs to be there with him. There is a rather unsensible voice screaming in his head that they belong together, it might be the bloodloss talking though. 

“Leave me here, please” Law reiterates, his tone leaving no choice for a no to answer. 

Despite the entrenched fight Luffy-ya is posing against Doflamingo seems to be working–Law’s previous attacks to Doflamingo might have not completely incapacitate him but they have affected him gravely–the birdcage isn’t being affected at all. Luffy-ya is clearly running out of haki to protect himself, that is truly dangerous. 

As everyone has their eyes staring at the battle, Luffy-ya runs out of haki, falls from the sky and Doflamingo proceeds to chase him to end the job. 

Law feels his heart in his throat, Law can feel Luffy-ya with his haki, so he makes a room and brings Luffy to him.

Luffy-ya had been carried by some of his allies from the Colliseum, Law asks one of them:

“How long until his haki returns?”

Three minutes he can protect, take care of him for three minutes. 

“Leave him with me” he asks resolutely. 

Law gazes at Luffy, his face is covered in grime and blood, even his hair is matted, completely drenched with blood. Law suspects part of it is his. The exhaustion of using the Ope ope no mi is so extreme he can barely move but he needs to do this. He laboriously pushes himself up, he crawls using just one arm, each movement is so painful that his vision blacks out in between blinks. He gets to where Luffy-ya is. He raises Luffy-ya’s head with his working hand, puts it on top of his lap. His fingers tremble with a mixture of residual adrenaline and something akin to trepidation. 

“Hey” he pushes aside a wild lock off Luffy-ya’s forehead, he touches his cheek with his fingertips, as gently as once the other did to him once upon a time on the coasts of Amazon Lily. Law feels something aching, tender, inundating every inch of his body and soul. The words make to his lips before he can care to stop them. 

“You can do this, Luffy-ya. I believe in you”

“Torao” the other mutters. Luffy-ya’s eyes slowly open, at the beginning they are unfocused until Law turns his face gently to face his. Hunching over to him he gets his face looming just scarce ten centimeters from the other. 

He wishes he was able to communicate all that he is feeling at the moment: the terror of losing him to Doflamingo, the gratefulness for defending him again and again, the tenderness at his sight, someone that, like him, has survived again and again against all odds. That had seen each other at their worst. Luffy-ya in Amazon Lily and Law now, but Law can only say something just in case he doesn’t get the chance to say it ever again.

“Luffy-ya….thank you for defending me”

Upon hearing this Luffy’s stare turns focused once again, full of conviction. His haki had finally come back. He gets up. Law watches him in awe as he propels himself against Doflamingo and for the first time since he was a little happy child, before the fall of Flevance, he feels the urge to pray. To whatever has made him and Luffy-ya meet, to whatever force brought him to Punk Hazard that fateful day, to whatever force made him survive where his brother died. 

“Just give him back to me. Alive.” 

He thinks of Cora-san. Of what he told him about the ‘D’ that could survive at impossible odds, do amazingly strange things. 

After some very tense minutes in which Law feels his heart on his throat, everything is over. The birdcage falls and Law knows with certainty that Doflamingo is defeated. Between him and the Strawhats they have destroyed everything he once possessed. 

Luffy-ya literally deinflates, impacting against the cobblestone that covers Dressrosa’s streets. Fortunately, he falls near the vicinity where Law is, just a few meters at Law’s right. 

He is alive, he feels it, he can feel it with his entire body, with the remnants of his observation haki. He needs to see his face, he needs to be closer to him. He crawls until his body is unable to move, his nails drenched in his own blood. Fortunately he is able to reach Luffy-ya’s body before all force abandons him. 

“Luffy-ya…” he calls him. Law is positioned in the opposite direction of where Luffy is lying, so his eyes are the only part of their bodies that are aligned, parallel, to each other. 

Law’s eyes prickle, his throat constricts, he feels as if he is in a dream but for the first time in his life he doesn’t want to be awake. Because it is a dream of hope, it is a dream of freedom. He feels his tears rolling down his cheeks. 

“We did it” Law murmurs so close to the other they are breathing the same air. Law lets his forehead fall onto Luffy-ya’s. Their noses touching each other as well. 

Luffy-ya smiles, his eyes already closed in exhaustion. Law knows he is close to being completely unconscious but he is alive. Alive. Law closes his eyes as well and for a moment they just breathe together. Exist together. 

For all Law has gone through all of those years in which he didn’t know if he was going to survive and yet, here he is. 

Here they are. At the end of it. Together. 

End of Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Ao nascer do sol.

There was a thin veil of darkness permeating Law’s vision when he opened his eyes. He blinked twice until he could make the contours of a wooden ceiling. There was the sound of even breathing all around him. There is pain as well, radiating from every injury every scrap and blooming, particularly his reattached arm throbs and stings. Then, there is a familiar smell of burnt rubber and salt of something exposed to the sun for a prolonged time. Luffy-ya is laying half on top of him, wrapped around  him like a vice, his head firmly pressed against Law’s heart. He is already covered in bandages the same as Law is. They had been divested down to their underwear; Luffy-ya’s face is plastered against the bandages covering Law’s chest, he is unabashedly drooling on him. 

Something acute, warm, traverses Law’s chest where Luffy-ya’s head is resting. 

For a moment he just breathes. In and out. Trying to test if his haki is working enough to be a testimony of the presence of enough energy to use his devil’s fruit.  

The blue orb flickers unevenly in between his fingers until it stabilizes. Luffy-ya’s face illuminates with the light of his room. He scans him, proceeds to fix the several ligaments that are still broken, the bruised ribs, the extensive damage to his bones and muscles. Law is so entranced in his work that doesn’t notice a figure quietly opening and closing the entrance door. 

“Thank you for that, by the way”

Law turns to face towards the sound of the voice, there is the silhouette of a man leaning against the opposite wall, just beside the window. Thanks to the light that filters through it he can see he is blonde with a burn in one of his dark eyes. There is a familiar air in the way he moves, in his deadpan voice. 

“Who…?”

“I’m Luffy’s big brother, Sabo” the stranger answers before Law can finish the question.

“...Weren’t you dead?” asks Law, arching an eyebrow.  

“So he has talked to you about me, uh? Interesting. Given that not even his crewmates knew about me.”

Law didn’t know that, he assumed everyone knew about Luffy-ya’s other brother. 

“I take it by the face you are making that you didn’t know you were the only one” 

Law didn’t answer; he was too tired, too much still in shock, still processing the ferocity with which Luffy and himself had fought Doflamingo defending each in a fiery, passionate way. He was beginning to understand that there was a possibility that Luffy-ya didn’t do that with just everyone. But. That didn’t mean anything but an intent of friendship.  

“I came here to check on him before departing and I found both of you on the same bed, embraced. Well, do you understand why I might want to give you the shovel talk, right?” the blonde comments with a half smile playing on his lips, his tone is a mixture of apparent nonchalance with a pinch of ironic acidity. 

“I’m afraid I don’t follow. You are the third person to attempt this and I am puzzled why all of you might come to the conclusion that Luffy-ya might me interested in me in that way, there is nothing that quite signals to that direction” Law speaks lowing his voice as much as he can, seeing than the rest of Luffy-ya’s crew is still sleeping occupying most of the cottage’s floor. 

“Really?” comments Sabo with incredulity, then he spared a couple of seconds interrogating Law’s facial expression as if trying to elucidate something “Oh, you do really think that” he declared, almost with relief “You should have seen his face when that bastard almost killed you, he lost the plot, mate” Luffy-ya’s brother let out a chuckle as if he was entertained by the very memory. “He truly was furious because that man gave you a beating. I have never seen him like that, ever”

Law couldn’t answer. He didn’t know what to make out of it. No one but Cora-san had taken someone hurting Law to heart like that, reacting with protective violence towards him. 

“I feel a little lonely that I’ve only got here to see him already so grown up, but I’m happy he has found someone that can understand him” continued Sabo-ya. “Would you let something happen to him?” 

That was an easy question to answer. 

“No. I wanted him to go the moment my plan went off track. If he had lost I was prepared to die trying to get him a chance at escaping”

The revolutionary let out a carefree laugh, his eyes turned tender with something akin to  approval. 

“I think Ace would have liked you too. Please take care of my brother” he made a bowing gesture with his head.

“If he let’s me I will” 

“A very sensible answer” Sabo-ya tipped his hat, directed a last tender look at his brother’s face before closing the door. 

Having survived your own planned destruction was a strange situation. Not that Law had time to unpack any of it in a little wooden house, full of exhausted injured people, being the only doctor present. Next stop would be Zou. Undoubtedly. It would be Zou and he will have to give an explanation to the Hearts. 

Law spent all morning monitoring Luffy-ya’s vitals, changing the rest of the Strawhat’s bandages and generally doing his job as a doctor. 

It was midmorning and most of the Strawhats were organizing their escape from Dressrosa. Most of them were out talking with their new allies, only Law and Robin were inside the cottage. Nico Robin-ya seated down on a chair of the cottage’s table, in front of Law, while he tried to organize his minuscule bag of medical supplies, scattered in front of him.

“It was a quite passionate declaration of intentions you made there, Trafalgar D. Law” commented Nico Robin-ya resting her chin on his hand with a questioning smile curving her lips up. She was clearly referring to what he said when he thought him and Luffy-ya were going to die trying to stop Doflamingo. 

“I don’t know what you mean” he controlled his tone of voice answering in a low and almost neutral volume. 

“Our captain, he has become very fond of you. I understand why. You are kind, patient with him, you have a protective vein.” she insisted. No one would have ever described Law as ‘patient’ and even less so as ‘kind’.

“He is fond of many people” Law simply stated. He was aware that he was beginning to sound like a broken record saying that again and again. He didn’t dare to think of it as an excuse. 

“Not quite like this” Nico Robin’s voice was no-nonsense but it was tinted with an empathetic overtone that meant that she meant no harm even though she was objecting to Law’s statements. 

“Robin-ya, we are in a formal pirate alliance” almost pleaded the surgeon. Law truly enjoyed Robin-ya’s company, she was intelligent, sensible and they had similar political interests. He definitely didn’t want to give her any bad impression as to what his intentions were. He had never entered this alliance thinking that he could just collect and use. He had fought hard enough his entire life to be like Cora-san not to be like Doflamingo. 

“Luffy has never followed formalities. I do think he has always broken even unspoken rules. If he likes someone he is even more prone to disregard those norms.” she simply stated. Law opened his mouth to answer, when he heard a familiar voice. 

“To-Torao” Luffy-ya croaked from the bed. Law and Robin rushed to his side. Luffy-ya was already sheepishly smiling. 

“Luffy-ya” Law could not contain the open relief of his own voice. His hands ached to take his but they were not alone. 

“Torao your arm…” Luffy-ya directed a glance to Law’s arm, Law felt his cheeks warming. 

“Really?” he could feel a smile tugging his lips upwards “Are you asking about me when you did the final heavy lifting? I’m fine, the little fairy princess fixed it with her powers and I finished the healing yesterday while you were asleep”

Then, there was an audible growl coming from Luffy-ya’s stomach.  

“I’m hungry” he whined. 

“Of course you are” half nodded Law. If Robin-ya hid a telling smile behind her hand, Law made an effort to ignore it. 

It is time to leave Dressrosa. Of course Luffy-ya wanted to fix some things before going, something about one of the Dressrosa’s princesses and his father. Law had already thrown the towel at trying to stop Luffy-ya from doing whatever he wanted during their last moments in Dressrosa, as long as he was on the ship to sail to Zou on time he was fine with it. 

After administering some antibiotics Luffy-ya was ready to go and fetch Rebecca-ya. When he crossed the door Law felt his legs moving by themselves, he accompanied Luffy-ya outside. 

Law wanted to accompany him until he crossed the entire sunflower garden in front of the house. 

They navigated the sunflower’s field in silence for one solid minute. They had barely advanced, the cottage was still in view but they were far enough from the house that they had some modicum of privacy. Law’s mind was agitated; he could not stop looking at Strawhat’s figure in front of him. Despite being trailing behind him Law was close enough to Luffy-ya that in his ample arm swing movements their hands brushed Law’s. 

Law made a feint of reaching for Luffy-ya’s hand but stopped halfway. Somehow Luffy-ya noticed the aborted gesture and reached for Law's hand. They stopped walking and Luffy-ya turned completely to face him. Law looked at their hands, Luffy-ya took it by his wrist and Law automatically closed his fingers around the other's. With his hands clasped in the middle of a seemingly infinite field full of sunflowers, the Sun began to rise. Little by little the flowers began to open around both of them and everything began to flood with light.

“Torao” he just said. As if he was just content with Law’s presence, as if it was something good that they were just together, sharing the same moment in time. 

Law had thought in the past that he wouldn’t live past his thirteenth birthday, then he lived, then he got to be twenty six somehow and then he thought he would never live to be past twenty six and somehow…He was here, alive, because a joyful boy had wanted it so, done everything in his hand, moved heaven and earth to give Law his life back. 

“I…” he couldn’t talk, he couldn't say anything at all. It was too much. 

“Shishishi, Torao let’s be free together!” for a moment, Luffy-ya’s smile is blinding. 

He wants that more than anything in the world. How is it possible that this is happening? He thought he couldn’t, he thought. He simply thought he was too broken to ever be capable of feeling something again. 

His heart felt like a bird moving his wings against his ribcage. 

He can’t deny anymore what is happening. 

From their point of view the house is illuminated by the amber rays of the Sun, the tiles of its roof turn red. For a moment it is as if everything is on fire. Law looked back at Luffy-ya’s face fixating on the scar he had under one of his eyes. From that angle it seemed as if it was another crevice where there had been darkness and now there was light. 

One single thought inundated Law’s mind against the background of the rising sun. 

I’m in love with him.

End of A Portrait of a House on Fire

To be continued (Next fic of this series)