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I. Faith
The first time Law dies, he is ten and the world ends in fire.
Somewhere between the rain of explosives and artillery, the marines in uniform dragging bodies into the street, and numbing horror, some part of Law is mortally wounded. It's a small part, and it goes into shock as Law buries himself under the crushing weight of bodies being carted out of the city to be burned.
His parents' son and sister's brother dies. He is carted away with a nameless heap of his country's people. The part of Law that is light, love, and innocence goes with them to the grave.
That he still breathes is of no account.
===/\===
II. Flesh
The second is a slow death, from when Law is nine-and-a-half to twelve-and-nine-months.
Amber Lead hurts.
It's noticeable in the lungs first, in the hacking cough, and the sensation of never getting enough air no matter how many rasping breaths he might struggle to take. It goes for the intestines next, sitting heavy and painful in his gut, making even the thought of food unrealistic. By the time it takes to his skin, hard patches which crack and ooze blood and plasma…
Everything hurts, all the time.
Law's days are numbered. He counts them, three years from his parents' last hushed argument about his dying sister and himself.
Some days are better. Some days are worse. Some days, dying is scary, but living just hurts so much.
Hate keeps him going.
Hate straps scavenged explosives to his small chest with patchy-white hands.
"Let me join you," Hate says to Donquixote Doflamingo with Law's failing lungs. "I want to see the world burn."
===/\===
III. Heart
Law's third death is a surprise, but that is the risk of walking around with your heart in someone else's body.
Humans are social creatures. So, despite everything, it's rejection that hurts the most.
He'd overcome the impossible, escaped the fall of Flevance, fought through overwhelming grief and weakness, scraped together enough willpower and supplies to get to Spider Miles—and the Donquixote inner circle scattered away from him, screaming.
Disgust. Avoidance. The desire to eliminate him like vermin.
Again and again it happens, at every hospital Corazón stupidly, ignorantly, drags him to. Law is subjected to fear and rejection time and time again.
It chips away at the pale shadow that had roused itself in the ashes of his burning city. He barely has the energy to be bitter, he wants to be bitter, to rage and rail and protest "I lived! I lived, and this is what I got."
But he's tired and everything hurts and he's twelve and he's dying and he's dead—he just hasn't stopped bleeding yet.
"You poor boy," whispers Corazón, thinking Law sound asleep. Law isn't, not truly—he hasn't slept properly in years. The strangled breaths, the twisted gut and the cracked skin don't allow it. "You poor boy."
And Corazón wept.
With his back to the man, Law feels tears fall upon his head. The heat and salt of them were alive, deeply human, and a remedy for great wrongs. Corazón swept the hate out, replaced it with the soft mortal thought of "I'm small and I'm scared and I don't deserve to die."
The tears he'd thought long-dried well up in his eyes and Law wept too.
From that point on, Corazón is Cora-san, and Law is a boy who deserves to live.
(I love you.)
(You are free.)
Cora-san dies in his place to make it true.
===/\===
IV. Fear
Law's fourth death is by his own hand.
He learns his lesson—everyone around him dies. He hadn't learned well enough from Flevance, but the lesson had been repeated in Cora-san and well. . . he didn't fancy a third time.
He sends his people far away with every provision he can make for his failure. They're holding him back, he tells himself. So he looks his oldest, dearest, closest friends in the eyes and tells them to go ahead to Zou. That he'd meet them there soon. He doesn't tell them what he's going to do—Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin corner him to ask, but he's foul-tempered from stress and fear, and stubborn enough that they let the matter drop. He refuses to risk them, so he bundles up everything worth living for and banishes it, watches the Tang sink slowly below sunset-dyed waters for maybe the last time. He stands on the shore replaying the sight to burn it into memory long after they're gone.
"It's for the best," he argues at the yawning blank landscape of the winter half of Punk Hazard. He knows exactly what—who—he is up against, and preparing for death is only prudent. His exhaustion and selfish desire to hide with them in the Tang forever just isn't realistic. It doesn't matter how he feels. This way he can't be tempted to cowardice, to run into the waiting arms of those who love him and just . . . live.
He has a debt, a duty, and he's already made Cora-san wait for so long.
It doesn't matter how he feels.
When the marines come knocking, when Monet reveals that she has been one of Doflamingo's all along, when his careful contingencies start collapsing around him, and allying with Straw Hat constantly feels like the dream where he misses the step on a staircase and falls—
Law goes through the whole thing half-numb, smirking or scowling to hide his racing heart and whirling panic.
Dressrosa is the end of everything, one way or another. Law is terrified but he can't show it, not with the Straw Hats watching him for direction and the slightest indication that he'd betray them.
Despite Law's best efforts, Doflamingo cuts through Law's plans, unloads a round of lead bullets into Law's chest in a mocking parody of Cora-san's murder. Somehow, deep in his heart, Law expected this. Law has run all the possibilities and permutations, failure is very real. It's Doflamingo, after all. And Law is only Law.
But Straw Hat—impossible, aggravating, miracle-working Straw Hat—charges straight ahead. He causes pirates and kings to argue for the privilege of killing Doflamingo. It's bizarre, to have an entire crowd believe Doflamingo so easily killed—like he isn't a beast of mythos, the closest thing to invincible, the idol god of Law's desperate youth.
In the midst of the rabble, Law finally manages a fragile belief in what he's been trying to convince himself of for thirteen years:
He is not infallible.
All men must die.
All men must die, and Doflamingo is only mortal.
In that moment, Law decides, against all logic and reason, to bet everything on Straw Hat.
Impossibly, they win.
High above the rising dust of Dressrosa's ruins, Straw Hat defeats Doflamingo. Law picks Straw Hat from the sky and Doflamingo's dominion dissolves along with his birdcage.
It's over, everybody lives—
—and Law is free.
===/END\===