Darling Typhoon [One Piece Law x Luffy]

11. Destined for Ruin

For as long as he could recognize the word, Law had been haunted by his precocity.

Growing up, he loved to read. His father, being an overly zealous and ambitious man, had little time for his children, much less for himself. 

Ironically, the first few years following the death of his wife were the happiest since his marriage.

Law's father had with a vigor of no source, no rhyme, and seemingly no reason, vowed to sweeten a bitter pill. 

He devoted all of his love and affection towards his two children only minutes after the news that his wife had died in childbirth. To him, they were gifts, the last of which his wife would ever bless him with. Both were to be loved, cherished, and while incredibly expensive, they were worth every minute of his time and more. Only by being happier than he ever was, could he convince his children of this truth.

Law read as many books as he wanted. 

Luckily enough, he was unbothered by his selection that was limited to those that his father had already owned, caked with dust from his University days. Though years apart, their interests and passions had overlapped. Thus, those old books became a blissful happenstance; oblivious to the limitations that bound them by circumstance.

It didn't matter if Law only had a few tattered yellow books that smelt of dust and decay—some stolen from libraries, some rentals from days of a high school past—they were his father's, and they kindled the flames of his lifelong cultivation of knowledge. Old, moth-eaten books 30 years out of the loop since the date of its last revision, despite themself, stoked flames of the passion in Law's heart for human hearts.

It was inevitable. inevitable as the day Law's freedom fell into the clutches of a blonde, pink ostrich-feather wearing tyrant,. Long before any of this world of hurt could even steal a strip of film from Law's bittersweet childhood memories.

Long before he even knew what it meant to truly hurt.

Preceding this...so hopelessly, lovingly, sickeningly sweet—in a sweltering barrage of startled 'ah's, late-night reading, strained eyes were filled with a swirling mixture of curiosity, thinly veiled by child-like wonder. At age 8, Trafalgar Law fell helplessly in love with medicine.

At age 23, Donquixote Doflamingo fell in love with the idea of exploiting this talent, and those of others.

For a man of his power, this very well meant that there was nothing that could stand between him and his goals. Nothing was out of his reach. Certainly not an 8 year old boy who despite giving the doctors that he paid a run for their money when a case of cardiomyopathy exploded in his ER, still held a characteristic naïveté that was impossible to ignore.

If you asked Doflamingo, some people were destined for greatness—that being said, some people were destined for self-inflicted ruin at the hands of such greatness. Law, as much as he struggled, had his role assigned the moment Doflamingo laid eyes on him— ruin .

If he didn't take the path of greatness with him, Law would capsize into ruin without him.

At age 8, Trafalgar Law had the Donquixote Family crest branded across his back with hot tongs—meant to forever scar the tissue. It mattered not if the little boy didn't know it yet— that small, gaunt back had a damned fate stamped across it. If it wasn't covered by Doflamingo's mark of ownership, it would simply regress into desolation. A fate that had been sealed the moment Law's small legs trudged through those hospital doors.

The world of hurt began, in a constant flux of bistable regression: His father collapsing at work...His father sitting in a hospital bed and promising to take the two of them camping once he got better. Lammy's bright, hopeful eyes, the way they dimmed when he died from a stroke hours later.