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It hurts different, is the thing.
When Hawkins had hurt him, it was a bargain Law went into with both eyes open. He knew there would be pain, and he’d decided that was an acceptable price to pay for the lives of his crew. He knew, and Hawkins knew, and Hawkins knew that he knew, and that made it different.
Every blow he took, Law thought ‘that’s a blow that didn’t fall on Bepo, or Penguin, or Shachi.’ Every drop of blood Hawkins wrung from him was one he didn’t take from one of Law’s crewmates. Even as screams were wrenched, raw and ragged, from Law’s tortured throat, some part of him was thinking ‘at least it’s me, and not them.’ ‘At least I was able to do this much, this time.’ And when his consciousness finally failed him, trickling through his blood-slick fingers like so much sand, all Law could think was ‘this is a victory. I know it, and he knows it. Even if he kills me, I’ve already won.’
When Blackbeard hurts him, it’s so much worse. The part of his brain that is a doctor, always, first and foremost, is telling him it probably isn’t actually as bad as some of the wounds he took from Hawkins, when he used that straw-sword of his like a whip that cut almost to bone, striking again and again and again until he was a bloody wreck hanging limp from the seastone chains. It’s definitely not as bad as Doflamingo taking his arm off, or filling his chest with lead, watching his suffering with that awful, awful smile. But Blackbeard stomps down on his chest, and it hurts. It hurts even more because Blackbeard’s blows are not saying ‘I hate you, you’ve ruined everything for me,’ and they aren’t saying ‘I want to punish you for picking the winning side,’ they’re just saying ‘I’m hurting you, because I can.’
Law tries to catch his breath and Blackbeard’s foot finds his ribs again and he feels them snap and he can’t muster the breath to scream, and it’s Blackbeard saying ‘Everything you are is mine if I want it. I can do this, and you can’t stop me.’ It’s saying ‘Just for kicks, I can break anything you have – your crew. Your ship. Your body.’ It’s saying ‘Doesn’t this feel familiar? To be helpless and hurting while someone takes away what you love the most? Don’t you want to do something about it? Well, you can’t.’ And Law has worked so hard, given up so much, to never be that helpless little kid again. Has spent so long honing himself so he would never again have to watch someone take everything of his they wanted and break it, just for kicks.
He tries, with everything left in him, to summon a Room, even for a moment – but no sooner have his fingers twitched with the gesture, than Blackbeard’s heel grinds his hand down into the gravel. One, two, three of his metacarpals break and Law can picture what he’d probably look like on an X-ray right now. Not great, he thinks.
Law doesn’t think he can do this again. Doesn’t think he can pick himself up out of the wreckage of his life a third time. His home is (burning, screaming, dying) sinking to the bottom of the ocean and his family are (bleeding out, and he can’t reach them) scattered, either unconscious or in chains, and his body is (betraying him with its weakness) more broken than he can fix.
And then there’s a roar, and he thinks for a second it’s just his blood rushing in his ears but no, no, it’s Bepo, and Bepo shouldn’t have to do this he thinks, I should be protecting him, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.
Can’t is, for a moment, all he can get out, and it’s so muddled by his numb lips and panting breaths that it's incomprehensible even to his own ears. He tries again. This time nothing comes from his mouth but blood. Once more. Manages, this time, somehow:
“We can’t abandon our crew.”
The effort of saying it nearly undoes him, his vision going black around the edges, but he needs to be clear – Bepo has to understand.
Take me back. We need to go back.
The captain’s supposed to go down with the ship.
And Bepo – ever-loyal Bepo, Bepo who is his best friend, Bepo, who he saw hurting when he was thirteen and only then realized that he could still care about other people’s pain, Bepo, who loves him more than he thought anyone would ever love him again, somehow, impossibly--
Bepo, his first mate, who has never refused any order Law has given—
Bepo disobeys. Bepo keeps swimming.
And it hurts – it hurts different, is the thing, but it hurts.