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From the other side of the island Law can hear the boom and crackle of fireworks as the locals celebrate some pointless holiday with bright displays of pyrotechnics and explosions. The sounds and the vibrations traveling through the air set his teeth on edge, make his skin twitch in unease, make his heart pump a little faster in anticipation of being faced with some disaster.
He goes below deck to try and get a handle on something, on anything, to come to grips with reality, or at the very least his pulse rate (he’s not optimistic about self-control).
breathe in, breathe out, try not to scratch your eyes out, ignore the ringing in your ears, swallow hard to keep the bile down, breathe in, breathe out.
Waiting is the hardest part. Always has been, always will be. He’s stuck, physically, emotionally, logically, in fucking absentia.
There’s stillness in the silence of waiting. It’s a moment when the rotation of the earth takes over, and in the blank space left behind vice and virtue rests. It’s not a moment to make decisions; it’s not a moment to act. It’s meant only for waiting (in a strange paradox of the world) and it hurts.
In the operating room it has a name: tempore quo non extat. A time out. Like a child sent away for wrongdoing, but now instead it’s a preventative measure; to cut the right side, to mark the site, to take a breath, to understand, to approach. What happens when the sides aren’t where they should be?
Law has lived the majority of his life upside down, tossed in and out, underneath when the rest are above. He hides in shadows and ignores the ramifications of his given name. He doesn’t follow the rules because the rules are made for situations that don’t apply, for a time that never happened, for a life he never had a choice in.
Ad te suspirámus geméntes et flentes in hac lacrimárum valle – to thee sigh we, groaning, weeping in this valley of tears. The salt in the tears that encrust his pillow no different than salt in a wound; painful, marginally helpful, cleansing.
He doesn’t see the world as it is, as it should be, or even as it might be. Because in the dark nightmares run rampart and in the light they lie waiting in the shadows of the corners of his heart. He waits and he runs and nothing quite makes sense when he’s cursed to be followed with the fog of That Day; a fog that smells of human flesh and buries all of his senses until he can’t tell the difference between forward and backward, past or present; turn back turn back turn back.
This was never what he wanted and it sure as hell wasn’t what he needed, but it’s where he is. And it’s going to take a hell of a lot of waiting to get to somewhere where at least the sun rising in the west has some semblance of sense. Nothing makes sense anymore, nothing’s made sense in a long time. He’s the victim of a tragedy caused by ignorance and propelled by fear and horror. He gave up reasoning when he sought out joker, as a kid with a will against the world and no will to live.
It’s about control. He’s known for a while. About cutting strings, and breaking out of self-made cages. His powers are a blessing and a curse, both in disguise and neither giving him what he wants. (tua dona quae de sumus sumpturi, but Law questions the gifts from an avenging god. What deity would allow this level of devastation?). He takes control: forcefully, in anguish, praying and crying about coming to grips with a fierce determination that he wasn’t born with but that was thrust upon him with a vile taste and an evil grin. His hands shake. He looks down at his fingertips seeing not the whorls, arches, and loops that might give some hint of personal identity, but instead the proximal pieces of a man who knows drop for drop the amount of blood in a human body. A man who knows the average size of the heart of a man who doesn’t have one (10 ounces plus or minus the weight of a feather against his soul).
He falls to his knees, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
What is death but a negligible accident?
What is death but a small, almost unnoticeable blight against life?
What is death but a final rest after the exhaustion of existence?
He knows it’s not all hopeless, but it doesn’t change the inexorable marching on of time and the pace-less parading of the damned. He’s seen hope and freedom personified (shining too bright) in a man whom also has knocked on death’s door. The man who showed Law that as much pain and suffering as there was in the world there was a light at the end, a heart that kept beating, a smile through the hurt. A twinkle in the eye, a promise of freedom, of a goal, of a future. He’d like to believe all of the stories were true.
He remembers clearly what happened at the end of the beginning. First the white spots, then the pain, burning, death, tears, a distaste of humanity supplemented by a rage more powerful than any cure, silence, then suffocation with hope, a fruit, a gun, a sick comedic ending, more silence.
Some days it was easier to believe. Pater noster, qui es in cælis – the only father who mattered dead in a snowdrift, Law’s eyes frozen open in an act of unwanted penance. He didn’t want this life thrust upon him, didn’t ask to be an avenging angel. He should have died with the others – left to burn in a building meant to heal. It was hard to reconcile the need for revenge with the burden of justice that lays on his back. No, it’s not about justice, it’s not about stopping a monster even, it’s about a man who has nothing to lose bringing down the man who caused him to lose it all in the first place. He’d lost it all, and if he had to go down, he’d bring the world crashing down with him. Some days he could believe in something a little brighter, some days it was possible to have hope, and some days he was consumed by a black fury that left him dissociated for days.
Was it wrong to wish for retribution? For relief from the pain that haunted him? For a brief reprieve from the unending emptiness he felt? For release from the matter of heart too heavy to carry? He could end it with the end of another man – simple, clean, with surgical precision. It’s the only thing that makes sense anymore… lex talionis, a punishment fit to match the misdeeds of the wrongdoer; who was in the wrong when everything is wrong?
It hurt: knowing what was coming, constantly reliving the past, pretending to be in control of the bleak hole inside of him. Keeping up appearances was easy – everyone was afraid of the man with death tattooed on his hand and imprinted in his eyes. He never killed, not really, (Law was more of a fan of inconveniencing and impairment), but one man deserved an end even worse than Law could deal, but goddamnit he would try.
Post hoc exsílium – after this, our exile. There’s no plan for After. He hasn’t thought that far out, can’t think that far out (after all, he hasn’t met his saving grace yet, doesn’t know he has any grace leftover to save). There’s a missing puzzle piece but he hasn’t figured it out yet because he’s blinding by what he thinks he’s supposed to be seeing.
In absentia lucis tenebrae vincunt – but then again, Law’s never been afraid of the dark. He’s waiting in the shadows.
He somehow finds himself back outside, staring, as the sky is tinted blood red with an accompanying (satisfying) bang.