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Fools trusted him. Law knew that. Just ask Lami.
Best made plans and those assembled on the fly regularly fell to pieces, even when everything came together. Just ask Cora, just ask Caesar. Unintentional deceit was a breeze. Blatant dishonesty not so hard.
Just ask Vergo.
Just ask a marine in the snow.
Just ask two of them.
White and malicious lies both served a purpose but who benefitted? Hasty lies whispered in hope or reprieve to alleviate despair or horror worked for the time they were given, like an arrhythmic beat in a cycle of pain.
Take Bepo, for example. Bepo worried about his carcass-devouring breath, as he should. He did his best with whatever dental implements they had at hand (bleached white wild animal femurs—the human ones were off limits), but scents lingered.
Toothbrushes, toothpaste, charcoal rubbed over the canines, all were used at times. But Bepo was an apex predator. The crew accepted the shaggy, wet-dog notes of Bepo's parfum over time, Bepo himself taking on board a few suggestions, and discarding others. The odour wasn't that bad—the Minks loved it—and Bepo's apologetic handwringing was a near-constant exasperation, so the Hearts didn't dwell on it, didn't add to it. Lies of omission served the well-being of both the Hearts and their navigator.
God-ya too. He was godlike in the spells he wove and cast. Tall stories, spectres, and projectiles shot from his catapult—all constantly saved the day. Law wasn't sure if the deceit was in what Usopp told himself, or in what he told others.
Law needed to be trusted but wished Lami hadn't. The bullets sprayed into the room where their parents lay had been hard to dodge; the floor was slippery with blood. Law thought Lami—sick and small—hadn't been tall enough to reach the sill of the window he'd jumped through. But plans made on the fly and those meticulously mapped out veer off course. For good and bad.
Law trusted Sister. She was one of God's chosen and who could betray her? The risk was too great. Learning what he'd learnt, seeing what he'd seen, Law's ten-year old self didn't hold the cynicism—knowledge?—he now did.
To harm Sister was defying God. Defying, not deifying. And Law knew there were plenty of false idols; one recently toppled from Dressrosa thanks to Straw Hat. But Sister's direct line to the divinities was sacrosanct. And of course, if Sister said that the government had said that she and Law's classmates were going to be safe, then they would be. God and the government had declared it to be so. Both were good.
And if his classmates were safe, then Lami would be safe, and his father would find a cure for Amber lead poisoning. Or his hardworking mother might crack it. Doctors were good. His parents were clever.
Even then, though, Law had known the cure hadn't yet been discovered. He'd told Lami for sure, just a matter of time, you'll be better soon, but he hadn't known. His own research hadn't advanced much over the past sixteen years. Law had left Lami in the hospital room. Soldiers shipped children to safety. Global agreements spared doctors from the worst of war.
In Flevance, thousands died from bullets, burning, and smoke inhalation, children and carers among them. Amber lead disease was communicable, the citizens of Flevance were to blame, eradication was necessary. A few years later when Law bared his patchy white face to clinics around the North Sea, doctors ran shrieking—from him, from Amber lead poisoning.
Doflamingo and Cora san knew that the condition was not contagious. Doflamingo had declared this to the Family before Law could. Most of the executives knew. But how? Concern over ammunition shipments? Flevance had no shortage of bullets, and as much as amber lead was a danger when mined, it was not a contagion.
The upholders of health and care, the doctors Cora took him to see, supported the government line. And Cora, good-hearted like Sister, hadn't questioned the practitioner's role, and trusted in the symbols they wore of healing and nurture. But, snakes in the grass were snakes in the grass after all.
Cora had relied upon doctors wanting to help, in the way he depended upon Sengoku (the murderer of firefist-ya, the saviour of Law's saviour), and his navy, to uphold rules and regulations. Doctors researched diseases and ailments, and were duty-bound to help a boy in pain. As if the roles and titles that people wore held meaning.
Rooster-ya asked Law on the way to Zou if he'd seen his bounty, but a piece of government paper couldn't bring Cora back. It wouldn't relieve the grief and trauma of the people they'd just helped; that Strawhat-ya had protected in Dressrosa. Law didn't care. All those zeroes were just that.
Deception upon deception brought Vergo to Cora: double agents both. And Law brought the two traitors together, and had helped kill the one he loved. Again.
Cora was bleeding out—Law too young and knock-kneed to use his new devil fruit to fix him. Cora had lied that the marines would assist, and Law had renewed his trust in the role, for a second. Had needed to believe. What could he do?
Hiding behind a snow-covered wall, marines marching by, Law told himself that Sister and his schoolmates had been caught in the crossfire, their deaths hadn't been targeted; told himself they were the tragic victims of collateral damage. Shivering, he inhaled deeply. Doctors who hated his skin were an anomaly and a disgrace. Marines were good. Some must be. Look at Cora.
Law later decided the real anomaly was that he cared. Cared about the meaning of those roles. The faith people put into them. The needs they addressed.
Some found it easy to utter words of love, but Cora had beaten Law black and blue every single fucking day before he'd kidnapped him. It was a strange way to show affection—his parents had never raised a hand, but the Family was like that. And the government said that Flevance had been full of monsters intent on infecting the rest of the world, and then mowed them down for their malformations. What else could Law have expected?
If they wanted him to be a monster, he'd be one.
The government—shaking spent cartridges to the ground—declared that the town had succumbed to disease. God punishes sinners, right? Cora beat the other kids too, but not as regularly. Law must've done something to deserve it. Must've done something wrong. Putting Lami in the closet. Lying to her.
Cora caused Law physical hurt in a way that Doflamingo promised—and more—if he were ever to find out how ten-year old Law had driven a shank into Doflamingo's brother. But, in an overheard drunken campfire rambling, Cora recognised and named Law's pain as something Law shouldn't have to bear. As something a child should not have to carry.
Waking from sleep, Law felt seen for the first time in a long time. He hadn't even realised that the boy his parents had known was still alive. The world wasn't as corrupt as he'd experienced. A dim light ebbed beyond the darkness. The venom streaking his blood wasn't intrinsic. Cruelty was both more random and organised than heavenly whims. Back turned to Cora, Law cried.
What Law knew as true was not. His parents' deaths marred that absolutely. But grenades worn so closely to his skin they’d fused with the flesh were no less a lie. His invisible weaponry and armour. He knew his parents loved him. He knew Lami had loved him. He knew Cora cared.
A spoke removed from a breaking wheel doesn't immediately alleviate a victim's agony. But, eventually, the uneven support affects the efficiency of the structure. After his benefactor's death, and not so long before it, Law reneged on his plan to torture the world. He didn't want to cause any more suffering. Not when his own world was full of it. Vengeance and disruption were fair game, but he didn't have the heart to blindly inflict hurt. To amass power.
Doflamingo wanted to harness his anger, but Cora had wanted to heal it. Law lost his saviour to lies and he was saved by lies (mysterious boys on navy ships). His hope was dashed and encouraged by lies, and maybe if he'd stood in Lami's room and taken the bullets, she'd be breathing still. He'd give up his life for his crew, but wouldn't use it as a bargaining chip to fulfil another's ambitions. Would not let them use his life that way. Doflamingo could screw himself.
Wano tested that resolve. Who knew what Hawkins' game was, but Law made sure that the seer couldn't take chances with the jailed Hearts, his oldest friends. When he negotiated to free Bepo, Shachi and Penguin from Rasetsu Prison, Law gambled with his own existence, and the lives of his crew and Basil Hawkins, but on his own terms. He’d kill Hawkins if he didn't release his subordinates. Bepo, Shachi and Penguin would die as a consequence, caught in the powers of the magician's devil fruit. But what did Law need with a bunch of incompetents?
Anyone not wedded to chance would've called his bluff. Anyone who knew him. Anyone who knew the Hearts. Which Shinobu did not. There was no way Law would've been able to execute his crew, even by proxy, especially by proxy, although the kunoichi seemed to think their demise was the only way to keep the Wano plan safe—not trusting in their loyalty, accusing them of having betrayed the alliance to their captors. Someone had, but it wasn’t Law’s team.
Blood dripped from Law's nails, and the jailers had fucked up his back of course. An impressive array of devices lined Hawkins' torture chamber. Upright, wrists and arms suspended by chains, Law couldn't lift his head, and didn't know which instruments were now absent from the neat, ordered display, which ones were in use. But his men were free and there was no way Law was going to drag his own stay out longer than he had to.
Kin'emon, Shinobu's ally, seemed to have forgiven Law for cutting him in half on Punk Hazard. Law-dono indeed. Kin'emon wasn't really Momonosuke's father, and Law hadn't really been Caesar's lapdog, or a warlord at heart. Law's attack, although among the more macabre of his repertoire, might've sheltered Kin'emon from Orochi's men. Hunting down Wano samurai, they had later laid waste to lands like Zou.
Law spat blood from where the guards had loosened a few teeth. The gob of phlegm didn't make it to the floor. Hawkins' thugs were in fine form.
The Hearts had been harmed in the fighting on Bepo's homeland when they'd unwittingly protected Shinobu's ninja compatriot, Raizou. The Minks' lies saved Raizou. The Heart Pirates had helped.
His nails would take some healing. Damn them. Law curled his fingers. He still could.
Shinobu loved her family, loved the Kozuki family, loved Kin'emon and the samurai, and had waited twenty years to avenge her lord and bring freedom to Wano. Law understood the drive and dedication, and the Kozuki clan seemed just and fair, but he wouldn't swear allegiance to any other family since having left Doflamingo's. And his sister and mother and father needed no replacements.
But nakama was nakama, and if Shinobu didn't recognise that Law's loyalty to his nakama, and his nakama's loyalty to the cause, to him, was as strong as her own, then Law needed to reassess the aims and goals of the alliance.
They released the chains and Law fell face first to the hard cobbled floor. Pain shot through his body. Pain upon pain. Hawkins and Drake drew near, standing over him. Through a static buzz and rattling shackles, breath dry and short, Law sensed Shinobu nearby, Blackleg too. Here to fight, free or assassinate? Just what he needed.
Shinobu's nakama, Kin’emon, Raizou and Kanjurou included, had sailed under the Polar Tang's roof from Zou to Wano. Law wasn't trustworthy, but needed to be trusted, and to trust. Water fills the shape of the holder, and—over time—shapes it in turn.
Hawkins’ goons lifted and threw him back against the far wall. Law let out a sharp raspy cry. They checked and tightened the heavy seastone restraints. Law glanced up. Towering above him, Hawkins thought interrogation would force Law to betray his accomplices. That he'd give up his soul to prevent a little pain. That he didn't know how to lie through his bloodied, salty teeth. Law ran his tongue against the back of them and grinned.