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When Law spies the blonde hair in the crowd with the Straw Hats, he initially dismisses it. Even though it’s nearly the same shade as Cora-san’s hair, and it also makes him think of —
But no, it couldn’t be him.
Then there’s a ruckus because Straw Hat just punched a freaking Celestial Dragon.
Like what the heck.
It was thrilling.
There’s a rush as the fight begins, and he knows that he should just leave and not get caught up in this mess. Especially considering who the auction house belongs to. But Kid says something stupid and now he has to prove that he’s worthy of fighting just like the other two supernovas.
(It doesn’t matter that his bounty is smaller than theirs right now. That’s completely on purpose. It helps him to hide.)
Well, he’s definitely not hiding now.
There’s blonde again, just for a second. But beside the fringe (over the same eye that he remembers) there’s a curl of an eyebrow and Law nearly drops Kikoku.
(A beaming smile, a warm hand on his splotchy white cold one —)
But it’s gone again. The Straw Hats have run off, and Law is left feeling like the ground just fell out from under him.
He doesn’t see the Straw Hats again on Sabaody. There was a fight with the government’s new weapons, the Pacifistas, and he’s too worried about getting his own people out of harms way. Later, he hears that the actual Warlord Kuma had shown up, and shortly afterward there are rumors going around that the Straw Hats Pirates are dead.
He ignores the twinge of loss.
(You don’t even know if it was him.)
But then the captain has shown back up, and during the execution of his brother? of course Portgas D. Ace is Monkey D. Luffy’s brother. And suddenly, Law has hope.
He swears that it is just on a whim that he saves Straw Hat’s life. That he was curious about the D, and where he wasn’t able to save one, he could save the other.
And maybe, down the road, he can call in a favor.
(And the favor shouldn’t be so personal, but the tiny spot in Law’s heart that was full of smiles and clumsy food but so much bubbling sunshine wants to know more.)
When Straw Hat wakes up and is inconsolable for hours until Jinbei calms him down, Law thinks that the time to ask about his crew members isn’t now. Not while he’s grieving.
And so they dive, and Law moves on to the darker part of his heart, focused on two other blondes, each with wide smiles but only one with true kindness.
(It was always the kind ones that he lost.)
“Who are you?”
Law was laying on an exam table, feeling highly uncomfortable in a flimsy hospital gown. It showed too much of his skin for comfort, the blotches of white more prominent than what he supposed should have been much tanner skin. But even that had become too pale.
There was a yelp, and the tiny figure that had just walked through the door startled, jumping a little. A wide, blue eye with a funny curled eyebrow over it stared up at him in surprise.
“Uh-um-I, uh —“ he stuttered and Law scoffed and rolled his eyes, reaching a shaky hand to run through his hair. They’d taken his hat away, and he’d been feeling even more exposed even though he knew that it didn’t cover anything more than his hair.
He cursed his shaking hand as well.
His illness had gotten worse over the last several months, and when Doflamingo had come to him and let him know that he was owed a favor by some powerful people that had made strides in genetic research, he had been shipped off to freaking Germa to be poked and prodded to see if there was a way to cure him.
How in the world Germa was actually a thing had thrown him off quite a bit. He’d always been a fan of Sora, Warrior of the Sea, when he was little. He hadn’t thought of it in the few years since Flevance had burned to the ground though. Any of the comics that he’d owned, that he’d read to Lami, that his father had picked up for him and gifted him because he’d been so good at his studies —
Law hadn’t thought of it in a while.
An old excitement had bubbled up, and he had started thinking of all the cool things he could see and hear about while in this strange country. But so far, it has just been one boring scientist or doctor after another.
At least they didn’t run away from him screaming about a contagious disease that wasn’t actually contagious.
And now, there was this pale yellow blonde kid that couldn’t be more than seven that had just stumbled into the room he’d been waiting in.
Law sighed again.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said in response to the stuttering.
“I’m sorry!” the kid said. “I didn’t know anyone was in here! This is where they normally send me. I guess I’m supposed to go to a different room…”
Law slowly sat up, ignoring the dizziness in doing so, and gave the other boy a cursory once over.
“Why?”
Blue eye blinked. “Why what?” he asked.
Law cocked his head. There was a visible bruise on one of the boy’s arms. He had a bandaid on his cheek, and some scrapes underneath that looked newly healed but still visible. He was not really that unhealthy looking. Just a few scrapes.
“Why are you here?” Law clarified. “Are you sick?”
The boy looked down at his feet. Law must have been really tired, but as he too looked at the other boy’s feet for a second, he saw the yellow shirt and finally registered the number 3 on it.
Huh. Weird.
“M-not sick,” he mumbled. “I just need to be fixed.”
Law’s eyebrows furrowed. “Do you have a broken bone? What’s needing to be fixed exactly?”
The boy looked back up and studied Law with far more intelligence than his age belied. “I have had broken bones. Lots of them. But they’re mostly all healed right now.” Law wasn’t sure why that answer made him so uneasy. “I’m messed up though. I’m not strong. I get hurt too much. And I cry a lot.”
Law didn’t know what this all meant, but seeing the sincerity in the visible eye made him feel wrong footed.
“Well, people can get hurt. You’re not superhuman, are you? If you’ve had broken bones, those hurt. Crying is normal when you’re hurt,” he said matter of factly.
A blink. “But-but that’s not right!” He suddenly burst out. “My brothers don’t get hurt. And they don’t cry. They call me a crybaby because I can’t do things like them. I bleed and they don’t. I can’t go as fast as them while running, and I drowned when we were supposed to swim the course. They don’t drown. I do. I’m broken!”
It would have been comical as he said all this and ended it with a stomp of a tiny foot, but Law was starting to put together a picture, and it made him angry.
“How old are you?” he asked. “And your brothers? How old are they?”
The boy looked surprised at the change of subject, but he puffed his chest out proudly. “I just turned 8! Just like my brothers. We are quadruplets,” he said. “Ichiji, Niji, myself and Yonji.”
Law blinked. “Wait…what’s your name?” he asked, heart sinking as he as pretty sure he knew, eyes going back to the three on the boy’s shirt.
“I’m Sanji!” He said, and the grin that lit up his face was almost blinding.
And in that moment of clarity, of understanding, (and hatred at whoever had done what he was sure they had done) Law knew. He was completely screwed.
When word came out that the Straw Hats had become active again, Law was too far embroiled in his own plans against Doflamingo that he didn’t think too much about it.
After they had left Amazon Lily, he’d hunted down the wanted posters for the rest of the Straw Hats. He’d seen the captain’s poster several times, as well as the swordsman’s. They were both fellow supernovas, and it would have been remiss if he hadn’t known more about them. But he hadn’t paid attention to the rest of them.
He’d looked on in befuddlement at the one labeled Blackleg Sanji. It was a horrible rendition of the actual man, given the brief glimpse of him that Law had spotted. It made him want to laugh a little hysterically though.
Because the name, Sanji. It was correct. And the swirl was unmistakable.
How was he alive? After all this time? And a part of the Straw Hats at that. Law had done his research thoroughly then, and it confused him to no end when he realized that the notorious pirate crew had originated from the East Blue.
But he had shoved all those thoughts further down as more and more time passed and no one heard more. He was knee deep in his revenge plan against Doflamingo. He didn’t have time to think about it.
And then they showed up. And every plan, every outcome he’d calculated up to this point, was tossed out the freaking window.
(Later, he would call it the Straw Hat effect. It just seemed to be something they were good at.)
When Law swapped their personalities, something had stayed his hand and he hadn’t changed Sanji’s, much to his confusion. The blonde was a far cry from the little boy he’d met so many years ago in the Germa labs, swearing up a storm at him for hurting a woman when he saw Law slice Tashigi in half.
It made Law want to laugh hysterically.
When they were finally done and Vergo was dead, and Caesar was sufficiently tied up, Law was once again distracted. This time it was at the tearful request of the raccoon doctor. He was bemoaning that he couldn’t save the children, and Law was trying hard to ignore the tears. He has known Caesar had been doing more than he let on while Law was sharing his space. But he had ignored it in favor of his own worries. When he realized the children had been experimented on though, there was a new burning hatred in his chest towards the scientist.
(Tears leaking out of a blue eye, a wail wondering why he couldn’t just be like his brothers, saying that he was a failure —)
Law cut the poison out of the children.
He probably could have gone about it a little differently and not given the small doctor a near heart attack. But in the end, he felt better if only a little, because he’d helped someone that had been hurt by science. It wasn’t the one he’d wanted to help, but he’d still helped.
When he sat down to eat Sanji’s cooking for the first time in 13 years, a warmth bloomed inside him that quickly took over the hatred that filled him before.
He’d become a chef, just like he’d wanted.
“Law! I brought you food!”
Sanji was wearing a yellow raincoat, and was holding a bento box toward him. The boy was dripping rainwater all over the floor, but he seemed to have no care in the world about it.
Law rolled to the side, his joints aching a lot more than normal today. He supposed if it was raining, that made perfect sense.
“You…brought me food?” He asked, staring at the proffered bento box suspiciously.
“Yeah!” A wide grin. “I cooked it just for you!” He stated. “I made some for Mama too, so I have to hurry and leave. But I wanted to give you yours first!”
Sanji hadn’t mentioned his mom before. “Okay,” Law said. He was a little tired of the bland food they’d been feeding him anyways.
He was currently laying in an actual bed, in another room off the one he’d first met Sanji in. They’d given him a blanket, but he felt perpetually cold, and he missed his hat so much.
When Law took his first bite of the curry (he assumed it was supposed to be curry) his first instinct was to spit it out. But the anxious, hopeful look on Sanji’s face had him swallowing and giving what he hoped was a sufficient smile.
“It’s good,” he lied through his teeth.
Sanji didn’t need to know that he’d eaten far worse things during his short life.
The beaming smile the boy had given him had been worth it. Even after Sanji left, Law made sure he finished every bite.
When Cora-san came bursting through the door with a fresh set of clothes and his familiar and oh-so-missed hat, Law was confused.
“They’re not trying to help you,” he had said. “They’re trying to see if they can harvest the amber lead from you and what they can use it for.”
Law had felt sick. Well, more so than normal. But as Cora-san explained what they were going to do, about going to a real hospital that had real doctors to find a cure, he stopped the man.
“I want to take Sanji with.”
The blonde boy had been a constant in the few months Law had been with Germa. He’d cooked several times for the older boy, always looking so hopeful. When Law had made a few suggestions, the studious look on the other’s face had made him chuckle. But the boy had taken his words to heart. Even if it was minute, every change in his cooking made it slowly better than the last food he’d brought Law.
And somehow, Law had become proud of him.
Law had also realized that whatever was going on with Sanji and his siblings was wrong.
His brothers abused him, and his father let them. His sister just watched, and pretended to care about him when she patched him up afterward.
Sanji was too kind for them all.
It had been a few days since Sanji had managed to sneak off to find him. It wasn’t unusual, as he sometimes had extra training or an injury that made it hard for him to get away. Law always felt protective of the other boy when he did show up with a new injury and he always cursed his weak body for not doing better so he could go teach those good for nothings a lesson.
When Cora-san looked down at Law with that face though…Law knew.
“Oh Law. I’m so sorry.”
It was always the kind ones that he lost.
He hadn’t realized Sanji had heard him yell about the bread. When he’d finally decided he could join the rambunctious group of pirates around their table, he was pleasantly surprised to see onigiri on his plate in lieu of the different sandwhiches the others had. Sanji hadn’t even looked at him, just continued to serve the others and fawn over the girls.
Later though when Law was sitting on the deck, Kikoku leaning on his shoulder and back to the railing, the cook had walked over to him. Law’s heart rate picked up in anticipation, but willed it to slow as he realized there was no recognition in the blonde’s eyes.
“Why no bread?” he questioned, standing beside Law, facing the sea. Law glanced up at him as he puffed on a cigarette. “Allergy or preference?”
Law looked across the deck towards the other railing, coming to a conclusion about what he should do.
“Not quite an allergy,” Law finally said. “I can eat it, but it makes my stomach hurt.”
He felt more than saw Sanji nod. “Good deal,” he said. “Is it the wheat?” he asked again.
This time Law looked up. A blue eye-the wrong one-had looked down at him.
Law knew it was the wheat. Had finally figured out it was bread that caused the extra edge of ache and nausea after the amber lead was finally out of his system. He’d always thought it was just another symptom. So of course he’d run tests to find out what about bread caused him issues.
“Yes, the gluten.”
Sanji nodded and looked away. “If you want to try bread that is made without gluten, I have a recipe I’ve been meaning to try.”
Law tried not to be surprised. Of course that was what he’d do. He’d make something different, special, just to please one person who he didn’t even know.
(He’d known him once.)
Sanji had smiled then, and after saying something about preparing a midnight snack for the person on watch that evening, he walked away.
Law wanted to follow him, and tell him everything. To ask for information. To understand what had happened.
He stayed where he was.
When Law saw Sanji suspended in the air by Doflamingo’s strings, he had never felt more frightened in his life. He’d felt afraid for various members of his crew before. They were his family now, after all. But the regret of not telling Sanji what was going on, and who he was, was so great in that moment and all he could think of was—
(Doflamingo is going to kill him and he won’t know who I am.)
…
(Would he even care?)
When Law grabbed Sanji after shambling Doflamingo away, he was hit with such a strange feeling of nostalgia.
(A tiny body wedged against his, blonde hair tickling his nose as a tiny finger pointed at pictures in the book he’d brought to Law and somehow convinced him to read out loud —)
They crashed into the deck, and Law said, “My fault, I’m sorry.”
(It wasn’t enough.)
Sanji hunched into himself, and the specks of blood dotting his white shirt made Law feel sick.
Law barked out orders to the rest of the crew that was there about leaving, getting away. Taking Caesar with them and not giving Doflamingo more targets.
He didn’t want Sanji to die.
(Again.)
Sanji had snatched his arm out and grabbed Law’s wrist, stopping him. Law felt frozen as the blue eye widened, looking down at the tattooed hand in his own.
(Law knew they were still there. Most of them had faded, but his hands still had small patches that were forever paler than the rest of his skin that the tattoos didn’t quite hide.)
Sanji’s eyes snapped up to Law’s own.
And in a breathed whisper, the little boy shining through a suddenly wet eye, he said “Law.”