~

"So, when are you coming back?" Nami asked Law when she parted from the hug. The Strawhats and Luffy's brothers were all at the airport to see the doctor off.

"No idea, probably a few months." Law answered and let the others show their affections as well, he was pretty sure they wouldn't get a next time.

"If we are nearby, can we come to Flevance then?" Robin asked this time.

"Not a good idea, I'm travelling all over these next few weeks so I don't know where I'll be when."

"Wow, how's Lu gonna cope?" Ace grinned elbowing his brother who pouted.

"I'll be fine!" Luffy defended himself.

"That's why he has Dogfather." Law said pointing at the dog with his eyes.

"It's Godfather, you keep saying it wrong." The younger corrected.

"What if he wants to fuck? He can't fuck a dog." Ace said and heard all the Strawhats groan. "Whaaaat? I'm trying to find a solution for all the problems."

"I'm not answering that, and don't try getting any answers for him either." The doctor rolled his eyes and put his hand on Luffy's mouth to keep the younger shut.

"You're no fun Law."

"As I keep saying!" Law stuck his tongue out then heard the call for boarding. "Ok, I gotta go, see you all when I do, I guess."

"Wait, since you're going away for so long, can't you at least kiss Luffy goodbye?" Sabo grinned.

"I'm not going to do anything like that in public."

"Booo!!!"

"KISS! KISS! KISS! KISS! KISS! KISS! KISS!" Everyone started shouting and Law felt blood rush to his face.

"Fine! Just Shut up." Law said and sighed. "Don't get used to this." The older told his boyfriend and took the strawhat off the younger's head, used it as a shield against eyes and camera lenses, and kissed Luffy lightly on the lips, moving to kiss his forehead seconds later. "I love you."

"Law that's cheating!" Ace called when Law was walking away. "We don't know if you really kissed him!"

"Look at his face!!" Law yelled back and held up a middle finger all the while until he disappeared behind the gates. Ace, Sabo and all the Strawhats shifted their eyes to Luffy's face, much to their surprise, it was red.

Luffy could hear his brothers and his friends crowding him, asking him things but all he could hear were muffled sounds and all he could see was blurry feet, until Godfather's barking cut through everything and Luffy was forced to sit on the ground by the force of the canine.

When the pup starting barking at everyone and made the friends disperse to give Luffy space, Sabo and Ace looked at each other to check if the other was seeing the same thing. The brothers were both shocked and understood in that moment that Law had gotten Luffy a service dog.

"Does Luffy have problems he's not telling us?" Ace asked his blond brother, in a voice low enough so it stayed between them.

"Or is Law not coming back?" Sabo asked instead and the answer to both their questions was something the brothers didn't want. "Hey Lu, come on, let's go home."

"Yeah, we'll get meat, that'll make you feel better." Ace suggested, his heart aching at the way his brother was silently crying. The older brothers decided they wouldn't question the youngest about it.

"Y-yeah, meat sounds good." Luffy said and wiped his eyes, petting Godfather to make space to stand up. "See ya guys later." The young man didn't wait around for answers from his friends, he wanted to get away from the open sky and people all around him, he wanted to cocoon himself in blankets until he couldn't see the sun because he felt like a void was pulsing in his chest, making him heavy and nauseous. Luffy didn't like the way Law left, kissing him in public, something he didn't like doing, telling the younger he loved him, something he didn't like saying too much, going without a 'see you later,' Luffy felt panic rise within him, it felt like he wasn't going to see Law again, it felt like Luffy should have stopped the older from leaving. It somehow felt like the end. Godfather's head nuzzled deep in the boy's neck was the only thing keeping Luffy from giving into panic.

'He's a service dog.' Luffy remembered Law saying and with all that was going in his head, the young man tried making sense of his thoughts. Among all those thoughts was the realization that Law might have gifted Luffy a companion to look after him because for some reason Law himself might not be there.

The first thing Luffy did after getting home was go in his bathroom and throw up, he felt sick with the thoughts in his head. The next thing the young man did was bombard Law's phone with texts to call him as soon as he landed at the Red Line International Airport, then texted the Hearts to figure out if they felt something equally ominous with the way Law was behaving. When the Hearts told Luffy they weren't having any bad feelings, Luffy decided to trust his Torao, that he would get to see him again soon and if it felt like the older was avoiding him, Luffy would quite literally, hunt him down.

~

Law nearly cried from all the messages from Luffy, he was lounging in the Red Line airport, waiting for the connecting flight to be ready. Leaving everyone as casually as possible, without raising alarms was difficult but Law thought he managed to pull it off good enough, well nearly good enough, because Luffy wasn't deceived and Law had instead, triggered the younger's intuition and now he needed to reassure his boyfriend with lies of meeting again till he wouldn't need to.

It wasn't like Law had a choice, he had been planning his revenge for so many years and the one thing that was holding him down, a legacy to keep his family name alive, he had done that, at least enough to warrant a mention, so now it was time to carry out his revenge. Law's easy as pie plan was to go to Dressrosa, draw Doflamingo out, kill him for murdering Cora-san and hurting Luffy, then die with him. The End. But first, Law thought he deserved seeing familiar faces, to say his goodbyes from a distance.

"All flights for South Blue are now boarding." The PA system boomed over the surgeon's head and Law sniffled, wiped his eyes in case they had started leaking, stuffed his phone in his jacket and went to board his flight.

Why South Blue? Because first on Law's list of goodbyes, was Eustass Kidd. No matter how endearingly obnoxious the redhead was, he had saved Law from harming himself a good many times. Law laughed to himself realizing that he needed those punches to his face to set his brain right.

Law watched from a distance as Kidd argued with someone, looked exasperated as he peeked in the trunk of a car, shook his head and went inside his workshop to probably get the tools he needed to fix the problem. The doctor was impressed that the redhead still looked after his hobby workshop. While Kidd was fixing the car, Law sneaked into the building and put a basket on the main desk, easy enough for the idiotic Eustass Kidd to not miss.

Kidd slid out from underneath the car and told his pathetic, dumb customer to turn the ignition, the machine roared to life and the noise it had been making was now gone.

"Get it serviced once a month at least, that way you won't have these problems, and get the entire thing an undercoat to avoid rust." Kidd told the man in front of him and accepted the payment, watching the man drive away with his now problem-free car.

Kidd wiped his hands on the rag in his pants pocket and went inside the workshop to put his tools away. The redhead stopped when he spotted a basket on the table that had the workshop receipts and stuff. Kidd approached the basket cautiously in case it was a time-bomb from one of his enemies. The first thing Kidd saw in the basket was a note, he opened it and noticed it was Law's handwriting so he groaned and put the note aside, lifting the cloth under it to peek inside.

"Oi Killer! Was Trafalgar here?" The redhead asked his friend who was way inside the workshop, working on cleaning the space because Kidd was a disorganized man.

"No." The blond answered and stopped what he was doing, his eyes going to the basket in his friend's hand. "What's that?"

"Cabbage rolls and a note in Trafalgar's handwriting." Kidd held up the neatly folded piece of paper.

"What does it say?"

"Your stop-sign of a face would like stuffing on these.

They make it really good in Goa, thought I'd let you in on the experience.

Consider it a small token of gratitude for not letting me kill myself."

"That guy is so weird." Kidd mumbled.

"How the hell do you know his handwriting?" Killer's intonation conveyed that he had his eyebrows raised underneath his helmet.

"He wrote me a prescription once."

"He wrote you a prescription? And it still alluded you that he was a doctor????"

"What doctor has such neat handwriting?"

"I get your point."

Kidd shrugged and munched on the cabbage rolls to see if they were indeed as good as Law said, they absolutely were. "Man these are so good, that Mugiwara is so lucky to live in Goa."

"Keep it in your pants." Killer joked and went back to work.

Kidd took the basket outside with him to enjoy the treat under the clear open sky and the warmth of early spring. The man was just looking in the distance till he spotted a tall body looking back at him from the shadows of the alley of a building overlooking the fence the redhead had around his place. Kidd knew those golden eyes, he knew that posture, he knew that man. Kidd looked back at Law and raised the basket in his hand as acceptance and agreement that the food was delicious. The muscular man tried was about to wave the other man over, but Law turned heel and disappeared in the shadows.

Something's wrong with him. Kidd couldn't help the feeling in his gut that it was probably the last time he had seen Law, not that he was a fan of the older man but it still disturbed him that the nice gesture came out of nowhere and that Law had personally made the delivery. Something's very, very off.

~

Law stared at the headstone in front on him with nothing but hate for himself. The doctor had hoped to say his goodbyes to Volff in person but all het got to see was the old scientist's grave, the man had passed away a few months ago, and Law hadn't been there. With a heavy heart, Law put the flowers he had went to the town to buy, on the grave and sat down for a few moments, he could give the old man at least that much. Law didn't know if it was the biting cold or he was crying, but something hurt on his face by the time Law was ready to leave the grave and Swallow Island behind for good. The doctor got on the first boat that was leaving for a big city that had an international airport, so he could go to the Sakura country, formerly known as Drum.

The doctor had made it to Sakura without many problems and the first thing that was waiting for him there was a person, injured in the middle of the snowy road. Cursing his luck, Law told the crowding passerbys to make way for him so he could examine what was going on.

"We've already called a doctor, but we don't know how long it'll take with the oncoming blizzard." One woman said from the crowd.

"Well," Law said looking at the man who was trying his best not to cry from pain, he had clearly fallen off his bike and his foot had taken the worst damage. "You're going to lose your foot if we don't do something about it soon, there's no pulse in there so it's either, let the appendage die, or trust me and bear with some more pain."

"I-I-I-I-I can deal with pain." The man said, his teeth chattering from the cold and fear of what was about to come.

"Brave choice." Law patted the leg and put his gloves on. "I need a volunteer with strong arms for this job, and a few others to keep him down."

Law was impressed with the speed everyone took their roles and he found a young man sitting in front of him, waiting to be given orders. The doctor told the boy that he would need to pull the leg back and the foot out to correct the fracture dislocation and much to Law's surprise, the young boy did exactly he was told, reaping the exact results Law wanted. Once the fracture was in place, Law managed the bleeding to stay to a minimum and found some stray wood that he wrapped in sterile gauze for makeshift stints to wrap around the foot till the ambulance or the doctor arrived.

Law was busy at the task at hand that the screams of the man he was saving went over his head, unheard, so did the praise of the citizens around him until the ambulance arrived and took the man away. All of the noise that was around him felt like one long tune until a witchy laughter distinguished itself from it all when Law was taking his gloves off.

"Are you happy, you brat?" Kureha asked and sat beside the surgeon on the bench he was resting on.

"Hardly ever." Law answered and bagged the gloves to be discarded later.

"Good job today."

"I was just doing what was required of me."

"And inspired a life while doing so." Kureha pointed at the young boy who had helped Law. "He was just asking me on the steps of becoming a doctor, said you inspired him."

Law looked at the boy who was talking to a woman, probably his mother, very excitedly. "Well the world would need one in my place soon anyway." Law sighed and got up from the bench, bowed a little to show his respect to the old woman whom he had learned a lot from. "I came here to see you one last time, I've done that, so I'd be on my way."

"Where are you going?" Kureha asked the receding figure but received no answer. "Don't do anything stupid Trafalgar! And don't go dying either!"

The old man still sat on the bench long after Law had disappeared from her sight, she was worried about the young man, his farewell was as obvious as Law could have made it, that he wasn't coming back. Kureha let out a heavy exhale, as worried as she was about Law, she knew she had no right stopping the younger from carrying out his plans but she still worried and hoped that Law, whom she had come to think of as her own idiot son, would see the value in his own life and spare himself when it would come to ending his life, because it would definitely come to that.

There are people who love you, you idiot.

~

Upon receiving the news that Smoker and Hina were on a short mission near Cocoyashi and were staying with Bellemere for some time, Law moved in that direction and as he had anticipated, he found the three, smoking, sitting behind Bellemere's house, at night.

The doctor just watched his three parents from a far, didn't dare nor risk letting them see him, but he did participate in the group smoke and stole a tangerine to snack on while looking over the hill, it was the same hill he had sat on for hours while he was recovering from Amber Lead, the same hill Cora-san sat beside him on for the same hours Law had, to keep the weak boy company and to provide him with the support he needed to keep himself from jumping off the edge.

When the sun rose, Bellemere walked between the orange trees to check on the fruit and to pick off any pests she could see lurking. The woman eventually reached the end and decided to enjoy a few minutes looking over the town from the cliff. It was supposed to be a normal day, a normal walk from the trees to the cliff but it stopped being that when Bellemere spotted something on the edge of the cliff, a pinwheel made out of orange peel, a butt of a cigarette keeping it together in the center. The woman examined the edges and found that she knew only one person in the entire world who peeled an orange as neatly as the one she was looking at.

"Smoker! Hina!" Bellemere called her two friend, arriving at her house.

"Caught us at the right time, we were just heading out on duty." Hina answered from the front door.

"Good! Look for Law if he's in town when you're down there."

"Law?" Smoker furrowed his eyebrows. "Why would Law be here?"

"Look at this." Bellemere showed the two the pinwheel. "He was at the hill's edge yesterday."

"You don't think... he jumped off, right?" Hina worded the difficult question.

"That's why, look!"

"Law wouldn't do that, he was ok the last time we saw him a few weeks ago." Smoker tried dismissing the alarm in the air and the one that had settled in his own body.

"He always comes over for a smoke, always. Sometimes he doesn't tell his friends or Nami that he's coming here but he always comes over." Bellemere sat down to breathe herself into being calm because the thought that her child had been so close but didn't come any nearer, it was sending her into a state of dread and fear that Law had done something to someone or himself, so bad that there was no coming back from it.

"We'll look for him and ask around as well." Hina said and patted Bellemere on the shoulder.

"I'll call Nami and ask if she knows something." Bellemere stood up to search for her phone immediately.

"I'll call Mugiwara too." Smoker said but the woman hadn't heard him, she was too worried to pay attention to anything anymore.

"I hope for her sake nothing's happened to Law." Hina said as the two marines left the house to search for clues on their collective kid.

"I hope so too."

~

Finding Sengoku was too easy, the old man was still at the Navy HQ at Marineford and Law used his face as access and silence from the marines, to enter the facility. The old man wasn't in his office when Law entered it and put a lot of paper in front of Baarbara for the goat to chew on, and rice crackers on the desk for Sengoku himself. Law took a long amount of time to stare at the picture of Cora-san that the old man kept in his drawer.

"Bring the report in my office when you're done." Sengoku told the commander who was following him after the meeting and headed for his office. When he was only twenty paces away from the door, Sengoku saw a figure coming out of his office, a figure even his worsening eyes could recognize as his grandson, Trafalgar Law. For a few seconds, the old marine was confused, then his senses kicked in. "Law!" Sengoku called but the doctor didn't turn around or even acknowledge him, just kept walking until he rounded the corridor and disappeared.

Shaking his head and thinking he was seeing things, Sengoku entered his office and the first thing he saw were a ton of rice crackers on his desk, the second thing he noticed was Baarbara happily chewing on a lot of paper that Sengoku knew he didn't get her and was hoping weren't reports that arrived when he was away. The third thing that made Sengoku sure that it was indeed Law who had been here, and made him worried about the young doctor, was the photograph of Rosinante, that he usually kept in his drawer, standing proud in a frame, in the middle of his desk.

The Fleet Admiral quickly called for a search of the entire marine facility in search for Law and deployed some marines at the nearby international airports and harbours in case the doctor went there. Sengoku had a bad feeling about what Law was going to do, if his grandson had some to look at Rosinante's photograph, there was only one thing he was going to do next, kill Doflamingo, and Sengoku wasn't sure Law wanted to come out of the aftermath, alive.

~

Law took one deep breath after another and clutched his nodachi close to himself. The doctor was sitting in the waiting area of the Red Line International Airport to wait for boarding for Dressrosa. It was finally time. The doctor ducked his head further to avoid catching the eyes of the marines he knew Sengoku had sent to find him. As expected of the old man, he had picked on what Law was doing.

Law had said his goodbyes but he didn't have the heart to go to Flevance and look at his friends one last time so he skipped that step on purpose, turned his phone off and destroyed the SIM card for good, and decided he would just end everything. Law tried keeping his nerves under control, nerves that got worsened when it was time to board his flight. The doctor was walking towards the boarding gates for the flight to Dressrosa, he stopped for a second to listen to the sounds around him, the sounds of people, machines, a distant dog barking, the scraping of luggage wheels on the tiled airport floor, the PA system, the dog barking that was now closer, the slapping of sandals on tiled floor. Law bit his lip, that last sound was something he so wished to hear, of Luffy's sandals, since the younger always wore those shoes, regardless of the weather and decorum. Law shook his head to clear the image of Luffy's face from behind his eyes and resumed walking to the gates.

When the gates were just ten feet away, when Law's nerves were rising to the point of a headache, Law wished for instant relief so he could just get on with his revenge. The relief was no doubt instant, but it did not arrive in the way the doctor had meant for it to. Law was walking one second and the next he was being tackled to the ground, the sounds of that distant dog barking now in next to his ear, and the slapping of sandals coming to a stop close by too. Then Law heard the voice he had wanted to hear so badly but knew better than to seek it himself.

"TORAO!!"

~