Title: Akanbou no Isha (Baby Doctor)
Author: AppleL0V3R
Beta-reader: N/A
Fandom: Naruto and One Piece
Pairing: Trafalgar D. Water Law and Haruno Sakura
Other Characters: Lao G, (mentions of) the Donquixote Pirates, Donquixote "Corazon" Rocinante, Senju Tsunade, Team Seven
Summary: Sakura remembered when Law was a small sickly child with nothing and no one. But the man in front of her was definitely not that kid anymore.
Word Count: 2,626
Rating: T
Type: Two-shot - Incomplete
Genre: Hurt/comfort, Pre-canon (One Piece), Conan compliant (Naruto)
Warning: Mentions of fatal illness and character death
Disclaimer: If you've heard of it before, then it's obviously not mine.
Started: December 3, 2016
Completed: February 28, 2017
Last Edited: March 1, 2017
Note: Takes place directly after the events of Minion Island where Law crawls out of the treasure chest and walks away from the Donquixote Pirates crying. Sakura, on a mission but detouring because of what she's heard about the Ope Ope no Mi, runs across Law. Law is canonically about twelve and a half, Sakura is almost eighteen and post 4th war, also canon compliant. And yes, this is one of the few verses I've written thus far that does not include the killing off of Team 7/Team Kakashi. I do have a reason for doing that as often as I do, and it is not for drama or shock value. I just don't see Sakura adventuring so far outside of Konoha without Naruto (and not just because they are one of my top BrOTPs). As far as I'm concerned, Sakura is super loyal and very team oriented; therefore, she would only go on long solo journeys like that if she did not have a team at all. Even in most canon verses, Sakura is more commonly seen in the hospital or with the Hokage than she is by herself outside of the village. Anyway, there is my little spiel about why I keep killing off Sakura's teammate prior to the timeline of the creation, in case any of you were wondering. (Also, sorry for being so longwinded)
Despite the quiet brought by the heavy snowfall, Sakura heard the gunshot loud and clear. Her chakra spread out automatically, informing her that there were a handful of people to the northeast of her. Including a kid. And a dying man. Assuming the signature strengths were anything to go by. Even if she rushed, she knew she would not get to him in time—and that did not even account for the fact that she knew nothing of what had happened or even exactly what damage had been done. But the way his life energy levels flickered dangerously diminishing like blood gushing from an arterial wound, told her that she would be useless unless she had been within arm's reach from the start. She was a miracle worker, not omnipotent after all.
Still, her lips pursed and her heart went out to the fallen.
No life should be so easily taken. All life should be properly mourned.
An opinion that it had taken a war and too many personal loses to learn, but one she would not budge on for a long time to come.
From her position where she had contemplated the rise of the thin white strands that formed a sort of a cage over the island, Sakura had yet to move. She had come to the small island, known as Minion, for the sole purpose of looking into the Ope Ope no Mi. She had heard many tales surrounding the powerful Devil Fruit and as a doctor could not help but be curious enough to poke around. She wondered if that was the reason behind the gunshot and all the calamity that had befallen this snow-covered place. Probably.
Sighing softly to herself, she weighed the merits of investigating further anyway.
In the end, she figured that as long as those unnatural threads connected in the sky, she would not be going anywhere and would not lose anything to simple observation. Decided, she turned a trekked around the hillside towards where she'd heard the gunshot and could still feel the signatures of those present. Thanks to the snow boot quality of her favorite pair of knee-highs she had no trouble staying atop the thick layering of snow and due to the heavy snowfall she did not have to worry about leaving even the lightest of imprints in the snow.
With her attention half on the people ahead, she felt the precise moment the gunshot victim stopped flickering, stopped breathing, and something in her chest tightened at the finality of death the abject loss of life—even for someone she had never met, would never meet. Oh, but she could feel the rough edges of the child, wild and fierce, and she hoped like hell that kid had not seen the violence and death take place. As she focused more on the kid than the handful of steady signatures, she realized that the child was moving away from the group and towards her.
Eyes widening at what her senses were telling her, she changed the center of her focus to the little, and no doubt distraught, one headed straight for her and backburnered the rest. Picking up her pace, Sakura did not waste time on getting to what she found to be a small boy not at all dressed for the weather and bawling his eyes out. His cries, though loud and heartwrenching, were hushed by the snow and probably could not echo to the group of people closer to the shore.
At a loss for all the things she assumed had just happened, she hurried to the boy who looked so small and broken. Instinct had her reaching out. Caution thrown to the wind, she caught his shoulders and pulled him in tight. Right then, all that mattered was shielding him from the world, providing him the most protection she could from what he may or may have not witnessed. Right then, Sakura did not care that she did not know this kid or what exactly he had been through or all the ways such rash actions could blow up in her face.
She had been helpless for so many for so long.
She would do what she could for this tiny broken thing.
Caught in a fog of grief and pain and loss, Law did not register the young woman in front of him, not when she hurried to his side, not when she grabbed his shoulders, and not even when she tucked him tight against her chest and plucked him right off the ground.
All he could do was cry. All he felt was numb. All he cared about was gone.
Too enveloped with the pain, he did not even try to react as he was carried away, his face pressed against some combination of skin and fur and cloth. Distantly he heard her speak, but he could not make out what she was saying over the pounding in his ears or the screaming in his heart.
Really, what in the world could matter more than the fact that Cora-san—the only person he had ever cared about—had been murdered? Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
And still he continued to mourn.
In the days that followed, Sakura managed to finish up the task she had originally been dispatched for before she had gone to investigate the Ope Ope no Mi. The young adult did so with the tiny thirteen year old boy in tow. No matter what she tried, he remained sullen and drowning in his grief; so caught up in it that he scarcely told her more than his name—"Law. Just Law"—and basic facts—how old he was, that he was dying, but mostly that he did not care anymore.
Her heart broke for the kid. She knew firsthand how cruel life could be, how little it cared about age or experience when it chose to be a harrowing unstoppable force. And still she wished she could help him, could undo the apparent injustice done to this young life in a way that no one ever helped her and her former teammates.
She settled for talking him into letting her do a medical check-up in the name of figuring out why he was dying, a request that had been initially been met with wide eyes and endless refusals. As soon as she mentioned that she was a trained doctor and that she intended to do the exam, he settled down enough to be mostly agreeable to the notion. His firm refusals made her only a little curious as to why he was so stanchly against visiting a hospital—kids tended to either of have an inborne avoidance of such places, though she quickly began to doubt that was the case with Law, or they had a past trauma stemming from medical institutions.
With his cooperation, and reluctant willingness to recount the necessary details, the kunoichi managed to get a very clear picture of Law's situation. And what she found absolutely astounded her, breaking her heart anew for the strife he had endured. When he got to the part about eating the devil fruit, a part that piqued her curiosity enough for her to ask after what he knew of it and what the fruit actually did, she realized that Law had the potential to be quite the doctor. Or scientist at the very least, given his family's background in medicine.
But rather than push that particular issue, she promised him that she would do what she could to forestall, or possibly even cure, his disease.
The problem, for her, was that she had neither the time nor the resources to even research Amber Lead Poisoning, let alone create a procedure to effectively deal with a type of poisoning she had no prior knowledge of. Those few facts were hardly deterrents; they did however force her to get creative. Like taking Law with her for however long it took to cure him of his affliction. She convinced him to count her, even though he clearly struggled with concept of trust, so she could do daily checks on his health and try to at least halt the progression of the poison—a skill she did have in her wheelhouse thanks to both Tsunade and Shizune, and to Chiyo and Kankuro.
A single run-in with a member of the Donquixote family ended up being all it took to build trust between them. With her shinobi and medical training, Sakura often found herself underestimated. If she thought other shinobi had underestimated her, then how pirates, marines, and mercenaries alike took the cake. Without fail, her opponents took one look at her and assumed she was exactly what she appeared to be—a scrawny, teenage, merchant girl. And without fail, she had little to no trouble discerning and exploiting weaknesses to win her fights. The member of the Donquixote family, a large muscular man with an affinity for the letter G and looking to take Law back, had barely caused her to work up a sweat to render unconscious so she could get Law away from the small bazaar three islands away from Minion Island.
In the wake of defeating the man Law referred to as Lao G, Sakura found herself on the receiving end of a fair bit of trust and a little bit of awe. Law, apparently, had assumed what everyone else did when they dealt with her—not a competent fighter. She could not honestly say she minded as much when she considered that it laid the foundation for Law actually listening to her and following directives. Oh, there was no way to miss how much he still mourned the man who had died on Minion Island, but she had expected that. Loss was a harrowing thing, impossible to control let alone ignore.
In addition to being more compliant, Law listened and asked her a litany of medical questions when she performed medical checks on him, soaking up any knowledge she imparted like a sponge. She suspected he was sublimating his grief, but she did not want the mistake of assuming she could suddenly tell him what to do and how to deal with his emotions. Not that she refrained from idle comments, which were often ignored, but she knew better than to make commands of the rebellious, young teen. He reminded her a bit of Sasuke when he was that age, and as Sasuke would not be told what to do on any manner, she imagined Law would react much the same.
She had also found that with a more solid trust between the two of them, Law was more open to her, receptive to touch in a way that he had previously cringed from. An act that had saddened her each time she witnessed it, but she strove not to show him pity. For everything he had been through, he deserved hugs and praise rather than pity. It was getting him to accept that was the trick. After all, he was a smart kid, leery of just about everything.
He had gotten this far, she figured, he could make it through anything else life could possibly throw at him.
They had found a motel room that was not on the roach side of sanitary to bed down in, and Law could not help but cautiously poke around the room. Never knew who or what could be lurking. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as she set the giant backpack she always carried beside the small table the room offered as compliment with a matching chair. She seemed mostly relaxed, but then, she always seemed mostly at ease.
Even when Lao G had caught them. Even when she had fought him and won.
He was still reeling from that, unable to believe that it was true. Lao G might not have been one of the highest ranking in the Donquixote family but he was just as formidable as all the elite, enough to be considered part of Doflamingo's 'family'. And this young woman who could not be that much older than him had seemed to barely break a sweat incapacitating him.
Once he was finished inspecting the closet and half bath, he returned to find her half-settled on the bed, her back against the wall at the head of the bed and one leg dangling off. The window above the bed was open now, and there were a few of her things—books, scrolls and other bits that had interested him from the get-go—spread out on the table. She had a newspaper in hand though, rather than one of those tombs she usual read leisurely.
Unable to shake years of caution and anger, he slowly approached the bed, wanting to get a look at one of those books instead. But they were hers and she had proven to be too strong and too fast for him to get away with it. Once he was seated on the side of the bed, he considered his options.
Only when she cleared her throat did he realize he had been starring at the desk with its supplies laid out. He turned to face her, and she nodded her head at the books, "If you want…"
Yellow eyes blinked. She was offering them to him?
Quicker than she could change her mind he hopped off the bed and darted to the desk. When he picked up the first large volume he could get his hands on he realized that it was a medical book. The title on it having to do with viruses and diseases. Lips parting, he turned his head to look back at her. But rather than watching him, she had returned to the newspaper, looking far too focused to actually be that interested.
His gaze returned to the book and he climbed into the chair. The next title that caught his eye was about poisons, judging by the size—easily the length of his palm—he would bet it was more than just the basics.
She was trying to study the poison that was killing him, he realized.
Diseases, poisons, one of the scrolls had the word antidote on it, another botany—the study of herbs, if he remembered right—and a handful more that he could not see but probably covered different aspects of the same topic.
Again, he turned back to her.
Cora-san had said that the Ope Ope no Mi would grant him the ability to save himself. But in the whirlwind of the last week, he not even thought about trying to figure out how to even activate it. But she was a doctor, and she was trying to help. So maybe she could teach him how to excise his own poison before he really died. Question was, did he want that?
Cora-san had died for him.
Didn't he deserve revenge? Shouldn't Doflamingo pay for what he had done?
Could Law make that happen?
Not if he was dead, he knew. But if he survived this horrible poisoning, then maybe, just maybe. And Sakura—she had beat one of them. She knew medicine. She knew how to fight. And she knew how to make enough money to keep them fed, put a roof over their head and acquire transport.
If he was serious about it, he could learn. She would teach him. She'd been trying to subtly teach him, answering his questions and offering suggestions at every turn. Taking a leap of faith, one no scarier than he had when he demanded to join the Donquixto family, he cleared his throat to get her attention. When she looked up, he asked, "Will you teach me to be a doctor?"
