Written for the OP Halloween Tumblr Event. Day 2 prompt: Immortal/Undead. I don't own One Piece.
Fleet Admiral Gloriosa has issued a public apology regarding her absence at the Reverie. She assures the citizens of the World Government that she is being seen by the best medical staff available, and will return to the force in a matter of days. The World Economic Times wishes her a speedy recovery. The latest developments on the Reverie indicate that -
"Excuse me, Trafalgar Law?"
The aged doctor turned away from his newspaper to regard the newcomers in his doorway.
"The hell is wrong with you? Ever heard of knocking?" he deadpanned.
His hair was chalk white, and the tattoos across his hands were greyed and blurred with age. However though if one looked closely one could still see the legendary marks of "LIFE" and "DEATH" across his knuckles.
There could be no mistaking that this was indeed the Surgeon of Death.
He was nearly one hundred and forty years old.
"You are, Trafalgar Law?" The Marine said tentatively, almost reverently. She was flanked by two other Marines, cowering behind her.
"Yeah," he said in a voice like gravel. "What do you assholes want?"
"Trafalgar Law," one of the other Marines spoke nervously, his gloved hands twisting. "After the death of Monkey D. Luffy, you vanished. Many of his allies did. It's been nearly 80 years. There... There were rumors of a 'miracle doctor' living on this island. We thought...rather…"
"Perhaps, you simply wished to live a peaceful life?" His superior finished for him.
Law stared at them with sunken, grey eyes, paled in age. A harsh grating laugh escaped his throat, echoing ominously around the dusty room.
"Peaceful?" he repeated. "Peaceful? To repair those around you, unable to ever completely heal yourself? To watch your comrades die one by one, over and over, while only you survive, unable to join them? To watch your body wither and collapse on itself, yet unable to for pass on? Is that your idea of peaceful?"
He shrugged his lab coat off his shoulder and stood up to the light.
The three Marines recoiled. His skeletal figure was riddled with swollen, purpling tumors. The chest that bore the famed heart tattoos was shrunken, and swollen with mottled grey lumps that seemed to be writhing upon themselves. A growth near his shoulder swelled to the size of a large melon, before it seemed to contract upon itself and recede, dissolving away. Seconds later, another bulbous growth burst from his chest, contorting what remained of the heart tattoos, before it too shrank back into his abdomen.
"My devil fruit can only heal me so quickly," said Law, replacing his lab coat. "My powers drain me of my stamina. The cancer is too aggressive at this stage. I am healed only to be afflicted again. There is no remission. My body has been forced into a stasis of simultaneously dying and healing."
He fixed the Marines with a humorless smile. "Peaceful, yeah."
There was a ringing silence. Finally, the leader of the Marines spoke.
"Are the rumors true?" she said quietly. "About the...the surgery? The Immortality surgery?"
Law let out a harsh grating sigh. "So that's why you're here," he muttered. "I should have known."
"Please sir, the Fleet Admiral is very sick. She is dying. She needs -"
"Who the hell is it now? We talking Smoker's granddaughter or Coby's brat? Hell, I can't keep track of 'em all anymore," said Law. "I should have known you were all gonna come looking for me sooner or later, on the chance I was still alive. I suppose the World Government needs someone to keep their leaders young, after Bonney killed herself. She had to," he added. "She was like me. Her powers kept reverting her age back - like a survival mechanism. She couldn't get old enough to die."
"Fleet Admiral Gloriosa has been an incredible asset to this generation, Marine and pirate alike," pleaded the woman. "There's so much left she has to do. You could help her, and you could finally be at..."
She bit her lip.
"You would dare presume to choose my death for me?" Law growled, taking a step forward. "And you would force my curse upon someone else? Is that it?"
"So then, you have no intention of helping us?" said the woman, coldly.
"It goes against my Hippocratic Oath."
"Then we have been given orders to dispose of what's left of the Worst Generation," said the woman, drawing a pistol.
Law laughed.
"I am not so weak that I cannot choose how I will die."
He pressed a hand to his chest and murmured "Mes." With a pained gasp he wrenched his heart from his chest, holding it in a pulsating, gelatinous cube. The Marines drew back, horrified, as Law raised a scalpel.
"I've kept Mugiwara-ya and Corazon waiting for far too long."
The heart burst, the bloody scalpel clattering to the floor, as Trafalgar Law died smiling.