Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece

Law didn't care about the children. They were a nuisance that were simply getting in the way of his plan, and the drugs Caesar had plied them with would make them even more of a nuisance if the Straw Hats succeeded in rescuing them. He'd only agreed to look for them because Mugiwara-ya was never going to shut up until he did, and they had no time to waste. It didn't stop him fobbing the entire task off on Tony-ya the first chance he got, even if running into Vergo again and being captured hadn't been part of the plan.

With everything that followed, the children slipped his mind. The sight of one girl unconscious and on the verge of death when they had regrouped caught his attention, but Tony-ya and the G-5 marines were dealing with it. He didn't need to get involved, so he didn't. Not until Tony-ya approached him, tearful.

"I can't save them," the small tanuki/reindeer – whatever he was – sobbed, hooves rubbing at his teary eyes with far too much dexterity for their structure. "The poison is too deeply embedded in their bodies. They've got weeks at most!" he wailed, snot seeping disgustingly out of his unnatural blue nose.

Law wanted nothing more than to leave the island immediately. But he couldn't; the Straw Hats were his allies now and he didn't have his own ship, so he forced himself to sit through Tony-ya's distress.

"I can't save them," the Straw Hat's doctor repeated. "I don't know enough, and they're all going to die because I'm so useless! Don't they deserve happiness? They didn't ask to be torn from their parents! They didn't ask to be poisoned and experimented on! I hate Caesar! What sort of human plays with lives like that? If that's what humans are like I'm glad I'm a monster!"

Something inside Law shifted uncomfortably. Somehow, Tony-ya's account was striking too close to home. It shouldn't; there was no massacre, no illness, just humanity and its cruelty, but he found himself on his feet with no real recollection of moving.

"I'll see what I can do, Tony-ya," he sighed, heading towards their makeshift infirmary. "Stay here; you won't like my methods." He didn't wait for a response before shutting himself inside, staring at all the children. Their skin wasn't blotched over with white, nor were they hunched over in pain, but they were all sick and would never grow up. His mind changed their faces, unbidden, and he blinked to restore his vision back to reality. His classmates were long gone, and these children didn't resemble them at all. Their situation wasn't the same, either, but Law couldn't get the pain out of his chest.

"Room."

He hadn't been able to save his classmates, his parents, Lami. But he could save these children, and something in his chest felt just a little bit lighter.

A bit shorter than I usually like to write, but I didn't think I could lengthen it any more without losing something.

Personally, I think there are quite a few parallels between the Punk Hazard children and Flevance (both are victims of humanity's selfishness for starters), and it's an interesting one-eighty that Law pulls from refusing to save them to eventually treating them.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari