Authors Note:

Imagine loosing your most cherished friend after a fight. Then imagine not sleeping for nearly two weeks. Now add trying to drown your sorrows in alcohol. Maybe then you can start to feel the suffering Trafalgar Law is in. Will he be lost in the ruin of his own mind? Or will Eustass Kid bring him back? Rated M for langauge, violence, substance abuse and future events. Law x Kid

"Those who make mistakes blame themselves and close their hearts. It's impossible to fix the mistake; men can't return to the past. That's why they drink. Lushes, drunks, sliding alcohol down their throats to try to dilute the memories that can't be forgotten" - Vash the Stampede

This is not a song fiction. I do not own the song lyrics or the song. Song is owned by "The Ink Spots".

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own any One Piece characters.

Insomniac, Alcoholic, and Insane?

The sour stench of various alcoholic brews and iron filled the dark and recently abandoned casino. Florescent lighting droned and flickered overhead in the low beige ceiling at spacious intervals. In the frail stuttering pools of poor light, chopped up chairs, tables, poker chips, pool tables, slot machines, and the usual casino trash could be seen littering the previously lively casino-motels thick carpeted floor. By the entrance near the doubled mahogany doors, inlaid with polished golden handles that had begun to fade with repeated use, a few unfortunate casino employees lay in pools of their own blood. They too had been reduced to shambles and their body parts were scattered around in discord. These sad few had not been swift enough in their retreat.

*Scriiitch* Unexpected sound cut through the curtain of muteness and permeated the deathly silence that had fallen over the casino-motel. Further in the back of the decimated building, a needle scratched against a vintage record player, one of the few surviving things that remained and had gone unnoticed in its ebony shrouded corner. The unexpected sound drew the lone dark-haired man from whatever stupor he had been in. He looked up from the amber liquid in his crystal shot glass to look towards the record player that was bathed in weak red light of a neon sign that read 'Go big or go home.'

He contemplatively titled the glass around in his tattooed fingers; skeletons of what had been ice cubes swirled around and made chiming noises against the crystal musically. Overhead the lights flickered rapidly and gave the liquor an electrified appearance. Finally the record settled in its player and a few lyrics made their way over to the sole inhabitant of the casino bar.

"Oh I don't want to set the world on fire~

I just want to start *scratch*, a flame in your heart~"*scratch* *scritch*

The old tunes lyrics were sharply cut off as the player began to emit its annoying scratches once more.

Tersely the man downed the last of his shot glass's contents and slammed the empty vessel into the counter while letting out a sharp exhale of frustration. Jagged crystal shards went flying off in several directions and blood began to pool along the bars dark scratched surface. Both went ignored.

'How ironic' the man thought to himself as he listened to the tune die out. 'My world managed to collapse in about two days, and it also feels like a piece of my heart was incinerated.' At first he thought so sarcastically, but his lungs tightened and his breath shuddered out of his throat in a heartbreakingly silent lament. It felt like he was choking or drowning and he just couldn't find the surface, dark waves relentlessly crashing him further into despair. 'How did things go south so quickly?' His hands reached, albeit shakily, for a new glass, a much larger one, and he helped himself to what appeared to be beer that was tucked away behind the abandoned barkeep and settled back on his squeaky bar stool.

He drained half of the tankard and then noticed the blood running down its side and through his long tan fingers. 'Interesting, I wonder if it's mine', he considered apathetically.

Low chains of anxious toned murmurs from outside reached his ears, muffled by the gilded mahogany of the front doors. 'Oh…must be my crew…' Coldness gripped his innards and he shuddered with another sharp ragged exhale that verged on being a sob. They, well one person, or bear rather, was the reason he was currently by himself and drinking to oblivion. 'I need to forget. I need to forget… I can't forget dammit!' He tipped the tankard back and tried to drink the remainder of his drink only to come up short and choke on the burning liquid.

Tears burned at his eyes as he tried to hack up the beer from his already constricted airways. His shoulders shuddered as he gave off agonized wheezes, the alcohol in his lungs giving off an effervescent crackle before settling down. Tan hands steepled his long inked fingers in front of his face, resting them against his forehead, the rest of his head covered in a spotted white furry hat. In the shadow the hat casted, his eyes were screwed shut but stray tears managed to escape.

Any outsider who saw the man, hunched over with his elbows propped on his knees, might have thought he was some poor wretched sinner praying for the forgiveness that they knew he would not receive. But they did not know this particular man. He wasn't the sort to pray.

'It shouldn't have ended over something so….stupid.' White teeth clenched together visibly in what would have easily passed for an expression of agony if the rest of the man's face could be seen. Silent, short, and shallow gasps shook his entire form, like breathing had become impossibly painful.

"Bepo…" he hissed through his teeth and bit on his already bruised and split lower lip till it bled anew, driblets of blood ran down his stubble covered chin and soaked into his small goatee. His body violently shuddered along with his inner turmoil, too far gone to recognize the corporal pain that had mostly been self-inflicted. No matter how hard he wanted to, he couldn't forget the series of events that had led to this unexpectedly devastating fallout between them, captain and first mate.

+~O~+

13 days earlier

Bepo had been ecstatic, certainly unusual for the shy and meek white bear, and had begged and pleaded with one Trafalgar Law with desperate enthusiasm. His crew had been shocked at first, but they all knew their captain had a certain soft spot for their timid first mate. The Heart Pirates looked on anxiously. If anyone had a chance at persuading their captain it was Bepo.

"Bepo are you really sure? He abandoned you, a freshly born cub, and your mother. He left you both for dead." Laws usual smile was gone and he fixed Bepo with his intense slate colored eyes, ever present dark marks underneath each eye making him look all the more deranged, till the bear began to squirm nervously.

Law recalled to them both how he had found Bepo, his mother dead from child birth and the father had abandoned both of them to that frigid wasteland. He had still been just a boy and out looking for ingredients, and possibly anatomy subjects. One pure white little snow bear covered in his own mother's blood wasn't what he had expected at all. It reminded the doctor of how he had also killed his own mother in childbirth. Needless to say the young doctor- to- be had been captivated instantly. The newborn cub had been wailing for who knows how long and had gone silent the moment the child in the lab coat had scooped the tiny creature up into the palms of his hands.

"Please Law, it's my father. He's sick and he needs help and he's my only family left."

Law growled deep in his throat, "You have family, me and the crew. You biological father is not even close to being family after he left you."

Large tears welled from the bears round dark eyes and Law immediately flinched back as if he'd been struck.

"Law *sniff* it's the right thing to do *sob*. P-Please help him", the bears voice trembled and snot had begun to run down the white fur of his face. "You're the greatest doctor I know. You're my best friend. Please…! Please, only you can save him!" The bear threw himself at the surgeon's feet; his furry face buried into Law's spotted jeans as he clung to the man's leg in a powerful embrace. Every single Heart Pirate watched for the doctor's reaction, not quite knowing what to expect from the Surgeon of Death.

Law looked down at this large white bear, his friend, the cub he had once been able to cradle in his hands. They had grown up together and had rarely been apart, he was considered the only family he had ever known and that had been enough. Seeing him this way made his heart thump painfully, his breath hitching in his throat, like a physical wound. Law reached up slowly, his tattooed hands trembling in rage, and tugged his furry hat over his eyes, his other hand clenched down at his side till the knuckles had gone white and the joints audibly groaned. His sharp white teeth could be seen in what looked like a wolfish grin.

Bepo and the crew cringed in mutely transfixed horror. Law had just done a nervous gesture that they all had come to know too well. When the doctor had pulled his hat over his face once before, he had become dangerously enraged to the point of berserker-like madness, endangering friend or foe alike. It wasn't easy in the first place to get the normally pensive captain vexed; something really had to really go out of its way to distraught him. It made the already deadly Heart Pirates Captain extremely dangerous.

"Fine…change course." Law took the opportunity to extract his leg from the stunned bears grasp and disappeared below deck without another word. The Heart Pirates had been holding their breath and even now they exhaled their relief inaudibly as the threat of their captains wrath seemed to retreat for the moment.

12 days earlier

By the next afternoon they had reached a small winter-island. Snow fell lazily in fat little hunks of flakes to gather around a small village's clustered buildings. Captain and first mate were rushed to a small house by some of the natives, mostly human's with an occasional bear humanoid. Apparently Bepo's father had reached critical condition and was literally in the process of dying when they had arrived at what had foolishly seemed just in time.

"Clamps."

Penguin passed his captain the surgical clamps. Shachi leaned over and whisked away the moisture that had collected on what was visible their captain's forehead, a surgical scrub cap had replaced the usual white spotted hat.

"Shit." Law murmured from behind his surgical mask. He was shoulder deep in a massive silvery white bears chest, struggling to get the defective heart artery sewn shut.

When he had arrived he quickly deduced, from his own observations and the natives reports, that Bepo's father had a rare form of heart disease that had greatly disfigured the aorta, the main artery that leaves the heart. He knew it was a death sentence and he was only prolonging the inevitable, but it had to be done for Bepo's sake.

Bepo had been banned from the surgery room. 'Emotions will only get in the way, if you want your father to live you will wait outside', Law had told him.

Dark blood sprayed from the defective organ and splattered the surgeon with gore. His two assistants couldn't help but flinch back while their captain had not moved a muscle. Warning rings of a machine indicated the bears vitals were plummeting.

"Needle."

He didn't look up from the blood gushing viscera and felt someone brush past his arm and push the tool into his awaiting palm. Steel toned eyes tracked the needles movements through the cardiac tissue, deftly suturing the major artery's walls closed in seconds. Satisfied beeps announced the vitals beginning to stabilize, but they weren't out of the woods yet.

Hours went by and the Heart Pirates waited outside the operating room alongside a very anxious bear. Bepo paced restlessly in the small space of the house that had been lent for the procedure. His sensitive bear nose twitched uncomfortable at the rusty smell of blood flooding out of the room in a sickening haze. The Heart Pirates began to grumble, unsettled by their captains long exodus in the operating room.

The operating doors slammed opened expelling several natives dressed in operation smocks, gloves, and masks with bloody rags piled up high in their arms as they ran past the Heart Pirates and out another door. Their hurried steps squeaked against the polished floor. Pinkish smears were left behind. Several of the crew made quiet noises of distress. Something was wrong. It should not be taking so long. Bepo gnawed on his sharp claws, his large foot paws shuffled in worry.

Everyone stiffened as they heard the subdued voice of their captain shouting out orders from behind the closed doors. Then everything went noticeably quite. No one moved. Everything grew still. They held their breaths, not breathing in the air that was riddled with apprehension and the harsh tang of coppery iron that stung at the back of their throats and noses.

Ominous creaking announced Penguins presence as he poked his head out through the operating doors. "Bepo, the captain says he needs you in the Operating Room now. Please hurry."

Everyone's eyes fell on the white first mate, whose fur visibly bristled and stood on end making him look several times larger despite the shaking. Bepo hurriedly shuffled forward on numb paws, his front appendages clenched near his chest. Penguin discretely let the bipedal bear in through an opening just large enough for the first mate to squeeze by.

His eyes were drawn to Law's turned back standing in front of the operating table with several blood packets scattered around. Over his captains shoulder he could see the silvery white head of his father peeking up from slightly bloody sheets that had been drawn up to his chin.

Law raised a glove covered arm, seemingly drenched in dark red all the way up to the shoulder from what could be seen of his slightly silhouetted form, to gesture his first mate over without looking at him.

Bepo stumbled past Law and fell to his knees by his father's side. Cloudy black eyes looked at the bear whose fur was silver with age, not seeming to be able to focus past tears that had welled up.

"Dad…"

The elder bear let out a pained wheeze. "Don't call me that. I'm not your father. Not after what I've done."

Bepo swallowed deep in his throat and opened his mouth to speak when his father raised a paw to cut him off.

"I left you, you and your mother *Cough*. I don't deserve to be called a father." The silvery white bear hacked and wheezed a bit more before he continued. "I couldn't raise you knowing I would just die from this heart disease. I foolishly thought it would be a much less cruel fate if I let you die in the wilderness without seeing your old man die slowly and not being able to care for you." Bepo's father managed a weak smile before his eyelids fluttered shut and his body ushered out its final exhale that came all too soon. Bepo froze, so full of regret and shock he was left speechless.

Law watched the pair in silence, glancing at the bloodied instruments and packets scattered around the room, and stripped off his gloves. Many of the native bears had been gracious enough to donate blood to their cause. He was lucky the native bears didn't seem to have various blood types like their human counterparts. Not that it made much difference when the bear would and had died regardless. Yet he couldn't help the cold feeling of failure that stabbed at him maliciously.

'You failed Trafalgar.'

'There was nothing I could do. The bear was as good as dead when we arrived.'

'You let your cherished friend down.'

'Nothing could have saved Bepo's father. He was too far gone…'

'You should have done better. No, you could have done better; you just didn't want the competition of Bepo's real father.'

'I did EVERYTHING that was mortally possible. I may not like the bastard who abandoned Bepo, but I still have my honor as a doctor!'

'Doctor? Yet you can't even save one life. Pathetic… Well done Surgeon of Death.'

'Shut up…just SHUT UP! I will NOT fall into the madness again!'

'It is not madness. It is your nature. I am part of you.'

Law violently ripped the surgeons cap off his head, sending droplets of sweat to fly through the iron tainted air. His damp, short, and spikey black hair stuck out at chaotic angles and steam billowed from his heated skull into the cold winter-island climate. He could feel his body shaking, throbbing with a pulse that left his entire body trembling. An erratically beating heart caged inside his chest pumped burning lifeblood that scorched him from head to toe. He began to feel like he was asphyxiating and tore off the surgical mask with loud snaps as the ties at the back broke, letting it fall to the cold tiled floor.

He was so fixated with his own inner struggle he hadn't noticed when Bepo had gotten to his feet. Bepo turned around, his face void of tears and expressionless. He was broken. Law's heart tore at the sight.

Bepo's dark eyes began to focus on his captain who was covered in blood and gore till everything but his shaggy head was stained a dark grisly red. Steam curled off his dark jagged locks giving him a sinister appearance. Steel gray eyes, the shadows underneath each made to contrast sharply against his skin in the bright operating lights, looked at him with a haunted and hollow stare. 'The Surgeon of Death.'

The only warning Trafalgar Law got was his first mates coal black eyes washing over with a blood red hue at an alarming rate. One fur cover fist slammed into the pirate captain's jaw with enough force behind it to send his lanky body crashing through the operating doors and out into the lobby. Law's trajectory had him skidding across the polished wooden floors where he landed on his back winded.

Gasps from his crew reminded him of the Heart Pirates who had been waiting just outside the operating room. They noted their captains stunned expression, his eyes wide with gray iris's dominating the pupils that were contracted till they were barely discernible, as he lay on his back staring up at the ceiling. Laws usual smile was gone with a slightly gaping frown in place.

Bepo stomped over to his captain still lying on the floor and roughly grabbed him by the front of his bloody smock. All of the teddy bear like meekness was gone, only a full grown and angry predator remained. His eyes glazed over with bloodlust. He lifted the doctor up till the surgeon was several feet off the ground and at the bear's eye level.

Warm breath from the bear's face that was inches from his own hit Law. Through his shock he finally noticed a pain blossoming near his mouth and he raised a tattooed hand to find a split lip with blood gushing out. His other hand had ghosted out to grip the furry arm that was latched on to the front his stained smock.

"Bepo…Why?"

A savage roar made the doctor flinch in the white bears grasp. "YOU LET HIM DIE!" Bepo hurled his captain into the nearest wall, cracks erupting around Law from the force.

The Heart Pirates gasped in horror. Their mild mannered first mate was fighting with their captain, who now pried himself out of the crumbling wall to stand up. Law stood, seemingly not shaken at all; with his head bowed staring at the ground. Blood rolled down the bridge of his nose and tattooed forearms to drip on the wooden floor accusingly. One of his tattooed hands, the word ' Death' spelled out across his long fingers, came up to his jaw and there was a rapid yet sickening series of clicks and pops as the doctor relocated his own mandible. He did not even cringe or hesitate at what should have been excruciating for any man.

Laws bleeding countenance broke out into a malicious grin; sharp canines glinting in the room's candlelight. Molten steel orbs, dark openings of the eyes completely vanishing, bore into the white bear with a look that made the rest of the Heart Pirates whimper in fear. 'He's completely lost it.'

"You know what Bepo," Law paused and chuckled to himself as if he had found something terribly amusing. "I should have just let your old man die." This time the doctor's mouth twisted into a tight lipped frown. His first mate still trembled with rage although the bear had halted his assault.

"He was already dead when we got here…I knew there was no point in trying to forage an already disease devastated aorta that was too far gone. It had not even gone treated after all this time. But I just couldn't help myself... if it was for you then surely it was fine… "Law wheezed out a low humorless laugh and raised a hand to his face, his gray eyes glazed over in a foggy haze.

Bepo could see the sudden change in his captain as he himself came out of his blood wrath induced madness. He wondered if what Law had said was true, or if it was just mindless banter. But also maybe he should run. All the Heart Pirates had come to know and fear their captain's deeply hidden madness that lay just underneath the calm surface. It was a seemingly serene little iceberg that floated on cold waters, but large jagged ice was hidden just below and would sink any passerby in an instant.

"But it's fine. You wanted to be with your father. The least I can do is kill you and send you to him."

Bepo became rigid; no other sound in the world reached his ears except for his own heart beat that was far too loud. His pulse thundered behind his eardrums and his lungs forgot how to function as they were clenched in a thorny embrace of fear. Laws words were icy and detached as the captain shifted his inked hands and uttered the words that had taken countless lives before his. "Room: Sha-"

"CAPTAIN, DON'T!" Sachi and Penguin yelled in unison as they tackled their captain to the ground. Shachi had grabbed Laws legs while Penguin had dived in and wrapped his arms around the doctor's chest. Sobs shook both of their bodies as they hung on for dear life.

"P-please captain, you don't want to do this," Shachi sobbed and buried his tearful face into Laws legs.

"Captain, please think of what you are doing! Bepo means too much for you to simply kill him in such a mindless way!" Penguin yelled hoarsely, trying to reason with the distraught man.

At first Law just lay there, stunned at what he had been about to do and at how far he had allowed the madness to take over. He had just nearly killed his best friend, and probably would have succeeded in wiping out most of the town, and possibly his crew, in his delusional state. Roughly, he pushed the two crew mates off of himself and stood up.

Penguin and Shachi cringed and prepared themselves for the worst, but when it never came they looked up in apprehension. Their captains face looked pained, a heavy frown in place of his trademark smirk and his slate gray solemn irises looking like a rainy sky.

Bepo took a stumbling step towards his captain but was stopped by Laws raised hand.

"Don't come near me. I can't stand the sight of your face right now." Laws voice was a full octave lower than normal and the undertone held a sorrowful grate. He pulled the bloodied smock over his head and threw it on the ground. The captain turned around and made his way out of the building, leaving in just his operating scrub pants and boots. Law walked out into the cold winter air, leaving his crew to stare after him in a shocked hush.

Large clusters of flakes swirled around in the darkness and enveloped the heart pirates in its muffling whiteness. The hushed night feigned calmness, but the harsh reality was obscured in the dark and heavy snowfall.

+~O~+

Sub Authors note:

-I started righting this before I had even seen the character Trafalgar Law in the anime. He was just that fascinating to me. So possible out of characterness.

-Slight AU since there is no proof of Laws insanity; I just added it for plot purposes. Also not sure if some of the technology mentioned would be in the One Piece Universe.

Review so I can see if anyone actually interested in this story :P. It also makes me happy.