The two men stayed on the floor for a moment without saying anything. Law with the tears falling down his face and supporting the weight of the other who was beginning to stain his clothes red; and Doflamingo lying on top of Law not wanting to move and breathing heavily feeling like his lungs and throat burned raw.
The screams surrounded them and things were heard breaking in the distance, which surely meant that a fight would have broken out somewhere in the temple. But they did not care, Law wanted to assimilate that Doflamingo had returned.
And that Kidd had not.
His tears kept pouring out as he tried to convince himself that nothing was wrong, that this could mean something else and that Kidd was still alive. But his analytical mind undid all his hopes. He could not find any explanation for Kidd not being here if he had won. Kidd should be here. He had promised. He could not break a promise like that.
He felt something warm caressing his cheek removing the tears from his eyes. Looking down, he found the bloody hand of the blonde delineating his face with the usual delicacy, as if Law was another of his extravagant and expensive objects that should be treated with care. Law did not even try to take that hand away and just watched the man with his head resting on his lap, dying.
As a doctor he knew that the wound in Doflamingo's chest was deadly. If he had been treated immediately there might have been a chance of survival, but at this point, the blond had no chance.
And yet, despite all that, he realized with surprise that he felt nothing for the dying man. Not hurt, or anguish, not even sadness for his death, but neither did he feel the relief or happiness he had expected to feel when the man's life came to an end. He just did not feel anything. Because there was nothing to feel.
"Law ... " the blonde whispered again, as the blood escaped his lips "Law do not cry ... I ... I'm going to die" the man announced, smiling without a hint of doubt or fear in his voice, still cleaning away the tears that escaped through his gray eyes "and I want you to hear my story before that happens"
Law continued to look at him, watching the movement of those broken and blood-covered lips that had been kissing him only a few days ago. Life was so absurd, so ephemeral, he thought in shock.
"Law, I want you to listen to me and understand why I did what I did" he said while another fit of coughing appeared, making him spit again that red liquid. "Please Law, stop crying" the blonde continued repeating his name as if it was the only important word at that time.
Law still unable to move and still crying, nodded like an automaton. Doflamingo smiled again with a slight grimace of relief, as if with that and he could be happy.
" I was born in the north, in a village so cold that even in summer the countryside was still covered in snow ...
... I was born two millennia ago, when civilization and cultures had not even been created and people lived in small nomadic villages that changed places every few minutes in search of something to eat. It was a depressing time where magic and superstition mixed daily with reality and fanatic people, and committed unspeakable crimes in the name of strange deities without anyone being able to do anything to stop them.
At that time, I lived with my mother, a woman who had been kidnapped from a southern town that they had attacked in search of food and riches. I remember that she had charcoal-black hair and intense violet eyes that fascinated and at the same time scared the tribe, and so they took her with them as a prisoner. That's what my mother told me when I asked her about her appearance. And I believed it for a few years. However, the first time I thought there was something wrong with that theory was when I turned five.
That day we had finally managed to hunt down some food after weeks without prey, and while the people were enjoying the banquet, they locked us in one of the stores telling us that we would ruin the banquet with our curse. They left us without food. I remember complaining about that, but my mother just smiled sadly and hugged me protectively and forced me to shut up and sleep while her stomach roared.
It was then that I began to notice some details that had previously escaped me: the people's relationships with us, the way we lived or what people thought of us. Unlike what my mother had told me, they did not treat us as equals, but despised and marginalized us at every moment. What's more, I began to notice that there were some nights when my mother did not even come to sleep at our tent and woke me up only in the cold of the morning.
Years later I knew what that meant, although, at the time, it was only a small child who just wanted to sleep with his mother and did not understand reality.
My mother was the prostitute of those men. Not out of necessity like other women who needed money in exchange for their favors, but out of obligation. And because of that and because of her strange appearance between blond and tall blue eyed man, they despised her and used her as they wanted without her being able to do anything about it.
And that was how I spent my childhood and part of my adolescence. Walking from here to there between frozen landscapes, being marginalized and rejected by the only people he had never met and not understanding why. However, when I turned fifteen, something happened that changed my whole life completely.
One day I got lost in a forest for a whole week. The forest was like any forest in the area, covered in snow and with tall, leafy pine trees all identical to each other. I swear I've never had more bad luck in my life. I spent seven days debating between dying of hunger or dying frozen, knowing that deep down, no one was going to come looking for me, because I was the son of the prostitute. I screamed, I cried and I asked for help. I tried to find my path with the constellations in the sky, the animal paths... but everything was useless and on the seventh day I fell against an tree knowing I was going to die.
And then, as if mocking me, a bird appeared in the snow right in front of me. It was the first animal I have seen in those days, the first "food" I found, but I could not even move. The bird walked through the snow and landed on my shoe as if laughing at me and my death. I remember thinking, that if only I had something with which to kill him or a way to catch him ...
Then I raised a hand and moved a simple finger. And then the bird fell headless on the snow and the trees in front of it fell to the ground cut with a clean cut.
That was the first time I used my gift.
And thanks to it I managed to get out of the forest by rising over the trees and spotting the right path. But even so I kept it secret so as not to cause more trouble in the tribe. Even my own mother didn't know. When I had some free time I would sneak out of the camp and walk away to practice with him. Within a month he mastered it perfectly, and a year later I could do things that ordinary men would think impossible. I was a teenager, and with that gift, I felt the strongest man on earth, I thought that this would end my problems, that I would be able to help my mother get out of that torture ...
But things never work the way you plan.
The week that I turned sixteen and old man arrived that I disliked from the first moment. When he saw my mother he quickly tried to approach her with a more than obvious goal. My mother rejected him not having to attend to the demands of a stranger, and the men of the tribe laughed and praised my mother for taking such a wise decision. But still, the old man stayed with us, and with a clear rancor in every action he did, he began to conspire against my mother.
First he coaxed the women of the village saying that, as such a pretty whore, my mother would cajole her men and steal them away from they and their families. He called her a witch. With the hatred and fear that already existed, and with the superstition and magic that were part of our lives, the idea did not take long to materialize. The people prevented their children from approaching us and then they convinced some of their husbands until almost the entire tribe was against us.
However, thanks to God, the other half still tolerated us moderately and no incident occurred since I, already eighteen years old and much taller and stronger than most of the men in the village, did not let anything happen. However, the tension was growing more and more every day and had it not been for the village chief who tried to maintain peace between the different sides, they would have surely killed us without even doubting it. However, things got worse and worse and in the end it exploded.
I started hearing the screams one afternoon when I had left the camp to continue practicing those strange powers. Quickly, knowing what could be happening, I turned around and tried to get to where the camp was, but I had gone far enough and it cost me a while to get back. Upon arriving, the village was a total chaos, there were houses burning, people shrieking and blood staining the white snow. I went running to our tent without hesitation, seeing the terrified bodies of the few people who had defended us lying dead on the floor. I remember running until I felt the blood in my mouth and my lungs hurt to breathe the cold air, but that did not matter as soon as I arrived at our little cloth tent.
I definitely was not prepared for that, nor do I think I ever would have been.
There was absolutely nothing left of our tent, and instead there was a huge wooden bonfire that rose bright red to the sky. The piles of wood formed a circle inside which was my mother. Laying between the flames. Naked, with bruises covering her chest and blood stains running down her legs. Dead.
They had violated her. But unlike the previous times, this time they had not shred a bit of consideration to her and scratches and bruises showed that they had treated her almost like an animal. I cried as I fell kneeling in the snow. Meanwhile, the people around me contemplated the flames without doing anything, even the few families who had defended us and who were still alive looked at me repentant, but without daring to do anything. While my mother burned. While she left this world unjustly, without time to say goodbye to her.
The old man appeared beside me, letting out a chuckle of self-sufficiency and mockery as he licked his lips where he now had a horrible bite.
That was the first time I lost my mind.
I do not remember very well what I did exactly. I only know that when I left that camp two days later there was absolutely no one left or anything alive, no women, no children, not even stone left on stone. I buried my mother in a small mountain next to a small glacial river from where the vast white countryside was seen in all directions. Away from the camp and in a quiet and peaceful place. Then, I marked the tomb with a circle of stones, like a small temple in the middle of nowhere.
Then I just left never to return.
The following years, I dedicated myself to wandering the world doing any kind of work that could give me some money to survive. I traveled the world from one place to another, and I came across people who, like me, could do things that most people would consider fantasies. I found people who could turn their body into fire and not burn, there were people who had visions of the future that were always fulfilled, people who could move mountains with their minds, who turned what they touched into gold or some who could travel from one place to another in a matter of seconds. I stayed with them for a few months and we learned from each other, but we always ended up separating and we never saw each other again. I suppose it was during those years when I reached the necessary skill and dominated my gift to such a level that it gave me immortality.
And so the years and centuries went by. Traveling from one place to another, observing how the world evolved, but still unable to trust anyone enough, not finding something worth living for or making sense of my existence. I hated the human beings no matter where I went, I saw wars, the people suffering and dying of hunger while their rulers returned to throw away the food of their shiny plates. All was so absurd, that many times I thought about ending my life as not to observe the senseless massacre.
In the end I came here to Greece. It was a different country from all the ones I had seen before. People had their problems but they were relatively happy and they were governed by a fair system called democracy where they chose who governed them. I decided to stay here for a few years to see how things would end up. I bought a house and lived as an ordinary citizen for some time, but things got complicated on a stormy night where the floods almost destroyed the city.
As always I tried to help people with my power despite knowing that I would surely have to leave the place as soon as I did, since people used to fear me when I used it. However that time was different and when everything was resolved, Gold D Roger, who at that time ruled the city, was impressed with me and what I could do and asked me to stay there and help them when something bad happened.
I liked this place so I did it and I stayed in the house of the oracle that at that time was nothing more than a small temple with three or four rooms. And then the people, in gratitude for what I had done, began to give me offerings and praise me as someone deity who protected them.
A few centuries later they considered me a god.
And I ended up believing it. Forgetting everything I had done until then, from Gold D Roger and his kindness, my mother and my travels around the world, I focused totally on that new role. I built a huge temple where people could pray to me, a place from where I could control the city, I invented a system that gave me more privileges than anyone else. I became selfish, self-centered and greedy, just like the people I had always hated. But I didn't care. I had come to the conclusion that this was the best thing, that kind and good people only suffered at the hands of the rest. That if you had power it was better to take advantage of it. Why help the human being if they were cruel and petty? Better to take advantage of them. I forgot every principle for which I had fought until then, and only dedicated myself to seek my own benefit.
And so we come to the present.
When I saw you in the temple praying before the test, I felt in love on sight. When you finished the test in the Coliseum I was totally obsessed with you. Not only because you were the heir of Persia and I could use you to conquer that empire, but because of your personality. You reminded me of myself as a child, with that arrogance and irreverence for your superiors. You also had the dark skin and black hair that my mother had had, and I guess you reminded me of her.
In general you reminded me all at once. My childhood, my travels, everything. And I realized what I have been doing these last years and I hated myself. Those were a few depressing days, especially because despite regretting what I had done, I continued to make people suffer without changing anything, like you, for example, because I selfishly ruined your life so that you would be with me. That's why it took me a few days to meet you in person even though you were in the temple.
Even so I still didn't trust people, I still thought that the human being were still horrible and cruel creatures, and to prove my theory, to take away part of my guilt for those last years of cruelty, and to remove the obsession I had with you, I decided to tempt you. I wanted to show that you were like the rest, someone who, for some money or some privileges, would do whatever it was needed. But again, you showed me how wrong I was and rejected everything I offered you.
And the obsession grew to levels that I never would have believed possible, I had never wanted someone as much as you. The night at the pool I would have raped your if you had not said anything, but I had promised myself to become decent again and that's why I didn't force you. I guess in the end I ended up falling in love with you, you were so different to all the people I had met, it was so much fun talking to you, provoking you, playing...that I started to feel that life meant something and that there could be good things in it. I wanted to make you happy, I wanted you to love me so we could live that way until the end of time.
And from the rest you already know the story. I found you with Kidd. I got jealous thinking that he was going to take away someone who mattered most to me, and send everything I had achieved in those months with you, to hell. I went back to becoming the monster that I was before I met you, and I hurt you just in the same way they had done to my mother.
I cried when I realized that my efforts were useless. When I broke you and you looked at me with that empty look. I fell back into despair and lost all hope in life again. I gave it all for lost until Kidd came back. It was to murmur his name, and you came back to life with that look full of emotions that I had been waiting to see so much. And again the jealousy that I had promised not to have again, and the desire to kill him and lock you in some place where he could not find you.
When Kidd declared war against me, even though I hated them for what I had seen they do to people and countries, I decided to fight for you, for something that had given me back my life even if it was for a moment after so many centuries. I decided that I would do it right this time, that I would get you once I killed Kidd
... And here I am ... " The blonde laughed sarcastic, with that voice that was becoming increasingly weak "mistaken again and about to die"
Law then looked at the man in his lap assimilating what the other had just told him. The silence between the two, was only cut by the heavy breathing of the blond who was becoming more and more irregular. In his mind he was still worried about Kidd, but the blond's story had definitely brought him back to this world and definitely now the man had his full attention.
It was ... too much for anyone.
Now he understood everything, the obsession, the mood swings without meaning... and yet what worried him most was the blond's opinion of life and people. He sounded so hopeless when he had spoken of it, so broken and dead that Law doubted this was a lie to gain him back.
It was horrible. Someone who had to went through all that, had experienced such emotions, could not end well. His chest contracted in a tight knot as he imagined the whole story, the boy watching his mother burn, the rejection, the fear ... as he understood the suffering, despair and frustration that the blonde must have gone through.
Raising a hand he stroked the blond hair that was over Doflamingo eyes, and gently removed it so that it would not bother him, without knowing what else to do for the man who had lived such a life.
The blond smiled at him with a wince.
"Law I want to tell you three things" he said grabbing his hand before Law removed it from his face" The first, thanks for all you have given me, thank you for reminding me why I was fighting, and for having restored my confidence in life. Despite the hatred you had for me, these have been the best years of my life" he murmured with a weakened voice.
Law's tears came back to his eyes. It was not fair. The blonde could not die like this, there had to be something good in his life, something really good and not a forced relationship, he had to be with someone, everyone deserved to be happy. He pressed the blonde's hand in his, giving him encouragement, supporting him, giving him the only appreciation he had ever shown.
"The second" said the blond looking at his gray eyes directly "I apologize for everything I've done since we met. I've been so selfish that I did not realize the damage I was doing. I want you to be happy and free, to do whatever you want... I want you to be with Kidd. I have never seen two people so in love with each other and I know that he would take care of you."
Law cried now frustrated, he wanted to do something for the blonde, save his life, give him some real happiness, but time slipped from his hands. The other could not go like that, not like that. But the hand that held his each was trning colder and he knew at the bottom that nothing could be done.
"And the third one," Doflamingo said with a bitter smile on his face. "Please, Law. I want you to forgive me, let me go to the other world with a clear conscience, tell me you forgive me."
Law hugged him. Doflamingo, coughing blood on his lap, couldn't just tell such a story and then leave like this. Why hadn't he told him this before? Everything would have been so different. He wanted to hit him and insult him for doing this, for changing everything with a few simple words.
"I forgive you," he murmured, his voice shaking. "I ... you can't die like this, it's not fair, you still have to ... you can not" Law tried to speak without being able to finish any sentence.
The blond laughed again.
"Don't cry my death Law, it's not worth it"
But Law shook his head, and squeezed even harder.
"I love you Law" the blond whispered delineating with a finger his lips and capturing his tears "thanks for everything"
And without a warning, his body stopped working and his arm fell to the ground between a pool of blood. Law with wide eyes stood still trying to catch some sign of the man's life, a breath, a faint heartbeat. But only the cruel silence enveloped him.
He cried feeling as if an important part of his soul had been ripped out. Because although he had never wanted to admit it, after so many years, the blonde had become a fundamental part of his life, the one that locked him up, the one that hugged him at night or with which he kept interesting talks for hours. And now that he was not there, all felt empty, something was missing and the hole hurt. Especially after that confession.
Leaning against the blonde, he pressed his lips against the blonde's. He kiss him. It was not one of the passionate kisses with Kidd that stole the air. It was not one of of those shared with Luffy or Ace, innocent among brothers. It was a kiss of those given to a friend. A goodbye to a man who had suffered like no other but who had moved on despite everything, and who had finally regained confidence in everything, someone who had needed only a minimal reason to return to life.
It was a goodbye kiss.
...oOo…
The hours passed and Law was still sitting in front of the blond's body without enough strength to leave. The uproar of a few hours ago had ceased and now only absolute silence surrounded him as his gaze remained fixed on the sheet that he had wrapped around the body to hide the wounds and a face now pale.
He had stopped crying a while ago and now he simply watched silently the blood on the floor with a blank mind. He had complained about his life when Doflamingo had had one a thousand times worse. Law had had a family to support him, friends, and people who loved him. The blonde had always been alone. And Law understood how horrible that was, he had been locked in the temple for a few years had thought of committing suicide to put an end to that horrible feeling. He could not even imagine what it must have been like for the blond all those centuries, with no one at his side to support him.
He reclined on the floor feeling his legs asleep from sitting so long in the same position. And that's when he heard some quick steps approaching where he was with the blonde. He quickly thought it would be Vergo. After all, there were not many more people who knew the location of that room. Surely Vergo would enter into a rage when he saw Doflamingo dead. He would try to kill him as Law had always suspected that the brunette wanted to do. He should defend himself despite haven't trained for years and not having any kind of weapon at hand.
But he did not care. He was tired of it all. Of so much injustice and secrecy. He had thought he knew the blond and the man had kicked him in the mouth. And Vergo said that he really protected and appreciated the god. It had always made Law laugh. Surely the mam would be like the rest of them, and would only be interested in the riches and privileges of the position that he would have, and now that the god was dead, he would get angry because he had lost his position. Surely Doflamingo have guessed it and it was the reason he always tried to avoid the man and treated him like an annoying but necessary dog.
But when the door was opened from a sharp blow in front of him, it was not Vergo who appeared.
It was Kidd.
With his fiery red hair and his eyes the color of blood. He was wounded in several places and was panting heavily as if he had been running for hours. His clothes were stained with blood and mud and there were several broken parts of the heavy armor.
But he was alive.
Law held his breath feeling the purest relief through his veins despite what had just happened.
Kidd looked at Law in the middle of the room in the most intense way he had ever looked at anyone, and Law could not help but put a hand to his mouth and let out a gasp as he felt his heart come back to life with that.
The next instant Kidd ran to Law and hugged him tightly. Then Law returned the hug with enthusiasm wrapping his neck with his arms and sinking his head into the hollow of his neck not wanting to be separated from the man again, with too many emotions inside to even try to talk. Kidd stroked his head, sinking his fingers into his soft black hair, sighing just as relieved as the other and handing out kisses over every tiny bit of skin he reached.
"We won Law," he whispered then as he squeezed him even more in his arms. "It's all right now, you're free, Law. We won," he repeated.
And this time Law believed him.