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Sicktember Prompt 14: Aches and Pains, with Law (requested by anonymous)

Amber Lead Syndrome was cruel. Even ignoring the mental anguish it had assailed him with – the deaths of his family, his classmates, the lies about contagion screamed in his face – the disease itself had been truly awful. White pigments crawling across his skin, expanding too slowly to see with the naked eye but fast enough that the patches seemed bigger every time he caught sight of them, had been merely an inconvenience, but of course there was always something else.

Something like the fact that it was inside his body, not just on his skin, and the more his lungs were encased the harder it became to breathe until every drag of air into his lungs was a chore warring for dominance against his failing body. His temperature spiked, feverish more often than not, and slowed down other parts of his body vital for survival.

And then there was the pain. Law was no stranger to pain, although as a child it had been more normal things, like catching his finger on a scalpel, or even stumbling and scraping his knee on the rare occasions he was dragged out from his studies to play with his peers, but the chronic nature of Amber Lead was something else entirely.

Every waking moment had been on the scale of agony to agony, with respites lasting the briefest of moments where it was simply pain. Escape had been all but impossible – sleep was the obvious solution, except he'd been in too much pain to fall asleep in the first place – and for much of his thirteenth year of life, Law's 'sleep' had been pure passing out from exhaustion when his body simply couldn't function any more. The bags under his eyes, deep and black and more than a little hollow, were an indicator of that.

It had been a whole year since he'd eaten the Ope Ope no Mi. A year since Cora-san's self-sacrificing death – since he'd been murdered – a year since, frantic and at least partially delirious, he'd stripped the Amber Lead from his body and called it a cure.

A year since, in theory, he'd been free of the disease that had plagued him for several years and forced him through two life-shattering tragedies.

Theory was not the same as practice. The lead was gone, his skin regaining its pigment until it was no longer white, although it hadn't regained its true colour again yet and Law was doubtful that it ever would, but that didn't mean he was free.

Phantom pains wouldn't leave him alone. They'd strike at inconsiderate times, like part way through training one of his new nakama, triggering rounds of questioning from the older teens who clearly had no intentions of leaving him any time soon, or in the middle of the night. The dark circles under his eyes refused to fade away, pain-induced insomnia striking with sporadic frequency.

When it had first happened, he'd been thrown into a blind panic, drawing out his Room and checking desperately to make sure it was really gone. And the second time. And the third.

It was still his instinct, rising up and clawing at his throat whenever he felt the familiar pangs of aches and pains running through his muscles and deep inside his chest, but slowly he was overriding it. He knew all about phantom pains, how the mind played tricks and reported impossible sensations.

Amputations were the most famous cause, but it transpired that the abrupt removal of a chronic disease had a similar effect.

Law hated it. Each pang threw him back to Flevance, to hiding under dead bodies, to the Family and Cora-san and Minion Island. To silence and a gunshot and screaming until his voice was hoarse without making a single sound.

He was cured. Cora-san had sacrificed everything, including his life, to ensure it. He was free, too. Free from the legacy, free from the horrified looks and pariah treatment, free from Doflamingo's long reaching strings.

When the pain struck, fake but still so real, it didn't feel like it at all, and the despair-laced question threaded through his mind.

When would he truly be free?

I'm dabbling in Sicktember over on tumblr! Only doing prompts that I get a character request for, so feel free to drop by with a request. You can find the list on the sicktember tumblr blog!

Thanks for reading!
Tsari