Teach
Characters: Law, Chopper. Rating: K. Warnings: None
The light clopping of hooves on the decking was the first clue Law had towards his fellow doctor's approach. He stayed still, glancing at the tanuki out of the corner of his eye to see him taking three steps forwards then two steps back, constantly looking back at someone. That someone, Law could just about tell from his peripheral vision, wore an obnoxiously bright red shirt undone, and the infamous Strawhat on his head. The hat bobbed up and down, and Law had seen enough of the other captain to suspect there was one of those impossibly wide grins on his face.
Trying to focus on his periphery, as well as attempting to decipher Mugiwara-ya's latest brand of insanity, was giving him a headache so he returned his attention to the quivering tanuki, noticing the large volume clutched awkwardly in too-dexterous hooves. The title wasn't visible from that angle, but there were very few reasons Law could think of for Tanuki-ya to approach him with a book, and he debated how he felt about it.
He disliked doctors. Blinded by their cushy positions as one of the most important professions in society, they turned away from anyone that didn't fit the nice, simple role of 'patient'. Medical research had long since faded away into obscurity in his experience. He'd seen none of it since Flevance, and while he had heard of a winter island in Paradise that boasted similar prowess, until he saw it with his own eyes he wouldn't permit himself to believe that a hub of research still existed.
Of course, there were the doctors on the other side of the law, working underground, or even pirate doctors like himself and Tanuki-ya, but he disliked their practices almost as much as the blind law-abiding ones. He'd never met an illegal doctor with a respectable work area, or ethic. Many of them were money-grabbing frauds, and while Law knew he could hardly talk about ethics he could at least say that on the rare occasion he chose to treat someone he didn't rob them blind in the process.
He wasn't sure where on his scale of legal scum to illegal scum the Strawhat doctor fell yet. On Punk Hazard he had seemed naïve, stupidly so (Law knew first hand how it was impossible to save everyone and that sometimes it was better to let nature run its course), yet the work he'd put into counteracting Caesar's drugs… Law hadn't seen anything like it outside of his own submarine for sixteen long years. The fact that there was no obvious niche to put the inhuman doctor in made him uneasy, if he was honest with himself.
"L-law." The tanuki had reached arms' length (if an arm was to be measured in Robo-ya's standards) and stopped, clearly setting himself an invisible barrier which was not to be crossed. Law had no objections, unwilling to get closer to any of the other crew than he had to. He'd been close enough, embarrassingly so, to the other doctor already and was unwilling to repeat the experience. He turned his head to face him silently, regarding the way he fidgeted as if he was on the verge of fleeing. Dimly he recalled the reindeer form he'd seen the other take and wondered if it was his natural flight instinct kicking in.
"Tanuki-ya," he acknowledged after the silence stretched on too long. With Caesar nearby and Doflamingo ahead, any patience he might normally have exhibited had long since evaporated, and he was in no mood to deal with Tanuki-ya's skittishness.
"I-I-" the small doctor stuttered, pulling the book closer to his chest for a moment. "I'm not a tanuki, you bastard!" he exploded, honestly catching Law by surprise. The skittish creature had just shouted at him and insulted him? Was bipolarity a common disorder in the Strawhat crew? Certainly many of them, captain very obviously included, exhibited the symptoms. The creature took a deep breath, calming himself, before continuing. Clearly he'd realised that arguing over whether or not he was a tanuki was a waste of breath. Law appreciated it.
"Are you really a surgeon?" was the question that finally escaped his mouth, to Law's surprise. There were many things people often asked him if given the chance ("what's with the hat" and "what's with the tattoos" prominent), but that was a new one. He remained silent and the tanuki rushed on. "I mean, I know the Marines say you are, and I know you're a doctor, but the Marines don't necessarily know what the difference is so I was wondering if you were actually a surgeon," he garbled, to Law's raised eyebrow.
"I am," he said simply, and he swore the tanuki's eyes briefly turned into stars, disturbingly similar to the way his captain viewed meat (Law may not have been with the Strawhats for very long, but long-term exposure was hardly a requirement to learn of Mugiwara-ya's obsession with meat).
Their invisible boundary disappeared alongside all the wariness the tanuki had been exhibiting as he bounded the last couple of feet to settle in front of Law, placing the heavy tome down in front of him excitedly. As Law had surmised, it was medical in nature. More specifically, it appeared to be about the surgery of organs.
He was slightly taken aback at how easily the tanuki appeared to have him figured, until he remembered that he had been present to see him clutching more than one heart during their time on Punk Hazard. That was probably a large clue.
"I've never been very good at surgery," the tanuki confessed, to Law's complete unsurprise. Uncannily dextrous or not, he had yet to see the tanuki take a form with hooves appropriate for conventional surgery. "But I saw Luffy's scar, a-and I don't want to be useless. Not like I was with Mocha and the others." Law hardly thought that developing a temporary antidote on the fly was useless, but it wasn't his job to give self-depreciating tanukis pep talks. "So… I-I was wondering if you could explain some things?"
Law had no reason to explain anything to a rival crew member. He certainly had no obligation to, nor was there any incentive that he could see (he would only later find out about the Torino Island herbs and regret not demanding those as exchange, forgetting that with the tanuki as he was he'd probably gift them if Law showed any interest at all).
Perhaps it was the fur, or the simple anthropomorphology that he exhibited, but for just a moment Law thought he was looking at Bepo when the Mink really really wanted something (begging for the submarine to resurface because it's too hot, Captain top of the list), and before he'd even realised what he was doing, he'd reached for the book in question and flipped it open to a marked page.
It was on stomachs, and Law immediately recognised the interest as stemming from Mugiwara-ya's own Marineford injury, although he was more unpleasantly reminded of a more recent surgery he'd performed. Dutifully, he began to decipher some of the terms, delighted when the tanuki absorbed his words like a sponge.
Outside of his crew, no-one ever listened to him. Even casual conversation was an exchange of words barely tailored to the situation at hand, and absolutely no-one wanted to discuss medical techniques with the Surgeon of Death. In all fairness, whoever he'd ever brought the subject up with had probably thought he'd intended on using them as the example (and in some cases they would have been right, but Law didn't always use it as a threat, just most of the time).
His crew, for all he loved them, struggled with the nuances of surgery. Few of them had minds geared in such a way that they could view the body as a puzzle, and usually their medical training stopped at basic scrapes and superficial wounds. Others had persevered further, and Law remembered Penguin and Shachi studiously pulling stitches through each other's arms (with Bepo around, mammals were a no-go and neither amphibians nor reptiles had skin close enough to a humans' for Law's satisfaction) as he supervised closely. Neither of them had much aptitude for healing at all, capable of patching up scrapes but nothing else, but the way that they had forced themselves to learn, because they thought that Law needed someone else that could treat wounds, had touched him. It could also have been because they thought Law was happiest when he was teaching, sharing his knowledge. Law liked to deny that idea, because if it was true that meant that even as a young teen, knowing them for less than a year at the time, he'd already been an open book to them.
Tanuki-ya was the most attentive student he'd had since those days, cowering under the sea for weeks at a time and teaching two ruffians who knew how to hurt but not to heal while they waited for Doflamingo to leave.
When he started asking questions back, debating techniques and showing a quick yet accurate comprehension of everything Law was saying, and the inquisitiveness required for research, Law wanted to cry. Finally, someone else who cared about technique enhancement, further research and studies to broaden the profession.
The fact that the one person with such pure desires wasn't even human spoke volumes.
Someone requested some Law-Chopper doctor bonding, although I of course had to put in some Heart Pirate memories because, well, the Heart Pirates.
As anyone that has read my fic Succor may be aware, I have a headcanon that Law's afraid of doctors - although he's hardly going to channel it as fear when he can use disgust, disappointment and anger instead.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari