Characters: Law. Rating: T. Warnings: None

Law's life wasn't what anyone would call easy. Messed up. Traumatising. Unbelievable. But not easy. He'd had everything - family, good education, classmates that cared - and then he'd had nothing. Not even his own life.

The change wasn't quite instantaneous - it had started with Lami getting sick, and culminated in the day Flevance fell - but it was still sudden enough to give him whiplash if he thought about it too much. He tended not to think about it.

He'd been a pirate for the majority of his life at this point. Ten years of idyllic life as the son of two well-respected doctors seemed almost a dream when compared to the sixteen years of piracy. His parents wouldn't recognise him now. He didn't recognise him. Not that little boy who didn't know what death was, whose only concern was his studies and his little sister.

That little boy had died age ten. Whoever, whatever had run around in his body since wasn't the same. Couldn't be. Trauma was cruel like that.

The animated corpse that had been Trafalgar D. Water Law aged between ten and thirteen had been dark. He'd had a new family, but it wasn't the same sort of family. The family of blood replaced by the family of crime. Of we've only got each other so buck it up and deal with it.

Then Cora-san had breathed life into that corpse, dragged it back into the living like some creature made of patches. Sewn back together but sewn not quite right, with some parts missing entirely and new sections brought in to stuff the gaps. Minion Island, and then Swallow Island where he found a third family.

Found was the wrong word. In a way, he was adopted in - entirely against his will but some things couldn't be fought, and the world might underestimate his nakama but Penguin and Shachi were a force of nature without even trying. Bepo was far from insignificant, either, the thread that held them together before the new family knitted itself together around it.

Law could never pinpoint the moment three teenagers and a mink became a family. It wasn't a word they ever used. Nakama sounded better. They weren't trying to replace his parents, Lami. They didn't try and stuff themselves in the ragged holes left behind by grief. They just made their own niches, settled in until one day they were there and Law had a new family.

Ten years old against the world meant he'd never had a chance. Thirteen years old and a walking corpse meant he couldn't do anything when it mattered. This time, the third time, he would fight to his last breath before they could be taken from him.

Another song-themed drabble, this one was to 'Gone Hollywood' by Supertramp.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari