Kitsune here with my contribution to this year's One Piece Big Bang, hosted by Bae. I hope you like it. When I pitched the idea to Anj she was like "... I'm not sure…." But she say's it's a good story now, so…. Anyway, Beta read by Anjelle and WeRunYonder, and the WONDERFUL art by Insidiousdeep.

I broke it into chapters to make it easier on everyone. There's some time skipping here. The boys go from being, well, YOUNG, to being mid to late teens by the end. Some interesting notes at the end of the story. And JUST so we are clear. This story is more of a T+. THERE ARE POSSIBLE TRIGGERS. Like, RIGHT AWAY. Triggers include mutilation, self-harm, torture. PLEASE BE AWARE.

The boy struggled valiantly against being tied down, kicking and screaming for his parents to let him go, that there must have been some kind of mistake. His arms were caught first, strapped to a steel bar above his head as he was forced face down onto the unforgiving table. The small wings, a beautiful mix of eggshell white and ash-gray flapped in desperation as the child tried to free himself. He was scared, and he didn't understand that what his parents did was for his own good.

Something they coldly reminded him while they captured his feet and strapped them down. The wings continued to flap uselessly as the boy tried to thrash before they too stilled, trembling. A hand reached out and gripped harshly at the soft feathers, yanking the limb as far away from the body as possible and causing the boy to cry out before something numbed the pain. It was for the child's own good. The demon marks had to be gotten rid of before anyone else found out. It was this or death, and as cold hearted as the parents seemed right now, they did not want that for their son. Not when it would mean the taint would be traced back to them.

No, better to remove the evidence. With those thoughts the father brought the blade to the skin, feeling for the joint where the cursed wing fit in it's socket and began carving it out. He ignored the soul shattering screeches of the child below him. The boy was numb, and it was for his own good anyway. He'd understand when he was older how his parents had saved him. The man handed the first bloodied wing to his wife to dispose of in the fire before starting on the next with the same brutal efficiency. When it was done and his wife was burning away all evidence of the taint he roughly pulled the few feathers that remained on the skin before stitching up the gaping holes and bandaging his now unconscious son. He felt nothing but relief over what he had done.

Doflamingo looked down at the kid standing in front of him. Splotches of chalk-white skin had marred an already pale complexion, a sure sign of amber lead poisoning when he'd allowed Law to join them over two years ago. Now most of the kid's skin was that chalk color. Law had maybe a month or two left. Even he could admit it was a sad fate. Corazon had already tried to heal Law, taking the brat all over the New World and the Grand Line to boot. His brother was refusing to admit what Doffy had already realized; there was no cure. Little Trafalgar was going to die unless there was something the boy was not telling them.

He smirked, causing Law to glare defiantly up at him. "You're looking well."

Corazon shifted so his view of the boy was mostly blocked, holding up a piece of paper, his face pulled in a dark frown. ::You said you had a way to cure Law.::

"Yes, I did, didn't I?" He grinned, eyeing the boy now hiding behind his younger brother. He wondered if his brother knew what sort of creature Law really was. At once lower than any regular human; and yet so much more at the same time. The pathetic remnants of a defiant clan who'd sought to overthrow the tenryuubito. Something that had been lost - buried - in history along with everything that made the clan such a potential threat.

Rising from his seat he casually walked around the two, taking note of the way Law cutched at his brother's side and the way Cora even reached out to comfort him. His eyes narrowed at this, not liking how such a low thing had wormed it's way into his brother's heart. Part of him wanted to just let the brat die as punishment. But he couldn't do that to Corazon. His brother asked for so little from him. And this way… this way the boy would live at least. And he'd never be able to hurt them. "Come here, little Law."

The boy approached with great trepidation. He seemed stiff, as if his joints pained him slightly. Doflamingo couldn't have that. A quick flick of his finger that earned a frown from Corazon had the youngster standing straight in front of him. If Cora was unhappy with that, he was really not going to like what was next. "A little birdy told me you've been keeping secrets from me, Lawsy."

"What's that got to do with anything?!" The boy growled back, struggling. Good, he wanted him to struggle, to be scared.

"Brat." He roughly patted the speckled cap with a bit of fondness. "How do you expect us to be able to help you if you don't tell us everything?"

"I told you everything that was important!"

"Did you, Trafalgar D. Water Law?" The boy's already white completion lost what little color it had as he stilled, eyes wide before he began thrashing. Doflamingo leaned over, grinning maniacally, "Did you?"

There was a tap on his shoulder, a hastily scribbled note, ::What does it matter? He's just a brat.:: So his brother knew. Intresting. But he obviously had forgotten the importance of that letter. Of what it could mean about the brat. He tightened his strings around the boy's neck, legs and hands, making sure to leave his chest alone and earning a pained cry.

"Have you forgotten about that hated clan, brother? About the secret carried in their genes?" He tightened his hold against the boy's thrashing, one large hand covering the diminutive head with carefully controlled force. His brother mutely asked him to just let Law go and he snorted, digging his fingers into the soft bone behind the ears lightly.

Trafalgar cried out, the sound muffled by the string biting into his neck. Doflamingo smirked in triumph when seconds later his hand was buffeted by two wings, black with large blotches of white covering them. Every movement sent white feathers flying into the air as the boy continued to struggle. Doflamingo looked at his brother, refusing to let up on his grip quite yet as he took in the look of shock. He was pleased; his brother had not been hiding this from him. Corazon hadn't known. But he bet the kid had. With the trauma he'd gone through, he had to have known that he was a cursed human. Ironic that very thing was saving his life. Roughly he shoved the brat into his brother's arms.

"Those wings have got to stay out until they stop shedding feathers everywhere. Do that and then the little shit is cured." He glared down at the now pale, shaking boy. He was no longer chalk white, though. "Then we'll cut those damn things off. Fucking Ds. Be thankful I like you, kid, or I'd cut your head off."

Corazon gently ran a hand over Law's quivering back as the boy slept fitfully. He hadn't expected the child to be one of the rare Ds that still carried the winged ability. The clan, back in it's days of power, had been made up almost exclusively of people with the ability to form, large powerful wings. While not exactly unusual in itself - there were other people in the world that had wings after all - how the D clan used their wings was what made it so dangerous. Their wings acted almost like a liver, healing nearly any illness or poison the tenryuubito had thrown at them. If it didn't kill them the first time, it was rendered useless. The wings also allowed them to heal faster in general, too. When coupled with their typically insane strength, Corazon thought that had something to do with the strength needed to fly himself, it made them dangerous opponents. He eyed Law's wings. His brother had tied a rope at the base of them, forcing them to remain out for the world to see. It had been almost a week, and nearly all the feathers had turned white and fallen out, leaving both appendages frail looking. Law had told him he hadn't known the wings were real, he'd thought he had lost him mind. Everyone was dead, and these two soft wings had wrapped around him. He'd thought it was an angel. But when he'd woke hours later, they were gone.

Doflamingo had started collecting the feathers. He'd never been so disgusted in his life at his brother, taking to leaving his own feather jacket in his room. When the Ds were just a story of old - a boogie man of a sorts - he'd worn his jacket with a weird sort of pride. Sure, he hadn't agreed with what the tenryuubito had done to the clan in killing them off, but they had been a crazy unpredictable people. He'd never really thought that the jacket his brother had lovingly given him had actually been made up of wing feathers of some poor Ds! Now though… Even if Law's feathers were tiny, small things, he could see the similarities in the shape, the softness. It made him sick. His people were sick, wearing the body parts of a clan they'd defeated.

Running a careful finger along the paper thin skin on the wing he noticed little quill-like nubs move under his touch. Corazon paused, looking hard at the wing before smiling. The feathers were growing back, and the last few on the wings had not turned white. Law was going to live. The smile fell when he realized that meant his brother was going to mutilate the child.

Law refused to talk about the wings. He refused to look in the mirror Corazon held up when he excitedly told the boy he was cured. "They're ugly."
"Only right now. In a few weeks they'll be covered in feathers again, and will be very pretty." He assured the boy after making sure his barrier was up.
"I'm not going to have them in a few weeks, so it doesn't matter anyway. They're ugly, and they mean I'm a monster." Law turned away from the mirror.

It broke Corazon's heart to hear the kid put himself down like that. He knew that the boy had heard the others talking. He'd probably heard rumors as a kid, too. How people with a certain type of wings bore the mark of the devil… all lies told by the tenryuubito, of course, but people believed it. As for Law having his wings removed... Well, there was no way he was going to let that happen. He'd had to scramble, but he had a plan. It relied heavily on playing to his brother's unease at the wings. "You're not a monster, Law. You're just a kid - a kid with a very special trait. Like a devil fruit, it doesn't make you a bad person. I need you to trust me, alright? I got a plan to get us out of this."

Trafalgar looked up at him in obvious surprise, "Us?"

"Yes, us. I told you I'd cure you, and I meant all of you. Including your wings." When the child huffed and turned away he took the opportunity to gently unwind the rope binding the wings. "You might not like them, but they're part of you. And I'd never try to make you less than what you are." He assured the boy as the wings receded for the first time in over a week. Corazon was sure to hear about it from Doflamingo, but for his plan to work, his brother couldn't know what condition the wings were in - just that they'd stopped molting.