curious about how you envision the doflaw dynamic as consensual without law being ooc whats the psychology at work there for him to you i wonder. theres a few ways i can imagine it going but whats your version if you dont mind talking abt it a bit
puts my hands flat on the table and leans in calmly
so. you have to understand. there are two parts of trafalgar law's life. the part where he was preparing to die of white lead disease. and the part where he was preparing to die fighting doflamingo in order to stop him.
he's not the surgeon of death for no reason; he is unhealthily morbid/obsessed with mortality. corazon dying so he could live both saved him and also made his mentality worse, in a way. like doflamingo, he can't understand just living. it's kill or be killed to him.
so you have this guy who has an extremely traumatic childhood and doesn't know how to stop preparing for death and make him obsessed with carrying out the wish of a man who died for him, which is stopping this doflamingo guy from his violent rampage. he's a cold, plan-oriented and obsessive guy, so how much do you think he thinks about doflamingo? someone he believes his inherited will dictates he has to defeat?
^and also to be clear this man is 100% gay. to me.
both law and doflamingo have a part inside them that has snapped. because of their childhood trauma and what was done to their family. they both have a very specific kind of rage and anguish and desire to see the world burn, and they both know that they share this. law fights off this feeling because corazon was trying to absolve this feeling in him. not really because law knows this feeling is wrong, but because of the sacrifice. and additionally, law knows that if he were to snap and decide he wants to see the world burn after all, doflamingo would be able to provide this indulgence to him no questions asked. the heart seat has STILL been kept open to him all this time.
which to me means that even though doflamingo knows law will probably never turn because of corazon's blessing, he's still playing the psychological long game just in case. he knows more than anyone just how seductive the chance to make the world bleed with revenge is. doflamingo knows that the part of law that craves bloodshed is still in there. and law knows that he knows.
doflamingo taught law war tactics and shit. they both know each other VERY well. they both know what's going on. doflamingo knows law is planning on carrying out corazon's wish of stopping him and law knows doflamingo is tempting law with a kind of power only doflamingo can grant. even if they haven't seen each other in 13 years they both have their fingers on the other's pulse.
doflamingo is psychologically infatuated with corazon's actions too. to doflamingo, corazon reminded him way too much of their father, and he takes the desire for peace and harmony as the same as laying down and dying. a loving nature = ignorance and stupidity to him.
and he sees law as this ghost that haunts him, this ghost of an idea that what he's doing is wrong, that's passed from homing to corazon to law, and defeating this ghost is one of the most important steps in doflamingo's lust for power and control. by killing law OR getting law back in the heart seat, doflamingo kills all doubt or weakness in his own heart, and proves homing wrong, and proves corazon wrong, and justifies his murder of them. in his head. and this is a necessary step doflamingo believes he needs to take. he cannot just let law be. he has to kill him, be killed by him, or get him to kill for him.
so at the end of the day. they both think about each other a lot. and law is repressed and gay and lonely and demented.
i think at some point, in his weird lonely little submarine where he surrounds himself with plans to stop doflamingo and probably every newspaper clipping detailing his movements he can get his hands on, and he spends so much time both isolating and being obsessed with doflamingo, eventually he has a particularly lonely and weird day and glances over at all his pictures of this huge ripped freak and a wire gets crossed in his head. yknow.
but he just rolls his eyes and keeps it wayyy deep down and won't even admit it to himself. especially because he equates being seduced by doflamingo with being seduced by the heart seat & the chance to inflict revenge, which is what corazon would not want. and law has built his ENTIRE existence around corazon's sacrifice.
essentially my doflaw truth is that law pulls up to dressrosa and as he's getting his ass continually and brutally kicked by doflamingo he might accidentally notice how sexy and ripped doflamingo is and internally cringe at himself and blame his own loneliness and dismiss these feelings so he can stay locked in. he wouldn't act on any of his feelings for several reasons, not just because it would go against his core beliefs, but also because he fucking hates doflamingo at the end of the day. law can tell himself it's because he killed someone who did him the ultimate favor, or it's because he killed someone who he loved, but either way he wouldn't be able to overlook these things.
when law is on death's door and doflamingo says he might as well do the ultimate eternal youth operation for him anyway, it isnt necessarily a fruitless gamble. law is already insane and his entire life has been shaped by doflamingo and rosinante and he might be insane enough to die tying the end of the string to the beginning of the string.
but in an arc where trust is a gamble, where fujitora trusts that he's losing at routlette until luffy calls white, where the tontattas choose to trust in usopp, where the citizens choose to trust king riku again, law chooses to believe in luffy. and his own vicious mental cycle of inherited will and certain death and righteous sacrifice begins to shatter. as he realizes there is actually more to life than this infinite death triangle between himself, corazon and doflamingo. this is where is starts to actually understand why he shouldn't act on his violent urges, not because it's what corazon would've wanted and his destiny dictates it so, but because violence wouldn't heal him and would just make things worse.
but i still think even after dressrosa he would crave closure. he spent so much of his life thinking about doflamingo and picking apart his motives and movements and mentality that i think the fight at dressrosa would just make him even more morbidly curious about him and how he turned into such a freak. and furthermore morbidly curious about how law himself mightve turned out if things had gone differently. i can definitely see him infiltrating impel down just to pick at his brain. maybe even with some gloating and taunting involved. and some "are you here to kill me? torture me?" "corazon wouldn't have wanted that, so no."
AND ALSO! the only time we see law have the upper hand over doflamingo is in punk hazard when vergo and monet are dead, the SAD room is destroyed and baby 5 & buffalo are held hostage. and law's demeanor is totally different. he's sassy, dismissive and self-assured, just like doflamingo usually is because doflamingo usually has the upper hand over everyone. i think law left alone with doflamingo in a situation where he has the upper hand would reveal a dynamic we haven't seen since then. law can be reaaaaal fucking smug and dominant when he wants to be.
and yknow. well. if i had a morbid and strange and perhaps even psychosexual fascination with someone who knows about my deepest darkest urges and they were chained up in a jail cell and also i had the powers of the op op fruit. hang on a giant evil ankylosaurus just swung its club tail into the rroom
