"The Fade" (One Piece)

WARNING: CHAPTER 662 SPOILERS.

A/N: I like Smoker, but I don't give him a lot of attention, so I wanted to write something about him. I respect him a lot as a character and wanted to go in-depth with him a bit.

R&R / Comments and crits are veeery appreciated!

-Swaben

Everything froze in a microsecond.

Not many men can say that the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen was their own heart being held in front of their eyes.

Smoker's knees buckled and he stared at his own beating core, and his mouth was fixed in a single expression of shock and confusion.

There was a languid, quiet moment of utter silence that followed the wave of frightened adrenaline.

It's almost surreal, he thought.

His attacker was smug, and the hand that held that cube of ice was attached to a man who adhered little to the Hippocratic Oath.

Trafalgar Law was cunning, confident, and merciless, and all three of these traits showed themselves through the subtle smile he held as he looked down at him. There was no Marine who could trample him, vaunted the newly anointed Shichibukai, and the Vice Admiral's arguably foolhardy behavior made that evident.

Smoker would have none of it.

Though it seemed that he couldn't hear much besides that beating, and his own labored breaths that burned every time he tried to find a balance in his breathing.

His life had flashed before his eyes many times before, but never like this, to the point where he felt like hallucinating amidst the cries of shock from his men and of Tashigi, which soon died as they all fell silent. They saw him frozen still from a distance, but didn't know what to make of it besides meet it with dismay.

The snow was especially cold, and an ebbing sensation was pulling at him, like a gentle kiss of remorse that coated his insides.

But he couldn't die here.

It was simply unacceptable.

As much as it went against the situation, there was a distinct refusal in the back of his mind to just fall to the ground and leave his entire bevy of panicked Marines to be toyed with, and at the very least be mangled because of one ill choice on the part of a corrupt World Government.

He could choke on his breaths or cry out from the immense cold crippling his guts in the strangest way, but he remained quiet aside from his gasping.

"Your will to live is noteworthy. I'll give you that." The disaffected surgeon's thumb slid across the side of the cube, and stray flecks of ice fluttered down into the blanket of snow below them.

Tashigi looked from afar, and the visual tore through her chest and welled up like an unstable fire. A terrible feeling was festering inside of her, but she had no time to react to it nor contain its lashes against her.

The Vice Admiral's vision was blurring as well as his sense of time.

Law's distracted voice became inaudible as he turned away with his chilly epicenter set in his palm. Teasingly close and hopelessly far, it hurt the more the cube hauntingly drew away from his empty aperture.

The verdict was clear.

Pirates are pirates.

It would always be so.