Archive of Our Own

Law hears the Hunter before he sees him. It’s actually less impressive than it sounds because the forest around his hut is dense and dark and even if it was winter he couldn’t really see far between the trees. The Hunter’s footsteps squelch loudly in the muddy, rain-soaked earth, heavy boots surely leaving a pretty trail right to the next village.

The Hunter’s clothes blend in with his surroundings, wet leather coat dark like tree bark, his hair greyish white like a storm in the evening, when dusk clouds the forest in shadows.

Law hears him before he can see him. Which is less impressive than it sounds and only gives him a few extra moments to consider moving. It’s just enough time to snap his fingers and let the front door disappear in the exact right moment, the Hunter having already raised his fist to knock.

Law can feel his stare, a wave of frustration bordering on anger washing up against the wood of the hut. He sighs.

Hunters rarely make it out here. And by rarely, he means never. They like to put their trust in governments, in official contracts and authorities. In some kind of order . As if order and bureaucracy could save anyone. As if trusting in their leaders and employers was the only solution for keeping their villages safe in this world of chaos.

"They trust in laws rather than in Law", Shachi had said once, sniggering, before Penguin had lazily kicked him for making a pun Law has heard a thousand times already.

"Stupid blind trust", Penguin had said. "Isn’t there a cure for that?"

"Can’t make glasses against stupidity", had been Law’s only answer.

No, Hunters aren’t high on his list of people he’d want to chop his firewood. And much much further down on the one of the people he’d invite into his house.

"What the fuck?" he hears the Hunter exclaim.

There have been more inventive curses thrown against the walls of his home, so Law barely even blinks when a fist hits the wall with a bang . He gets up from his seat by the window, strolling through the room as he takes stock of the potions and herbs he keeps in carefully arranged bottles, jars and vials on shelves along the walls. He’s running out of space again, which is nothing new but doesn’t make it any less annoying.

"I know you’re in there, Witch."

Law rolls his eyes, tugs carefully at the leaves of a jumping spider plant that’s threatening to take over a whole row of shelves, spiderettes dangling from the mother plant and hungrily reaching for the pot of soil on the desk beneath.

"That’s not for you," Law says. "Don’t be so greedy."

The black milk thistle on the lower shelf shivers in gratitude as he pushes its pot out of reach. The spider plant shrinks back a little, chastised.

Law likes it when his plants develop personalities. Shachi and Penguin both disagree with him on that, but that’s to be expected after getting trapped by too many of their feral siblings out in the wild. Untamed, most of Law’s plants should be considered with caution. These ones, though, the ones Law grew from seeds and cuttings, tempted with the best of his magic, will rarely hurt anyone. If Law doesn’t want them to.

"What do I have to do to get in?" The Hunter has stopped his banging, at least, but he doesn’t seem to want to leave.

Unfortunate. Law doesn’t have the patience to just wait him out today.

(And maybe he’s curious, too, just a bit, about what a Hunter might want from someone like him. Truly, truly unfortunate.)

He’s still not in the mood to just invite him in, though.

One of his problem children died last week. A rare kind of ice lily, rebellious and temperamental even in death, its wilted leaves still hissing angrily whenever Law even tries to touch the pot. It’s starting to get on his nerves, not just because of the frostbites on his arms.

The lily would’ve been a good addition to his collection, with its uses in potions and spells, with its value in rituals, with its powers in healing burns and blisters. Also, it's one of the more interesting plants, its frosty character would have been a nice change from friendly ferns, refined roses, and mushrooms who like to tell knock-knock jokes. The lily would've made interesting company, if nothing else.

Alas, it wasn't meant to be, apparently. It still irks Law, more than he's willing to admit. That he wasn't able to keep the damn plant alive, when that's all he's been doing for the past however many years.

Keeping things alive is all he's good for. What use is he if he can't even do that?

"Witch!" the Hunter yells. He's wandering around the hut now, trying to look past magical curtains that veil the interior but let Law still look outside. In this light, his hair looks more silver than white but it also casts his strong jaw in sharp contrasts, making it appear more angular, especially clenched in impatient anger as it is. "I was told that you're the one to talk to for this kinda shit. Dammit."

People talk a lot about Law, he has found. No matter where he appears, the towns and villages always make up the same stories.

Shachi's favourite is the one about Law being a child-eating ghoul, luring them in by making his house appear like it's made out of gingerbread and sugary sweets.

"Sugar is bad for children," was Law's annoyed reply. "It makes them even more unpredictable and hyped up. And it's cavity-producing."

Shachi'd snorted at that so loud that the roses, always a little too delicate, a little too shy, had shrunk back a little in shock.

Penguin likes the one about Law transforming anyone who comes too close to the hut into a bird. 

Or no, not anyone .

"Apparently, only girls get the bird treatment," he'd grinned. "The boys just freeze. Can't even come close to the hut, still as statues."

"To what purpose?" Law had sighed, already regretting even asking. But it's not like he gets much entertainment apart from this.

"You like the pretty birds to sing to you, of course. And for the guys to not disturb you." Penguin had leaned back in his chair so far that two of the legs had lifted into the air, smug smile far too wide to hide the incoming joke at Law's expense. "Really shows that they don't know anything, doesn't it? When we all know that you'd do it the other way around."

Law had pulled a face. "If I had any say in this, they'd all freeze before even stepping foot in the forest. I'm equal opportunity like that."

Penguin's chair had toppled over but he hadn't stopped laughing even then.

People like to make up stories around Law. He's not especially bothered by most of them. Not even by the ones that are true, that make townsfolk take a dangerous trip through the forest for his help, for remedies against cuts and curses, for healing salves and ointments.

Hunters, however, are a whole different kind of story.

The one disturbing his peace and quiet at the moment is trampling through one of the empty patches in Law's garden right now. At least he's aware enough to not step into one of the flower beds. Not a complete fool, then.

"Okay, then." The Hunter stops beside one of the windows, leaning against the wall. Law can feel the pressure of his body, his heavy coat, the soft clink of the rifle slung around his shoulder, like it's him he's resting against and not the hut.

It sends an unpleasant shiver down his back, making him tug his cape tighter around himself. As if that could lessen the impact.

"I'm not gonna leave, ya know," the Hunter says. He's stopped yelling, is just talking now, as if he knows Law can hear him clear as day. "And I know you're in there." A huff. "I'm pretty sure, at least."

A swishing sound, then a whiff of smoke wafts in through the walls. The hut is good at keeping out people and the weather but bad at keeping out sounds and scents. The Hunter's cigar smells rough, tangy and sharp, not quite like burning wood. It conjures up images of campfires and torches.

Of lonely nights under dark skies, of hunting hunting hunting, of glowing eyes in the forest, of running running running, of whispers between the trees, between the streets, between the sheets, of hiding hiding hiding, of screams and shots fired, of the stench of blood, of dying dying dying.

"We need your help, Witch," the Hunter speaks through the stream of death piling up in Law's mind.

He's not sure if they're visions or memories. (Not sure if they're his, or the Hunter's.) But they're bad . They leave an imprint on his heart, his pulse racing as he blinks, shaking himself back to reality.

"The town's in trouble." His voice is muffled around the cigar, around the suffering he's seen. "A curse, I think. I'd deal with it myself but…" He hesitates.

But he's a Hunter. Hunters fight monsters and the people who the government deems close enough. Hunters shoot at things with teeth and men with knives. They can't shoot curses.

Witches can't either. But they're still the best chance they've got.

"There's this old woman, a few towns over," the Hunter continues, "she said there's a Witch in these woods. Helped her granddaughter when she got hit with a gold curse."

Law remembers. He remembers all of the people who come to him for help, all of their stories; remembers the old woman dragging the gold statue of a girl behind her through the forest, out of breath from the trek, swaying with exhaustion but still so desperately determined. Her granddaughter had spoken her wants into a wishing well, apparently, badly expressed, the well twisting her words — riches instead of rags — into something almost deadly.

Not technically a curse but close enough. Law can see where it could be misinterpreted.

"Bad things are happening." The Hunter's voice is rough but full of resolve. Law can't help but listen. "People are doing weird things. Bad things. Breaking contracts and promises, turning on their loved ones, their children , yelling, fighting. Killing. The government said they'd send help but I don't think they'll be able to. If they even come at all. It's been a month."

A month. A month doesn’t sound like a lot to Law who’s passing through life with a Witch’s immortality, doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of time. But for some curses, that’s enough to take root and fester, to start spoiling every bit of earth it digs into. 

"So, I've come here. Shitty trip, I'm tellin' ya. You couldn't have found a more isolated piece of land? The hinterlands not good enough, had to be a dark, magical fucking forest, too?" He snorts, a cloud of smoke puffing through the hut with it. "But whatever. I've made it and I'm not leaving until you've agreed to do something about it. These people. They don't deserve this."

Law stares at the part of the wall he can feel the Hunter leaning against, sees smoke drifting by the window.

"You've got a soft heart, Law," Bepo tries to convince him sometimes, "why are you trying so hard to hide it?"

Maybe he's right. Bepo's right about a lot of things.

Still. He does try. Hiding it , that is. It's much too risky otherwise. So, when Law opens the window just enough for his voice to reach the Hunter, to mingle with the smoke of his cigar, he says, "I don't help people just for the fun of it."

Satisfyingly, the Hunter startles, looking at the window with wide, shining eyes. To his credit, he catches himself much faster than almost anyone else Law's met with so far.

"What?"

"Witchcraft is a trade, Hunter. So, what are you willing to give for my help?"

Law can't help but enjoy the suspiciousness in the Hunter's eyes. It's always better when they're aware of the danger they're about to step into. Law's always liked people with a sense of self-preservation.

"Let me in and we can talk," the Hunter says.

Law's always liked people with a sense of self-preservation. People who don't like to make contracts with faceless walls of magic huts. He can respect that.

"The door is open," he says.

The Hunter’s name is Smoker.

Law imagines that Shachi will find that funnier than it is, what with all the cigar smoke drifting around him in clouds of sharp smelling death. The look Smoker throws at him when he tells him that smoking will kill you, is almost amused.

"It can get in line, if it wants to try," he grunts.

Law is so close to saying that this isn’t how it works. He’s also sure that Smoker couldn’t give a fuck either way.

"Most curses are best countered by multiples of three," he explains, letting his fingers run over the spines of several books before pulling one from the shelf. He brushes a sheen of dust away with the edge of his sleeve, annoyed with his own uncleanliness.

"How do you know what kind of curse it is?" Smoker asks. There’s a good amount of suspicion in his eyes, in his stance, in the way he doesn’t let go of his rifle.

Law respects that, even if it irritates him. Guns are a messy business.

"I don’t," he admits while he skims over the pages. He can give Smoker that much. Lying, or worse, false hope won’t do any good here. "I’d have to go into town for that, get a look at that mess."

"Why don’t you, then?"

This, Law doesn’t deign with an answer. There’s nothing he can do about it, anyway, and he doubts that the town will greet him with open arms, no matter if he’s there to help or not. Witches don’t have the best reputation. They’re the last straw, the only hope left when everything else has gone to shit.

"I’ll make a general curse breaker," he says, frowns. "It’ll have to be strong and strong magic can be quite unstable, so you’ll have to be careful."

"Me?"

"Yeah, I’m thinking of putting it in the water supply, or maybe spilling it in a ring around the town, or maybe…" He speed-reads through a few spells, casts them aside, gets another book, doesn’t find what he’s looking for there, either, until... Spells like that work best when they’re as specific as possible, so maybe, if he combines those…

"Multiples of three," Law repeats, remembering his initial point. "With a curse this strong, I’ll need three sets of three ingredients… different variations, maybe… or six sets of… hm, no, no, it’ll work better if… or…"

He keeps mumbling, his thoughts running into several different directions at once.

Bepo calls it intense , when he gets like this; Penguin prefers deranged , but he isn’t complaining when Law manages to get the poison out of his blood, so it’s rather big-level whinging, Law thinks.

Smoker keeps looking at him, his eyes a constant prickle against Law’s senses. Law’s made him put out his cigar but the smell clings to him still, his breathing is controlled, quiet, but rough, and he can feel the heavy weight of his boots against the floorboards.

Someone’s in here , the hut is telling him, and Law appreciates it as much as anything the hut gives him, but it’s still distracting.

"How long will it take?" Smoker asks after a while. He doesn’t move much, keeps standing close to the door, and doesn't turn his back to Law. "The… curse breaker. How long will it take you to make it?"

"Depends," Law says, reaching for a piece of paper on his desk. He thinks he’s got the spell figured out, mostly. Enough to start experimenting.

Smoker huffs, gritting his teeth like he’s chewing his impatience into submission. "On what?"

"On how long it’ll take you to get these for me."

"Me?" He frowns, grips the string of his holster a little tighter. "Why? Don’t you have your little underlings for that?"

Law snorts. Little underlings. Shachi will be pissed when he tells him about that one.

"Sure," he allows, lifting a brow at Smoker’s irritation. "But they’re gonna tell me to fuck off if I send them up the Mountain."

There’s a brief pause, a small flicker of something before Smoker narrows his eyes. It’s gone too fast for Law to pin it down. Smoker’s trying to make sense of him, he guesses, and maybe he’s coming closer than either of them would like.

"The Mountain," Smoker repeats, slowly. "That’s a death mission."

"Well," Law shrugs, "no one said this would be easy."

The Mountain had a name once, Law thinks. Humans like to give names to things and places, to put them into little boxes with neat writing, so they can find it again one day, should they want to. So they can claim them as their own, pretending they know them.

But some places — and things, and people, too, for that matter — aren’t meant to be known, or found, or named. They resist it like fire resists being tamed, always licking at its cage, heat and ash a reminder of what could be; or like water resists being held, slipping through fingers so easily, away away away, running and dripping and melting.

Law likes to be counted among these things. He’s been called a lot of names in his life, most of them insults, some endearments, but "Witch" suits him just fine, he thinks. A few people know his name, but even Shachi, Bepo and Penguin call him "boss" most of the time, or "captain" if they want to be particularly annoying.

The Mountain is a different matter, though.

Older than the forest where Law has set up his hut, looming over the place like a storm that never quite reaches them. The townsfolk avoid the forest as much as they can but they make an active effort to never come close to the Mountain. They tell stories about the monsters living there, about the nightmares coming to haunt everyone who takes even a pebble from its side, about the kings and dictators who were foolish enough to want to mine for silver or gold and were punished for their greed.

Law doesn’t believe in most of these tales. But he does believe that the Mountain is a dark place, a dangerous place.

So, he tries to avoid requests for plants that only grow up there, between untouched stones, in the silence of a snow covered peak, besides paths that only the bravest of creatures will walk.

He tries to avoid it, and stares longingly at the drawings in his books, depicting emerald edelweiss, arctic wolf lupine, or widowherbs. Some things are better left untouched, he knows this, he knows .

But still. He wants .

"Is this our trade, then?" A muscle in Smoker’s jaw twitches, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "I risk my life for these ingredients and you break the curse?"

"Oh, no." For the first time, Law lets a grin spread on his face. He’s allowed to have a bit of fun with this, isn’t he? He doesn’t get to have desperate Hunters on his doorstep every day after all, let him have his fun. "I couldn’t even start without you going up the Mountain, so you’re only helping yourself, there. In exchange for my help, I want your heart, Hunter."

It’s the first time since he’s stepped foot in Law’s hut that Smoker looks genuinely stunned. Eyes wide, brows pinched, fingers twitching. The expression hangs on his face for a second before he reins it in, walls building up so quickly that it’s hard to believe they were ever close to crumbling. He shifts his stance, planting his boots into the ground.

"How’s that supposed to work?" he asks, voice even gruffer than before.

Law’s almost impressed. Not a lot of people dig their heels in like this, like they’re making sure he knows they won’t back down, won’t run away just because he scares them.

"It’s something of a specialty of mine," Law says. He rights himself, leans his hip against the table and lets some of his magic seep up through the floorboards, curling around Smoker’s ankles.

To his credit, Smoker doesn’t startle. His eyes only flicker down, then he looks at Law again, keeping his feet and gaze steady.

"I’ll switch it out for one of my plants. Don’t worry, you won’t feel it. Not much, at least." Without looking away from Smoker’s stony grimace, Law brushes his fingers over the soft leaves of the sunlight sage he keeps in a bowl of water on his desk during the colder months. Tiny specks of gold drizzle off of it, catching the sparse light in the room and multiplying it into a glittering shower of sunshine. It’s a fascinating if minuscule display of magic, and Smoker doesn’t look at it even once.

"Why?" He directs his eyes at Law instead. "What do you get out of this?"

"An insurance," Law shrugs, "that you won’t run off as soon as you know which ingredients to get. It’s hard to betray someone who literally holds your heart in their hands."

Smoker huffs. It could almost be a laugh if the atmosphere in the room wasn’t as heavy, loaded with threats and magic as it is.

"How do I know you won’t betray me?"

"Ah," Law smiles, pushes himself away from the table and steps closer to Smoker. "You’re free to leave at any time, of course. I won’t push you into making a deal. But… well…" He saunters up to Smoker, his magic weaving through the air around him, threading a net of almost-not-quite invisible energy around them.

Smoker doesn’t waver. He doesn’t straighten up, either, doesn't try to look more intimidating.

Law has seen them all over the years, all the ways powerful men will try to seem strong when they’re scared. It’s useless here, where Law has absolute control over every grain of dust in the air, every nail in the walls, every splinter of wood his hut is made out of.

"People don’t come to me if they have other options left," Law says.

Smoker stares down at him. He’s taller than Law, can square his wide shoulders and tower over him. Something in his stance tells Law that he doesn’t back down very often, and for just the slightest of moments, Law considers the possibility that he won’t back down now, either. That he’ll try to argue, to barter, maybe to fight.

(Law may have all the magic at the tips of fingers but he’s not invincible. And there’s not much he’d be able to do on his own if he got shot.)

Then Smoker nods, slowly, and the tension in the room cracks like glass. He reaches out his hand.

"We have a deal."

He lets Smoker choose the plant. Because it’s telling him something about the guy, even if he isn’t aware of it, even if he chooses at random. Because decisions like this have value, have worth , and magic like Law’s works better when the connections are personal.

Mostly, though, he does it because it’s fun.

Smoker looks at him weirdly when he asks him to choose from one of the plants on his shelves but he doesn’t question it. People stop questioning things when they’ve decided to make deals with him, Law has found.

"That one," Smoker says after not even half a minute. He points to a dark, glazed pot close to the window.

"Knight’s rosemary," Law shakes his head slowly from side to side, "how fitting."

"What do you use it for?" Smoker asks while Law takes the pot. "Aside from this."

Law carefully lifts the herb out of its pot. The plant shivers in his grasp, leans against his magic, unaware of where it’s about to take root.

"Potions for remembering long-forgotten things, sometimes protection spells. It’s supposed to bring adaptability." He shoots him a grin. "But mostly it just tastes really delicious with cheese."

He doesn’t tell him that it also symbolizes loyalty and love. It’s not like that’s important, anyway.

This is the list Law gives Smoker after he takes his heart out of his chest and replaces it with a shrub of rosemary.

Rose of Lost Souls, pale blue, cut at night with a silver knife; grows in the shadow of the coldest moon.

Hanged-Man’s Ivy, evergreen with black edges, cut during a crisis of faith; grows in strong northern winds.

Bleeding Gentian, dark red, cut in the early morning hours (collect some dew drops!); grows beneath a tree where someone has died.

(3 of each)

Smoker takes one look at the list and asks, "Is this a joke?"

"I’ve been told I’m not a very humorous person."

"But… the coldest moon ? Where the fuck’s that supposed to be?"

So, Law talks him through it. It takes less time than anticipated, Smoker just frowns and scoffs and clutches at his chest where his heart used to beat. Then, without much fuss, he rights the rifle on his shoulder.

"I’d better get going," he says as he walks towards the door. "This has been going on for too long already."

He says it in a tone that almost makes Law want to apologize for the inconvenience. Almost. It’s not like he can do something about the fucking passage of time .

"Safe travels," Law says instead. It’s something he says to Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin all the time when they go out to get him something, some things, ingredient lists just like this one tucked into their pockets. It feels strange, directing it at someone else. Forbidden. Dangerous.

At this, Smoker turns around, frown still in place. He nods his chin in the direction of Law’s desk.

"Take care of that."

One corner of Law’s mouth pulls up, unasked. He flicks a finger softly into the pulmonary artery of Smoker’s heart. "It’s in good hands."

Smoker flinches a little before he can catch himself. Then, he throws the door open and stalks into the forest like a Hunter on the prowl.

A heart is a terrible thing. So important, yet so fragile.

Law asked Shachi, once, a long time ago, what it’s like to have it taken out of his chest, to have it replaced by a foreign body, a living, growing thing that digs its roots into veins and arteries and muscles and bones.

Shachi had taken a long time to answer, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat, and he’d touched the place on his chest where the spell had marked itself on his skin.

"I’m not gonna lie," he’d said, finally looking up at Law, "it’s not a good feeling. Hurts. Sometimes I forget it’s not there and then it hurts worse . Like phantom pains. But you get used to it, I guess. As long as you don’t poke the real thing." He’d rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Why do you ask?"

"What about the flower?"

Shachi had chosen an orange greatsword lily. The symbol of a fighter.

"A constant reminder," had been his only, cryptic reply.

A heart is a terrible thing. A plant comes close to it in its fragility, in its constant need for care and attention. It needs the right soil to grow, the right amount of water and light.

Law keeps Smoker’s heart in the exact same spot where he’d kept the rosemary, on the shelf closest to the window. He likes to think it helps the plant in Smoker’s chest to do its job, with sunshine and wind replaced for red and white blood cells. It will root itself between Smoker’s ribs, dig its tiny, spiky leaves into his lungs from time to time, make him chase a trace of spice in his dry mouth when he wakes up in the morning. And it will do its job, keeping Smoker alive until he comes back.

If he comes back.

Something wakes Law up in the middle of the night, nine days later. It’s not the wind, although he can hear it tearing at the edges of the hut, at every log and at the ridge of the roof, can feel tiny, icy cold pricks of rain drumming against the glass like nails. There’s a pull there, on nights like this, when it feels like the forest wants him out, wants him gone because he’s an intruder, a cancer, he doesn’t belong and the Mountain knows this.

Law’s gotten used to it over the years.

(There’s a lot of nights like this, though.)

It never wakes him up, not anymore, not in a while. He knows the power his hut holds, knows his own power, and trusts in it enough to not let it disturb his sleep.

He gets up, plants his bare feet onto the floorboards. Sometimes the hut will throw strange dreams his way, dreams that sneak into his sleeping mind and make his heart skip a few beats. It does that just to mess with him, like the aurora mushrooms who glow the brightest when he falls for a dirty knock-knock joke.

But now, he feels a shiver running through him, upwards through his toes into his throat where it stays and sticks like mud, leaving a bad taste on his tongue. The hut’s magic curls around his legs like it wants to yank him out of bed, hissing in warning.

The hut is awake. The hut is awake and it woke him up . It hasn’t done that since…

Law stumbles over the carpet in front of his bed, already conjuring up the front door before he even reaches the door to his bedroom.

Finally , the hut seems to breathe, but it keeps the floorboards unnaturally hot until he throws the front door open.

The wind immediately rushes in, eager to wreak as much havoc as it can while Law has to concentrate to look out into the darkness. Between the storm and the rain and the night he’s almost blind for a moment, no moon or stars or magic to help him, the anger of the forest almost too thick to breathe in, and too unpredictable to let his powers stretch too far out.

So, he has to wait until his eyes get used to the night. Until he sees it. Until he sees him , the figure between the trees, crouching on the forest floor.

"Fuck," Law curses, and feels the hut agree with him. He yanks his cape from one of the hooks next to the door and throws it over his head, hoping the magic in its threads will be enough to protect him from the wrath of the Mountain.

The howl of the wind sounds like laughter.

The person in the forest is still moving, Law realizes with relief as he pushes himself through the storm towards the edge of his garden.

It has to be Smoker, it has to be. The hut would’ve materialized the door by itself for Bepo, would’ve pushed Law out of bed with more urgency for Shachi or Penguin. Not to mention that the forest has never thrown such a temper tantrum over Law’s people like this.

Smoker crawls towards the hut on all fours, although it has to be easier now that the storm has found a new target in Law. The rain on his face is cold and hard and the wind pulls at his cape just like it’s pulled at the hut all night. He feels the intent, the animosity, but he’s lived with it for long enough to know how to maneuver himself through a bit of vicious weather.

When he reaches the fence surrounding his garden, pickets sticking up like sharp teeth, Smoker looks up. He’s close now, close enough for Law to see the dirt on his face, his usually bright hair dark with mud and rain.

"Come on! " he yells into the storm, feels the wind rip away his voice.

Smoker’s face twists into a grimace as he struggles to his feet. His broad shoulders are not made for weather like this and he almost keels over again before he manages to find his footing in the soaking wet earth of the forest floor. The wind pulls at him like it pulls at Law but he manages a few stumbling steps into Law’s direction before a strong gust throws him off balance again and he tumbles into the dirt, almost crashing headfirst into a tree.

Law screams Smoker’s name into the night, and that, plus the wind pushing at him, almost makes him take a step forward. He catches himself on one of the fence posts in time, just as he feels the barrier cut into his bare toes.

Shit. He holds onto the fence with both hands to keep himself from reaching out, the magic of the hut rushing through his veins, clutching at him.

When Smoker pushes himself up again, Law yells his name again.

"Hurry up ," he says, because fuck, he could swear he hears the Mountain cackling in the distance.

He can’t do much more from here, can’t do much more than yell curses into the wind, hoping that Smoker will find something in his voice to keep him going, strength or resolve or anger or anything. Anything.

Smoker keeps his eyes locked onto him all the way, and Law realizes that there is one thing he can do. He grips the fabric of his cape in one fist and lets his magic whirl and twirl with the threads. With a burst, the cape lights up and suddenly, Law is wrapped up in a cloud of starlight. His bare feet lift up from the ground and he has to grab hold of the fence again before the storm can throw him into the sky.

He doesn’t know if Smoker stumbles or hesitates or even blinks. He doesn’t know if it makes that much of a difference, to see Law like this, to have him as a beacon of light in the dark.

The only thing he knows is: Smoker finally reaching the fence. Law pushing at his shoulders, the leather of his coat wet and rough under his hands. Both of them make their way back to the hut, using each other as protection against the storm that’s still out to kill them.

When he falls into the warmth of the hut again, when the door closes and disappears behind him, when he feels the weight of the rain, the wind, the mountain drip off his shoulders and onto the floorboards, Law finally feels like he can breathe again. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been, how afraid , even though he doesn’t know why. His heart is still pounding high up in his throat and he feels it rattle against his voice as a shaking, coughing kind of laughter comes tumbling out of him.

"Fuck," he breathes, leaning against the wall. At his back, the storm is still pounding its furious fists against the hut. But here, Law holds all the power.

"Yeah," Smoker says. His voice is husky, like he’d been screaming for a long, long time. And maybe he has, maybe he’d been fighting against the wind for far longer than Law can imagine.

He wonders how long it took the hut to wake him, how long Smoker had crawled through a forest that wanted to prevent his arrival at all costs, how long he’d been just a few dozen meters from his destination, seeing the hut in front of him but unable to reach it.

He wonders if his appearance made a difference.

Smoker’s dripping rain and mud over the floor but he still keeps close to where the door once was, even when Law has caught his breath and is peeling himself out of his wet cape. The starlight clings to his skin, leaves glittering specks of dust on his hands and arms.

Smoker pulls three cigars out his coat pockets, all of them soft and wet. He curses, tries to light one anyway but puts it back when he realizes that his lighter isn’t working, either.

"Shit," he mumbles, his jaw a hard line made even harder by the way his hair is sticking to his head, flat and shapeless. "Shit. Fuck. What the fuck was that."

It doesn’t sound like a question, not really, more like an inquiry to whatever deity he believes in. Still, Law knows at least part of the answer, and he doesn’t shy away from playing god.

"The Mountain," he says. With a flick of his fingers he conjures up a fire in the fireplace on the other side of the room. He doesn’t usually let people see this part of the hut but he also doesn’t usually save them from the storm that’s trying to kill him, so whatever.

He feels Smoker’s stare at his back as he starts preparing a pot of tea.

"What."

Law hates repeating himself. "The forest’s magic wants to push the hut out of here. It doesn’t usually get this bad, though."

Smoker doesn’t say anything to that and Law can’t decide if he likes his silence. It hangs heavy between them, as if they’d dragged part of the Mountain inside. So he concentrates on making tea, even if that doesn’t really take much concentration, it’s better than nothing. His hands are wet and cold and the kettle keeps slipping from his grasp but it’s still not a difficult task.

Behind him, he feels Smoker thinking. Feels him standing and dripping on the floor, heavy boots and heavy eyes and something cold and calculating.

Even having saved him from the force of nature magic, Smoker’s still a stranger.

Even with his heart on his windowsill, Law doesn’t know him, not really.

But, the hut woke him up. It’s never done that before, not with anyone besides Bepo, Penguin and Shachi, not with anyone Law doesn’t know, doesn’t trust.

What does it mean?

When the tea’s ready, Law gestures towards one of the chairs in front of the fire. "Take a seat." He looks up, sees Smoker standing in the exact same spot, as if his feet are frozen to the floor. "Smoker. Come on. You look like a breeze could knock you over."

At that, at last, the vehemence of his stare decreases. Smoker blinks, and even as he squares his shoulders, there’s something different about the lines around his eyes, now. Something amused and soft and tired .

"Didn’t take you for the hospitable type, Witch," he says, and still doesn’t move.

"I’m not." Law raises an eyebrow, feels his hair cling to his forehead in wet, messy strands. "But it’s the middle of the night. And we have a deal. Wouldn’t be good business to let you die from pneumonia now."

Smoker snorts. He keeps one gloved hand around his rifle as if that could protect him from the weather, the other grasps at the strap of his bag.

"Only got one so far," Smoker says when Law eyes the bag too long. His grip tightens for a second, then he slowly lets go of the rifle, leans it against the wall, before he takes the bag off his shoulder to hold it in front of Law.

Law takes the bag to his desk. Before he even opens it, he can smell the gentian inside, the scent of rust drifting into his nose so fervently he’s surprised he hasn’t smelled it earlier.

Red and white and black.

The shadow of a leafless tree, its branches reaching into the soft blue of the morning sky like fingers reaching for the clouds. The first light of the morning glinting over freshly fallen snow, air cold and crisp enough that no ray of sun could ever melt it. Drops of blood collecting, becoming rivers turning into seas, seeping into the snow, into the earth beneath it, watering the hungry seeds beneath.

Red and white and black.

The shadow of a leafless tree, its branches stitching together a velvet sky, a seam, a suture, for the cut, the wound, the night dripping out into the world. The first light of the morning ripping reality into two like an over-enthusiastic seamstress, ice winds a harsh reminder. Drops of blood collecting, always dripping, dripping, dripping, a faulty faucet, dripping dripping drip-drip-dripping, drip, drip, drip…

Is it his vision or Smoker’s? Does it matter? The images it conjures up in his head send a chill down his spine either way and it takes a second, a shake of his head, for them to leave him again. Even then, he feels the impression they’ve made sitting at the back of his mind.

"Bleeding gentian," Law says and can’t quite keep his growing respect out of his voice, "you went for that first?"

"Seemed easiest."

Law huffs a laugh as he fixes Smoker with an incredulous stare.

Smoker shrugs. "I miscalculated."

Bleeding gentian is hateful, not far from murderous. It only grows where blood was spilled involuntarily, a cursed flower if Law’s ever known one. The one time he’s got his fingers on one, a few years back, its presence had scratched at his unconscious when he’d slept, tugging things to the surface he hadn’t thought about in decades, making anger boil in his veins. Hot, hot anger, directed at anyone who even dared to look at him wrong.

Since then, he tries to only have it around when he knows he’ll need it soon. He’s not in the business of making more bleeding gentians. Even if they have incredible uses.

"I didn’t plan to come back already," Smoker admits, the tiredness now colouring his voice as well. "I wanted to collect all of them but…"

"Shouldn’t have started with this, then," Law says. He considers taking the plants out of the bag but decides against it, closing it again to put it into a chest he keeps under his desk along with the gentian. It won’t do much for the nightmares that are sure to come but maybe it’ll keep the worst at bay.

Then, he turns to Smoker. "But you weren’t supposed to do this all in one go anyway, you know that, right?"

Smoker sneers. His mouth looks too wide, empty like this, as if he’s not used to his expressions without at least one cigar between his teeth. "This is time-sensitive. You know that. The town is suffering. "

"You dying won’t help them much." Law crosses his arms over his chest. "Most curses don’t escalate that quickly, they build slowly over time, festering until the very earth they’re planted into can’t be touched anymore. And even if you’re too late for the people, you’ll still have to break the curse to make it possible for others to live there again."

"The people …" Smoker’s face contorts, anger and rage and desperation twisting his expression. "They’re good people, they don’t deserve this."

"Of course they don’t." Law frowns. "But that doesn’t change the facts. You can’t expect to save them all."

With an angry growl, Smoker takes a step forward, firm and loud on the wooden floor even with the storm still howling around them. It’s the first step he’s taken further into the hut since they’ve come in. Maybe he wants to charge at Law. Maybe he wants to scream into his face, maybe he wants to hate him. Maybe he already hates him.

Maybe carrying bleeding gentian down the mountain for days has already infected Smoker’s mind, Law thinks and grabs one of his shears from the desk behind him. The flames of the fire raise and flicker, the beams and joists of the hut creak and shriek as he tries to remember as many protection spells as he can. He hasn’t used them in a while, he doesn’t need them very much, not here, not in years, not…

But Smoker isn’t moving anymore, has stopped after his second step towards Law, and is now raising his brows at the shears being brandished in front of him like a dagger. His smile is bitterly brittle.

Penguin stares incredulously at Law when he tells him about the Hunter and his deal.

"You made him go to the Mountain?"

It’s been a week since Smoker left again, his heart still in a dark, glazed pot on Law’s shelf, close to the window. Not very long for someone aiming to collect another two of the rarest flowers Law can think of in one of the most dangerous regions he knows.

Still. With every passing day, Law thinks about the storm, about the forest and the forces that seem to have made the connection between him and Smoker.

"I didn’t make him do anything. Plus, he’s a Hunter. He can take care of himself."

Penguin shrugs. "It’s your business. The Mountain, though…" He looks at Law like he’s waiting for something, a declaration of some kind. An explanation, maybe.

Law just leans back in his chair. He doesn’t need to explain the way his magic works to Penguin, and he doesn’t intend to. That’s just the way things are.

"You know how this works," he ends up saying, though, unable to help himself when Penguin’s silence stretches on and on. He’s good at them, too, Penguin, better than Shachi or Bepo, who always try to get Law to talk more. "I can’t break this curse for him."

"Oh, I know how it works." Penguin’s smile is grim. "But this feels different."

"Different how?" Law frowns when Penguin takes his time to answer. "Different how ?"

"I went to Smoker’s town, like you said," Penguin starts, crossing his arms and looking out of the window.

Law often wonders what other people see when they look outside. Is it the same forest, the same trees, the same wind, the same birds drifting through the breeze?

"And?"

"And I don’t think it’s a curse. Or, I think the curse isn’t the problem. I think it’s another Witch."

There are things in this world that are out to get you. Law knows this better than most. It’s one of the many reasons he keeps his hut out of the way, hidden between large trees and thick undergrowth. If it’s good enough for rabbits and squirrels and badgers and mice, it works for him, too.

He feels old when he starts to think like this. Like a scared animal, afraid of a world that seems so much bigger than him, and much too small at the same time. He feels it in his bones, this shaking fear, feels it gnawing at flesh and muscles until he’s nothing more than a skeleton, until the hut shrinks around him, tightening around him like a new, a second skin.

He feels old but even in human years he isn’t, not really. He’s definitely young for a Witch, not even in his second century yet. But his life has been long enough to give him an idea about what feeling old must be like and he imagines it being very much like this.

There are things in this world that are out to get you. Law knows this better than most. He’s been trying to turn around for years now, to turn from running away to simply running to becoming the chaser himself.

He’s not quite there yet, he thinks. Or is he?

There are things in this world that are out to get you. Law knows this better than most. However, he doesn’t intend to let them.

When Law takes a heart, he makes it a rule for himself to not touch it until he gives it back to its rightful owner. It just seems like the right thing to do, besides the fact that most witchcraft that involves beating human hearts is so sinister and twisted that Law doesn’t even like to think about it.

He thinks about the gentian, though, sitting by a small window Law’d made appear just for this, just so its malevolence wouldn’t scare the other plants into untimely deaths. Or worse, mutiny. Even like this, they’re cautious, quieter than usual, like they’re afraid of what he’s about to do.

Beating hearts and bleeding gentians mix well — or badly, depending how you look at it. Law has seen some spellworks, knows how the root of a gentian will curl around a heart and bind it to him. He doesn’t want to do that, though. He just wants to know if the Hunter has lost his way in the woods.

The gentian could tell him that as well. He won’t, though, he won’t.

There are some other things he can do, first. Less invasive. Still questionable in its morality.

It’s been more than a month without a trace of Smoker. He’d sent Shachi to the edge of the forest where the tree line slowly transforms into brambles, moss, and grass, before finally making way for plain rocks and pathless ground. It’s the furthest he’s ever told any of his people to go up the Mountain, the furthest he dares to send them, although his guilty conscience would’ve kept him even closer to home. It’s Shachi’s decision to go on.

Still, his efforts remain unrewarded.

Law takes Smoker’s heart carefully off his place on the shelf. It’s strangely warm in his hands, beating on and on and on. As strong as a heart can be outside of a chest. When he concentrates, he can feel a pull, a connection to Smoker, to the knight’s rosemary between his ribs, a line that crosses through the forest, over rivers and stones and…

" Where are you? " Law whispers over the heart, tugging at the invisible string. " Come back. Come. Come home. "

Maybe he imagines the quickening heartbeat. Maybe he doesn’t.

It takes another two days before Smoker comes back. He’s preceded by another storm but at least it’s daytime, at least this time he doesn’t have to crawl through the forest, at least this time the hut doesn’t have to wake Law in the middle of the night.

Law sits at his desk and tries his best not to scream at Smoker’s heart. That’s not how this spell works, that’s not how any magic works, really. Magic like this is at its best, at its most powerful, when he’s sure of himself, when it comes to him as easy as breathing. And so, he smiles at the heart in his hands, whispers promises and assurances, voice alluring as he tells them both how they’ll be just fine if they’ll only be together. If Smoker only came to him.

He doesn’t expect him to come stumbling in, clutching at his heart — at where his heart used to be — and swaying in the door frame for a second before his legs give out under him, cigar falling from his lips. He’s tumbling to the floor as soon as he’s taken one, two, three steps over the threshold, first one knee hitting the ground, then the other.

Admittedly, it’s not that much of an improvement.

"Fuck." Law scrambles up, only just remembering that he’s holding Smoker’s heart in his hands, a last whispered spell still hanging to his lips. He puts the heart in its place on the windowsill, glad for his steady hands under pressure, before he wipes at his mouth to get the taste of the spell off his tongue.

"What the—" Shachi, who’d been trying to fix an open seam on his jacket in the back room — and had probably fallen asleep doing it — comes running into the room, woken up from the ruckus of a grown man collapsing onto Law’s floorboard. "What happened ?"

Law is at Smoker’s side, rolling him onto his back. His hands come back bloody.

"Don’t know," he breathes, looking Smoker over, not sure where it’s safe to touch, where he can… "Can you—" He nods towards the door, still open, still letting the storm barge in unhindered, the rain coloring the floorboards a dark, muddy brown, the door itself banging against the wall and rattling the stained glass embedded in it.

"Yeah, sure."

He leans over Smoker, rips open his coat, his vest, the shirt underneath until he reaches skin. Bloody, bloody skin, torn apart by claws or teeth or maybe a particularly violent tree.

It takes him and Shachi hours to get the bleeding to stop, to make sure no major organs have been hit, to clean and disinfect the wounds and sew them up, to put bandages on everything. When Smoker wakes up for just a minute in the middle of it all, screaming in pain, in horror, in confusion, Law doesn’t know, he’s almost surprised. He didn’t know humans could just wake up like that, like they’d fight and run and claw their way out if they had to, even though they’ve basically been ripped in two.

Shachi knocks him out again, holds a cloth soaked in nightshadow potion over his nose and mouth while Law tries to keep his struggling body down until his eyes roll back into his head and he sinks to the ground again.

"Fuck, he’s strong," Shachi says, not quite impressed, not quite complaining. "You always have to pick the strong ones."

"Next time I’ll let you choose," Law murmurs but he’s already back at trying to force his magic to work with his skills as a surgeon. He lets the knight’s rosemary in Smoker’s chest curl around his broken ribs to hold them in place and keep them from poking holes into his lungs.

"Wouldn’t it help if he had his own heart?" Shachi asks, later, when they’re both scrubbing Smoker’s blood from their arms. "Seems like he could use an organ that didn’t have to go through all of that." He gestures towards the hastily conjured up couch in front of the fireplace, where Smoker rests now, his body pale and motionless.

"I used the rosemary for some fixes," Law says, frowning at the blood under his nails.

"Yeah, but…"

"We made a deal." Law knows how his voice sounds when he gets like this; cool, unattached, like he doesn’t care.

"For a guy who collects hearts," Shachi had told him, once, a long time ago, when his own heart had still been kept in a light green pot on Law’s desk, "you’re surprisingly heartless."

He doesn’t hold it against him, not then, not now. Some words need to be spoken out loud, need to fill the air until all the oxygen is gone, until the only thing left is the truth in them. Some words need to be spoken, so the truth in them can make way for all the other words and their truths.

Law can be heartless, just as Shachi can be cruel.

They’d never talked about it, afterwards. Why should they, when they’ve come to see everything else, too, every other truth the other holds, everything they appreciate about each other.

Law can be honest and fair in his heartlessness. Shachi can be loyal and sincere in his cruelty. As long as they both know that they can depend on each other, Law is willing to never talk about their past mistakes again. Words only have the power to choke if you let them build up and clog up your windpipe.

"If I break the deal now," Law continues carefully, "he might get his heart back. He might live. But he won’t be able to break the curse. I won’t be able to."

"Fucking Witch rules," Shachi grunts but he lets it go. He rubs at some of the dried blood on his clothes. The storm must’ve blown off his hat when he’d closed the door and he looks weirdly naked without it, his hair falling into his face again and again.

"Those wounds," he says, frowning, "they looked like claw marks."

"Wolves, maybe. Or a Weeping Soul."

"A Screechling?" Shachi shivers violently. "I hate those, last time I met one, my ears didn’t stop ringing for a month."

"Tinnitus is still preferable to death."

Shachi snorts. "Yeah, I guess . Doesn’t explain why it hit him so hard, though. The forest doesn’t attack the people you do business with, normally."

"Normally," Law agrees.

He hasn’t told anyone about Penguin’s suspicions that there might be another Witch close by. Maybe it doesn’t matter anyway, not with the way Shachi and Penguin tend to share everything, especially their free time, as much as they can. So, Shachi probably knows what Penguin knows, and still, Law can’t bring himself to think any further than that.

Can’t bring himself to think about the possibility that another Witch can only really mean one person. Because only one person could make the forest Law is living in hate him even more than it already does. Only one other Witch could do that, making people do things they’d never do otherwise, turn on each other, on themselves, a sick, cruel kind of magic that only leaves behind black feathers and the taste of burned chocolate.

"I need you to do something for me," he says.

"Don’t you always, boss," Shachi replies but Law’s voice must carry enough of his worries to let his usual snark end there.

"You need to go to his town," Law nods to where Smoker’s still barely breathing on the couch, "and try to get some information."

"Information on what?"

"If we need to leave."

Smoker sleeps through this day and the next. His face turns a slightly better colour after a while and his breathing gets steadier; just in time with the sun setting behind the treetops, grey light slowly retreating and being replaced, first, by the shadows of night, and then, by the candles Law puts up around the hut and the flames in the fireplace.

"Witch…" A groan, barely audible over the crackling of the fire.

"Don’t get up," Law says. It’s too easy to get Smoker to lay back down, just a little push at his shoulders enough to make him shrink back into the pillows, blinking heavily. "You’ll tear your stitches."

"There was…" Smoker blinks heavily, already close to falling asleep again, "… a child… crying…" His face twists into a grimace, full of pain and sorrow, and Law realizes a second too late that there are tears in his eyes.

"A Screechling," he says, slowly.

Smoker looks up at him. "Can’t be… haven’t seen one in… don’t exist anym…" The words slur together, get quieter and quieter until he seems to be mumbling in his sleep.

Law sits back in his chair, realizing he’d leaned forward trying to catch what Smoker was trying to say. For a few minutes, he just stays there, staring, chastising himself for not making Smoker drink while he was awake and, at the same time, not sure why he doesn’t care more about it. Why he’d wanted to hear Smoker talk more than he wanted to give him tea, why he’d felt so anxious trying to make sense of the rough voice.

In all his years, Law has never met a Hunter quite like him. Sure, they all look similar, dressed in leather and frowns, clutching their weapon of choice like it’d protect them from anything. The Hunters who had crossed Law’s path from time to time had all carried an air of invincibility with them, along with a healthy dose of arrogance and a tendency to put their noses where they didn’t belong, simply because they felt it was the right thing to do .

Smoker’s not that far off from that, Law thinks. He can almost imagine a younger man, less white hair, less steely muscles, less worry lines, declaring it his duty to protect people, to fight for a safer, a juster world. Words like these carry weight with them, unanticipated weight that most Hunters aren’t prepared for when they start on their path.

Words like these — duty, protection, justice — may bring a certain kind of immortality, a magic even Witches can’t quite figure out, but it’s heavier than most people can bear.

Law has seen many Hunters break under it all, dying not because of claws or teeth or black magic, but because of the realization that they’ll never be able to keep every promise; they’ll never be able to protect everyone. The world is a dangerous place and it’s a long way from being just .

Most Hunters don’t make it to grey hair and worry lines.

Law wonders how Smoker came to be.

His heart keeps beating on Law’s windowsill, deceptively strong and seemingly unchanged. Law knows better, of course. Heart magic has its consequences, even the tiniest tug will leave a mark behind, even if he can’t tell what it’ll be yet. But he’s cautious, so over the next hours he keeps an eye on the heart and on its owner sleeping on his couch.

More than an eye, actually, as he lets the tips of his fingers ghost over Smoker’s face, over the deep line on his forehead, over smooth scars and rough stubble. He hasn’t touched a human in such a long time, it almost doesn’t feel real, like he’s dreaming, like this is one of those dreams he wakes up from shivering, with his heart in his throat and yearning to go back to sleep.

Humans are warm. He tends to forget that, forgets how hot life can burn.

Penguin and Shachi are human, too, of course, but they’ve been touched by his magic too often, to bind them to him or to heal them or to test something or to make them stronger. Law’s magic is as cold as his plants, refreshing maybe but cool to the touch. And so they are cool now, too, even if they say they can’t feel a difference.

Bepo’s magic works differently from Law’s and so his fur is warm and cozy when he hugs him. And he hugs him as often as Law will let him but still.

Still . Humans are different.

There’s sweat collecting in Smoker’s hairline, the strain from his injuries letting his body run hotter than usual. Law lets his fingers trail over the damp skin and then, without really thinking about it, he lets them sink into Smoker’s hair, strokes it back, out of his face.

It’s a good face. The worry lines haven’t receded, probably thanks to the fever and the pain, but Law can’t help but think that he probably rarely loses the angry, worried look, even in his sleep.

What made him like this in the first place? Angry and worried, eyes hard as steel. Smoker’s seen things, sure, the world outside Law’s hut isn’t a kind place and Hunters don’t make it easy on themselves. But Law has seen regular men of Smoker's age with laughter lines around their eyes and mouths, coming home from fields or factories, a bit of happiness clinging to their tired forms, showing in soft bellies and round hips.

Smoker is all hard straight lines from his hairline to his muscular calves.

His skin is soft, though.

"What are you doing, Witch?"

Law recoils like he’s been burned. (And maybe he has, maybe he has , human skin is so warm, maybe he has…)

Smoker stares up at him through glassy, lidded eyes. He blinks slowly, like it costs him tremendous energy to even move that much, and he’s having trouble focusing.

"Drink this," Law says instead of answering, finally reaching for the coffee table he’s put up beside the sickbed and the cup of tea he’s made. "You’ll feel better."

He gets his hand under Smoker’s head to push him up, sets the rim of the cup against his lips. His hair is coarser than it looks, his neck hot and sweaty.

Smoker pulls a face at the taste of the tea, turns away to cough. Law knows it’s not the most pleasant of his concoctions, bitter and with a weird, garlicky aftertaste that burns from throat to stomach.

"This’ll help," he says because it will. It’s also one of his more powerful healing potions. "Trust me."

Why does he say that?

Smoker’s eyes burn into Law even in this state, looking and looking and looking until he seems to find something, although Law can’t be sure what that’s supposed to be.

Is it trust, really? Or is it something else, something only a Hunter can see, something only Smoker knows to even look for?

Whatever it is, he drinks every last drop of Law’s tea. Not even Bepo has done that before.

While Smoker had slept and Law had watched over him, night has fallen like a dark blanket, cloaking the darkest corners of the hut even darker, and the forest outside seems to close in around them, the hut always seeming that much narrower in the hours between dusk and dawn. Still, the light of the fire licks over furniture, plants and people, over Smoker’s sweat-soaked hair and the white of his bandages, the tattoos on Law’s hands and the shimmering black polish on his nails.

Slowly, some of the pain fades from Smoker’s eyes, smooths over the lines around his mouth, and as he looks up at Law, he looks more awake than he has since he’d dragged himself in.

"I heard your voice," he says, finally, after what seems like an endless chain of endless moments, strung together like pearls on a necklace, softly sparkling in the dark.

Law snorts quietly. "The Screechling? Thanks, I didn’t know my voice was that bad."

"Not the Screechling." Smoker frowns, his eyes flitting to the side, then back to Law. "I could only hear its cries for a while. A long while, I think. Couldn’t listen to anything else, got lost in the woods…" He takes a shaking breath, grimacing as if he’s angry with himself for this weakness.

"That’s why they’re dangerous," Law says. He doesn’t know why, exactly, why he’s trying to give Smoker another moment to collect himself. "Weeping Souls are dead children of cursed parents, always crying for their families to come get them, to show them kindness. They tend to attack anyone else. I guess that’s what happened to you. I’ve seen claw marks like this before."

"I heard your voice," Smoker repeats, more strongly. "I must’ve been miles from here and suddenly, I saw the path again."

Law grimaces. "Did you feel any pain? When it happened?"

"A child with claws as long as my forearm had ripped my chest open, yeah, I felt pain ."

"I mean…"

"I know what you mean. What was that? Why did I hear your voice, Witch?"

Law sighs, avoids looking at Smoker and inevitably his eyes find the heart on his windowsill. Still beating, still strong. Still marked by him.

"Witch," Smoker says again, and then: " Law ."

It’s the first time he uses his name and it’s doing things to Law, the way this gruff, tired, stupidly brave voice scratches around it, the way it echoes in the loneliness of the hut until it reaches some place inside of him where it latches on.

"I spoke to your heart," he says, more guilt in his voice than he’d like to hear. "It’s a simple spell, really. Like pulling on— like pulling on a leash."

"A leash. "

Law pulls a face again. "Sorry, bad choice of words."

"And that… will that change anything? Was it supposed to hurt?"

"I don’t know. I haven’t done it before."

Smoker doesn’t say anything to that but Law can feel him sitting up on the couch, can hear the barely suppressed gasp that escapes his chest. If he were a braver man, he’d turn to tell him to lay down again, that he’ll tear his stitches, that he’s still not strong enough, that it’s only been two days…

But he isn’t brave. And at the moment, he doesn’t dare to look at Smoker.

Law hates it when his plans are met with obstacles he didn’t foresee. He tries to include everything, tries to provide for every contingency, to have back-up plans for his back-up plans. So, of course, calling to Smoker’s heart has always been part of the plan. Or at least, part of a plan, some distant possibility in a realm of distant possibilities.

What he didn’t take into consideration — because he never even thought of it being something he should worry about: that he’d feel bad about doing it. Guilty. Like he’s broken a promise he didn’t even know he’d made.

"Don’t you have like… several centuries of experience?"

Surprised, Law turns to Smoker again, without even truly realizing he’s doing it. "That’s your biggest concern?"

"No," Smoker grunts. He’s obviously struggling to hold himself up on his elbows. "But I feel like asking if I was an experiment wouldn’t really be showing gratitude, now, would it?"

Law would laugh if he wasn’t still this stunned. Or if his patient wasn’t struggling to catch his breath while lying on a couch.

"Stay down," he says and pushes at Smoker’s shoulder again. "Don’t tear your stitches, I worked hard on those."

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Smoker rolls his eyes but he doesn’t stop Law from pushing another pillow under his head. He doesn’t stop him when he helps him drink again, either, though it probably helps that it’s water this time.

They both stay silent for most of it, stay silent for most of the night until Smoker unceremoniously slips back into sleep again, and Law pulls one of his books from a shelf to read by the fire. The light’s better here than at his desk, he tells himself, and can’t concentrate on a single word, distracted by the rise and fall of Smoker’s chest.

Showing gratitude , he’d said, off-handedly like it isn’t a big deal. Like it’s just another day for Law, for the Witch in the woods, hated by the forest around him and feared by the people who seek him out. Like gratitude is something he receives every day.

"I’m not that old," Law says the next day, after he’s made Smoker drink another cup of healing tea.

"Hm?" Smoker lifts his brows at him.

He does that a lot, Law has realized, his face much more expressive than he’d have thought from a guy who mainly likes to yell and grunt angrily. But actually, he says a lot with his brows, or by narrowing his eyes, or by pulling the corners of his mouth up or down.

It’s fascinating, and Law finds himself wanting to touch again, and again, and again, wanting to feel the subtle expressions under his hands. He imagines what his throat must feel like when he swallows, or the tick in his jaw when he’s annoyed, or the vein on his temple when he’s close to exploding.

"Yesterday," Law continues, occupying his hands by plucking one or two dry leaves off his spider plant, "you said something about me having several centuries of experience."

"Yeah?" There’s always something impatient in Smoker’s voice, like he’s annoyed he has to listen to people at all. Law thinks it’s gotten worse because of his refusal to let him smoke as long as he can barely draw a breath without wincing.

"I’m not even one hundred yet," he says, sitting down on his desk chair and waiting for Smoker’s reaction from across the room.

"Huh." Smoker’s mouth pulls down into a frown and he looks at him like he has to reassess his image of Law. "You’re a baby Witch."

Law sputters. "I’m not a child ."

"Don’t Witches mature in their third century or something?"

"That’s prejudiced. And insulting, honestly, immortality doesn’t change life experience."

"But you don’t have life experience," Smoker reminds him with a shrugging shoulder. "In comparison to other Witches."

"I have more than you, old man."

Smoker blinks, frowns, shakes his head. "Wait, are you trying to insult me for being younger than you or for being old?"

Law huffs a laugh, feels his mouth twitch into a grin. "Both, I guess."

"I’m in the prime of my life, you know."

Law’s pretty sure he’d flex his muscles at him if he’d have the energy to lift his arms. "Says the man who almost died on my couch."

"Ah," Smoker shrugs, "could’ve happened to anyone."

He’ll never understand humans, Law realizes, thinking about all the times he’d had to remind Shachi or Penguin to take better care of themselves, had to teach them first aid and about the healing herbs they could find on the side of the road and how to stitch themselves up if they ever needed it. 

How do humans even make it past their tenth birthday is a question he’s been asking himself for most of his eighty nine years. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get an answer past the "we’re more resilient than you know" that is Penguin’s reply whenever Law goes off on a tangent about it.

It’s almost too easy to find a place for Smoker in this consideration.

Law takes the hanged man’s ivy out of Smoker’s bag but it’s almost an afterthought. The scent of the Mountain clings to its leaves like ozone, fresh and electrical, buzzing on his skin. It’s not as malevolent as bleeding gentian, its dark green colour fading out into black at the edges, stems curling towards Law’s magic as if feeling him up.

What a weird one , the ivy seems to tell him. Not sure I like you .

"Who do you like, then?" Law murmurs while putting the plant on his desk and watching as the vines curl and uncurl, stretching across his spellbooks until he pulls them out of its reach.

The white one , the ivy sings and chuckles, the one who cut me .

He looks towards Smoker on his couch, watches the rise and fall of his chest for a moment. He’s distracted enough to almost miss the way the ivy suddenly twines around his wrist.

I liked his doubts , it whispers, I liked the way he screamed, I liked the way he fought, so valiant, so noble, so convinced of his beliefs before he came to me…

Law tugs at the vines but its hold only strengthens. He curses, scrambles for the set of silver knives he keeps in a drawer as the plant continues to climb up his arm.

They always are convinced before they come to me.

It’s only a feeling, even though it sounds like words in Law’s head, and he feels his heartbeat picking up. It’s only a feeling but it’s the worst feeling possible as it twists in his mind, softly coaxing out every bad thought, every doubt, every pain.

"Stop it," he grits out, movements becoming erratic as the vines reach his shoulder, stretching longer and longer to whisper against his throat. "Get it together, Law, get it the fuck together."

He would have made such a lovely hanging man , the ivy says, but you will, too. I can give you something to believe in. I can make you part of a whole, I can…

"Fuck," Law gasps, finally getting a grip around a knife and cutting the Ivy from his arm, the vines leaving shimmering red imprints on his skin. He breathes heavily, blinks and tries to get his wild thoughts to stop running.

He sits by Smoker’s side every night. Sleep isn’t something he gets a lot of anyway, especially with another presence in the hut pressing against his subconscious. It always feels like he’s on the verge of forgetting something, when he tries to fall asleep like that, and some days he fears he will. Will just forget Bepo when he’s spending a cold winter night in front of his fireplace, will forget Shachi and Penguin when they curl up in armchairs during a snowstorm.

So, he rarely sleeps anyway, when someone’s in the hut with him.

But he could take an hour here or there. He knows this. He knows that not enough sleep will leave its toll on his body, on his brain, that it’s dangerous.

Still, he sits by Smoker’s side, a book in his lap, firelight flickering over the old, pale yellow pages, illuminating letters and illustrations until they almost come to life, until they whir before his eyes, moving around, blinking, grinning at him. And then, he looks at Smoker.

People are a lot like plants, in a way. The most obvious comparison is their shared need for sunlight and water. Some things are more subtle, however. Law believes that his plants flourish best when he talks to them, when he takes their interests and personalities into account.

They need gentle hands, too; a caressing touch from time to time, mimicking wind and wildlife he can’t give them, so he gives them whatever he’s capable of instead. His attention, his care, his love .

Like he takes care of his plants, he tries to take care of his patients. Because that’s what Smoker is, now, having shifted from the safe, distant category of client . And in these nights, when the darkness around his hut creeps closer, when the light of the fire dances over the rough features of a man Law isn’t quite sure he understands, he feels Smoker, and himself, and them together, shifting into another category altogether.

"Did you take his heart, too?" Smoker asks, one night about a week after his arrival at the hut. He nods towards Shachi’s room in the back.

It’s cold for this time of year, ice winds cutting through every crack and crevice they can find with a shrill howl. It’s the noises, the war songs of the wild around them that keep Smoker awake more than anything, Law thinks, disapproving because rest is important in healing and Smoker’s his patient, and glad at the same time because…

Because.

"Yes," Law says. It’s easier to talk on nights like these, he finds, even when a distant hostility has taken residence in Smoker’s voice, a bitterness in his eyes courtesy of the pain and the accompanying inability to move without flinching.

He leans forward in his chair, looks at his hands. He tries to lift the tense atmosphere with a bit of humour in his voice when he adds: "You weren’t my first, if that’s what you’re asking."

A rough laugh escapes Smoker’s chest. He groans, coughs, clutches at it with a grimace on his face. "It’s not. But good to know."

"I’ve given them back," Law says after a long moment of listening to Smoker’s breath rattling in his lungs. He doesn’t know why he says it at all, why he feels the need to explain . "All of them. I use it as insurance, but when I don’t need them anymore, I give it back."

"Because the deal is done?"

"Because I trust them now."

Smoker heals faster than Law had expected him to. Maybe because of him being a Hunter, but Law thinks it has more to do with Smoker being Smoker.

He doesn’t know a lot about the man but what he does know points towards a bullheadedness surpassing even Shachi’s special brand of persistent obstinacy. He’s made a promise to save his town, no matter what, and so he drags himself out of the hut one morning, when Law isn’t looking, stubbornly trying to complete his mission.

Law finds him lying collapsed on the ground, unconscious and barely breathing. Of course, he’s also made it past the fence, so Law spends an infuriating amount of minutes dragging Smoker towards him with a rake while trying not to cross the barrier.

"Do I have to tie you to this couch?" Law yells when Smoker’s awake again. "Because I fucking will if you try shit like this again."

"I’m fine ," Smoker barks back because of course he does. "Just give me some of that pain killer potion of yours and I’ll make it…"

"You tore half of your stitches ," Law reminds him, incredulously. There’s still blood on his hands and clothes. "Are you trying to kill yourself? Is this really this important ?"

He knows he shouldn’t have said that even before the words tumble out of him, spilling over the floor like marbles, with much more impact than he’d thought possible, loudly rolling under couches and closets where they’ll stay until he’s almost forgotten them. He’d been so careful, too, the past two weeks, to not say them, because he knows the answer.

Smoker opens his mouth, his eyes lighting up with a mix of fury and dedication to his promise.

"Don’t answer that," Law spits out, "don’t you fucking dare answer that."

But Smoker wouldn’t be Smoker, and this Law knows about him, if he simply listened to him. "I took an oath to protect them and I will," he snarls, and then adds, with a kind of vicious seriousness reserved specially for Law: "Even if it kills me."

Law spends the rest of the day outside the house, up to his elbows in dirt, taking out his frustration on poor, unsuspecting weeds and some especially unfortunate potato plants he’ll have to apologize to later.

When he comes back in, it’s getting dark outside but a few stray rays of sunshine break through the everlasting blanket of clouds and fog, covering the inside of the hut in a weirdly dusty sheen of gold. Law moves the sunlight sage into the light, lets its grateful twinkling draw a smile on his face he actually feels, and goes to prepare dinner for Smoker and himself.

They spend the evening in uncomfortable silence, none of them willing to give in. Law’s used to this, to silence, to hostile companionship, but for some reason it’s different than when he met Penguin and Shachi. Maybe he should’ve expected this — neither Shachi nor Penguin had ever had to spend more time at the hut than they absolutely wanted to — but it’s still unnerving. This is his home, for better or worse, and it annoys him that he’s feeling as if he should draw lines on the floorboards and tell Smoker to not cross them.

It’s the first time in Smoker’s involuntary stay that Law hesitates to take his place on the armchair by his side, even after he’s fallen asleep. So, he’s at his desk when Smoker wakes up with a jolt sometime after midnight, gasping for breath like he’s drowning.

"Breathe," Law tells him, rushing to the couch, "you’re safe. Breathe. "

There have been enough nightmares in the past weeks for this to almost feel like routine again, on a day when nothing’s felt quite as usual as before. Never-mind that Law’s sure he knows why it seems to take longer than usual to get Smoker to stop looking as panicked.

"You okay?" he asks, giving Smoker a cup of water.

He doesn’t get a response for a while, long enough that he’s considering going back to work on his spellbooks again.

"Why didn’t you come closer?" Smoker asks, suddenly. He’s pulled his long legs up to his chest, cradles the cup in his hands. He looks small like this, vulnerable in a way that has nothing to do with the bandages around his chest or the sickly pallor of his skin.

"What?"

"Two months ago, during the storm." Smoker frowns. "You came outside, you called my name, you did the thing with your cape, but…"

Law leans back into his armchair, tension crawling up his spine.

"… but you didn’t come any closer, you just… stood there . And then, today…"

Law had thought he was unconscious the whole time. Apparently he’d been wrong.

"Why didn’t you come closer?" When Smoker looks up, most of his anger from their fight today seems gone, wrought out of him by hours spent alone and a nightmare bad enough to leave him shaking.

"I couldn’t," Law says, much calmer than he feels.

"Why?"

"You were behind the fence."

Smoker sits there, on his couch, small, and tired, and yeah , maybe in some ways, he’s just as old as Law, and maybe in some ways, he’s older. "What’s up with the fucking fence?" he sighs.

"It marks the border. Where my curse ends… or begins, I guess, would be technically true. The line I can’t step over without losing my powers."

"Who did that to you?"

"It was a long time ago."

"That’s not what I asked."

"Smoker…" Law sighs, rubs a hand over his face, unusually aware of how vulnerable the gesture must make him look. How human . "You can’t do anything about it now anyways, okay? Just… try to go to sleep, rest is important."

Smoker chuckles humourlessly. "Look who’s talking."

It shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does. Of course Smoker noticed, of course, they’ve been living under the same roof for two weeks, without anyone else to focus on except for Shachi, who comes and goes as he pleases, as always. Of course he noticed, he’s a Hunter, it’s in the job description to realize when things aren’t like they’re supposed to be.

And still. And still , he can’t help but feel caught .

"I’m a Witch," he says, feeling oddly guilty, "I don’t need as much sleep as humans do."

He can’t say And I can’t sleep while you’re here .

"But you do need to rest. You look like shit, you know."

Law huffs a dry laugh. " Wow , thanks for the compliment."

At that, Smoker’s face changes, his eyebrows rise, and one corner of his mouth ticks up into an almost-smile. It’s the softest he’s seen him look so far, and he doesn’t know what it means . If he’s laughing at him or with him, if this is a joke he’s supposed to be in on but he’s too removed from him, from everyone, to recognize it.

Something must show on his face because Smoker shakes his head and reaches out to lay a hand on Law’s knee. "Close your eyes, Law," he says, his usually gruff voice taking on a golden kind of warmth, like rays of sunshine through the fog and clouds on the end of a terribly cold day, rare and shimmering and making visible all the specks of dust in the air.

"I won’t sleep," Law protests. Smoker’s hand feels warm, too. Burning. Humans burn so bright and fast and hot, he always forgets that.

"Then just rest," Smoker shrugs, his thumb a gentle pressure on his leg.

So Law, still mistrustful and anxious, his heart beating in his throat where it doesn’t belong, closes his eyes. He’s not sure what good it’ll do, he’s never been able to turn off his brain enough to even think about simply resting like this.

But something about Smoker’s voice, and something about the touch of his hand, and something about his presence , makes Law want to try, at least.

"I’m sorry you were cursed," Smoker says, and Law thinks he can feel his words touch his skin, a soft rumble in the air between them. "I’m sorry."

"Not like it’s your fault," Law answers, and he’s so, so sure that he could just reach out to catch the texture of Smoker’s laugh between his fingers.

"Well, then I’m sorry you can’t run away from me."

"You’re not actually sorry about that, though," Law smiles, and thinks: And I don’t think I want to, either.

A few days after that, Smoker leaves. Law tries to hold him back for "just another day or two, seriously, if your stitches tear again when you’re on the Mountain, you won’t make it back in time for me to fix you." But to no avail.

"The stitches will have to hold, then," Smoker says, too serious to be argued with, even when he adds: "Or do you think you’ve done a bad job and they won’t?"

Law fumes at the insinuation but it doesn’t matter anyway because at this point he knows that Smoker won’t be held back again. He refuses to accompany him to the fence, however, not willing to bid him goodbye like a wife seeing off her husband going to war and already expecting to be made a widow, not willing to feel like this is goodbye, like this is final.

So, Smoker just leaves the hut like he’s done it twice before, with his rifle slung over his shoulder and a nod towards Law sitting at his desk. He only breaks their usual routine by stopping in the doorway for a moment, back turned to Law.

"After this…," he starts and then he trails off.

It’s so much more difficult to talk when the light of day shines on every possible way this could go wrong so very quickly. Words hold much more meaning in the day, somehow, much more weight and clarity.

But Law gets it.

"Yeah," he simply says, and as he watches as Smoker closes the door behind him, when he thinks he can’t hear him anymore, he quietly adds, "Safe travels."

After this, they won’t have much more reason to meet.

After this, Smoker will get his heart back.

After this, Law won’t be able to seek him out through spells.

After this, Smoker might die breaking a curse.

After this, they could never see each other again.

After this. After this, they’ll have to decide.

After this.

Penguin, Shachi and Bepo rarely meet up at the hut at the same time. Usually, they’re all busy with the tasks Law gives them; they have their own orders to fulfill and places to check on. Sometimes two of them go off together, or they meet each other by pure chance. More often than not, those two are Shachi and Penguin, who’ll drive Law up the walls for a few days before disappearing into the woods again.

This time, though, they’re all here. And they all come bearing the same news.

"It’s him," Shachi says, worry and anger burrowing lines onto his young face. "It’s him , Law."

"What should we do?" Bepo looks more worried than he’s ever seen him.

"The Hunter’s still on the Mountain," Penguin tells them, as if any of them need the reminder. "If we move now, he won’t be able to find us again."

"Who cares about Smoker," Shachi barks. He’s been stalking the whole length of the hut over and over again since they got here. Then, he stops, almost guiltily looking at Law. "I mean, I care about him, boss, I do, but…"

"This is Doflamingo," Penguin agrees. "He’ll find us if we don’t move soon."

Law can’t help the dry, high-pitched laugh that escapes his chest. "He’s found me already. You wouldn’t have found him if he hadn’t found me first."

A strange, tense silence settles over them. Law doesn’t miss the look the three of them share but he doesn’t think he’s supposed to. He’s known them long enough — and they know him — to guess at what they’re thinking before they say it out loud.

"You knew?" Bepo twists his nose into the kind of disapproving frown that always looks slightly panicked on him.

"I guessed," Law admits. He wants to hide how anxious their words, their discoveries make him but he’s too tightly wound to care if he doesn’t manage it. "When Penguin told me about the possibility of another Witch being here."

Shachi points an accusatory finger at Penguin. "You didn’t tell me!"

"I did!" Penguin sputters. "I did , I told you about the Witch in Smoker’s town."

"Everything always comes back to that guy," Shachi frowns.

"I wish you’d never made that deal, boss," Bepo sighs. "Hunters are always trouble."

Law thinks about Smoker’s palm on his leg, about the sound of his voice reverberating between his ribs, about his eyes trailing over Law and leaving behind a blazing hot trail of touch.

And he says: "It doesn’t matter now." It does, it does, it does. "But I do have to honour the deal. We can’t move before that."

"And after?" Shachi asks.

After this…

"We’ll leave. After this, we’re leaving."

Three days later, Smoker returns. And if Law’s heartbeat picks up speed, and if his stomach drops, and if he thinks, yes, you’re back, finally, finally , at the same time as he thinks, not yet, not yet, not yet , then that’s his own fucking business. He’s glad no one in his vicinity knows how to read minds.

"I know who’s behind it," Smoker says before Law can even get a word in. He’s stomped into the door — the door that now appears for him without Law even having to think about it, which is unnerving in so many different ways —, dragging the storm in behind him like the frayed ends of a cloak, cold and grey and chaotic. "How fast can you magic this curse breaker thing?"

Law raises his brows. "Do you have the roses?" He crosses his arms, refusing to be rushed by a guy who almost got himself killed twice because of his impatience.

"Fuck you, Law," Smoker growls but he throws open his bag and retrieves three perfectly pale blue roses, framed by a halo of delicate, green leaves. Their petals glow as if the moonlight they’ve been cut under is still clinging to them, soft and cool and shimmering.

Law falls in love instantly. He takes the roses from Smoker with careful hands, paying attention to the way his fingers curl around the flowers, awestruck for a second.

They’re almost too beautiful to use for something like this, he can’t help but think, too beautiful to do something as mundane, as tedious, as repugnant as curse breaking. There are so many other spells he could use them for, potions for eternal youth or iridescent beauty, for truth serums or for picking stars from the sky, you could have it all, Trafalgar D. Water Law, you’d be the most powerful Witch in the world, we can promise you, just use us right, we’ll make you beautifulalmightyinvincibleloveablegreat, what do you want, Law, what do you yearn for, is it freedom, we can give you freedom, you’ll never have to be afraid again, you’ll never have to run again…

".. aw!" Something breaks through his conscience, disrupting the luring echo of voices in his head. And then: " LAW! " Smoker’s scream shakes him from his thoughts.

Law blinks, realizing he has his whole face pressed into the roses in his hands, realizing that Smoker must’ve been yelling his name for quite some time, because the mushrooms are yelling with him, their voices a shrill and panicked ringing in his ears.

"Put the flowers down, Law," Smoker tells him, a hesitantly worried tone to his otherwise firm order.

And Law does, lets them drop onto his desk, right on top of his spellbooks. His hands are shaking, his head’s still swimming with angelic songs, with promises no one and nothing should be able to tempt him with, should be able to make …

"Oh," he breathes, taking a measured step back, "I underestimated this."

Smoker narrows his eyes. "What the fuck just happened?"

"Didn’t you hear them, too?"

"Yes."

Surprised, Law looks up. "Then you know what happened."

"I know what I heard. But why didn’t it happen when I held them? I walked down the Mountain with them for two days ."

For a second, Law falters. I know what I heard . He clears his throat. "You can’t give them what they want."

"And what’s that?"

"Power."

"I know who’s behind it," Smoker repeats an hour later as he watches Law cooking up the curse breaker potion.

"You mentioned that," Law says and tries to keep his voice level, tries to keep all of his anxieties out of it. His hands are already not as steady as he’d like them, he doesn’t need them shaking any more.

"It’s a Witch," Smoker says. He’s started pacing from window to window as if this Witch could show up at any moment, now that he knows about its existence.

"Mhm." Law maybe pretends a bit too much to be enraptured with cutting and weighing pieces of hanged man’s ivy. He truly does have to pay attention to not let himself get wrapped in its grasp again, but a single leave doesn’t hold as much danger, he has to admit.

Either way, perhaps it’s not that surprising when he doesn’t hear Smoker’s steps on the floorboards anymore, and instead feels the heavy weight of his eyes on him.

"You knew that already."

Law looks up for a second, only to immediately avoid his gaze, the dark green mess on his desk a welcome distraction.

"How…" Smoker stops himself, but Law can still hear the thick layer of anger building up in his voice.

"I have my ways," Law states, more enigmatically than he’s heard himself in a while. "I like to be informed, too, you know."

"Bullshit," Smoker spits. And if it wasn’t for the fact that Law had told him to stay away from his desk while he was working, he’d surely have a furious Hunter stalking into his personal space right now. As it is, Smoker only takes one step forward, then steps back towards the door and somehow makes it possible for his movements to seem even angrier from a distance. " Bullshit , Law."

He drags a hand down his face, flexes his fist. His eyes leave Law for a second to look at the path into the forest he arrived on, only to return to him with a soft but burning kind of understanding.

"He’s the Witch who cursed you," Smoker says.

There’s no point in denying it. Sometime during the last couple of months, between taking Smoker’s heart into his hands and watching him go into the storm again and again, he’s found himself unable… no, unwilling to lie to him.

"Yes, he is," he says, picking up the chopped up pieces of ivy and sprinkling it into a pot, where pale blue rose petals and dark red gentian are already swimming in a shimmering, silvery fluid.

When Smoker doesn’t reply, he looks up.

He’s standing by the window, hands clenched into fists and eyes filled with a murderous kind of desperation.

"Will the curse break if I kill him?"

Law’s heart does something unexpected and complicated, something that flutters all the way down into his hands and he has to grasp onto the desk for support as his knees buckle under him. "He’s dangerous ."

"Will the curse break?"

"What the fuck are you talking about," he asks but it’s not really a question, just a desperate attempt to stop Smoker in his tracks. "You’re supposed to take this potion and break his influence on your town. No one needs a hero here, Hunter."

"That’s not what I asked, Witch," Smoker says, and repeats: "Will your curse break if I kill him?"

"You can’t kill him," Law says, louder, more intensely, trying to get him to understand, "he’s so much stronger than you. The only thing you can do is break your curse and fucking hope he’ll get bored soon."

"So, you don’t know, then." Smoker frowns and nods and…

No. No, this won’t do.

"Listen to me." Law’s dangerously close to begging, he realizes, but it’s too late and his heart is in his throat and he wishes … he wishes he could just leave right now, take Smoker with him and never look back. But he can’t do that, can’t leave Bepo and Shachi and Penguin behind like that, can’t leave Smoker’s town behind. The only thing he can do is beg. "The potion is almost ready. You pour it around the town, anti-clockwise, and it’ll break the hold he has on everyone. And then you need to run ."

For one wonderful, glorious moment, Smoker only looks confused. Then, it dawns on him: "Like you?"

"He doesn’t care about me," Law shrugs, more nonchalant than he feels, "not anymore. But I’m not going to force his hand. There’d be… a lot of deaths if he found me."

Smoker shakes his head. "I’m going to kill him, Law. Even if it kills me, too, remember? It’s the right thing to do."

"It’s stupid ," Law barks. He wants to throw something at Smoker. Instead, he steps out from behind his desk, reaching out. "Doflamingo, he… he’s like a cat. He plays with his food until he gets bored, and if you’re lucky, if you manage to get out of his claws at the right time, he’ll leave you be. But only…" He takes a shaking breath. "But only if you don’t antagonize him. He doesn’t even have to notice you, just take the potion…"

"It wouldn’t be right , Law," Smoker says. "He needs to be stopped. I can’t just turn a blind eye and pretend he won’t do anything to the next town he’s in, simply because I’m safe at home."

Another breath. Another couple of erratic heartbeats.

Law closes his eyes. " Please ," he says, because it’s the only thing he has left.

He hears Smoker’s footsteps over the floorboards, feels them pressing against his consciousness, and then… A hand on his shoulder, then on his cheek, soft, warm skin, a thumb at the corner of his mouth. The scent of cigar smoke and firewood and leather, a light gust of breath on his face carrying a barely recognizable trace of rosemary.

"No," Smoker says, so unbearably gentle, so calm, before he presses his lips against Law’s mouth.

Law doesn’t move. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted this, how much he’d longed for it, until now, until he can only stand there and hope not to fall apart under this kiss.

"I need to give you back your heart," he says and his lips catch against Smoker’s stubble.

"Take care of it for me." And he feels Smoker’s smile, too. "I know it’s in good hands."

Shachi shakes his head, when Law tells him, Bepo and Penguin that he wants to take a few days to wait after Smoker is gone.

"Wait for what?" he asks but Law can’t give him an answer that would satisfy them both, so he says nothing.

Shouting his disapproval, he storms out of the hut, Penguin running after him with a quick, only kind of apologetic glance back at Law.

"What are you doing, boss?" Bepo asks.

"I don’t know," Law admits, burying his head in his hands. "I really don’t know."

After a long pause, Bepo says: "He could survive."

There’s nothing he could say to that, either.

Three days after his departure, Smoker’s heart stops beating.

Law doesn’t know how he does it. It has always come as an instinct, like a rabbit recognizing approaching danger and realizing that it’d be better to run. That’s mostly how he’d realized that he can do it at all, fear gripping him so tightly all his thoughts become occupied with running .

Now, he wants to run as well. He just chooses another direction. Not away but towards . Towards danger, towards the thing that makes every muscle in his body freeze up, towards the person who got him stuck here in the first place.

But also towards the person whose literal heart he holds in his hands. Towards the person who, for some inexplicable reason, is less afraid of dying than of living in ever-present fear or with a guilty conscience.

Law doesn’t know how he does it. Just that he can.

And so, he thinks about Smoker. About his scent, wet leather and burning wood and Knight’s rosemary, and about his gruff laugh, and about the imprints his heavy boots leave on Law’s skin whenever he steps foot into the hut. He thinks about his anger, his rage , the down-turned corners of his mouth, about the scar on his face and the deep lines on his forehead. He thinks about his fear, too, for himself, for the town, for Law. The way it seems to eat away at him, always, trying to do the right thing and failing.

He thinks about the warmth of his presence and of the roughness of his hand, thinks about the way his stubble scratched over his skin, about his smile pressed against Law’s mouth, thinks about…

He thinks about all of it , and the hut lifts itself up under him. He can feel it shake on its thin legs, always a little unsteady before getting used to having legs at all, before it turns, steps over the remnants of the garden fence and starts running.

Law throws open the door as soon as the hut sits down again. He almost stumbles back when he sees the mayhem he’s walked into, his small hut seemingly the only building in town, now, that doesn’t have a hole in its walls or its roof, that isn’t on fire, or cut in half, or stomped into the ground.

Then, he sees Doflamingo’s feather coat. His pulse skyrockets, his thoughts threatening to pull him into angry, fearful chaos, before he realizes that the coat’s lying flat in the dirt, without anyone inside it, all of its magic collapsed like a puppet cut from the strings holding it up.

Pull yourself together , he chastises himself, tries to calm his racing heart.

His heart, that is a startling difference to the one he’s clasping in his hands, growing colder and heavier by the minute.

He sees Smoker lying a few feet away from a building that’s threateningly close to caving in, its roof sinking lower as he’s looking at it. There’s a boy just a few feet aside from him, too, face covered by a straw hat, sinking to his knees just as slowly as the building.

What the fuck happened here?

But he can’t wait for an answer, doubts he’s going to get one anyway, and starts running through the rubble. The hut has landed close enough for Law to almost reach him. He can feel the barrier as he crosses it, a veil brushing past his face and parting for him, revealing the world on the other side, louder and brighter and clearer, more chaos than he could’ve ever imagined, more destruction, and more life.

For a tense second, he expects it to turn into something worse, something more than this simple shift in his vision, that he’ll feel the pain so many of his kind have described when losing their powers. A loss so deep and cutting, he’ll never feel whole again, will always feel less himself, but…

Nothing.

Nothing. His cage has opened as if all he’d needed to do was open the door and wake up, as if the detached, annoyed numbness he’d grown into over the years could just be shaken off, like a limb he’d fallen asleep on. It’s such a mundane, unremarkable feeling that it almost throws him off, an unexpected anticlimax that makes his steps unsure and so he first stumbles, then tumbles to the ground beside Smoker.

He almost, almost cries, when he digs his hand into the earth, lets himself channel its magic into the heart he holds over Smoker’s unmoving chest. It’s difficult to put a heart back into its rightful place, more difficult than taking it out in the first place, and Law has never done it to a person he’d consider dying.

Dying, not dead, though, no, not dead, please please, not dead…

He shoves his earth-soaked hand into Smoker’s chest, trying to untangle the knight’s rosemary from his arteries and veins without damaging anything further, every spell slipping off his tongue sounding more like a prayer, tinged with desperation as they are. Ordinarily, he’d do this meticulously, would try to weed out every last root, every little seed, but the tissue around one of his hands is dying, life force seeping into the ground below, and the heart in his other hand is growing colder and colder.

So, good enough , he thinks, finally, hoping this won’t come back to haunt him, when most of the rosemary’s rooted out, and he pushes the heart in behind Smoker’s ribs.

Much, much later, in a future he can’t even imagine right now, Smoker will sometimes berate him for having done shoddy work, mostly to derail from all the ways his body’s age will become more and more apparent.

"At least you’re alive to complain about it," will be one of Law’s standard answers but none of them will actually be annoyed with the other.

There’s something to be said about growing old together, in the end, about seeing hairlines recede and muscles grow soft, about watching skin get wrinkly and eyesight get worse.

There’s something to be said, as well, about the spicy scent of rosemary hanging in the air wherever Smoker goes, like leaving a trail for Law to follow, a string to tug on when he needs it.

At this moment, however, in a small town close to the edge of a large, mysterious forest, and a looming, dangerous mountain, one Witch has been defeated and another one has stepped outside of his hiding place into the world to save a man he’s only beginning to know.

"You’re here," Smoker says when he blinks awake, not quite aware yet of how close he’d been to not being here himself. "You came."

"We had a deal," Law says, and there’s something to be said about weights being lifted off his chest, about hearts feeling lighter, and about tears. He laughs, wet and bright. "I’m just keeping my end of it."