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Killer dies.
It doesn’t matter how it happens, only that it does, except the moment and everything leading up to it plays on loop, a broken record, the repetition of the same riff on a guitar going slowly out of tune it’s been played for so long without a break. Kid closes his eyes and Killer draws a breath he does not exhale. He opens them again and Killer is impaled from behind; the blood erupts from his chest and then blooms over his shirt, the pattern at once of a firework and a misshapen flower, and Kid can’t fucking believe he’s thinking of other things now. He grits his teeth and Killer turns to the side, the angle that will lead him to miss sensing his assailant in time. He screams, as if to scrape his own throat out from the inside, no word because no words will do and how can he say words when Killer is gone, when he hadn’t covered him, when even if he could blame himself the whole way through it wouldn’t be enough to hold the burden of being here alone?
They bury him in the ground, not a sea funeral as is pirate custom, but he’d died on land and it seems almost worse to let his body drop below the waves and build a shrine divorced from that. It’s like admitting that it’s over, that he won’t wake up again, wound half-healed but walking around pretending like he’s not hurting at all the way they all do. Kid won’t give into that; the religious officials they hire (someone hires, not Kid; he’s got no religion and Killer hadn’t either, but maybe that’s a requirement of having a grave) drone on and on about afterlives and letting go, as if they’re closing a door firmly when they throw the soil on top, as if things are tightly, neatly divided like that. Kid won’t let go; he can’t let go; it’s not so easy as all that. It’s not for any of them, but the rest of his crew are already thinking about it, and when they are people who inflict death so casually, when they have caused this kind of mourning, perhaps--not that Kid feels guilty, not that he’s about to turn himself in and rot in jail and repent and be sorry--perhaps that’s--no, that’s different.
But how can Kid let go of Killer? Even if he does, they’re bound together as they have been, always, the same root split by a fence and locked around it, vines tightly coiled in a helix, two kinds of metal forming an alloy, paths that all lead to the same place, an infinite circle.He’d known Killer better than the feeling of a knife in his hand, than boots worn in and worn out on his feet, than the singing call of metal in his hands, than the beat of the music loud around him on the shell of the ship. But this is unimaginable; this is territory he could not conceive of, far off the map, a wide-open blank space. Killer has always been there; he leaves a gaping void, an absence felt, incomparable. He can’t detach himself, and even if he could, he fucking wouldn’t--what would Killer want him to do? Kid doesn’t fucking know, that’s the thing. What would Killer do if he were here? Well then all of this wouldn’t be true, and it would all be some nightmare or illusion, a warning.
He’d heard a song once, about death, comparing it to something like a habit or a delusion, forgetting that a person isn’t there until you remember. He can’t forget that Killer’s not there for more than a few seconds at a time; he can’t even get halfway through thinking he should tell Killer something, that he wants to ask Killer for advice, plumb the depths of knowledge that he’s gleaned from being on a parallel path to Kid’s but that Kid himself has missed, because he could afford to, except now he can’t, and he almost doesn’t fucking care.
Killer would want, perhaps, the same things he’d wanted in life--for Kid to become the pirate king, sail the seas, cut down anyone who might stand in his way, but the idea of any of that is like toast forgotten in a broiler and burned to ash, disintegrating on his tongue and leaving him with an unshakeable, horrible aftertaste. What the fuck’s the point if Killer’s not there with him? He can’t not do it; he can’t not pursue it; he can’t fall behind. But he’s swallowed in an empty fog offshore; if his blade meets and tears through flesh he does not feel or hear it; he does not smell the blood or taste it as it splatters across his face. He is waiting for the rocks to get him; if they do, and if he falls--to be sliced, impaled, to slip off and into the water and sink like ballast off a hot air balloon, then it’s not the glorious death at sea he and Killer had always talked about (but always after reaching the summit, better to die trying than to die pitifully, but better to die not at all or with more behind than in front of you if you have to go any way, better to die together, better--better for it not to be like this).
There is a thought that keeps eluding Kid, a fruit fly too small to be crushed in his closing metal fist, buzzing around his head as he whips it around on his neck. Diving, it heads for his neck, and he swats at it; it vanishes but his hand is empty again. There is something, and he thinks he remembers--they fight a group of pirates, bunch of kids just starting out from some New World town, one of whom fights three-sword style, badly. It’s got something to do with Roronoa, or one of the other Straw Hats, or--not that Kid wants to see those guys again. Not after they’d declared themselves the Kid Pirates’ allies and stolen the whole damn show (Kid’s fault, maybe, for not putting out something better), not after all of this. They’re all still together and whole, fighting onward with every piece of their crew; maybe Straw Hat hadn’t had anyone like Killer--but he’s not the same kind of captain Kid is. It’s a stupid comparison, but the fact remains: they’re all still alive, all still shouting their dreams at the top of their lungs, maybe because they’re better or stronger or luckier, or because their captain doesn’t let them die. Kid doesn’t fucking want to see them at all.
The thought persists; Kid ignores it, though trying to chase it down and follow down the back alleys of his brain is better than seeing the blood spread over Killer’s front again, better than shifting in his hammock and finding it too empty (even though he and Killer combined were a tight fit), better than eating adequate pasta and thinking he should be eating Killer’s, better than thinking of a question to which Killer would know the answer and that he swallows now instead of asking, because there’s no one to ask.
It’s better than grinding his teeth down because he sees failure around every corner, under every floorboard, over every horizon. The possibility of it is not one Kid ever considers until it happens, and even when he’s failed before he’s just kept going; he’s never failed so badly he can’t recover; he has never been thrown far off course in ways he can’t repair. This is like--he can’t describe it; it’s like nothing else; he’s gotten by on bluster and bravado and everything's come out alright in the end but now it hasn’t; now the possibility isn’t something he can ignore or throw away. If it happened once, who says it won’t happen again, he won’t be too slow and the rest of his crew won’t be pulled away like a skeleton picked apart by vultures? What if his run of luck has ended (though they’ve always created their own--but how can he create luck, or anything at all, without Killer there with him?) and he’s due for a bad string? Pathetic, weak shit to dwell on this, but how can he not? Killer would say that, if not in the same words, but it’s always been easier to listen to Killer than to listen to himself.
They fail. Once the poison is in, once one of their strongest links has been broken, they can’t recover quickly enough; the poison spreads and stays, slow-moving, not quick enough, not localized. They can’t tear off the limb, tie a tourniquet and chop; they can’t dilute or excise or override it. They are the kind of people who pretend they don’t know the word can’t, but here they are, inept; here they are, drudging up every loss from the long streak in Kid’s mind, the losses he’d thought he’d gotten out of the way when he was a kid and it was okay to project an image of a person who couldn’t do anything, because he’d shatter it one day and leave it behind.
But they find the treasure map and the treasure’s already gone; they reach the island and the Straw Hats have already come through; they fight someone and it’s too easy and then, worse, too hard; they get knocked around, shoved down, not killed, but Kid’s never there to shield them from a blast; Kid’s never there to knock them out of the way, and only gets knocked around himself. He can deal with black eyes, a broken nose (not the first time), twisted ankles, dented prosthetic, shredded clothes--but he shouldn’t have them; he needs to be better than that. He’s always been able to fight on his own; even with Killer kilometers away he can hold things down. He doesn’t have that astronomical bounty for fucking nothing, but it’s just not working anymore. None of it is.
And then they get ambushed by two Marine vice-admirals at once, probably a hundred ships, and someone had to have tipped them off, but it doesn’t fucking matter. They’re not going to go down, but if they are--the possibility never would have occurred to Kid two weeks ago. They’ll take as many of them down as they can, which is going to be fucking all of them, and they’re not going down. Already, heat is setting the fuses on the canons; everyone is grabbing their weapons; Kid raises his arms and tears the Marines’ cannons from their decks, four at a time, as many as he can see, as many as he’s close enough to attract with his powers and then drop in the water. Swords, too, are pulled by steel blades; those he wants but there isn’t fucking time; they need to see the glory of all that government money going to waste before they meet their end, but there are so many ships and so many cannons firing at once. A cannonball slams towards Kid’s shoulder and he only repels it back at the last second; where’s Killer to slice it up?
Oh. Fuck. The next one hits him square in the chest and slams him back against the cabin and he stops thinking.
Kid shoots forward; his chest is painfully constrained, as if he’s wrapped in a seastone vest that somehow doesn’t impair the rest of him, but his head fucking hurts and his stomach is gnashing dangerously; he sets his jaw and squints forward. The cannonball, the fight--is hell a cabin on a strange ship? There are no cuffs on his wrists; the Marines hadn’t gotten him. The boat is somewhere at sea, whatever it is; it seems familiar. Fuck, his head hurts though. His chest is wrapped in bandages; whoever it was had done a better job than most of his crew. The cabin door opens; Kid doesn’t see who it is at first because he nearly blacks out from his neck moving too quickly.
“Don’t strain yourself!” The voice is harried, worried. Kid grimaces and forces his eyes open, tells his stomach to shut up.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, of course it’s the Straw Hats’ doctor. To have those guys bail him out or fix him up, or--what exactly had happened?
“I’m fine,” Kid snaps.
“All of your ribs are broken,” the reindeer retorts, and Kid could throttle him, but--better not when he’s holding what looks like a hot teapot. “Would you like some tea?”
“I would,” says another voice from the doorway, and if all of them are going to come in, Kid is going to fucking—whatever, not important, though under better circumstances he’d actually want to talk to the Soul King about his music.
“What happened? Where’s my crew?”
“They’re fine, mostly. We ran into you guys right after you’d taken out a group of Marines.”
And Kid feels a surge of pride in his crew (they say the hallmark of a good captain is how well their ship runs without them, and even if he’d failed embarrassingly enough himself, even if his own bounty is probably going to go down, even if he’s not fit to lead them).
“They did. I just got knocked out,” says Kid.
The doctor snatches the teapot away from the outstretched hand of the Soul King. “It’s for the patient.”
“I don’t want any,” says Kid.
“It’ll calm your stomach.”
“There’s enough for two,” says the Soul King, holding out his own teacup.
Getting poked and prodded by a tiny doctor while a skeleton stares him down drinking a cup of tea is--kind of absurd, actually, and Kid half-laughs but the pain that courses through his body is--mildly unpleasant, but he can fucking take it, whatever.
“You’ll be fine.”
He says nothing about getting Kid’s crew. (Where are they? Is the ship tied alongside? Did they dump him with the Straw Hats? Serves him right if they had.) Probably better for Kid not to see them right now; how can he? But when he leaves, the Soul King does not go with him, and Kid wonders if he’s there to make him drink the tea--or try to take it for himself.
“You want that?” Kid says, pointing at the tea.
“Oh, yes!” says the Soul King. “Thank you.”
He reaches for the cup on the stand next to the bed and replaces it with his own, emptied. It’s pretty cool to look at all the bones and joints moving in his skeletal hand.
“You’re dead,” Kid says, more musing out loud than anything else.
“Yes I am,” says the Soul King. “I died a long time ago.”
“How’d you come back?”
“It’s the power of my devil fruit. Alas, it works only once.”
“Oh. So if I wanted to bring someone back to life—”
“You’d have to find other means, yes,” says the Soul King, almost cheerfully.
“Other means,” Kid repeats, because he’d said it almost like it was easy. “So if there was a person who was dead and I wanted to bring them back, then I could?”
“Well, not exactly,” says the Soul King. “Not that I know of, anyway. Gecko Moria would put shadows into zombies; he had this whole complicated process, you see, but the zombies weren’t really the people who they’d been when they were alive. Not that I am, either; I’m just bones.”
But he’s still himself--or is he? Kid wouldn’t know the difference, he supposes. But Gecko Moria--there’s something familiar about that. Hadn’t he been thinking about the Straw Hats before? He can’t remember; his head hurts.
“Roronoa.”
“That’s our other swordsman.”
“I fucking know,” says Kid. “No, he said something about his swords--that he’d won a sword off of some zombie samurai in the Florian Triangle—”
“Not just some zombie samurai. It had my shadow.”
“So he fought you?”
“Ah, there’s the rub,” says the Soul King, illustrating it by rubbing his chin. “Yes, and no. Both me and the body’s original owner--it’s a bit more complicated than that, even.”
They lapse into silence, and Kid tries to think through the thought again. It would be Killer--and not Killer, but what if it were Killer and his own shadow? And Killer but not Killer is better than just not Killer, just an absence. And Killer’s strong; his will is stronger; he could overcome having to share his body with someone else if anyone could--Kid definitely fucking could, too. And it’s better than nothing; he’s just got to find Moria and get him to do it, or to show him how, to coerce or beat him into doing it--that’s what Killer would do. Maybe the question he should be asking isn’t what Killer would want, or what he would do if he were here now, but what he would do if Kid were the one who died, and that’s obvious, isn’t it? Killer wouldn’t let him stay dead.
They can’t get the hell away from the Straw Hats fast enough, as far as Killer’s concerned. His crewmates don’t hold it against him that he’d gotten injured; they’re only worried, and as much as Kid hates when people make this kind of fuss over him, he lets them do it. The way Wire looks is too close to right after Killer had died, and so once they’ve finally left the Straw Hats on the other side of the horizon he calls a meeting.
“I’m going to bring Killer back,” he says. “I found a way.”
It’s a declaration; he’s the captain. They can desert if they want, try to mutiny; Kid glares out at them but they all look rather like the opposite. They want to help; they want Killer back, too. (Of course they do; of course they hadn’t really let go.)
Kid’s not too high on having to make a detour all the way back to the Florian Triangle, but when Kid brings it up, Heat says he remembers having heard about Moria being captured by Blackbeard, which had apparently happened while they were in Wano. The prospect of breaking Moria out of Blackbeard’s prison is--something Kid would have liked to have Killer along for, but isn’t everything? And what’s one more emperor when he’s already fought the other three? (It’s maddeningly stupid to go in against someone like that without Killer, and Killer would never forgive them if they did it without him--because he’ll be fucking back, and soon, that’s why.) And the prospect of the thrill, the thrill of the prospect of stealing a prisoner out from under Blackbeard’s nose, has lit the fire of the focus inside of Kid that was snuffed out, a candle with its wick trailing near-invisible smoke, when Killer had died.
It’s going to be okay. They’re going to fucking do it. No one says this is a small chance; Kid doesn’t exactly extend the Soul King’s words of caution out to the rest of them, but enough of his crew are pessimists that if any of them had wanted to poke holes or temper expectations or said it was a shitty idea, they would have tried.
The execution, however, is a bit of a letdown. The prison where Blackbeard keeps Moria isn’t well-guarded, and it’s the first place they look. Not that slicing through prison guards or annoying an Emperor isn’t fun, especially when it’s this one (not that Kid really gives a fuck about Straw Hat claiming this guy as his to be defeated, just like he’d claimed Kaido--every pirate for themself, even in an alliance, Kid knows that all too well, coursing through his veins and in the creaking of his knees). But Kid and Heat don’t even bother to call reinforcements; the fun is fleeting shallow like a lake that never gets any deeper. The guards don’t pose a fight or a challenge, and Kid would almost wonder if it was a trap, though they would have sprung it by now.
“Who the hell are you?” says Moria when they reach his cell and Kid wrenches open the bars (not even bothering to keep him in with seastone, damn), impertinent bastard that he is.
“I need you to raise the dead,” says Kid. “Can you do that for me?”
He is close to closing his arm around Moria’s neck, crushing his windpipe if he says no, or if he says yes and it’s a lie. He knows he doesn’t need to throw all this haki at the guy, but he’d beaten Kaido back in the day so he’ll have to be able to take it. He does, though he looks uncomfortable. He understands exactly what Kid is saying.
“Maybe,” says Moria. “Get me out and I’ll give you a way.”
What are a few extra ounces of pride that he can always reclaim later, when without this later isn’t worth shit? And when he’d stalk out of here unopposed anyway, what does it matter if he drags the old man along, too?
“What you need is to become a vampire,” says Moria.
Kid crosses his arms. “Listen, I heard you can raise the dead. Either I was lied to—”
“Well, I can,” says Moria. “But on my own I can only get them so far. The corpses will decay at a near-normal rate without someone to sustain them.”
“And you had someone before,” says Kid.
“Yes, but I don’t know where he is now,” says Moria, and the words ring as true as Kid can see them (fuck, Killer was always better at listening, and at Observation Haki).
Kid glares. This is a forthrightness and admission of his own inadequacy from Moria that he hadn’t thought far enough not to expect. Maybe being kicked around by Blackbeard had humbled him. Maybe he just doesn’t care. Maybe he’s smart enough to realize that if he lies here, it’s going to end pretty badly for him. Or maybe he isn’t, but he’s a good enough liar, and that that possibility isn’t zero digs into Kid like an ill-fitting belt right against his skin.
“How old is your corpse, anyway?”
Kid’s arm shoots out, slamming Moria against the wall; his froglike eyes open wider and he struggles, but his strength has sat growing brittle within him for too long. Maybe it’s technically the right word, but fuck technical definitions.
“A few weeks,” Kid grinds through his teeth.
“I wouldn’t be able to help you anyway,” says Moria. “Too old. But the vampires will! I can show you where to find them.”
“How come you haven’t become one, then?” says Kid.
Moria shudders. “I have learned a great many things from studying them. But who wants to eat blood or risk getting eaten? I can already raise the dead, and if I had someone like Hogback again…”
He’s clearly hinting. Kid just might send him to Trafalgar for shits and giggles, get him carved up and scattered around the seas or something.
“Okay. Tell me where they are.”
Moria’s price is pretty low, passage to the island on which he says the vampires live. It’s enough to make Kid suspicious that they’re headed straight for a trap, but if it is, then it’s an incredibly obvious one. What could it be, anyway? Hogback? The Marines?
Moria can still make zombies, if in a pathetic form; he reanimates a smashed fly with the shadow of another, and its body falls apart the next day (more because it had been fucking smashed than out of rapid decay). The shadows he steals and pins are real, and Kid has to be sharper around him than he’s had to be in a long time to keep his own and his crewmates’ from being stolen. It’s a small price to pay for something kind of like hope, edged in wariness and worry. Kid’s not too concerned about becoming a vampire himself; he might not choose it otherwise, and he’s stockpiling weaknesses at a rapid rate, but it’s all the price for something, whether it’s another power or to prove a point, or--Killer, who is worth everything. If he has to pour blood down his throat and hide from the sun and avoid stakes, then so be it. He’s always preferred nights to days anyway.
“I didn’t think you’d actually want to do it,” says Moria.
“I told you I needed to raise the dead,” says Kid. “And I haven’t done it yet. If you try to fucking double-cross me—”
He levitates a knife into the air by the blade, not moving any part of his body. That much shouldn’t--and doesn’t--scare Moria, but it’s a threat. A reminder that though this is no alliance, even in name. It’s not even a fair exchange, but it doesn’t have to be.
The island where Moria leaves them is in the midst of its harvest festival. Children dressed as animals and brides and superheroes carve jack-o-lanterns, stabbing wildly with dull knives through pumpkin faces; the smell of fresh apple tarts, mulled wine and cider, hot tea and coffee, wafts through the air, mixing in a way that’s pleasant and might be nostalgic if Kid had ever experienced something like this firsthand as a kid. Some of the crew take interest in the stalls, and Kid wonders if he should, too. He’s still pretty vague on what being a vampire actually entails--will he be able to eat human food at all? Well, if he thinks this is going to be his last meal, there’s no way a pastry and some watery coffee are going to live up to that hype.
Or--this could all be a ruse; the inhabitants of this town seem normal enough for the New World. But the vampires wouldn’t be here if they didn’t blend in, would they? And he’s supposed to meet them alone in the forest; maybe that’s where they live. Maybe it’s a trap after all and they haven’t yet fallen into it, but if Kid is stupid enough to fall for it and isn’t a good enough fighter to get out of his own mess, he deserves what he gets.
“Wine?”
Heat holds out a glass from the booth. Kid takes it; white wine is not his favorite but it’ll do, and it’s actually not bad when he takes a sip.
“Do you think I’m delusional? About all this?”
(It’s too late to turn back, and Kid won’t hesitate, won’t flinch. He’s not that kind of guy.)
“If any of us had deep reservations, we’d have said something,” says Heat. “Just--I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Oh, fuck. Kid squeezes the wineglass in his hand hard enough to smash it, forgetting for a second that he needs all the blood he can keep in his body, but his metal palm is slightly scratched, and the rest of the shards land harmlessly on the ground or snag on his pant legs. Of course he’s had the same thought; he can’t die and they can’t die, not after Killer, but it’s as if Kid’s injected a barrel of adrenaline and downed a bottle of tequila both at once; his whole body is reeling with a strange sort of clarity that’s not going to make sense to him in a few hours. He has to do this; he will not let the vampires, or Moria, or whoever, win.
“You won’t,” he says, clapping Heat on the shoulder.
He makes to head the opposite direction of the waves of people who comprise the crowd; Heat touches his arm. “You’re not going to let any of us come with you?”
“No,” says Kid--whatever’s in there, he’s not going to let any more of his crew fucking die, not when they’ve come all this way with him, for him or for Killer or for the dream or the end goal, but it doesn’t fucking matter because they’ve placed their faith hin him.
Heat looks at him as if he’s thinking of trying to make Kid stop him physically, but he knows Kid is stronger than he is, and he knows, too, what Kid is thinking. (Killer would have--but Heat is not Killer; Killer is not replaceable; Killer will be here again soon.) Heat nods, finally, and Kid begins to walk toward the forest, pushing against the crowd. It’s nearly dark; he won’t waste time.
Moria had said Kid would know it when he sees it, and he does. The clearing is wide open; in the center is a gnarled stump of what had once been a tree, slowly rotting away. Nature reclaims the remains of the corpse; moss grows and the wood softens and splinters; mushrooms curl around the roots.
“Human,” says a voice Kid cannot see, eerie and high-pitched, as if echoing through an odd pipe.
Kid does not answer.
“You cannot leave this forest alive.”
“Good,” says Kid. “I need to be a vampire.”
They don’t laugh at him; maybe that’s a good sign.
“Drink my blood. You get food; I get—”
“What makes you think your blood is worth anything?” says a different voice, and then one of the vampires (if that’s what they are) steps into the clearing, only a dark shape in the starlight.
“I have a high bounty on my head,” says Kid. “Won something against all the Yonkou.”
(If that means anything to vampires, who the hell knows.)
“If you’re so powerful, why be a vampire? Do you seek to conquer us? Knowledge of our kind?”
“I don’t give a damn about that,” says Kid. “My partner’s dead.”
(And even now, it hurts to say, nailing not into the coffin but straight through his right wrist and shattering the bone; his voice nearly cracks and his fists clench.)
“And you will bring him back, subject him to this cursed life against his will?”
“If it’s so cursed, why haven’t you destroyed yourself?” says Kid.
The vampire snarls; the moon reveals itself from behind a cloud and the vampire’s fangs catch its light--yeah, this is the real thing.
“Very well,” says the vampire. “Stop us before we drain you and this life is yours.”
There are only five of them. And even half-drained of blood, Kid’s more than a match for them; even when his new teeth are ripping into his gums and jaw and the vampires drool at the prospect of further blood as they approach, even when his skin feels as if it will split and fall off of him like a chrysalis, even when his heart stops beating and he can’t stop focusing on the sensation, when it is done, when the sky is growing lighter--and then they retreat, quicker than a lightning strike, and Kid only makes it to the shelter of the trees just in time before the light hits.
He wakes up in the early evening with his arm half-burned from the indirect light through the trees, still lightheaded but half-rested, hungry for something he can’t quite name. The streets are clean; there is no evidence that a festival had ever been there, and Kid wonders for a second if he’s lost fifty years (and what’s eternity to a vampire?) but there in the harbor is the ship, and there, waiting for him on the deck, is Wire, who lets out a cheer.
Kid must look a fucking sight, but he’s also probably looked worse; he lets his crewmates fuss over him for just a little until he makes them start moving. They’ve been delayed long enough as it is.
Kid is only awake and under the sun for a moment, but it’s a moment of agony and blistering, raw pain like being dropped in the middle of a bonfire, a volcano, sent straight to Hell. Wire drops his cloak over him a second later, and they drag him indoors into the galley and far from the windows--if he still had a heartbeat it would be going so fast each beat would melt into the next, like notes played so fast they smush into one, and he might not even notice it. That he still feels pain, he knows, means that the burn wasn’t too bad; that with his senses as heightened as they are now (and he smells and tastes everything in the air) he does not smell charred flesh means he’ll probably survive. It’s going to blister and it’s going to sting.
“I’m fine,” Kid says, and stares out the window, willing the sun to set or go behind a cloud and let him go outside.
The next step is to build himself a sunshade in the woodshop, a heavy wooden frame covered in thick black fabric, not typical or elegant but it gets the job done, and when he duct-tapes it to his left arm it looks kind of ridiculous, maybe, but what’s the use of a pirate captain who can’t go out on deck unless it’s cloudy or dark out? If he had the power to summon hurricanes, to form clouds above him--if he wasn’t trapped between sky and sea and rejected by both--but fuck that, he’ll conquer it all anyway, all the better that all of nature resents him for what he is. All the better that he’s a thorn in the side of the world--better yet, a knife in the side of the world--but now he’s just too dull to make a difference, a blunt instrument not half as effective as he should be, plain rusting iron instead of stainless steel.
He’s so fucking hungry. He can still eat human food, but it does nothing to satiate him, only the opposite. That he can smell the blood and that he wants it makes it so much worse; when one of his crew has so much as a paper cut he has to move to the other end of the ship, trying to make his eyes focus and his mind think something other than blood, blood blood. He’s supposed to be the uncontrolled and uncontrollable, but he’d never put one of his own in danger and here he is, hungry rookie vampire on a pirate ship. (They’re his crew; if he does something stupid they’ll get him to stop; they’re strong fighters and if it meant kicking him into the sea and dragging him out they’d do it, but he’d have done some damage already, failed them worse than he has already.)
He was a pretty damn good rookie pirate, though; who says he won’t be just as good of a rookie vampire? He’s only got the memory of those fangs tearing into him, but it’s fresh and sharp in his mind; he’ll know what to do when they find a boat full of people.
And he does. The Marines don’t stand a chance, their cannonballs and mass-produced battleship against the Kid Pirates and the firepower of the Victoria Punk . So many people and so much blood; a cannon blows someone’s head off first and Kid smells it when he’s halfway boarding; he tears over the deck on all fours, smashing and grabbing at the fresh flesh, tearing a leg off and bringing it, already dripping with blood, to his face. Someone shoots; Kid raises his arm and repels the bullet back, sinking his fangs into the limb, and--fuck. It’s like cool water on a hot day, dinner he’s had to wait for hours to be ready, all that prison food in Udon when he’d been starving out of his mind, only he hasn’t realized, really, what he’d been craving. It slots into place; for the first time since Killer died, something feels almost okay; for the first time, the doubt begins to recede. He’s going to do this. He’s still got it. He’ll bring Killer back. He’ll drain these Marines dry, deflect all their bullets, block all their swords.
The brief moment of elation subsides, and doubt begins to gnaw at Kid like the rats in the shipyard gnawing on garbage. What if they’re too late? What if there’s not enough left of Killer’s body to bite? What if none of that is true but it doesn’t work?
Fuck that. This isn’t time for doubt. Killer had never doubted him. What would Killer want? Killer would want him to just do what needs to be done. Killer would know he could; Killer would know when his mask of bravado was slipping--though is it there now?
Will Killer know him, vampire as he is? He looks the same, but with slightly different teeth, but Killer only knows him as the version of himself who had always had Killer, the version who was human and stood out in the sun, who never doubted for very long. Even if he doesn’t--even if Killer is disgusted by him, fuck, Kid would rather live in a world with Killer in it than one without, if those are his only choices.
And Killer won’t. Killer will meet him where he is; he has to believe that; it’s the thing he’s been clinging to, the thought that hasn’t been concrete but amorphous, and yet almost everything else had been built on it.
The night falls. The crew nears the graveyard.
The headstone is a bright grey, clear in the starlight. Kid knows it as soon as he sees it, though he barely remembers having seen it before. There had been a funeral; he only vaguely remembers what had occurred, only--how much he’d missed Killer, how much of a mockery the empty words about letting go had seemed. Fuck those people; they hadn’t even known Killer--why the fuck had their crew spent money on that anyway?
Kid hoists the coffin from the ground himself, magnetizing the hinges and tearing it out of the ground all at once, scattering clods of dirt and grass, dislodging the headstone so that it teeters forward toward the hole. Inside is—
A skeleton in a mask and the remains of clothes, bits of dried skin curled around the bones. That’s enough; Moria had said it would be, anyway. Kid lowers his head and bites down, his saliva and then his fang pressing into a piece of skin on the wrist. He waits.
His other set of fangs settles around the bone. Still, there is nothing, and then the bone begins to vibrate against his teeth. The skin unfurls in his mouth, growing thicker and fleshier. Kid releases his jaw and pulls back. The skeleton moves, the hand flexing, fingers of bone moving as if playing a scale on the piano, and the patch of flesh starts to grow. There is skin and muscle; the veins growing are empty but present, tucking themselves in and around everything, and slowly the growth begins to spread. Kid steps back, resting his palm on the edge of the coffin.
He can’t look away. He can barely blink. Splinters from the coffin lid dig into his skin. By now, the arm is recognizable as Killer’s, the same shape of his hand, sudden narrowness of his wrist, the burn scar all up and down the skin, his elbow sharp despite all the muscle he’d gained, and all of that is returning, too. Maybe his bones and skin had remembered how they had fit together; maybe it’s Kid’s memory of him--but it’s definitely Killer. The rest of him is moving now, too; the veins are coating his body like a tangle of wires in a complex machine, muscles winding up and down his limbs, skin re-forming and stretching into its former shape. The skin is spreading up his neck; the mask cracks and falls off of the face that is still now only bone. From the throat emerges a strange sound--vocal cords--and Kid wonders, is it a laugh spoken without lips or tongue? But no, as the rest of him forms, it’s a wordless scream, pain and joy, Kid’s own reflected back at him. And then, finally, Kid takes half a step back as the body moves into a sitting position, quiet. Killer sweeps the hair from his eyes as if to replace his mask, though there’s no mask. He looks down at his chest. There is no mark, no indication that he had ever been stabbed or impaled. The light of the moon and the stars shine down on him, inhumanly beautiful.
“Kid,” Killer says, eyes a bright blue shade (Kid didn’t forget, only his memories do such a shitty job with the exact hue) staring straight at him.
If he reaches out and touches, will it break the spell? Will Killer collapse into a decaying mass of bones and leftover guts? Will he hold together? Is there a hidden catch that’s scraped Kid all the way down the wrist but he hadn’t noticed, too intent on seeing what was before his eyes?
“Kid,” Killer says again, his voice raw, like he can’t believe it either.
“Fuck,” says Kid. “Killer.”
He reaches all at once; if this is all he has he’d better make it count, but Killer falls solid and real in his arm, cold like a winter night in a drafty shack, stuck in a harbor full of ice, death ten meters below the ground, but here, cool breath against Kid’s neck, fangs scraping lightly over his skin, hair soft to the touch. His smile is soft, an expression he’s no longer fighting, and his throat is free of laughter.
“You were dead,” Kid says, because even though it’s so fucking stupid to say, even though Killer already knows that, he feels like he ought to.
“Am I still?” says Killer.
“Dunno,” says Kid. “We’re vampires, so I guess so.”
Killer hugs him tightly, shoulders shaking in silent laughter, and Kid holds him tightly, the shape that he’d forgotten to remember that fits into his arms like an old pair of boots on his feet in the back of the closet, and it’s then that the rest of their crewmates cluster around them, all of them saying at once in a million ways how glad they are he’s here, and Kid’s going to start fucking crying again and he doesn’t even care this time, not about his reputation or how he can’t deal with anything, but even Killer, with all his issues, can’t deny how cherished he is right now. And then Killer’s reaching for Kid’s hand and bringing him back in again and they will never hear each other’s heartbeats again, but they still have bodies and breaths and rib cages even if some of the organs inside of them don’t work.
The first few nights are both blurred and sharp, seeing everything again, the things Kid hadn’t consciously memorized before because he’d never thought he’d needed to and the things he had, the remnants of a piercing that had never quite healed reopened with a bright new stud, the things he’d missed for so long that he’d gotten used to the ache and the hole and the sharp, tearing pain of it falling farther and farther from him. There is the tiny birthmark on Killer’s left foot, the scars on his knees that had somehow survived resurrection, every single one of his eyelashes and the depths of his eyes, even more gorgeous when tinged with hunger for blood. Kid would rather just monopolize Killer, hold him tightly and keep him close, but they’re both so fucking hungry and out of blood, so when they make landfall before midnight near a town, there’s no excuse not to give this all a test drive.
He drops Killer’s hand to pick up a knife, knuckles brushing over the familiar wrist guards as he goes, and then Killer is whirling blades and bared fangs with his mask half-off, already knowing just what to do, plunging his mouth into a person’s flesh. The smell of blood fills Killer’s nose, pumps around him, singing in his ears as if he has a pulse again; he throws the knife and it meets its target in the dark; blood is spewing, wasted, but there will be more, enough that he doesn’t have to lick it from the ground.
They have their fill and then some, and Kid licks the dried blood from Killer’s face and fangs, from his palms, and even without blood in their own veins they’re still so hungry for each other; they disappear into the lower decks as the boat moves out, and as morning dawns they are shielded from the sunlight by the tight hull and the barrels of salt and booze and gunpowder.
“You brought me back,” Killer says.
His finger moves in slow circles over Kid’s chest, as if he’s writing in some unknown alphabet.
“Yeah,” says Kid. “I had to, I--are you okay with this?”
(He thinks of the vampire in the clearing, of the fruit he had not seen Killer eat and the deal he had made to get there, that curse lifted at death, if only in exchange for another and then another.)
“Of course,” says Killer. “You did so well, Kid.”
Kid closes his eyes, breathing in the scent of stale blood, cold sweat, the must of the room, and Killer--all of him, somehow the same as ever. The things he could say Killer already knows, but are also too insignificant of magnitude, that it had been so hard without him, that he’d missed him, that he’ll never let him leave again, that everything was so fucked up--redundancy has never been a problem for him (and sometimes Killer needs to hear things several times), but inadequacy? That’s too much like the way he is on his own.
“Are you okay with it, though?” says Killer. “Being a vampire?”
Oh.
“Don’t feel guilty,” Kid says, tweaking his nose. “I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t. You know that, right?”
“Just making sure,” says Killer.
His voice is full of sleep already, his hair framing his face in the way that he only ever lets Kid see, Dried blood is stuck in his beard, where Kid hadn’t managed to lick it off before. They have eternity to relive and remember--and to keep it going, to make sure their names are not forgotten, to tear and bite their way through the rest of the world and then some. Not that they’ll be slow about it when there’s so much lost time to make up for.