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“A 'cheerful pirates crew' ... then?”
Kid looks thoroughly surprised in response. Killer asks the question, aiming for a calm tone, but it doesn't come out that way. While a faint scent of food wafts from the kitchen — one that even the familiar sea salt cannot overpower — there's no need to worry about lunch. Someone else is cooking, likely Heat. Kid asked him — no, Kid gave an order: you handle the kitchen today, and tomorrow we'll see. Tomorrow, the one who usually slices meat and vegetables thinner than the rest and cleans up after himself more thoroughly than anyone else might return to his duties. Then again, he knows how to cut more than just food, and how to cover his tracks in places other than the kitchen.
If Killer called him over for a quick word, something must be wrong.
“I... understand,” Killer says, his speech interrupted by laughter more often than usual, though Kid is already used to it. Used to it, right?.. “You... probably feel sorry for me? That’s why... you’re trying to... cheer me up?”
Kid grits his teeth just from how difficult it is to listen to him now, but for Killer, he’s willing to endure it. Killer has suffered enough as it is, so what’s a little patience now? Patience is something Kid has never learned in his life; usually, people simply stopped him from making rash decisions right then and there. Not always successfully, of course — very few would dare contradict the captain. Killer dared, though still less often than he should have — something Kid realized only after he had "cooled off."
“That’s not it. You’re still part of my crew. You’ll always be my partner. And you play no lesser role than anyone else, even... damn it, even right now! Do you think that after everything we went through in Wano, I’d just throw you fucking overboard?!”
Kid gets angry, flaring up — it’s always so easy with him, and right now Killer isn't even trying to avoid it.
“Well, if you want to drown me!” And he bursts into wild laughter — almost like back in Udon Prison, when Kid saw him for the first time after their long separation. Except he isn't crying now. Is he laughing sincerely? Is he angry? Sad? Now it isn't so obvious.
Kid has known him his whole life, yet reading him remains difficult. Kid was never one for pretty speeches or comforting words; it was always easier to yell something like, “If anyone hurts you, I’ll smash their fucking face in!” — which he did. And whenever he made that promise, the whistling in Killer’s throat, his hysterical laughter, would quiet down. It was impossible to tell whether he was stretching his purple lips into a barely noticeable smile or knitting his brows. The mask hid any visual emotion, and the bandages underneath served as extra insurance.
“Is this uncomfortable for you? We’re just trying to help, Killer...”
“Just... don't.”
The laughter vanishes instantly the moment he draws a breath to say it. Inside Killer, there is absolute calm.
“Everything is written on his face,” Kid used to say, their friend Victoria used to say, everyone who knew Killer before he took that alias used to say.
After Victoria’s death, Killer asked Kid to forget his real name and never mention it again. And Kid introduced him to the future crew properly.
“This is Killer — my right hand-man, a fighter in my crew. My partner.”
Partner — of course, Kid speaks like a comrade-in-arms, leaving out the details. “Partner.” It sounds meaningful and specific all at once.
“Everything is written on his face,” Victoria used to say, and were she alive, she could confirm it — everything Killer feels during a battle against an enemy is clearly written on his face. His lips stretch almost to his ears, the bandages press tight, clinging to his skin, his face burning. He steadies his breathing — he can’t lose control now. He looks right into their soul and laughs soundlessly, so that his enemies can only distinguish his giggles right before death, when they get impossibly close to him. He merges with his pseudonym, putting it on like a tight-fitting suit, until it becomes a second skin. He laughs as quietly as possible — without a voice, because his voice trembles uncontrollably at such moments. It’s better not to use it at all, leaving only the raspy whistling and a quiet chuckle if he really wants to.
The effect of the SMILE fruit is the worst nightmare Killer never even dreamed of; it came to him directly in reality.
It’s hard to control yourself when every emotion is immediately heard. It’s hard when you’re left without a helmet — effectively naked on all sides, because you simply can’t shut up and pull yourself together. It’s hard when the person most precious to you in the world sees you in such a vulnerable state.
It’s better to die. Better to drown. Ideally — instead of him, in exchange, just as Killer was promised. But the ideal is unreachable, and so they drown together. The ideal is unreachable because Killer lost to the Straw Hats' swordsman: he can count his defeats on the fingers of one hand — it’s the only finger, but it might as well be the thumb. That defeat cost two lives, two pirates of the Worst Generation. Will they just play with them, or actually kill them? Killer doesn't know; under water, he can’t think about anything, a single thought pulsing in his temples: How is Kid? The water tastes like tears. They say fresh water wouldn't be as bad, but there in prison, they knew full well: Devil Fruit users must be drowned in sea water. Killing two birds with one stone.
Even if they were drowned in the same barrel, it wouldn't be as bitter — getting to see his scar-covered face one last time.
Straw Hat secretly blabbed to him that when Kid saw him in Udon, he cried. Briefly, subtly — and yet he did. Killer didn't see it, Killer didn't realize — he couldn't see anything himself back then through the tears blinding his vision. Endless hysteria, the only one in his life; Killer hoped it would be the first and the last. One shouldn't be like this — a hostage to one's own emotions. He still has to... has to...
He has to become even stronger.
Turn himself into a machine. Leave no vulnerable spots, so that both he and his captain face less danger now.
The thought makes his stomach churn, because he’s a living human being, not a machine. He can’t always feel nothing but aggression and sadistic pleasure, because he has a crew — because, above all, he has Kid.
To stop feeling anything for him at all might be the right thing to do. That way, Kid won't lose his temper at the sight of a laughing Killer anymore and will focus on the enemies right in front of him. Without any distractions.
At first, Killer wants to forget, to extinguish the flame of his feelings, but doing so is extraordinarily hard when living in the same cabin with Kid and sharing the same bed. The captain doesn't take hints, so he’ll have to speak directly. What’s better — to suffer and break up? Leave the crew? Protect him from the shadows?
Love him... from the shadows.
Maybe that would be even better.
“Maybe that’s the problem. That I’m still part of the crew. I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You think too much,” Kid growls.
Killer is used to thinking for two. Sometimes for three, and that mythical, internal "someone" interferes with his logical thinking process far too much. Doubts that settled inside him after leaving Wano. That never used to happen to him.
“If you ever think about leaving the crew again, about leaving me, I’ll kil—”
An iron wardrobe rises into the air, flying rapidly and smashing through the wooden wall of the cabin. Killer takes off his helmet. He presses Kid to himself with a sigh:
“You really have no mercy for the shipwrights.”
“They don't eat our bread for nothing,” Kid snaps back.
“You have no mercy for anyone,” Killer wants to add. “Not for the rookies, not for Heat or Wire, not even for me... but how could I ever leave an idiot like you?”
He stays silent. The best strategy with Kid is to keep quiet until he calms down.
“Feeling better? Thanks for not throwing my wardrobe, at least,” he tells Kid once the captain’s heart stops beating so wildly.
“I wanted to throw your blades at first. But still...”
“You found some conscience!”
And he laughs — just like he always does. And Kid joins in with a deep, rumbling laugh that sounds quieter than Killer’s.
Kid feels him. Understands him. He’s beginning to tell the difference, just as he recognized the sincerity in Killer's laughter during the battle against Big Mom and Kaido.
Emotions no longer feel like a nightmare to Killer.
“I won't be able to leave the sea,” he says. “I’m especially attached to it now.”
It wasn't just Kid keeping him at sea. The past kept him there, along with the high bounty, the experience, the adventures, and the stories told around campfires on whatever island they stopped at. Laughter kept him there, like the call of a seagull. His will kept him there.
Straw Hat was right, after all: in this world, the Pirate King is the freest person alive. In a world where there is barely any land, the only thing left to do is sail. Keep afloat. Hold the course on one's own ship.
And even if Killer can no longer swim, if the sea eventually takes him in the end, then so be it.