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mekachu04Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Summary: He's not sure why it feels like he's still asleep, even long after he's woken up, tiny child body curled up under smelly blankets in a dingy back alley. He wonders where Killer wandered off to this early, his friend's body heat sorely missed in the dreary summer rain of Kutzk. The air is wet and cold and he reaches up to pull the blanket higher, water beading and rolling down the wool as he huddles under it. It keeps trying to slip off his left shoulder, the stub of his arm aching, partially the phantom pain that regularly haunts him, and then something deeper driven by the bleak weather.
Things are not what they seem when Kidd wakes up in the wrong place, the wrong time.
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Chapter 2: Burning Up then Freezing Cold
Kidd looked quietly at the woman on the bed, resting, but her face pinched in pain.
He doesn't know her, but seeing her unconscious in the bed, wrapped against the horrible burning on her body... it breaks his heart and he's not sure why.
Maybe because it reminds him of Killer, so many years ago, those horrible burns up his arm, down his hand, burns so bad that made it so he couldn't so much hold a fork for months. Couldn't fight, couldn't feed himself, couldn't lift his arm without whimpering in pain. A death sentence where they grew up, had it not been for Kidd watching his back.
Eustace Brichtrede made no such noises now. Not yet. Instead she lay at deaths door, with only a stranger's child to keep vigil.
The doctor who tended to her burns didn't think she'd wake up, wasn't sure how she'd survived in the first place. She'd been buried under the ruins of her home for hours when the building finally stopped smoking enough for the crowds to wander off. For neighbors to start the recovery process, picking though the ashes for anything salvageable.
He'd stayed away for a few days, but he wasn't sure where else to turn, no other connections, even as coincidental as his link to her. He spent the morning tucked into a harsh wooden chair at her side, lost in his own thoughts. It seemed the longer he was awake, the less he could remember. He inspects the scars on his arms - and he vividly remember.. well, not how he got them, but he can hear his crew, his family, screaming for him. He can remember Killer clutching him close as Wire and Heat cover them. the faces and voices of others, drifting in and out as he ponders the marks.
Faces and voices fall away, slipping under waves in his head, washed from his mind when he glances at the woman again.
They were burying her husband and baby later that day, holding off to see if she was being added to the grave but she stubbornly clung on, so they'd be laid to rest without her. The man'd taken the brunt of it, barely looked human when they'd found the family.
As for the baby....
Kidd didn't know how to feel about that... an impossible chance he was dead in the room next door, more ash and bone than infant.
He should be in his twenties, sailing the New World in his dreams. Not... some child. And even then, if the Marines hadn't lied - and, why would they? - he shouldn't be a child. He was 23, or even a few days old at most. Not 8. Like he's waiting for Killer to pick pockets while he sells his trinkets, still precocious enough to swindle naive passersbyers too much coin for a sad story. Like he's waiting for Victoria to stumble into their lives for the first time, with a bloody lip and a bigger than life attitude that had him and Killer both smitten at the start.
He curled up tighter in the chair, whimpering at how much it hurts to think about them. The dreams where he's running to her, trying to stop a bullet racing towards her - if he can just get closer, just a little more and he can pull the bullet to himself, he can save her.
He never makes it.
And the last few nights, some times it's not her standing across him anymore, but Killer. But Kidd is Victoria this time, Killer racing to him, hand outstretched, reaching for Kidd. Killer succeeds where Kidd fails, the bullet twisting away from it's path towards Kidd, and Kidd wakes up with a scream in his throat, Killer's mask broken and crumbling as the bullet rips through-
Kidd can't help the tears, shaking his head to try and toss the dream from his head. He's not sure when he drifted off, but the dim room darkens the fire in his head, the bright sun on blood, the day of his dream gradual transitioning away into night as both Victoria and Killer's faces dissolve away, harder to recall each time.
He curls up tighter, not sure why the loss feels so deep, but he hates this place so much. He hates not understanding what's going on, where he is, the more he learns the less it matches the things he knows. He wants to rage, wants to go hit someone until it makes sense again, but he doesn't even know where to start.What - to pick a fight with the Marines? Even with his devil fruit, he's just going to get his ass kicked in the end, if not killed out right.
He has no one to turn to, no Killer there to help him find the course. He's always seen the islands beyond on the horizon, felt them singing their siren songs, but it's been Killer to help him find which one to sail to, how to find the shore instead of getting smashed on the rocks of the coast.
He has no one now.
No one but a breathing corpse on the bed in front of him. A stranger wasting away, a ticking clock of how long Kidd has until he's back on the streets that don't match his memories, no matter how much his feet seem to know where to go.
One person until he's unmoored again, drifting.
One person, painful breathing harsh and heavy in his ears, twisting the pain in his heart.
Kidd glances up.
The woman was awake, her right tired, orange eye studying him from where she lay, the left side of her face swathed in bandages. Kidd wasn't sure what to say to her. She didn't look like she was any older than he was.. or had been. Tired, young. Sad. So sad.
He looked down at his tiny hand before looked back at her.
"I'll get the doctor."
