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It’s early morning, and Killer is barely awake when Kidd throws an empty bucket at him.
“I'm going diving today. C’mon,” Kidd says, speaking, as he so often does, in demands. He’s already dressed for diving — even rattier shorts than usual, goggles on his head, a towel around his neck. “You’re gunna spot me.”
Killer sits up, rubbing the rest of the sleep from his eyes and untangling himself from his blanket nest. Pale dawn sunbeams pry their way through the slats that make up the wall of their flop.
“…Okay,” says Killer. He gets to his feet and starts getting dressed, pulling on a faded pair of jeans and a too-big, formally-white shirt. “I can spot you.”
Kidd snorts, leaning against the makeshift door frame. “I know you can. That’s why I keep you around.”
Killer combs his bangs over his eyes just in time to hide them rolling. Brat. Everyone in his old gang would wonder why he puts up with it.
That’s okay. Killer is used to seeing things other people can’t necessarily see. Like brilliance in this scrappy little red head, who can dive like he’s made for it.
They walk together out of the scrap yard, into the streets. Killer carries the empty bucket, and Kidd fists his hands in the ends of his towel. It’s early enough that most of the people out are fishermen coming in from night fishing or heading out for the day, or working girls heading in after the night, or the baker. One of the working girls waves to Killer, who waves back.
“You know her?” Kidd demands. “She your girlfriend or something?”
Killer elbows him in the side. “No, and you know it. Stop running your mouth, pipsqueak. It’ll get you in trouble one day.”
“Fuck you.”
“There’s that mouth again.”
Kidd walks backwards for a few steps, just so he can face Killer and flip him off. “I haven’t lost a fight yet.”
“That’s because you keep getting me into fights with you.”
“Well,” says Kidd, “you do keep winning them.”
Absolute fucking brat. Killer smooths his bangs farther into his eyes, and doesn’t dignify it with an answer.
They get to their dock without anyone else speaking to them, or even acknowledging them. Killer takes his hand out of his pocket and uses the other one to put the bucket down on the sun-bleached wood. Kidd balls up his towel and throws it at him, and Killer catches it without looking.
It isn’t really their dock, anymore than their flop is their house, which just means that it might as well be theirs by nature of no one else using it. It’s too small for any of the fishing boats to dock at, and in too deep and rocky an area for any of the other kids to want to swim off of. Killer’s pretty sure it was built for some rich bastard’s private ship, back then their island had any rich bastard on it. Kidd, however, is convinced that the dock was built by pirates, maybe even Gold Roger himself.
Kidd’s weird like that, but Killer’s not complaining.
“Okay,” says Killer, folding himself down so he’s sitting on the dock. “I’m spotting.”
Kidd hums in agreement, bouncing his weight from one foot to the other. He pulls his goggles over his eyes. He tosses his skinny arms back, stretches them one way and then the other way, rolls his shoulders to loosen them.
He looks at Killer. Killer gives him a thumbs up.
Kidd takes a running start to the edge of the dock, flings himself forward, and dives. He cuts through the air like the blade of a knife, quick and slicing, and enters the water so perfectly he barely makes a splash. Killer watches his water-blurred shadow go down, down, down into the dark rocks below them.
It is, as always, incredibly impressive to watch.
Killer makes himself comfortable on the edge of the dock. He sits and lets his feet hang over, toes still a inches away from the water, save for the occasional wave swell. He puts the bucket next to him.
He counts.
One minute. Two. Three. Still no sign of a surfacing body.
Killer keeps counting.
At four and a half minutes, a dark shape makes itself clear under the water, and then breaches with a splash and a gasp for air.
“You good, Kidd?” Killer asks, already lowering the bucket towards the water.
“Yeah, yeah, don't fuss.” Kidd swims awkwardly into arms reach of the bucket, only using his legs to propel himself.
He stretches out to meet it, and lets five clams drop with a clank into the bottom. They are dark and slick with saltwater. Closed up, large, and alive.
Kidd uses his now-free hands to flick the hair out of his face, and then to tread water more easily.
Killer askes, “We eatin’ these or sellin’ them?”
“Sellin’ em,” Kidd says, only slightly out of breath. “Want more engine parts.”
Killer tilts his head. “And food.”
“Sure, sure.” Kidd waves him off. “And food. But also engine parts.”
Hidden by his bangs, Killer rolls his eyes.
“Diving again,” Kidd declares, turning back to the open ocean.
“Spotting,” responds Killer, and watches once again as Kidd submerges himself in water and torpedoes down, down, down.
Kidd is, without a doubt, the strongest swimmer Killer’s ever seen. He swims like he was born in the water, and dives like he was meant to be dropped into it. Free diving is difficult for adults with grown-up lungs, and Kidd can already beat them all.
He moves like a minnow. Or an otter. For all Killer’s spotted for him, he’s never needed to jump in after him once.
(“You sure your ma didn't have scales? Wasn't an algae-sucker?” the shopkeep who buys from them asks one day, all snide and judgmental, dragging his eyes over Kidd to look for aquatic features.
Killer pulls himself up to his full height, so that Kidd can stand tall next to him. “No,” Kidd snarls back, “I’m just the best.”)
And, yeah, maybe Killer did leave behind a much more powerful gang to roll his eyes at a pipsqueak. But he’s got a pretty good people-sense. And there is something about this pipsqueak he trusts.
So Killer watches and counts as Kidd dives, again and again, bringing up enough clams to clear up Killer’s worry about food and Kidd’s longing for bits to tinker with. When the bucket is near-overflowing and the sun is higher in the sky, Kidd reaches an arm out of the surf. Killer changes how he’s sitting so he can brace against the dock better, clasps hands with Kidd, and hauls him out of the water.
Kidd tips backwards, water running off of him and staining the pale wood of the dock black. He’s out of breath, and his goggles have left slight indents on the edges of his nose. Killer lobs the towel at him.
“See any treasure down there?” asks Killer, tilting his head towards the sun. It’s getting warmer by the second, but the air is still cool on the skin.
Kidd wraps himself in the towel, huddles on the side of the dock. “No treasure,” he says, “just clams. One day, though.”
“You sound real sure about that.”
“Yeah.” He reaches into the bucket, takes the two largest clams out of the top. He dries them off with an edge of his towel while he stares out at the horizon. His face is set and determined. “We’re gunna be pirates, one day. Have all the treasure we can dream of.”
Kidd holds both clams out to Killer, expectantly. Killer looks at them and snorts.
“I thought we were selling these,” he says.
Kidd glares. “We are. But one each ain’t gunna hurt it. We got enough.”
Fair point. Not like either of them has eaten breakfast. Killer flips his knife out of his pocket, and shucks first one clam, and then the other. Kidd takes his and hangs his own feet off the dock, eyes back on the horizon. He’s almost leaning against Killer, a warm weight against his side.
“Who says we’re going to be pirates?” says Killer, finally processing what Kidd said. “I never said I was going to be a pirate.”
Kidd looks at him like he’s stupid, which is rich, coming from him. “Sure you are. We’re gunna be pirates. You’re going to be my first mate. It’s gunna be great.”
“What if I don’t wanna be a pirate, huh?”
And Kidd looks at him with an expression at odds with his young face. It’s the same expression he wears right before he takes a running start for a dive.
“Someone’s gotta find all of Gold's stuff, right?” he says, dead serious. “The One Piece. All that power’s right there. Someone’s gotta take it. And it’s gotta be us, Kil, you know? It’s gotta be.”
He speaks with the conviction of a prayer, and Killer is lost.
He casts his eyes to Kidd’s horizon. Lifts the clam shell to his lips, and lets the briny-soft meat fill his mouth, and then his stomach. It feels so much more satisfying, more filling, than it has any right to. The morning light casts the ocean magic.
“Damn right it does,” Killer says, and knows they’ll make it so.
.
Years later, he will watch Kidd staring at a Devil Fruit with equal intensity.
He will say, “Kidd,” because he alone knows what Kidd will be giving up.
Because the ocean hates those with Devil Fruits. It rejects them, wants them gone, tries to drown them. And, for all Kidd has finally begun to hit his growth spurt, Killer can still see him as a too-small-too-skinny kid, diving like it’s the only thing he was created to do.
Kidd, the strongest swimmer Killer’s ever met. Who dove for shellfish to sell or, when their jobs were tight and the fishing was tighter, for them to boil and eat, burn their fingers and tongues with, gulp down and laugh at how they outsmarted and outswam the universe.
Kidd, whose greatest power has always been the way he moves through water.
But this is greater power still.
And Kidd looks at Killer the way he looks at the horizon, the way he looked at their first ship. He looks at Killer, determined, and already mourning. Heavy, but not with a single regret.
“It’s gotta be us, Killer,” he says, and Killer knows, and Kidd takes a bite of the fruit.