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A/N- Not gonna lie, summaries are like my LEAST favorite thing so hopefully they haven't been to terrible to read lol I had fun twisting the knife on this one. Enjoy!

Summary: Training is supposed to teach control. It doesn’t prepare you for the moment Kidd is in danger—and your scream tears across the battlefield hard enough to shatter the world around you. But power has a way of dragging old wounds into the light.

Reader POV

Training settles into routine. Mornings belong to Killer—footwork, balance, the controlled violence of twin scythes cutting clean arcs through the air. Afternoons are for scouting runs, for relearning rooftops and shadows, trusting your body to carry you where it once went without thought.  And at night, when most of the ship has gone quiet, you return to the one thing that still feels equal parts miracle and threat.

The mask. The pull of blood and violence. It’s not as foreign anymore. 

It used to sit heavy on your face—too tight, too present. Every breath through it felt mechanical, forced, like you were constantly aware of the thing keeping you alive.

Now, it’s just another part of you.

Kidd never says much when he finds you on the deck, wings half-spread beneath the moonlight, the respirator secured over your face. Sometimes he leans against the railing and watches. Sometimes he pretends he's there for the view. Neither of you bothers calling him out on it.

At first, it was just endurance—calling your powers forward, letting your lungs adjust, learning where the edges of your limits sat. Then control. Pushing it away before it consumed you. 

You’d play with your wings. Calling them faster, folding them away until the transition was smooth- second nature. Trusting that they would answer when you needed them.

Now the mask settles into place like part of the routine. Strap. Check the seal. Adjust the vents. Breathe in. Steady. Breathe out.

Below you- scrawny marines in the wrong place at the wrong time. You breathe in the fight.  Steel on steel. Shouting. Gunfire cracking. Bodies hitting the ground with dull thuds. You’re perched high on a rocky outcropping overlooking the shoreline, rifle braced to your shoulder, barrel angled toward the chaos.

You’re not alone– not really. Someone’s still there. A presence at the edge of your awareness, far enough that you can’t hear their breathing, far enough that an errant drop of blood won’t screw them if things go wrong. Allowing you a longer leash of control. It’s not Kidd. It isn’t Killer. Just one of the crew, stationed back as a precaution. Not hovering. Not watching every move. Just… there. A quiet safety net in case something shifts.

There’s less pressure now, more space. Other times fights like this broke out, someone was always close enough to contain you. Now the crew just fights. Like they know you’ll cover them. Like they trust you again.

A gust of wind carries the faint metallic scent of blood up the cliffside. Your chest tightens on instinct. For a second, you wait for it—that pull, that horrible clawing sensation at the back of your mind that makes your hands shake and your thoughts blur. It doesn’t come. The mask hums softly with each breath, filtering, dulling, protecting. You inhale. Exhale. Still steady.

You line up your next shot. Through the scope, the world narrows into clarity.

One of the enemy pirates charges straight for Heat, blade raised. You press your mechanical leg further into the ground. Adjust for wind, for movement, for timing— Fire.

Recoil kicks into your shoulder, familiar and grounding. Damn you’ve missed it.

The man drops. You cycle the bolt smoothly. No tremor. No rush of heat in your veins. Focus. Another target. A second shot. A third. Clean. Routine dulls the rest. 

A shiver runs down your spine. Something’s wrong. Below, the tide of the fight shifts. 

Kidd.

Pinned against a barrel by two recruits, one aiming a blade at his side.  Your heart thunders. The others are too far to intervene quickly. Without thinking, without hesitation, something primal rips from your chest.

It tears through you, shredding your throat—a scream. It doesn’t even sound human. It shatters the air like glass cracking. They stagger back, off balance. A shockwave snaps the barrels around Kidd into splinters. The sound echoes across the dock. The silence is louder than any battle.

Not paused—frozen. Enemy eyes dart frantically. Your crew looks up. They know. Killer remembers. 

You race down the hill, sand giving way beneath you as the fighting resumes, but the marines reel from your show of power. You reach Kidd, slicing through the last of the bastards. The Kidd Pirates seize the opening, pouncing on the last stragglers. The noise of battle bleeds back—the crew shouting, steel clashing, the enemy being driven back—but in this pocket of space, the fight had already ended. 

Your chest heaves. Heart pounding in your ears. You stare at your hands as if they belong to someone else. That scream—it’s always been yours.

Kidd stumbles upright, chest heaving, hair limp over his goggles, eyes wide. He grins, crooked, shaking his head. “Heh… that power,” he mutters, voice rough. “Same kind of damage I saw back at Sabaody. Whole place looked like it got hit by a cannon.”

You go still. 

He saw. He saw me.

Your stomach drops so fast it almost hurts. The world narrows, sound peeling away until all that's left is the thunder of blood in your ears. Your fingers tighten around the scythes until your knuckles ache white. 

Memories and nightmares alike slam into you—chains biting into your wrists, the crowd roaring, hands grabbing, voices bidding. Terror so complete it had hollowed you out from the inside.

And him. Watching. Seeing exactly what you were in that moment: collared, cornered, displayed. 

Shame and horror twist together beneath your ribs, hot enough to burn. Your knees threaten to buckle. The scythes suddenly feel less like weapons and more like anchors, the only things keeping you upright. 

He saw me like that.  Not bloodied after a fight. Not battle-worn. Broken. Stripped of everything, made to feel like nothing at all. Worthless. 

And somehow, that hurts even worse.

“No,” you whisper, voice thin as ice and just as tight. 

Kidd’s grin vanishes. His scowl back in place. “Huh?”

Your head snaps up, fury clawing its way through the shock.

“You—when I was…” Your voice catches, splintering and tears free anyway.  “When they sold me. You saw it. You saw what those bastards did to ME.” Your throat burns. “You were there and did nothing!?” 

Kidd’s head snaps as if you just hit him, hackles rising. “The hell are you talking about!?” His own temper flares, matching yours blow for blow. His chest rising hard, muscles taut, every line of him suddenly dangerous. 

And you don’t care. All you saw was red. Anger stoked by the burn of shame. 

“I wasn’t there when it happened,” he snaps. “I only saw what was left. The glass. The wreckage. I didn’t see the bastards touch you.” His jaw damn near cracking.

But you barely hear him. Your lungs won't fill. Your vision tunnels. Every nerve feels stripped raw, the terror flooding back- fresh as the day they branded you, until anger is the only thing keeping you from drowning in it.

“You expect me to believe that?” you choke. “You were right there! Strong enough to tear the whole place apart. But you wouldn't—”

“Don't.” The word cracks like a whip.

Kidd steps forward hard enough to make the ground groan beneath his boots. Fury blazes in his eyes, but beneath it is something even sharper. 

“Don’t you put that on me,” he growls, jaw clenched so tight you can see the muscle jump. “I would've ripped that whole DAMN island apart with my bare hands if I'd been there.” 

The force of it steals your breath.Cutting through your anger.  

Because he means it. Every word.

He drags a hand through his hair, breathing hard, trying—and failing—to leash his temper.

“That scream,” he says, voice still rough, still burning around the edges. “That was you.”  

“All you.” His gaze locks onto yours.“You gave ‘em hell.”

Something in his expression shifts—anger giving way to something older. Darker. Helpless in a way Kidd hates more than anything.

Even he seems startled by the rawness in his own voice. Your anger falters, cracking at the edges.

“I… I didn’t mean…” Words come out small now, guilt twisting your stomach. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”

“You don’t have to mean it,” Kidd cuts in, still intense, but the edge shifts—less defensive, more desperate. "You're not broken, and you're not some out-of-control monster unless you decide to be." 

He’s breathing hard, shoulders tight, like he’s still halfway in the fight. 

“And even then,” he adds, voice dropping, rough and fierce, “if you chose to be a monster, I would still be here. But you’re not dealing with it alone. Not while I’m breathing.”

You stare at him, wide-eyed, trembling. The realization hits like a punch to the chest. Your scream. Your power. Yours alone.

Not something done to you. Something that came from you. Something you survived. Something that saved him.

And Killer, off to the side, lets out the slightest nod—an almost imperceptible acknowledgment of what you just accomplished, a quiet respect earned.

But in this moment, it’s just the two of you. Breathing hard. Raw and angry. Hurt. Finally— standing on the same side of it.

The noise of the crew fades further into the background, distant now—like it belongs to another world entirely. Your chest is still heaving. So is his. Too close.

You don’t remember stepping in. Or maybe he did. It doesn’t matter. The space between you is gone, burned away in adrenaline and anger- and maybe something sharper. Kidd doesn’t move back. Neither do you.

Heat still burns in his eyes—only now it’s not on the fight. Your pulse stutters.

The mask is still on. You can hear your own breathing through it, steady but loud in your ears. Feel it bounce back against your skin. Trapped between you and him.

His gaze flicks to it. Lingers.

“You gonna keep that on,” he mutters, voice low, rougher now, “or are you finally gonna breathe?”

His words shouldn’t affect you the way they do. They shouldn’t hit that wall you’ve built so hard. Shouldn’t send a wave of heat through you, shouldn’t have your thighs pressing tight together. Because this isn’t about the mask. Not really.

Your fingers twitch at your sides, still curled from gripping your scythes—still buzzing from the echo of that scream. From him. From everything.

Kidd catches the movement—jaw tightening. For a second, you don’t move. Neither of you were ever talented at backing down.