there's a side to Kidd that Luffy has seen that he's not sure anyone else has - not even his crew

broken.

when he was first thrown into prison nest to his peer - Kidd was a shadow of the man he'd met in sabody- nearly unrecognizable. his poster looked nothing like the man across from him, chained to the wall one handed, sitting in a pile of his own filth.

he moves broken - like he's been smashed and put back together wrong

They get in a argument that night - Luffy and Kidd both incapable of not riling the other other up and until Kidd does the unthinkable, much to Luffy's delight. His cuffs might be seastone, but the chain isn't - and Kidd's brawn has nothing to do with his devil fruit other than a side effect of lugging all that metal around.

Kidd gets so worked up he breaks the chain so he can storm over and Luffy and him devolve into a proper brawl. Luffy loved how good it feels to finally be able to hit something, and even if Kidd reaks - untold time trapped alone in the dark like this - the solid body under his fist is nice after being alone. nami's voice flouts back to him - intricate male rituals or something like that, a comment she makes about zoro and sanji's fighting, and he can't help but cackle in glee at he and Kidd's fight.

Kidd's offended at first - demanding to know what Luffy finds so funny - only for Luffy just smile at him. "i forgot how much fun fighting with you was. it was only that once, and everything went to shit after - but it was fun. we should fight more."

Luffy learned that Kidd was a lot of bravado and swagger and anger. but he was worried sick about his crew and the unknown was quite literally killing him. he was trapped in a standstil, rotting away form the inside as he feard any action would doom his crew.

The guards drug them out for work duty the next morning - saying if they had enough energy to fight, they had the energy to work.

Luffy winced when he saw Kidd recoil from the sun - just how long had he been alone int he dark for in the end?

he'd skittered off  - and Luffy figured that was the end of that until carabou had found him, souring any mood he'd been in.

Kidd had come back to defend his honour, or maybe he crew - but he did not care for the romours carabou was telling, and Luffy was fascinated to hear Kidd had tangled with shanks too, not sure how he felt when Kidd regarded the stump of his arm in his retelling.

at night, they are marched back to their cell again, and Luffy asks about shanks. Kidd is not generous to Luffy's idol and for maybe the first time in Luffy's life, he doesn't lash out about it. Instead they share stories about big mom and being a thorn in the woman's side, and eventually, Kidd tells him about how he was captured and about his crew

"My crew doesn't even believe in me anymore - Killer's been sneaking around behind my back, trying to get us allied up with other crews - we're falling behind, and he thinks that somehow this will help. I want to be furious at him - hell, I am furious at him - but I don't even know if he's even alive anymore. I know some of my crew is, because they drag 'em out to make me play nice, but I haven't seen ....

"I haven't seen Killer since Kaido showed up.

"You know - for a horrible moment, I was sure Killer's sold us out. he'd been pushing this alliance, and then Kaido's murdering my people. I didn't have his back for one moment - I stepped away from him. I was so sure he was going to stab me in the back right there that I let Apoo do it to him instead.

"Apoo was watching his back - watching Kaido smash his head in from behind. I don't know if Killer even knew what happen, he was just down. he never got back up, and I haven't seen him since.

"I think Kaido murdered my partner and I just let it happen. What kind of captain am i?"

Luffy thinks over his awn alliance with Law, and with the loose StawHat Fleet that are sailing around under his flag right now and he never though he needed any of that either.

kidd had had a fleet too - it sounded like, only for it to be destroyed by the emperes. kairdo had taken him prisoner and sailed back to wano on his own flag ship ,and there was such an insult in that too.

there was a fragility to Kidd that Luffy as pretty sure not many got to see, a man who could probably could on one hand the nice things people said to him, too used to turning insults into compliments

Luffy balked at seeing injustice happen and felt he need to act. Kidd looked at it like it was such a normal part of his life that it wasn't even noteworthy. he was completely desensitized to it to the point the even when Luffy tried to spell it out, he just got a blank look back.

and then the hippo guard tried to eat the old man, and Luffy was taken comeblelty off balance by Kidd showing up to mouth of the guards with him. he wasn't really helping, but he was certainly helpful and getting to beat up a guard with no conisqnces but a pep in  his step so  Luffy counted it as a win.

later that night, Kidd was shuffling through some papers he'd pilfered, squinting as he tried to read them in the dim light of the cell.

finally, he held one of to Luffy - "hey, what this part say?" he asked, poitning to a passage written out in what looked like mandate.

the dim light was doing Luffy no favors, and the letters danced around once he tried to focus on them. he tried to look at them from a different angle, and Kidd lowered the paper, "sorry - just.. assumed there. dun worry about it."

It was the softest - dare kindest - his voice had ever been and Luffy took the paper from him, trying again.

"the lighting makes it hard to keep the letters still," he offrerd as an explanation, feeling like he needed to explain himself; feeling defensive in the... nice ... way Kidd smiled at him.

Kidd was glancing solemnly at some of the other papers, "i stole em off hippo guard. it's probably not anything useful, i just thought it weird they used mandate. everything else here as been in common...or some.. weird fancy version of it."

"It's talking about weapons, like an invoice i think."

Kidd looked thoughtful, "well, it more than i can read of it, thanks Monkey."

it was a very carefully placed olive branch. or a trap. Luffy wasn't sure. "it is dark in here."

"or i just can't read mandate," Kidd confesses nonchalantly, looking at the paper in his hand, "back home, all the letters are pronounced different, so its a nightmare trying to read anything out here. I've never made heads or tales of it on the grand line. Why can't they just stick to common. Kanji means roughly the same thing everywhere and it's not hard to break them down to radicals and get a rough idea what's going on. Tree always means tree, even when it means a village or forest or vermilion. It's just another kind of puzzle to solve."

Luffy wondered what robin would make of that and grins, "I'm awful at reading both. i just make Zoro read it to me if it's that important. or robin  but that' cause she likes to read."

"there's no shame in that." Kidd says, before looking at him, "you said something about keeping the letters still?"

"hmm." Luffy's not sure how else to explain it, "they move around. dance."

Kidd knods, "I've heard about stuff like that before. that's okay, Wire can't ready either until it's really big letters, so mostly signs and stuff. anything too close gets out of focus and fuzzy so he just never really bothers with ti."

Luffy looked at the other papers Kidd was sorting though - all of them in some form on local language that looked like common, but not really. "which one's Wire?"

"Tall skinny fucker." Kidd says, then chuckles, "bastard's the reason so many of if got fucking heels - we're all trying to catch up to him. and you know what he does? he goes an wears stilettos. not like.. in a fight, thank god, but any chance he can, he does and makes himself even taller. pretty sure Killer's getting a complex over it."

Kidd goes quiet after that, talk about his crew usually does, but Killer's name always kills any conversation.

"Killer is Mask Guy - right?"

"Hmm."

"He's your first mate?"

Kidd chuckles, "Killer's my first everything." he admits. "first friend, first rival, first best friend, first ex, first .." he trailed off, the dark chill of the cell closing off those thoughts. "Yeah, Monkey. He's my first mate if you want to be technical. But he's also my partner. He's got just as much say on my ship as I do. We've just been having a rough go of it lately."

He doesn't want to entertain the idea that Killer might be gone - that their 'rough go' might have gotten his partner killed. "I didn't want an alliance. I told him that, over and over. I refused to hear him out on it. Maybe..."

The dark of the room swallowed up all the air, "Maybe if I had heard him out, I could have seen Apoo coming. Could of seen he was scheming something. Talked Killer into looking at one of the other crews."

Maybe if I'd been watching his back, supporting him, he'd be alive still, and our crew wouldn't be slaves under kaido and that orachi asshole.

"Oihyavah, kachil ka mah."