Chapter 4: Colorless Life
A/N: Another short drabble without plot. This chapter is based solely on Luffy's P.O.V.
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Dark orbs stared at the picture frame before him for a good two minutes. It used the rugged earthy color that symbolize natural landscape—barnyard red with a rustic red finish.
The small voice inside the boy spoke: so the man was fond of with this type of art. Warm, welcoming and elegant.
Less than five minutes ago, Kidd had to run to the nearest convenient store since they were out of milk. Given that the mechanic was too hell bent to make pancakes for today breakfast, Kidd practically sprinted in order to obtain the missing ingredient. Today was Saturday and seeing that Luffy was still in bed when he discovered the house was milk-less, he had left the note on the refrigerator saying that he would be back in less than twenty minutes top.
Another three minutes had passed and Luffy still gazing at the picture frames on the black oak end table. He crouched a bit so the inanimate objects would be on his eye level. The tip of his index finger traced along the acrylic glass that was supposed to protect the picture inside the frame.
There were three people inside the photograph—two boys around twelve or thirteen years old along with a man in late thirties. One of the boys was smiling menacingly while holding a wrench with his right hand. He wore a round goggles on his forehead and his spiky, red hair was spread out, like a lion mane.
Beside him was a boy with a curly blonde hair that covered half of his eyes. A chocolate flavored pocky dangled between lips as he stared back at the camera with a slight smirk. Although the hair obscured the top part of his head, the band aid on the forehead, just above the left eyebrow was still noticeable.
Behind the boys was a man with the same intense, red hair as the boy with the wrench. Only that the hair was slightly longer and slicked back. He looked like an older version of the boy, minus the menacing smile. Instead, the big smile he was showing appeared to be a lot warmer, the kind of smile that welcomes anyone into his beatific orbit. Both of his hands were seen circling around the boys' neck in a loving manner.
They seemed to be getting along. Like a family. Maybe they were family after all.
Luffy wondered if those with family would smile like that. The blond lady from the agency told him that Kidd was his big brother. A family. If that's the case, would he smile like those people in the picture?
Looking back, he did have a family. A mother. But little Luffy couldn't recall the time where he had smiled. Or laughed. Or felt happy. Not when his house was nothing more like a dark well that drank in everything that related to happiness, tenderness and warmth. More than once he thought about accepting other people kindness—his kindergarten teacher, the friendly neighbor that lived below them or maybe the boy that sat next to him at his previous school. But each and everytime, the fear and loneliness embraced him, firm and unyielding. Little by little, those longing feeling dissipated, sucked into the dark well.
He wasn't sure when it began. But by the time he was six, there was already a wall grew around him, high as ever to keep the rest of the world away. If those longing feeling would only guide him into sorrow and pain, then he shall block them out. No one or nothing could ever go to get him again. He still spoke when asked and did as told, but at the same time, he put a mental shield around everything that was tender in him to protect himself.
But there was a price to pay when putting up the shield. His emotions. When speak of emotions, it wasn't to imply that he wasn't capable to feel anything for he felt it all. Just like a normal human. But the wall and the mental shield weren't built only to block the world from outside but also to oppose everything from inside from breaching the wall. That everything would be his emotions, his needs, his desires. And the results were the void eyes and the impassive look and the lack of conversation skill. All was done to protect him from the rest of the world.
However, there was someone who was trying to break through his wall. And he was relentless to the core.
That person would be Kidd.
At first, he ignored the man's very presence with a hope that his brother would just give up like the others before him. Unfortunately, Kidd's level of patience towards his cold shoulders was off charts and so the man proceeded without batting an eyelid.
Kidd spent quite a chunk of his money to buy him things. From the bedroom furniture to his clothes, his shoes and even his toiletries. That was how the man managed to shook his wall a bit.
Thing was, almost everything that the man bought was to his liking. For example, his bedding. Secretly, he sort of likes the sailor-like concept that somewhat symbolized adventure and fun. Sometimes, when he was certain that Kidd wasn't looking, his hand would brush over the printed images fondly, especially the boat while fantasizing that he was sailing in it. Even when he had refused to cooperate with the redhead in deciding his own clothing and forced his brother to make the decision, Kidd's still hadn't lose his patience. It seemed that he had underestimated the strength of the man's endurance. Much to his dismay, even the clothes picked by the older male actually looked nice on him.
The overture didn't stop there. Each day Kidd would try to create a small talk with him by bringing up random topics. At first, the man looked awkward himself and it was safe to assume he had no clue how to start a conversation with an eight year old kid. But gradually, he picked up his pace and came up with a subject that normally would interest a boy at his age like,
"There's a new pirate ship model at Whitebeard's Pirate World. The ship has pirates, canons, sharks, crow's nest and everything. And you can open it up to see the inside. Want to have a look?"
Or, "Do you remember the cyborg from last night show? The one with the laser beam and all? Kind of cool, huh. Although the character seemed like a pervert to me…"
And, "It's been raining a lot lately. Maybe tomorrow we'll see the whole town submerged in sea water and there'll be weird looking sea creatures swimming around. What do you think Luffy?"
Maybe the last one was too odd to even be a conversation topic.
When the 'making a small talk' strategy was going nowhere, Kidd then opted simple activities and asked him to do it together. So far, he had been hearing from the man, "let's make the bed together", "come here and help me fold these clothes", "we'll be doing some house cleaning today" and the list went on.
Kidd wanted to connect with him using every method he could think of.
As the week went by, his brother grew more and cleverer at getting around his wall, like when he bombarded him with food. There would be heaps of food on the table regardless it was breakfast, lunch or dinner and asked him to finish it all up since the man couldn't take another bite. Kidd even emphasized that it would be bothersome to pack the leftover to be put into the fridge. Not enough with that, it was almost became an everyday after school basis to stop by at the vendor near the neighborhood park for crepes, ice creams or pretzels on their way back home. At night, a cup of hot cocoa always waited for him slightly after dinner.
And he couldn't allow himself to ignore the mouthwatering beverage. Especially when it sat there on the table, looking all warm and delicious, topped with whipped cream, cocoa powder and melted marshmallows.
He thinks Kidd wanted to fatten him up.
The food bombardment got worse when Kidd discovered the art of cooking. However, for the first two weeks he'd stayed with the man, it was a total calamity. That is to say, Kidd was a terrible cook. Apart from egg, toast and coffee, everything prepared by the redhead was totally unrecognizable. Most of them were either burnt into some kind of black entity or turned into a revolting, mushy matter that seemed caustic enough to dissolve silver cutlery.
Few times Kidd had attempted in making pasta. The result was a gooey, white blob with a scoop of red blood soup that later he learned as the pasta sauce. On that time, perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, but somehow he was almost certain the white blob wriggled beneath the sauce as though it was alive. But his suspicion was confirmed immediately when Kidd himself squealed at his own creation. Almost like a girl.
The dish itself appeared like something that enjoyed by those who lives on the seventh layer of hell.
In any case, Kidd learned and surprisingly, a fast leaner too. The redhead purchased piles of cooking books and video to improve his skills. Numerous times he heard clacking sounds in the kitchen early in the morning which indicated that his brother went out of his way and woke up earlier than he should so Kidd could practice making whatever he had in mind. Day by day, he noticed the amount of band aids on the man's hand increased, courtesy to the sharp knives and hot pan. There was a time that he thought that Kidd might end killing himself while in the middle of making chicken stroganoff. But Kidd hadn't perished. What's more, the quality of the foods even had improved gradually.
No more black entity. No more gooey matter. Just your everyday edible food. And in reality, he kind of enjoyed these so called homemade meals.
The same goes with some of Kidd's friends. The lanky man with a long, blond hair would drop by once in a while, bringing with him load of snacks—potato chips, cheese puffs, doughnuts, jell-o, etc. Sometimes, the snacks the blond brought had never been seen in his entire life and he couldn't help but to wonder from which underground stores the man bought them. Several times he had heard Kidd referred the blond as snack eating monster and the man only respond was to dump the junk food in front and ask him to join scoffing the lot.
Surely eating this amount of junk foods wouldn't be good for his health, will it?
Yet, he did join the man and when he did, the blond would ruffle his head or pat his shoulder with a tiny smile.
The blond was the second person to touch him after Kidd.
Then, there was this woman who worked at the Spider Café and Kidd had told him she was the café's owner. Whenever they went to the cozy looking place, the dark-blue haired woman would personally take their order and everything. She would ask if he wanted to top up his juice, or if the food was too hot and if he wanted her to pour more maple syrup for his pancakes and many more.
And she had a funny way of walking too.
The sound of familiar footfalls interrupter the boy's reverie and Luffy quickly padded back into his room. At the same moment he heard the front door being unlocked, he had already slid under the cover, pretending to be asleep. The raven-haired boy just didn't want to face the man who was trying to crack open his wall.
Up until now, he had very little kindness from people and he was used to it. But the abundant warmness and compassion from Kidd and his friends terrified him. It felt too foreign.
Luffy wonder for how long the wall could keep this people at arm-length away from him.
-To be Continued-
A/N: People started asking me if there ever will be any mugiwara crew in the story. Well, to answer that question, there will be a NO since I like diversity in my characters, that is to say, I want all sort of characters to be in my stories. From Shichibukai, Yonkou, 11 Supernovas, CP9 and all those from different arc. Sine this is a major AU, the character's role obviously would be a major surprise too. You won't know whose going to be who.
