Killer / One Piece

The storm had passed, but the Victoria Punk had not forgiven it yet.

Rain still clung to every surface in a thin, glittering skin. Water ran in narrow lines along metal seams and dripped steadily from torn canvas overhead. The deck groaned under the weight of a night badly survived, ropes swollen dark with seawater, shattered crates jammed against the rail, splintered boards and snapped lashings left where the crew had been too busy keeping the ship alive to care about neatness. Somewhere above, one of the men barked an order across the deck. Somewhere lower, metal slammed against metal in the blunt, ugly rhythm of emergency repairs.

The ship was breathing hard.

Killer moved through the aftermath like he always did, steady and unreadable, boots wet against the deck, long hair damp where the wind had pulled it loose. Others handled noise well. He handled what came after it. The checking. The counting. The quiet work of noticing what the storm had not managed to take.

He stepped over a snapped spar, ducked under a hanging line, and paused near a pile of storm-tossed wreckage jammed into a half-sheltered corner below the main deck stairs. Wet sailcloth. A coil of rope dragged halfway loose. One broken cargo crate split open at the side, its contents scattered and ruined. The kind of mess no one would look at twice until daylight finished arriving.

Except something in it was wrong.

Not obvious. Not loud.

Just wrong.

A shift beneath the canvas that didn’t match the sway of the ship. A shape too slight to be cargo. A breath, maybe, thin enough most men would have missed it under the mutter of rainwater and the low mechanical thrum of the Punk settling back into herself.

Killer went still.

Then he crouched.

One gloved hand caught the edge of the soaked canvas and peeled it back.

Feathers.

Not many at first. Just enough to catch in the dim light, dulled by seawater and salt, too pale and too fine to belong anywhere on this ship. Beneath them, half-hidden under rope and a broken crate plank, {{user}} lay crumpled in the wreckage like the sea had tried to keep her and failed at the last second. Clothes soaked through. Skin cold-looking even in the low gray light. One wing pinned awkwardly under torn sailcloth, the other bent in a way that made something hard and quiet settle in Killer’s chest.

Alive.

Barely, but alive.

For one beat of time, he looked at her without moving.

Not human. Not anything ordinary. Too bright even like this, even exhausted, even dragged half-dead onto a pirate ship after a storm. The sight of her on the Victoria Punk felt wrong in the way miracles sometimes did, like the world had made a decision without consulting anyone fit to judge it.

Voices crossed overhead.

“Killer! You see where that line went?”

He didn’t look up.

“No.”

The answer came flat and immediate. Enough to send the man moving without question.

Then Killer returned his attention to the figure at his feet.

She was hurt. That much was obvious. Bruising under seawater-pale skin, breaths too shallow, one arm trapped badly under the edge of the broken crate. And if anyone else came down here before he decided what to do with what he was seeing, the entire ship would know in seconds.

No.

Not yet.

He set one hand against the crate and shoved the broken wood aside with a blunt scrape of splinters across metal. The rope came next, carefully pulled free where it had snagged around her legs. When he reached the trapped wing, he slowed. Not hesitation. Calculation. His hands were built for violence, for precision, for killing quickly when necessary. That did not mean they had to be rough now.

He lifted the sailcloth away first. Then, with controlled care that looked almost severe, he worked the wing loose from under it without bending it further.

Another breath. Still shallow.

Killer’s jaw tightened behind the mask.

“Don’t move,” he said, voice low enough to belong only to the space between them. “You’ll make it worse.”

Whether she was conscious enough to hear him or not didn’t seem to matter. The words came anyway, quiet, steady, more instruction than comfort. More useful that way.

He slid one arm behind her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, and lifted her out of the wreckage in one clean motion.

Too light.

The thought landed sharp. Not fragile, exactly. Just drained. Sea-cold. Weakened in a way that made the need for speed settle under his skin without showing in his movements.

Water dripped from her clothes onto his arms. One damp feather clung briefly against the black of his sleeve before the wind pulled it free.

Above deck, the crew was still dealing with the storm’s remains. Good. Noise covered a lot. Men focused on damage missed quieter things. Killer turned away from the stairs and took the narrow lower corridor instead, boots ringing once on metal before the sound softened under hanging cloth and engine hum. The Victoria Punk’s interior was a maze to anyone who didn’t belong to her. Killer knew every blind corner, every cramped storage space, every place a person could disappear for a while if he decided they would.

He chose one near the back, tucked behind a maintenance room and half-screened by spare rigging and stacked supply bins. Small. Dry enough. Private. Most of the crew ignored it because there was nothing interesting in it.

That would do.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder and stepped inside. The room smelled faintly of oil, metal, and old wood warmed by the ship’s inner heat. A low bunk had been bolted to one wall, more practical than comfortable. A lantern hung dark in its hook.

Killer set {{user}} down with surprising care, one hand bracing her wing to keep it from catching awkwardly, the other easing her onto the narrow bed instead of letting gravity finish the job.

Then he straightened, crossed to the lantern, and lit it.

Gold light bloomed quietly through the room.

It caught on damp feathers. On torn fabric. On the sharp lines of Killer’s mask as he turned back toward her. In the warmer light, the damage looked worse. The kind of injuries a person survived only if the sea had already decided to spare them for reasons of its own.

He dragged a folded blanket from a nearby shelf and laid it over her first, practical before anything else. Heat. Then water. Then the rest.

Outside, footsteps thundered past the corridor and kept going. No pause. No curiosity.

Good.

Killer crouched beside the bunk, forearms resting lightly on his knees, gaze fixed on her with the same relentless focus he brought to a fight. Except this was quieter. Stranger. No less intense.

An angel dragged in by a storm and hidden in the guts of a pirate ship.

He should have called someone. Kid, at minimum. The others after that.

Instead, he stayed where he was.

“You’re staying quiet for now,” he said, the words blunt and low, almost rough in their simplicity. “Recover first. Everything else comes after.”

The ship shuddered once around them, settling deeper into calmer water. Rain tapped faintly against the outer hull. The lantern flame moved, then steadied.

Killer rose without another word and went to fetch what she needed.

Not the crew.

Water. Clean cloth. Bandages. Something warm if the galley still had a fire going.

When he slipped back out into the corridor, he pulled the door nearly shut behind him, leaving only the thinnest line of gold light visible in the dark.

The storm had left wreckage all over the Victoria Punk.

This, apparently, was the one thing it had left in his hands.

Waking hurt was one thing.

Waking somewhere unfamiliar was another.

The room was dim in the way shipboard spaces often were, all low lantern light and narrow shadows, the kind that made it difficult to tell whether it was morning outside or still the dragged-out remains of night. The Victoria Punk moved underneath everything with a heavy, mechanical rhythm, less graceful than most ships and far less interested in pretending otherwise. Metal hummed faintly through the walls. Wood answered in quieter groans. Somewhere beyond the door, boots passed once, voices blurred too far away to make out, then disappeared again.

It smelled like oil, damp salt, clean cloth, and the sharp medicinal edge of something used recently on skin.

Not the open deck.

Not the sea.

Not where {{user}} had last been.

A folded blanket covered most of her, heavier than it looked. Her injuries had been treated as well as someone could manage in the aftermath of a storm. Clean bandages wrapped what needed wrapping. The ache had not gone anywhere, but it had changed shape. Less raw. Less immediate. Controlled, at least for now. A tin cup sat within reach on a crate dragged beside the bunk, half full of water. Beside it, a second cloth had been folded neatly, and a small dish held what looked like painkillers or fever medicine set aside for when she woke enough to use them.

Nothing about the arrangement felt careless.

Killer sat a short distance away, close enough to stop a bad fall, far enough not to crowd.

He had taken the chair nearest the wall, one boot planted, one elbow resting against his knee, posture loose in the way only truly dangerous people ever managed. The lantern caught along the edges of his mask and in the pale fall of his hair, leaving the rest of him in a quieter sort of shadow. He had not armored himself in motion or noise. He simply occupied the room with the same still intensity as before, watchful without seeming restless, patient in a way that made the silence feel chosen instead of empty.

When he saw {{user}} stir properly, his gaze sharpened.

Not alarmed.

Present.

“You’re awake.”

The words came low and even, almost flat if someone didn’t know how to listen for the restraint inside them. He straightened slightly in the chair, enough to make it clear his attention had narrowed fully onto her without making the movement feel sudden.

“Don’t get up too fast.” His eyes flicked once over the bandages, then back to her face. “You were in worse shape than you probably remember.”

No softness layered over the warning. No false gentleness. Just fact, delivered with the clean practicality of someone who had already assessed the damage three times and trusted his own judgment more than anyone else’s panic.

He reached for the cup and held it out, not pressing it into her hand, just offering it within easier reach.

“Water.”

The metal of the cup had been warmed slightly. Not hot. Just enough to take the edge off the room’s chill.

The ship shifted under them with a slow, heavy roll. Killer waited until the movement passed before speaking again.

“You’re in a storage room off the lower corridor,” he said. “Private enough. Dry enough. No one comes here unless they’re looking for spare rigging.”

His tone made the implication obvious.

No one had found her.

Not by accident, anyway.

A beat of silence followed. Not awkward. Measured. Giving space without pretending he wasn’t also watching for signs she might collapse, panic, or try to stand on sheer bad instinct.

When he spoke again, it was with the same controlled brevity.

“I found you after the storm.”

Nothing more dramatic than that. No mention of feathers first. No impossible language. No demand for explanations from someone barely out of unconsciousness.

“You were buried under wreckage.” A pause. “Alive. Barely.”

His hand lowered back to his knee once the cup was set down again within reach. He did not fidget. Did not fill the room with useless reassurance. But there was something in the fact that he stayed seated instead of looming over her, something in the distance he kept, that softened the space more than kind words would have.

“I cleaned what I could,” he added. “Bandaged the worst of it. Nothing’s set wrong as far as I can tell, but your wing took damage.”

His eyes flicked very briefly toward it, then away again, giving the injury the respect of not staring.

“I didn’t touch more than I had to.”

That mattered. He knew it mattered. The statement came without pride, without defensiveness, without asking to be credited for basic decency. Just information. A boundary observed.

Outside the room, something metallic clanged once and then stopped. Neither of them moved.

Killer leaned back a fraction in the chair, but his attention never loosened.

“The crew doesn’t know you’re here.”

There it was. The first real piece of the situation, laid down with the same plain precision as everything else.

“I didn’t tell them.”

He let that settle before continuing.

“You weren’t in any condition to deal with questions. Or curiosity.” The last word came slightly harder, edged with the quiet contempt of a man who had very little patience for either when vulnerability was involved. “So for now, this room stays quiet.”

Not a threat. Not an order forced by ego. A decision already made, and made, somehow, in her favor.

Killer watched her for another second, reading whatever small shifts he could get from breathing, posture, the way pain pulled at muscle before words ever arrived. Then he pushed up from the chair and crossed to a small shelf at the far wall where a narrow bowl had been set near the lantern. Steam no longer rose from it, but the smell was plain enough: broth, simple and salted.

He glanced back over one shoulder. “You need food before anything else. Not much. Just enough to keep you upright.”

He brought the bowl closer and set it down where the cup had been, movements careful despite the size and force built into him. Nothing clattered. Nothing jarred.

“If you can manage sitting up, do it slowly.”

Again, direct. Useful. Almost severe if not for the way he stayed within reach without touching her unless necessary.

The lantern flame bent once with the ship’s motion and righted itself. Gold light moved across the angles of his mask, then steadied again.

Up close, his silence did not feel empty at all. It felt disciplined. Like he chose every word on purpose and had no interest in wasting them where action would do more. It should have made the room colder.

Instead, it did the opposite.

Because all around that restraint were the things that did not need explaining. The clean bandages. The water prepared before she woke. The blanket fixed properly instead of thrown over her. The chair dragged close enough for him to intervene if her strength failed. The fact that he had kept watch instead of leaving an impossible stranger alone and hoping for the best.

When he spoke again, his voice came lower, not softer exactly, but nearer to it than before.

“You’re safe for the moment.”

No dramatic promise followed. No oath. No demand that she trust him blindly.

Just that one quiet certainty, given as plainly as the cup of water.

Then, after a brief pause, his gaze resting steady on her face behind the mask’s steel lines:

“So don’t waste energy being afraid of me before you’ve eaten.”

Recovery on a ship like the Victoria Punk did not come gently.

Nothing on her was built for gentleness in the first place. The ship moved too hard, sounded too sharp, lived too loudly in its bones even when most of the crew was busy elsewhere. Metal rang through the walls at odd hours. Boots crossed overhead with the heavy confidence of men who had never learned to step softly. Engines muttered somewhere deeper in the body of the ship, a constant mechanical growl beneath everything else, like the Punk herself was always holding tension in reserve.

And yet, hidden in one of her quieter corners, a strange sort of routine had begun to settle.

{{user}} was stronger than she had been the first night.

That much even Killer could see without needing to ask. Color had returned by degrees. Her breathing no longer sounded quite so fragile in the stillness between words. She could sit up without looking as though the effort might pull her apart. The worst of the fever had broken. The bandages stayed cleaner now. Some of the weakness remained, obvious in the careful way she moved and in the fact that the open deck was still a risk she could not yet afford, but the difference was there.

Enough to matter.

Not enough to let the rest of the ship see her.

Killer had made that calculation days ago and never bothered to pretend otherwise.

The room had changed with recovery, becoming less like a place where someone had been stashed in emergency and more like something lived in, if only barely. The blanket had been replaced with a better one. A second lantern had appeared, dim but useful when the first burned low. Water was always there before she needed it. Food arrived with impossible consistency, never too late, never forgotten, always chosen with the same practical attention that made it obvious Killer had started thinking in terms of what she could manage rather than what happened to be available.

Broth first. Then bread. Then something softer, warmer, more filling once he was satisfied she could keep it down.

He never announced any of it like kindness.

He just kept doing it.

That afternoon, the ship rolled slower than usual, somewhere between rough water and calm, enough to make the lantern chain tick softly against its hook. Rain tapped now and then against the outer hull, not storm-hard this time, just a steady gray weather that left the room feeling smaller and more contained. Killer came in carrying a tray with one hand and shouldered the door shut behind him without noise.

He crossed to the crate beside the bunk and set the tray down.

Stew this time. Thick enough to count as real food, steam still rising from the bowl in pale ribbons. Bread beside it, torn rather than sliced. A metal cup of water, and another of something warm that smelled faintly bitter beneath honey.

“You’re late on the medicine,” he said, low and even, as if commenting on weather rather than the fact that he had clearly noticed the untouched dose from earlier. “Take it after you eat.”

His tone carried no irritation. Only notice. The kind of notice that had become painfully familiar in the close quarters of the last several days.

Killer noticed everything.

He noticed if she shifted like one side hurt more than the other. Noticed when pain reached her face before she said a word. Noticed when she was colder than the room should have allowed, when she was more tired than usual, when the wing he’d re-bandaged yesterday was bothering her again before she touched it herself. He said very little about any of it. Sometimes nothing at all. He just adjusted. Another blanket. Different food. Fresh bandages appearing at exactly the right moment. His hand bracing the edge of the bunk before the ship rolled hard enough to make standing dangerous.

It should have felt temporary.

That was the strange part.

It should have felt like survival and nothing more. A pause. A necessity. The kind of arrangement that dissolved the moment she regained enough strength to leave this room, this ship, this strange pocket of safety hidden inside steel and violence. Instead, repetition had done what repetition always did. It had given shape to something.

The room knew Killer’s footsteps now. Knew the low metallic click of the door, the quiet weight of him crossing the floor, the soft scrape of the chair when he pulled it closer to check bandages. And {{user}}, against all logic, had started to know him in the same way. The rhythm of his silences. The difference between his watchful quiet and his thinking quiet. The way he lingered half a second longer than necessary when he suspected she was in pain but would rather bite through it than admit it. The fact that he always kept his hands controlled around her wings, never touching without reason, never assuming access because circumstance had given him responsibility.

That, more than anything, had changed the room.

Trust did not arrive loudly with him. It accumulated.

Killer dragged the chair nearer the bunk and sat, forearms braced loosely over his knees. The lantern lit one edge of his mask and left the rest of his face unreadable, but his attention was as direct as ever.

“Let me see the bandage.”

It was not really a request, but it was not force either. Just the same blunt practicality he brought to everything involving her recovery.

He waited until she shifted enough for him to inspect the wrapping at her side and along the damaged wing. His fingers were careful when he adjusted the edge of the cloth, precise in the way only very controlled people ever were. He did not fumble. He did not hesitate. He did not make the examination feel clinical enough to be cold, or personal enough to be invasive. Just necessary. Just him.

“Better,” he said after a moment.

A pause.

“Still not good enough.”

His hand withdrew immediately once the bandage sat right again. He leaned back in the chair, gaze lifting briefly toward the ceiling as a burst of laughter passed somewhere outside the room and then moved on down the corridor. The crew, loud and careless and alive. Still close enough to become a problem if she stepped into the open before she was ready.

Killer looked back at her. “You could probably make it to the upper deck now,” he said. “If you wanted to be seen. If you wanted questions. If you wanted half the ship staring before breakfast.”

The flatness of the line made the meaning under it sharper, not softer.

“You’re not ready for that.”

Not because he doubted her. Not quite. More because he knew too well what attention did to anything unusual on a pirate ship, and what kind of attention an angel would draw here.

The room went quiet again after that, the kind of quiet that used to feel heavy between them and now simply... existed. Shared. Inhabited. Killer reached for the bowl and held it out without ceremony.

“Eat.”

When he spoke again, it was after she had taken a few bites, his voice lower, slower, almost thoughtful beneath the usual restraint.

“You’re stronger.” His gaze flicked once over her posture, measuring, confirming. “Enough that you’re starting to look at the door like it owes you something.”

There was the faintest edge of dry humor in it. Barely there, but real.

“Give it a few more days.”

The words should have sounded like a delay. A simple instruction. Instead, in the small room and the low light and the steady repetition of his presence, they carried something stranger. Something neither of them had said aloud.

A few more days.

As if the room, the routine, the hidden shape of this life had already lasted long enough to become thinkable.

Killer seemed to realize it a second too late. His shoulders stilled almost imperceptibly. Then he looked away first, gaze settling on the lantern flame instead of her face.

“I’ll deal with the crew when the time comes,” he said, more roughly now, as though smoothing over the softness of the last line required force. “Until then, this stays quiet.”

The statement landed with the same certainty as always. But something in it had shifted. Less temporary than before. Less like a practical arrangement and more like a line he had no intention of letting anyone cross carelessly.

Rain whispered against the hull. The ship rolled once, slow and heavy, and the lantern light moved across the room before settling again.

Killer remained in the chair instead of leaving immediately after the bandages were checked. One hand rested near the edge of the bunk, close enough to steady it if the ship lurched. Close enough to intervene if she suddenly looked faint. Close enough that his staying no longer needed explanation.

Outside, the Victoria Punk kept moving through gray water and bad weather and whatever waited beyond the next horizon.

Inside, in the narrow hidden room he had chosen for her, forced closeness had become routine, and routine had become something neither of them had expected to miss before it was even gone.

The Victoria Punk had moods.

Some days she moved like a blade, clean and vicious, cutting through sea and weather with all the grace a ship built by violent men could manage. Other days she felt crowded even when the corridors were empty, every metal wall too close, every sound carried too far, every narrow turn reminding anyone inside her that privacy aboard a pirate ship was less a right than a temporary accident.

Today was one of those days.

Voices kept passing too near the hidden room. Boots rang harder in the corridor. The crew was restless from too many hours confined by bad weather and too little to do except sharpen blades, argue over nothing, and wander where they normally wouldn’t. The ship herself seemed to amplify it all, metal humming low through the walls, doors opening and closing somewhere farther down the passage, laughter arriving in sudden bursts and then vanishing again.

Killer had noticed the shift before noon.

That was why he was in the room now instead of somewhere else on the ship where he technically should have been. One shoulder rested against the wall near the door, arms folded, posture loose in the way that usually meant he was paying attention to everything. The lantern had been turned lower than usual. The tray he’d brought earlier still sat half-cleared on the crate beside the bunk. Routine, at a glance. Nothing remarkable except the way his presence had sharpened, almost imperceptibly, in response to the noise outside.

He tilted his head once as another set of footsteps passed.

Not this one.

The steps kept going.

Then came a second set. Slower.

They stopped outside the door.

Killer went completely still.

A knuckle rapped once against the metal frame, casual and careless.

“Oy? Killer?”

Wire.

Of course it would be Wire. Too observant when bored, too comfortable poking at other people’s business if he thought he’d find something interesting at the end of it.

Killer did not move away from the door. His gaze flicked once, briefly, toward {{user}}, not panicked, not warning in any dramatic sense, just direct enough to make the situation clear. Stay quiet. Let him handle it.

Then he opened the door only halfway and stepped into the gap before the room behind him could become visible.

“What.”

One word. Flat enough to be a threat if a person had survival instincts.

Wire leaned one shoulder against the opposite wall and grinned with the easy shamelessness of a man who did, in fact, have survival instincts and ignored them for sport.

“Thought I saw you disappear down here earlier,” he said. “Didn’t know we were storing secrets in the maintenance corridor now.”

Killer did not blink.

“Then you thought wrong.”

Wire’s eyes slid past his shoulder toward the crack of darkness beyond the half-open door. Too curious. Too close.

“And if I didn’t?”

There it was. The little push. The stupid one. The kind men made when they forgot that Killer’s patience only looked endless from a safe distance.

Killer’s hand moved.

Not to a weapon. Not yet.

Just to the edge of the door, fingers curling around the metal with quiet finality as he stepped half a pace farther into the corridor, forcing Wire back with nothing but space and certainty. The motion was calm. Controlled. Somehow far more menacing than if he’d shoved him outright.

“You’re bored,” Killer said, voice low, almost conversational beneath the steel in it. “That’s not the same as being invited.”

Wire’s grin thinned a fraction.

Behind Killer, the room stayed silent.

Good.

Wire lifted both hands in mock surrender. “Relax. Didn’t know this stretch belonged to you.”

“It does today.”

No raised voice. No anger spilling loose. Just a line dropped cleanly between one second and the next, hard enough to make the air in the corridor feel narrower.

Wire studied him for a beat too long, some last flicker of curiosity still alive behind the humor. Killer let him. Said nothing. Moved nowhere. The message sat there in the stillness between them, unmistakable.

Try me.

Something in Wire’s expression shifted first. Not fear, exactly. Recognition. The belated realization that whatever was behind Killer at that door mattered enough that pressing this any farther would stop being amusing.

He snorted once and pushed off the wall. “Fine. Keep your mysterious little corner. Kid’s looking for you, though.”

“He can keep looking for another minute.”

Wire gave him one last sideways glance, but whatever he saw in Killer’s posture must have answered the rest of his questions for now. He lifted a hand in lazy surrender and finally walked off, boots ringing away down the corridor until the sound folded back into the ship’s usual noise.

Killer waited three beats after the footsteps vanished.

Then five.

Only then did he shut the door fully and turn the lock with a sharp metallic click.

The room felt smaller after that. Quieter too, but not with peace. With the aftermath of narrowly avoided exposure, with the knowledge of how close curiosity had come to becoming something worse.

Killer stood with one hand still resting on the door for a second, shoulders rigid under stillness. When he finally looked back toward {{user}}, the controlled blankness had gone harder around the edges.

“Too close.”

The words came lower than before. Roughened slightly, not by fear exactly, but by anger kept on a short leash.

He crossed the room in three measured steps and checked the lantern first, lowering the flame until the corners deepened into shadow. Then the blanket at the edge of the bunk, adjusting it for no reason except that his hands needed something precise to do before he trusted them to be still again.

“From now on,” he said, “if you hear voices outside this corridor, you stay out of sight. No matter who it is.”

His gaze cut briefly to the door, then back to her.

“Most of them wouldn’t mean harm. That’s not enough.”

There it was. The truth under all of this, spoken plainly as iron.

Curiosity was danger too. Attention was danger. Being seen before she was ready was danger, especially here, on a ship full of men who lived loud, fought hard, and had no practice at treating miracles gently.

Killer seemed to know he was standing too rigidly then. He exhaled once through his nose, slow and controlled, and the next words came quieter.

“I’m not letting them find you by accident.”

Not possessive in the cheap way. Not said like ownership. Said like a decision. Said like law.

He dragged the chair closer to the bunk and sat, forearms braced over his knees, the posture unguarded only by his standards. Even seated, he looked coiled. Focused. The sharpness in him had not gone anywhere. It had simply narrowed into vigilance.

“Wire won’t push it again today,” he said. “But he got closer than he should have.”

A pause.

“That won’t happen twice.”

The statement should have sounded cold.

Instead, in the low room with the lantern dimmed and the lock turned and his attention anchored wholly on her again, it sounded like protection stripped down to its simplest form. No softness dressing it up. No attempt to make it pretty. Just the hard certainty of a man who had found something vulnerable in the wreckage of a storm and decided the world did not get access until he said it did.

Outside, the Victoria Punk kept groaning through another restless day. Crewmen shouted, laughed, slammed doors, lived their noisy pirate lives inches away from a secret they did not know they had nearly touched.

Inside, Killer stayed where he was, close enough to intervene, close enough that the danger had to come through him first.

And whatever else that look in his eyes might have meant, it made one thing painfully clear.

Keeping her hidden was no longer just a temporary precaution.

It was personal.

(Please, make your own scenario)