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- Meeting
He wears all green and carries a fishing pole, but more importantly, he is the same age as Killua.
This should be interesting Killua thinks, and he steps off his skateboard. The added flip is a formality, but the cheer of delight is nice to hear. Since killing doesn’t seem to make him very many friends, a skateboard trick is a good place to start. No big deal.
“I’m Killua,” he says, side by side with the boy as they run. He flexes his fingers, shoved in his pockets, a nervous habit Milluki technically beat out of him by the time he was four.
“I’m Gon!” the boy says, unaware of such technicalities.
Gon. Hmm. He seems like he won’t be boring, so Killua keeps running.
Neither of them win their very first race. Killua finds that he doesn’t even care who pays for dinner, as long as he gets to learn more about Gon, and Gon about him.
When the man with the funny mustache whose name Killua does not remember raises an eyebrow at them, Killua thinks me too, pal.
So he goes on a goose chase for some pigs, boards an airship, kills a few more people. Gon tells him that he’s looking for his dad, he tells Gon that he wants to murder his family but not really, and that he’s tired of the family business. Gon listens. That’s the weirdest thing about him, Killua decides: that he listens.
Then Killua makes his way to the bottom of the Trick Tower and only kills one person in the process. Again, Gon is weird and doesn’t seem to care, so the delight Killua feels is also weird when Gon throws a pillow back with a laugh, or when he asks Killua about his skateboard (he knew it was a good idea to bring it along).
It’s progress, all going swimmingly until it isn’t, because the moment Illumi extends his hand and says you don’t deserve to have friends, Killua knows it’s all over.
Until, again, it isn’t. Because for some reason Gon shows up and makes a ruckus at his front door, and Killua, who has technically given up, gives in without a second thought. He has fun when he’s with Gon and would like to be his friend, so he tags along.
It’s the logical choice until logic has nothing to do with it, but hey. No one ever said that finding a new purpose would be straightforward.
So he sees a weirdo wearing all green and carrying a fishing pole of all things; he asks him how old he is; he thinks huh. And since he is not aware that he’s stumbled across a beginning, he does a kickflip instead, and runs all the way into the sunlight with a boy named Gon at his side.
For the first time in years, his laugh is real.
(He didn’t know it, then. That love starts small and only grows when you’re not looking. He supposes he couldn’t have been completely at fault for that, though).
~
- Birthday
Gon buys him a set of Chocorobos for their first birthday together at Heaven’s Arena. Killua’s turning thirteen but feels about ninety-three when he sees Gon trying to calculate how much money he has left. The steam from his ears is nearly to the ceiling of their hotel room, and Killua feels another line growing between his eyebrows, feels the warmth glow from the bottom of his chest up to his face.
“Gon, it’s ok,” he says, laughing just a little. “I’ll pay you back.” The heat off his cheeks still hasn’t quite dissipated yet, so he avoids Gon’s eager eyes.
“But Killua,” Gon says. He gives up counting and offers the third box more aggressively. The first and second are already open on the ugly green carpet, scattered like birds. “It’s your birthday. You’re not supposed to pay people back for their birthday.”
Killua’s still looking intently at the lamp beside Gon’s bed, where they both sit facing each other. Believe it or not, this is the first birthday present that doesn’t involve killing someone, he doesn’t say. He’s not entirely sure what is normal, but he’s sure a surprise mission to murder a senator’s entire family probably isn’t (he was four, there were four of them; Illumi was proud).
This is his real first birthday. So what? It’s fine, really, because he’s with Gon. That automatically makes it the best he’s ever had.
The heat rushes back in, and he purses his lips.
“Killuaaaa.”
But he can’t tell Gon any of those thoughts; he would rather die. So he lets his eyes do what they want, and glances at the stack of even more boxes next to the desk. How Gon afforded all this in the first place, he has no idea. He suspects Zushi had something to do with it.
“Fine,” he finally says, and Gon cheers. He tosses the box and Killua catches it with the grin he finally lets loose.
“Happy birthday, Killua,” Gon says, and his smile lights up the room.
~
- Choice
“Killua,” Gon says, dragging out the syllables into the triplet that controls Killua’s own heartbeat. He is upside down in a handstand, spiky hair nearly touching the floor. “I’m bored. Let’s do something.”
Killua looks up from a comic he’d found on Gon’s sparse bookshelf, on top of a dusty box full of shells and grey-colored stones. “Ok.” He doesn’t get up. “What do you want to do?”
With a huff, Gon rights himself from his handstand, feet landing with a faint thump on the carpet. He stretches his arms to the sky and says, “I dunno! You pick.”
Killua gives him an unimpressed look and goes back to his comic. “You suggested it, so you pick.”
To be honest, he’s ok with lying here, in the square of late afternoon sunlight from Gon’s open window, lazy and content. And he’d be ok with doing anything, it’s just. He has everything he needs either way.
Gon’s room smells like Gon and the sea.
“Hmm…”
He can hear the gears turning. I’m happy he realizes.
“Let’s race to the docks!”
“Again?”
“You told me to choose. That’s my choice! You coming?”
“Hmm…” He pretends to think about it. “Fine.”
Killua carefully closes the book, not bothering to remember what page he was on. He places it back on top of the box full of Whale Island and turns to Gon, who is smiling.
“You’re on,” he says, grin wide in return. The window is open, and they’re already flying into heat of the afternoon.
~
- Hands
Gon’s hands are a study in a sunbaked childhood and clothes that fly on a line in the wind. If Killua squints, he sees the glittering sea and darkened forests somewhere in the lines of his palm, too. Island boy.
The fingers are shorter than his, the nails square and strong. The hands themselves are constantly in motion: pointing out certain landmarks as they run across the cliffs that hug the shoreline, waving to the women who keep shop in town, reaching over to grab Killua’s wrist so they can run up a hill together.
(But they are still, sometimes. Killua just doesn’t see them when they drift to Gon’s side, slack and loose. As if the wonder on Gon’s face, when he looks at Killua, is too much for him to carry on his own, so he must rest).
Breathless and grounded all at once, Killua thinks. An entire lifetime’s worth of contradictions, held in and by those hands.
The hands that come up to brush a stray curl away from Killua’s face, and the hands that poke his burning cheeks. The hands that save and the hands that hurt. Brown hands, warm hands, sun-kissed hands.
(Killua doesn’t usually see, but if he’s lucky and quick, he sees the expression on Gon’s face, and he’ll blush, high-red and lovely).
They are open and inviting as Gon reaches out, an invitation.
When has he ever been able to say no?
~
- Loser
Even by child assassin standards, training with Bisky is rough. She pushes them to their limits, and more often than not, they are not enough. But they’re improving, slowly and surely. It’s not everyday that Killua feels it, but perhaps every third or fourth: the stretch of new muscles forming, the feeling of using parts of himself he didn’t know he had.
He spars with Gon and realizes that they’re both getting faster, running longer. It feels good, to build himself up and lose himself in training again, this time with the added bonus of being at Gon’s side.
Things have changed recently. He can’t put a finger on when something shifted, but there’s an intensity between them now, an ease that wasn’t there before. Was it Yorknew where this—this thing—between them first began to grow? He doesn’t know.
Sometimes, when they’re meditating side by side, he’ll consider it, feel out the weight and shape of it like he’s controlling his aura in one of Bisky’s exercises. It feels like an extension of himself, and it’s strongest every time he looks over to grin at Gon and sees that Gon is already grinning back.
It also feels borrowed; not wrong, because nothing about Gon could ever feel wrong, but…there’s something that Killua can’t quite put his finger on, like it—all of this—will slip away if he’s not vigilant. What he’s guarding against, he has no idea.
And yet, in the sunlit days of laughing and digging and sparring, he doesn’t stress about it. Perhaps that’s what he can’t grasp—that he can accept something unknown so eagerly, not knowing, or perhaps even caring, if it could hurt him.
I’m glad I met you still rings in his ears, usually in the quiet stillness of the night, those last few moments before he slips into a dreamless, exhausted sleep. He’ll close his eyes to the sound of Gon’s steady breathing and open them to blue shadows of dawn on the planes of his face, and it will begin to glow in his chest again.
Me, too he will not say.
“Hey, Killua,” Gon says after one such morning, and Killua looks up from their warmup exercise of smashing rocks. The sun is just beginning to crest the plateau, warm yellow light brightening the mountain range. Bisky is off buying more spell cards, but she doesn’t mind if they talk during their exercises so long as they don’t get distracted.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Are you having fun?”
The rock he’s holding crumbles to dust, and he curses. “Not right now, no.”
“Hmm.” Gon’s voice is thoughtful.
Killua picks up another rock and gives Gon a minute to collect his thoughts; he’ll have to start all over now, damn.
After a moment, Gon says, “I’m having fun.”
There—that thing again, in Killua’s chest. He looks up from his small mountain of rocks in interest, only half paying attention to his nen now.
Gon is already looking at him with a smile, like Killua is somehow the source of his happiness. “I have fun when we’re together. Don’t you?”
Killua stills his hand and doesn’t notice when the stone in his fist turns to dust again. As if on cue, he feels the flush creeping up his neck to his face, traitorous and red. “Idiot. You can’t just say stuff like that!”
Gon looks confused, which. He’s always like this when it comes to these things, and Killua wants to bang his head into the nearest cliffside.
“Why not?” Gon asks, going for the next stone without pausing. “It’s true. I love spending time with you, and I hope you feel the same!”
Killua breathes a sigh he feels all the way to the bottom of his lungs, brings down his next strike with more force than is strictly necessary. Bisky would have had an aneurysm by now; he’s broken two stones in less than five minutes. “It’s just…embarrassing,” he mumbles to the ground. “You’re embarrassing me.”
With a shrug, Gon returns to his own pile of rocks, but Killua knows he won’t give up until he has an answer. “Why? There’s no one else around,” he says. “It’s just us.”
And that’s exactly the problem Killua thinks. He wants to say, You can never be ‘just’ anything, Gon.
“Yeah, well it’s still…dumb,” he says lamely instead. “I dunno.”
A moment. A millipede crawls out from beneath the rock Killua’s using as a table; he watches it crawl past the toe of his left shoe. “I mean…” he mumbles finally, and he doesn’t need to look up to know Gon is listening. “I’m having fun, too. Here. With you.” Another pause. “We don’t have to say it all the time, though, it’s weird,” he finishes quickly, and shuts up.
The millipede bumps into his shoelace and changes course, heading a hard right, and Killua follows its path until he can’t take Gon’s staring any longer. When he raises his eyes, he sees Gon’s are bright and wide.
They’ve both stopped their work; Bisky is going to make each of them do a million push-ups when she comes back.
Gon hums again, this time with a smile that Killua can’t quite read. His rock finally crumbles, and they both stare at his hand as the morning breeze whisks it away.
Killua’s face is red and the sun’s not even fully up yet, which is dumb. This is dumb.
“But I want to say it,” Gon says, considering the chalky bits of rock left. “Because it’s true.”
Killua feels his eyes widen, and he brings an arm to whack his idiotic best friend upside the head, because at this point there should be a limit to how much he lets Gon get away with.
But Gon beats him to it, his own hand coming to meet Killua’s halfway. He laces their fingers together, the mountains of Greed Island between their palms, and Killua’s brain stops working altogether.
“I want to say it,” Gon repeats with a shit-eating grin that is also somehow earnest and honest. Killua is drowning. “So I will.”
So you will he thinks weakly, and he knows he has lost yet again.
~
- Light
Gon, you are light, he thinks. Sometimes, you shine so brightly that I must look away.
But even so, is it still ok if I stay by your side?
Outside their window, a bird takes flight.
~
- Promise
“Promise me you’ll stay under the radar,” he says, voice high and desperate and he doesn’t fucking know why he’s panicking right now, of all times and of all places, but he is. They should be on high alert, because they’ve just arrived and have no clue where the enemies are, but Killua is panicking. “You’ll let me handle it. Promise me!”
Gon looks at him, innocent curiosity and maybe a little bit of disbelief in his eyes, because they both know full well that Gon is strong enough to fend for himself. He opens his mouth to say something, protest maybe, or ask why, and Killua realizes that he doesn’t have a good answer.
The panic subsides, gone as quickly as it came, but the fear is still there.
I can’t lose you.
It’s instinct at this point, and yet the full force of the truth hits him every time, and behind it, the conviction. It’s ok if anything happens to him, if it means Gon will be safe; he thinks so this is what grew in Yorknew, and what I held in Greed Island.
But he can’t just say it; he doesn’t have the vocabulary.
So he says, “Sorry. Just on edge,” a shitty excuse for a shittier fear, and they part ways.
He realizes too late that Gon never promised.
~
- Distance
“Let’s go,” Gon says.
What did you mean by that?
They jump. Gon goes first.
~
- Breath
“You have it easy, Killua.”
He breathes in.
“You’re perfectly calm.”
He holds it there, not knowing why.
“Since it means…”
Above Pitou’s white head is a frame of night.
“…nothing to you.”
Nothing? To him?
The frame is empty and barren. He wonders, idly, if that’s where Pitou entered, when they found the girl cradled in the arms of the King.
He is breathing again, a fact he did not notice. Not the mark of a good assassin, Killu.
Quickly, he must staunch the bleeding. He says—words, words that have worked in the past, words that reason and explain.
That’s right. He is the reasonable one. He is the one with a head on his shoulders, full of strategies, clear of needles. Always a plan, cataloguing movements, a clenched fist.
Still, he wants to run. The voice that tells him to run does not sound like Illumi’s; he does not have time to consider why.
Because Gon is walking away, one foot in front of the other, the set of his shoulders a line that he does not recognize. He is still walking a lifetime later, and Killua can only be still. Still, he is still. He feels the shadows of the tower rushing forward, the muted static of his own silence.
He’s been here, before. But usually on the side that deals the silence, takes it and smothers the life out of someone else’s eyes. Never on the side that receives it.
A new feeling, then. Somewhere, in the part of his mind where time still flows, he catalogues it for later, something he can slip over and between his fingers until they callus over. Until the skin forms a shell, with him inside.
Gon walks away and the lifetime ends. He breathes in, out.
When Gon sits, begins his vigil, Killua is already gone.
~
- Moment
Gon Freecss, age 14, does not understand.
The images come in halted shards that he cannot piece together.
The monster—Pitou—a girl covered in blood—that thing with its spindles for hands and its drooping eyelids—Killua’s voice—Pitou is turning—their eyes are—white hair—blue-black blood—night inside that frame above—they break their arm, offer every part of themselves to him—where has he seen that before?—it is not enough—it will never be enough—he hates—who does he…?—he hates—he cannot wait—Killua tells him to wait—Killua does not understand—he will never—this is a burden of his own making—brought by his own hands—and Killua will not—cannot know—the monster begs again—he cannot wait—why should he?—but he will—Killua is gone, now—good—he should not see—gone—Kite is—Pitou will be gone soon too—so will—he does not understand how—he will wait instead.
His patience falls just short of the allotted hour. It is another lifetime.
~
- Water
The woman with the hair flows, contracts, strikes, has stopped. She is staring.
The words are all his own, a ploy to buy time—until they aren’t. He doesn’t know where they come from, where he’s had them hidden away. He doesn’t know what to do with this thing in his chest that aches, a throbbing pain that resonates bone-deep.
It hurts he thinks, and the needles behind his eyes—didn’t he remove them all already? The one in his lungs can’t be Illumi’s, because he tore it out for him, he did it all for him—they turn to flame and suddenly he’s crying, and he can’t stop, because it’s Gon and Gon should never have to be alone, never have to shoulder this burden alone, and Killua’s useless, he’s so fucking useless, he can’t do anything for him, has never been able to do anything right; this one good thing, and he fucked it up. And the ache becomes a burn that swallows him whole, and he’s so goddamn tired, so he lets go entirely, falls down right next to the tears.
And then he mourns, and he mourns, and he mourns.
And the woman with the long black hair stares. She shouts words he doesn’t hear, leaps forward to attack, and he welcomes it, he’s ready—but again, he is not her goal; again, Killua is not wanted.
He is alone. His best friend does not want him, the one he promised to protect, to keep and to love—and Killua has failed him, over and over again, because when it really counted he could not speak. The words shriveled up in his throat like dead and dying things, blocking his airways so he couldn’t say a word. His hands did not move—useless—and they felt like lead at his sides, closed tight enough to break. And so instead he watched his best friend jump across a space too wide from him to cross—don’t go where I can’t follow he should have said, he wanted to say—please, just let me stay. Let me share this with you, because you shared everything with me.
Perhaps this is selfish of him, but they were both there when the monster came down from the sky, and they were both there to fight until they lost—and they did lose—but they did that together, too. And then Gon had said “let’s go” with a voice he did not know, the words died in his throat so he suffocated instead, and then the wind and dust were at their feet.
So he cries, because it is all he can do. His hands are empty, open; he has given all he has and it is still not enough.
And then—
Then Palm stands, her hair now flowing freely, and says the words that he cannot bring himself to believe. But she says them anyway, kind as they are, and he feels the earth steady beneath him, the shift in gravity that anchors him back down, and he stands as well.
“You are the one Gon needs most,” she says, and Killua feels his heart break in the face of such kindness.
It is—is it?—a lie, one he can’t bring himself to believe, but then she says, “You woke me up,” and suddenly there’s a bloody needle in his hand that is not his own.
Palm Siberia thanks him, and he thanks her as well, if only in the quiet, unknowable part of his heart, for her words. Even if they are not true, they were nice to hear.
The moonlight filters in like water from the crumbling ceiling; it tastes like salt and static.
He breathes again. In, out.
Next time, he promises, he will reach him.
(He does not consider the possibility that there is no next time).
~
- Fault
Kite is gone, and it is all Gon’s fault.
~
- Star
When Palm lowers her right hand, he is already gone. He hears, as if from very far away, her report. Pitou is fixing their arm. Gon is—
He sees Shaiapouf’s mouth move, hears the words as if he is underwater, and then he stops hearing altogether.
He lowers woman to the ground and tells Palm he is counting on her, and then he runs.
The way there stretches into infinity.
If this were, say, a training exercise, he’d notice how quietly the ground rushes to meet him, how the sound of the wind and the world turned to color alone could be something to live for, to swear by. He has lived a life of running, and this should be it: the feeling he yearns for, a feeling of flying.
But his mind, unlike his body, is still, except for a name and a plea, and all the way to the broken shell of his best friend he thinks please and wait for me, until he arrives and ceases to think at all.
The details of the clearing come in sharply defined points, each parsed methodically. He sees a man he does not know, and he sees violet-blue blood, and he sees golden light. Despite the echo and the stillness of the forest, he knows that in another universe, the light would be beautiful.
Gon Freecss brings his fist down, over and over again, and Killua wonders if this is what it’s like to die.
“Gon…” he says, the world a single thought. “Is that you?”
He thought he knew what death was, in the belly of that cave, the life bleeding out of him like water. He thought he knew when he jammed his fingers into his head, and the voices went quiet for good. He thought he knew the first time he killed, and looked down and felt nothing.
Evidently he did not, because when Gon turns and he cannot recognize him beyond the despair in his eyes, he sees what the end looks like, truly.
It looks like this:
He has activated Godspeed, but even if he hadn’t, he still would have jumped. His conscious mind does not need to be bypassed, because there is nothing there but white noise and Gon’s voice breaking. The reflex kicks in without the will to command it.
So when Pitou’s body jumps, he jumps too.
There is space between them, wind and dust, and the space should be shrinking. It should be. But it stretches out to infinity once again, except this time instead of a blur there is only clarity. An ex-assassin’s eye cannot be trained out of darkness; but then again, Killua could have been blind. He has long stopped needing sight to know Gon.
The arm goes flying, anyway. Gon says, “It doesn’t hurt,” and Killua thinks, Liar.
And then Gon says the words that Killua should have asked for, the words he was too scared to hear. It is too late and too much to hear them now, but then again, when has Gon Freecss ever been less than too much?
Killua is blown to the edge of the clearing, or perhaps pushed. He doesn’t care.
Gon holds a star in his hand—why is it outside of you?—the thing that shines behind his eyes, the brightness that powers the boy of light—it is in his hands, and it should not be there.
Killua has never been good with words. Now is no exception. A single word, and he pours a lifetime of regret into it.
At the sound of his name, Gon turns.
In another life, the clearing dims and stays that way. The star goes back to its rightful owner. It does not die out, and the big bang that follows does not rend Killua’s universe apart.
This is not that life.
~
- Gravity
Gon turns, and he sees Killua, and that is when the cracks in his chest cleave into two distinct parts.
Somewhere, a boy is crying for help. He can’t hear him.
The movements of the stars cannot be changed. This he knows, because he watched the night sky to track the passage of time long before he knew of hunters. Back on Whale Island, before he met Kite, he would sneak out his window when the house was dark and quiet, and he would sit on the cliff behind their house and watch. He knows the stars continue on their course without a care for the lives below, and now he understands why; so he does what he does best. He follows, and lets the pieces of himself fall to earth.
The forest turns to gold beneath his hands, and he wishes to never know forgiveness.
~
- Narrator
What is Killua feeling when the light dies?
He couldn’t tell you, either.
Gon is not breathing, his hair long and dark over his chest. Killua pushes it aside to restart his heart, then gently tucks it away from his face when he’s finished.
He picks him up with a tenderness that breaks. Gon is so small in his arms.
He could not tell you what he is thinking on the walk back. Thinking requires an awareness of one’s mental faculties, where one begins and ends, the boundary between past, present, future.
But Killua is experiencing pure sensation: dust-fragile bones, stuttering heartbeat, soft black hair, a hint of a breeze, and blood, and a shallow rattle of a breath, and the slow sway of Gon’s body on his back, and the next step, and the next, and the next.
If he does have a thought, it is less thought and more pure will: Gon cannot die. Gon will not die, because Killua will not allow it. He does not beg the universe for favors; he does not need to. Killua has decided: if Gon is not alive to see tomorrow, then he won’t be, either. Condition and covenant.
So he wills his feet beneath him to move and the heartbeat hovering over his ribcage to hold on, and he walks to face the light of a weeping dawn.
Gon sleeps and knows nothing at all.
~
- Question
Before Chairman Netero sacrificed his life for a rose, Killua hated him because he was an asshole who was constantly out of reach, and they both knew it.
Perhaps hate is too strong a word, after he lets off some steam. (Who were those guys, anyway? Two more lives taken he will never remember). But Killua has never really tried to understand the things that are out of his control, like his next target or why home no longer feels like a place he can return to. He doesn’t need to understand, and it makes his head hurt, anyway.
So he runs away. Doesn’t want to be an assassin anymore; what should I do next? Doesn’t remember why home has become a prison; where should I go now? He tells himself that he’s answering these questions and doesn’t realize he’s bullshitting until he meets the biggest question of all.
Gon Freecss tells him he’s looking for his father and doesn’t tell Killua that he’s a horrible person, even though he kinda is. Really is. And that’s the question that Killua can’t run away from, because Gon’s continued presence constantly asks it: why are you still here?
(Perhaps the question is not why is Gon still here? but instead why has Gon allowed me to stay? Because he’s following Gon, not the other way around, right?)
Killua doesn’t even consider the possibility that it’s because there’s something intrinsic to himself that makes Gon stay; no, it must have something to do with the weird way Gon’s head works. Because Gon is good and trusting and does not care where you came from, only who you are now. And Killua is his friend, a fact that first amuses, then frightens, then awes.
The fact of the matter is that Gon stays. Or rather, lets Killua stay. And then the question turns from why? to how long?, and that’s when Killua realizes he can no longer run from the answer.
~
- Atone
“Alluka,” he says, and they shouldn’t be stopping now, not with Illumi close behind, but they have very little choice. She looks up at him, so trusting and only inquisitive, even though her question breaks his heart. (It’s good to know he has one—thanks, Gon).
Would it be better if I disappeared?
He has been there. He understands.
“If…I was the only one in the world who really loved you,” he says, and he thinks he already knows the answer but is no longer able to assume anything, not anymore. “Would you be sad?”
Because I wasn’t. I was fucking invincible. One was enough for me.
But Alluka is not him, and for that he is grateful. There are some things only he can shoulder.
Besides, it’s fine if the answer is no; that just means Killua will step back, help her find someone who is enough. He will not force anything on Alluka.
But. He will ask. Because his hope, fragile and wounded as it is, is one of the few things he has left. That and his shame. Both grow with every passing moment, because Alluka is smiling so sweetly, so simply.
She oozes happiness, and tells him so, never one to bottle up the joy in fear that she will need it for later. She loves with what she has been given, turns dirt into diamond, and with the shit job Killua’s been doing these past few years, it’s honestly a miracle that she is the way she is, so damn sweet and kind and good.
Killua doesn’t deserve her. I’ll make up for it, he thinks, as he pulls her close.
He’ll make up for it. A promise he will keep, this time.
~
- Heal
That same hand is unrecognizable now.
Nanika says, “Hand,” and Killua quickly complies—fixing isn’t Nanika’s forte, after all, of course, and then that skeletal thing falls out from the spotted sheets and Killua can’t breathe.
Distantly, he is glad that he did not see—this can’t be him—before he set out for Mount Kukuroo, because he doesn’t think he would have made it past the front door without breaking.
It takes all he has to say, “Heal Gon,” and even then, it is less of a command than it is a plea.
Still, Nanika asks for no favors. “Kay,” she says, and he passes her his heart. She is the second person he has entrusted Gon’s safety to, but unlike last time, he knows she will not fail.
Nanika begins her work without hesitation. The light is blinding.
~
- Home
Gon woke up not an hour ago, and Killua is already messing up. He slaps himself so hard he can feel his teeth rattle, and he bows his head to the sisters whose love will save him from himself.
“Can you forgive me for being a bad big brother?” he asks. He is crying again; why is he always the one who cries?
Nanika opens her eyes slowly; she is hurt because of Killua’s fear; always, it is the fear that hurts the ones he loves most.
He doesn’t deserve her love—their love—so freely given. There are no favors to be granted nor paid back, not now and not ever.
But then Nanika says “‘Kay,” and when he pulls her in for a hug so tight he knows he will never let go, not really, he thinks that maybe—just maybe—it has nothing to do with deserving.
Because he knows he’ll never be able to make up for it all, the debt he has accumulated. So why bother trying to fill a hole that doesn’t need to be dug?
It feels like hope, in a way, and he hugs his sisters until the thing in his chest turns warm and solid, until he can finally breathe around the space a lifetime of never growing numb has left.
It feels like coming home.
~
- Wait
So their poor tour guide walks away with tears in his eyes and they don’t even notice. Why hear about the thing when they have the thing itself right in front of them?
The day is warm and sunny, with only a few clouds that dot the sky. There’s a wonderful little breeze that Gon can’t wait to hear grow into a gale once he starts climbing, and the smell of the sea not far behind it. Tourists just like themselves mill around and peer into souvenir shops, taking pictures, and ignoring their own guides.
Gon runs ahead when he sees an ice cream stand; he buys a chocolate cone for Killua before he can protest.
“Alluka, what would you like?” he asks excitedly, while the vendor is scooping a vanilla cone for himself.
“Strawberry, please!” she says, happy grin lighting up her face.
The seller hands Gon and Killua their cones. “You got it, miss. One strawberry, coming right up!” he says, and Alluka beams up at him when he hands her her very first dessert in the world.
Gon and Killua watch as Alluka takes her first experimental bite and winces, then laughs in delight.
The verdict is in, and Killua beams.
Ice cream secured, they walk on. Gon and Alluka share twin smiles when Killua grumbles about letting him pay for his own sister, thank you very much, but behind his cone he’s grinning, too.
They walk around the souvenir shops for another half hour or so, hands sticky and sweet. The sun reaches its peak, the shadows of the buildings thin against the cobblestone streets. They turn a corner, and Alluka reaches for Killua, who in turn reaches for Gon, and together she drags the two of them into a store with weird stuffed birds the color of confetti in its windows.
Killua turns to meet Gon’s eye with something fond and soft in the set of his mouth, and Gon blinks.
This, he thinks, as he watches Alluka find a little leaf-shaped pin that says, “I climbed the World Tree,” sees Killua deliberate for approximately half a second before he caves, wallet already in his hands. This for just a little longer.
He always has been selfish, but he can’t help it here; it’s Killua, after all. Maybe he really hasn’t changed.
(He would like to, though).
Somewhere, perhaps a few blocks away in this little town, a bell chimes noon. Twelve rings, he tells himself. And then we can go.
So he savors it. He gives a little wave when Alluka flashes her purchase in triumph from across the counter, grins at the sight of Killua arguing with the seller about overcharging him. He smiles as they emerge from the store together and walk onto the next, and he laughs, because he’s happy.
It’s not time to say goodbye. Not just yet.
~
- Wherever
Kite said that no matter we go, we’ll always be friends!
Yeah!
~
- Moonlight
In that forest, time does not flow. Sometimes, the memory comes in the sleepy warmth of the night, unbidden but not unexpected. It feels inevitable, no matter from where in time he approaches.
Leading up to the moment, or looking back on it, the outcome never changes.
Gon will wake up like he’s falling, heartbeat drumming up a war all the way down to the soles of his feet. Moonlight tumbles through his window, spills over like milk, and he sits up and stares.
He’ll let the details of the dream—the few he can recall, sharp and piercing—float away with the Whale Island breeze. Night smells differently than day, all quiet things that move in shadow, and clouds are less loud in the sky.
It is between the drifting and the waking when, for a moment, time shifts and flows to a halt. He can see everything at once.
Like what Knuckle said Gon will think. And then he will stare some more—out into the friendly moonlight—and think that he should savor it. Hold it close, despite its intangibility. It shines on his fingertips, silent and comforting, and he presses it to his chest, hands folded and loose.
He is grateful.
Ah, he’ll think. Another memory. Another thing he cannot hold.
Sometimes, he will reach for his phone on his bedside table. He’ll flip it open, type a few numbers in. But he never calls. On those nights, he lets his fingers hover, then retreats. He’ll put the phone back on his table, next to an old comic book he’s only read once and a dusty box of trinkets he’s collected over the years.
On those nights, the past is too much. He’ll put the phone back and stare at the ceiling for hours, rising just before dawn to roam the island. At Aunt Mito’s request, he’ll come back in the evening with some fish for dinner and sometimes mail.
But on the nights when he can hold the memories in the palm of his hand, can turn them over without spilling them, he’ll sit in the open window to watch the gentle night.
Always, always, it has been gentle.
He’ll close his eyes, feet kicking like he’s on top of the World Tree with Ging again. He’ll wonder if he’s lost that quiet peace—the kind stays near, stays warm—for good.
Most nights, though, he turns over on his side and goes back to sleep.
In the morning, he does not remember.
~
- Apology
The first time he tells Killua how sorry he is, he can’t see Killua’s face. His head is bowed low, his chest a near ninety-degree angle from the hallway floor outside their hotel room. Tomorrow, they will see the World Tree, a bus ride away, but there is something Gon must do first.
(They had just returned from lunch, and Alluka and Nanika fell asleep almost immediately. Gon had tugged on Killua’s sleeve and mouthed Can we talk?, and Killua had looked at him for a moment, eyes unreadable, before nodding. He pointed at the door, and Gon felt his heart crawl up into his throat).
“Killua,” he begins, eyes shut tight. “I’m sorry. For what I said to you, and for what I did. I was selfish, and mean, and cruel.”
Killua is quiet. He opens his eyes slightly, sees Killua’s feet next to his own, only a step apart. Killua’s wearing soft grey socks, and Gon is barefoot. “And I’m sorry for trying to do everything on my own. We were—” He falters. “We were a team. And I was a bad partner and an even worse friend to you.”
Still, Killua is quiet. Gon takes a breath. He’s not crying, but it’s a near thing. “I know I hurt you. Killua, I am so, so sorry.”
It’s ok if he’s angry Gon tells himself. He has every right to be.
Even so, is it selfish to want to be forgiven?
He can’t bring himself to ask, so he doesn’t.
Today is slightly overcast, a hint of rain on the horizon, but sunlight still finds a way through the window to Gon’s right. The shadow of a lone cloud slides across the wooden floorboards. It’s nearing the space between them when he hears Killua sigh.
“I’ve forgiven you already,” Killua says, soft as can be. Gon’s eyes widen and he snaps his head up to see Killua scratching the back of his head. He looks off to a space somewhere over to the left of Gon’s shoulder. “I was… hurt. And it hurt to see you that way. I wanted to help.”
The words come slowly, as if coaxed out one by one. But they come.
“It’s okay. I forgive you,” Killua says again, and he lowers his arm and puts his hands in pockets, rocks back and forth on his heels.
Gon’s eyes prickle with heat, and he bites his lip to stop it from trembling. He should have known. He will listen to the kindness he does not deserve, even if it hurts. Because it’s Killua, always so good, always a miracle, and even if he told Gon to get lost, he would listen.
Killua is looking everywhere but him. “Just…” he says, and he stops his rocking and lowers his head. “Don’t do it again. Ever. Please.”
The last word is quiet, and finally, finally, Killua looks at Gon, dead in the eye. Through the fog, Gon sees that it is not a plea, not a command, but a request. A wish.
Even now, Killua is too kind.
I don’t deserve you Gon thinks, as the heat finally spills over.
Killua’s face turns from serious to increasingly panicked, because the tears on Gon’s face are really falling now, slipping away one after the other after the other.
There is a rule. You promise to do things differently next time, and you keep that promise no matter what.
Slowly, Gon holds out his pinky on his right hand.
Killua stares at him, eyes wide, warm afternoon light on his face. His lips part slightly, then after a moment, quirk up in the barest trace of a smile.
“Mn,” he says, and reaches out to meet him halfway.
Killua’s hand is warm.
On sealed with a kiss, Gon tugs him forward before he can protest, wraps his arms around his waist, and sinks his head into the warm space between Killua’s shoulder and neck.
Killua freezes for a moment, then slowly raises his arms to pet the back of Gon’s head.
“Killua,” Gon whispers. “Thank you.” He closes his eyes again, memorizes the circumference of Killua’s waist, the fabric of his shirt clenched tight between his fingers, the steady weight of him as they lean against one another. There’s going to be snot on his shoulder now, but Gon knows Killua won’t care.
Killua gives a shuddering breath, fingers threading through the hairs on the nape of Gon’s neck and travelling up to cradle his head. “No need,” he says softly, and Gon trembles. “Never need to say thanks.” He buries his head beside Gon’s in the circle of their embrace and together, they breathe.
Soon, they will leave. But for now they hold on, and while it is not enough for all that has happened, it’s a start.
(The second time Gon apologizes, Killua’s voice is normal, lilting and teasing. Gon lets himself flop to the ground and makes his voice match, shame coming out in steam from his ears. When Alluka chastises her brother and Killua gives a little self-satisfied laugh, the cat who got the canary, he feels a little better).
(He supposes that by the third, and the fourth, and the fifth time—he stops counting by the sixth—they are no longer apologies, but fulfillments. It would be selfish to continue telling Killua how sorry he is, and while Ging may be wrong about a lot of things, with this Gon knows he did something right).
(So he makes good on his promise, again and again and again, until it becomes a promise not only to Killua, but to himself as well).
~
- Name
He looks at him and thinks of sunlight, and warmth, and the curve of his shoulder and the freckles that dust his collarbones like scattered sugar.
He thinks of things that are alive, things that slumber beneath the mossy soil of Whale Island and curl outwards towards the light; or maybe that’s just him, the one who is drawn up and outside of himself, and Gon is the sun towards which he inevitably grows.
Gon Freecss, boy of light, is beautiful, and even after that brightness burns Killua in the softest parts of his heart, he still loves him. It would be impossible not to.
So when he sees the port come into view, the sea breeze taking on the steadiness of land and earth, he lets himself breathe again. He watches as Alluka and Nanika run gleefully to the front of the ship, and he closes his eyes and laughs, just a little. Because Gon is jumping up and down on the docks like a bright green beacon amidst the bustle of his neighbors, and despite it all, or perhaps because of it, Killua Zoldyck loves him.
He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until they’re in each other’s arms, and Gon says his name like it’s something to hold: that triplet of syllables again, so quiet and fond, for Killua’s ears alone.
“Killua,” he says, and Killua holds on even tighter.
“Gon,” he says back, and really, why did he worry about the words, when this is all they’ll ever need?
~
- Coda
Gon breaks away from the hug first, just to look.
“Hi.” His smile is small and real, almost shy, always lovely.
“Hey.” Killua smiles back, and it is the beginning all over again.