Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“And you’re sure you won’t accept a tip, Mr. Vulf?” The old woman pressed her wrinkled hands to Leorio’s arm. She had a heavy face, made heavier by the makeup she wore in layers over her papery skin.

Leorio shook his head, “It’s no problem. You’re already paying top price, I couldn’t accept more than that, Mrs De Luca.”

“Ah, Mr. Vulf,” Mrs Greta De Luca said, scratching her chin, “You should always accept extra money. Even if you have no use for it, it’s safer to let people think you can be bought. Otherwise, they’ll try some other means to pull your strings.”

Leorio felt a chill.

It was easy to see Mrs De Luca for what she was now—a frail, slightly mad old woman—but Leorio knew what she had been before, too. She had been the powerful matriarch who had leapt on the vacuum left by the death of the Carron family head, and cracked the western seaboard open. The De Luca family’s luck had turned on a dime.

“You believed me about my bad leg,” De Luca said, “Without you, I’d still be hobbling around.”

“It was just a muscle infraction,” Leorio said, straightening up. “Anyone with eyes should have been able to see it.”

De Luca nodded approvingly. She opened her mouth to say something else, but the phone rang and she shuffled to her bedside table to pick it up. “Yes,” she said into the receiver, “you may enter.

Behind Leorio, the door opened and a smartly dressed young woman with deep violet hair in long waves entered. She gave a short bow. “Excuse the intrusion, Mrs De Luca.”

“You’re forgiven. What is it?” De Luca asked. Her voice was strong and deep, almost masculine.

“You asked to be informed when the merchandise arrived, Mrs De Luca,” The young woman spoke towards the floor.

“Ah, the Rashida,” De Luca nodded, eyes drifting shut. “Alright. You are dismissed.”

The young woman bowed even lower for a moment, and then left, closing the door behind her.

“Rashida…” Leorio muttered, wondering why the name seemed familiar to him. His head jerked up suddenly, “Rashida, the—”

“The mummy, yes,” De Luca said, and then smiled. It was a strange smile, straight and wide, like there were two hooks pulling her cheeks back. “Are you interested in that line of business, Mr. Vulf?”

Leorio held himself taut, so as not to display the roll of sickness that shivered through him. The body trading business, she meant. He could think of nothing he hated more. He searched around for something he could say that was both true and wouldn’t turn this mafioso against him. “The embalming is—interesting. From a medical standpoint.”

De Luca seemed to take his tension for supressed excitement, and her hook-smile grew wider. It seemed to be the sort of smile that wasn’t constrained by the sides of her face. “And your reluctance to take a tip—that wouldn’t be that your payment is capped by your medical school?”

“Ah,” said Leorio, a little too slow.

De Luca stood up. Her body was wiry, but strong, knotted like an old tree. Her shapeless black taffeta dress swirled around her nearly healed legs, which were pink with scars from the muscle infractions. It was true that the problem was simple and easy to fix—but it was also true that it had taken Leorio’s nen-enhanced eyes to detect the tiny lesions and diagnose them. Talking Mrs De Luca into swapping the tight, sharp breeches she had worn all her life for loose, long skirts and dresses—that had taken substantially more time.

“Come,” De Luca commanded, and Leorio rose to follow her. Her tone left no room for argument.

As if the attendant sensed them, the doors opened without De Luca even moving a muscle. She strode through them, and led Leorio down a long, blue corridor.

Leorio caught a glimpse at the white Yorknew sky through the rectangular windows. He had taken the placement mainly because nobody else would, and so far, it had been better than he had expected. He had been payed at the very top payment bracket. He had a foot in the underworld, if he needed to get in for some reason. A few months ago, he had even gotten a glimpse at Kurapika from across the room during an auction De Luca had taken him to. Kurapika had firmly ignored his gaze, but it was proof that the man was still alive, which was more than the dozens and dozens of missed calls would tell Leorio.

Whatever instincts that told him to leave and leave right now—were left over from Leorio’s childhood and his own memories of the body trade; and should be ignored.

“You know, you remind me of my husband, when he was still alive,” De Luca said, almost to herself.

Leorio was jolted out of his thoughts and blurted out, “What?”

“Come on, Mr. Vulf.” De Luca scoffed. “That’s a prime example. You’ve always got your head in the clouds.”

“Sorry,” Leorio said, scratching the back of his neck.

De Luca shook her head almost dismissively. Her grey curls remained unmoving, sprayed tight to the curve of her skull. Her earrings winked.

The pair of them passed the main entrance and descended the dark, wide staircase. It always surprised Leorio just how few people there were in the De Luca compound. Every once in a while, he’d even searched for auras but found almost nobody working. If there were people hidden from him, they knew exactly when to step out of sight to avoid detection.

Down here, the blue tiles had been replaced by sleek black granite. De Luca’s heels clicked like the long claws of a dog.

“Don’t mistake me—I loved Mattias very dearly. He was a very kind and gentle man,” De Luca said, “but I am glad my children inherited my temperament.”

Leorio wondered if the reason the scions of De Luca inherited Greta’s temperament because she had raised them. He couldn’t imagine a kind and gentle child staying that way long under Greta De Luca’s tutorship. He had the urge to apologise again—although what for, he wasn’t sure.

De Luca paused outside a gilded set of double doors, curling her hands around the long handles. “I don’t mean to offend. I’m just making an assertion as to why I’m a mafia don and you’re a…”

“A doctor,” Leorio supplied. Although technically he was only a student.

“Quite,” De Luca said, and pushed the door open.

The room was huge, and very dim. When Leorio crossed the threshold, a coolness flowed over him, and the air tasted of dry, cleaned and managed ventilation, like the air in a museum. Small lights glowed in pristine cases over all manner of horrors—disembodied noses, grey cut-out tongues, floating toes chained together with silver.

De Luca stepped around him. She was a very short old woman, barely reaching Leorio’s elbow, for all that she drew attention to herself. Her dress rustled together as the vents pumping in clean air disturbed the folds.

“Come here, Vulf,” De Luca said, beckoning with a gnarled hand.

Leorio took halting steps after her. His body was filled with a chilled, shivery sensation, like he was trespassing over something sacred and powerful. There was a cage hanging from the ceiling, encased in a second layer of glass, which held the emaciated body of a small child, curled in on itself like a dead cockroach. Their eye sockets were sunken.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” De Luca said. “Nobody knows it’s all here.”

“It makes me worry I’ll end up in one of these cases one day,” Leorio said, a bit thoughtlessly. He chewed his cheek. Even after six months, he couldn’t stop putting his foot in his mouth.

De Luca didn’t seem offended. “Ha!” She said. “As if you were so interesting.”

The old woman came to a mostly clear table, save for a black silk-wrapped box and a glass globe holding the preserved foot of an unfortunate saint. De Luca drew the black silk-wrapped box towards her and ran her hands along the soft sides, almost tenderly.

“Another lesson for you, Vulf,” De Luca said. “Money is anonymous—it has its uses, but there’s no mark there. If I gave you a thousand jenny, would you be able to tell which of the coins I’d taken from your pocket?”

“No,” Leorio said, before he realised it had been a rhetorical question. De Luca ignored him.

Gently, the black silk was folded away, revealing a crystalline case. Inside it, a brown hand had been neatly removed at the wrist and bore a faded autopsy tag tied to its little finger. A shining opal was set into a ring on the mummy’s middle finger. The dark, sheer skin was so heavily wrinkled that it appeared like the topography of a million mountain ranges.

“This is unique,” De Luca said. “The jenny’s price rises and falls but the mummy’s hand will always be worth something, you see? It’s an insurance. And if it were to disappear—nobody would be able to make use of it without letting you know.”

“Isn’t the hand cursed?” Leorio asked. His chest was tight.

De Luca laughed, “Don’t you see? That’s what makes it all the more valuable.”

Leorio swallowed thickly.

“Besides, nobody knows what your wealth truly is if you store it in objects, Mr Vulf,” De Luca said. She replaced the black silk over the mummy’s case, and Leorio felt a weight lift from his chest. She smoothed the dark coverings. “Everyone thinks the De Luca family is poor, but when we cash in, our power will leap like a hunting lion. You understand?”

“Y-yes,” Leorio said, voice weak despite himself. The horrible feeling in his chest only rose and rose, like he was in the den of some horrible beast he hadn’t caught sight of yet. Like there was something he wasn’t seeing.

De Luca lifted the box, shuffling the silk until it was wrapped tightly over the case. She held it out to him.

Leorio took it. He had a sudden wave of weakness, like the case was intolerably heavy, but he didn’t stumble. De Luca slapped his shoulder lightly and smiled humourlessly.

“I can see us doing good things together, Mr Vulf,” De Luca said. “It’s important to be healthy. Health is strength.”

Leorio couldn’t say anything, but De Luca didn’t seem to expect him to. She released him and stepped towards the door.

By then, his eyes had gotten used to the gloom in the storage room. By then, he had become aware of the higher racks of human merchandise, the things which rested away from the main room.

And as Leorio turned to follow De Luca, he saw them.

A row of curved glass containers. Each containing a brilliant, glowing scarlet eye.

*

Leorio left the De Luca compound in a daze, and would have forgotten his medical kit if an attendant hadn’t pushed it into his hands as he stepped outside. He was forced to put the glass case under his arm, which he hoped wouldn’t be too disrespectful.

Benedetta De Luca, the eldest of the De Luca children, drove him home. She was absolutely beautiful, but the picture of a woman carved out of ice—her face and skin and hair were pale, very pale to almost colourless. Her eyes were very dark, like the eyes of sparrow. When Leorio had first met her, months ago now, he had invited her up to his apartment for drinks. It had not gone well.

Leorio stepped out of the car and lingered on the side of the road until Benedetta’s car vanished around the corner. He took the stairs to his apartment very carefully, as if he thought the floor would open up beneath him.

He opened the door to his empty apartment and set Rashida’s hand down on the kitchen table. He closed and locked the door behind him.

It wasn’t that Leorio had stopped thinking about Kurapika. He still thought about him. Hell, he still called him every week or so; he didn’t leave messages anymore because Kurapika’s phone could only keep twenty messages recorded at once, and Leorio didn’t want to fill that up in case he had something important to say. What that was, he didn’t know.

But Leorio had carved out a little life for himself in Yorknew. He went to school, he sat in lectures. He talked to Killua and Gon when they were in town, which wasn’t uncommon. He went to frat parties and drank with his friends and ate bad street food and made careful money decisions and bought whatever looked interesting at the supermarket after a long day at the ward. It was a life that Kurapika wasn’t a part of.

He pulled out his phone. By now, he could type in Kurapika’s number even faster than any other’s, his fingers moved without thinking.

The phone rang. And rang.

Leorio stared at it buzzing and buzzing.

Buzzing.

An automated voice interrupted the message: the owner of this number can’t answer the phone right now, please—

Leorio cancelled the call. Although he was sure the number had been correct at some point, it had been months since Kurapika had picked up the call, so he couldn’t be sure it was still his. What would he even say, anyway?

Could he contact the mafia family Kurapika worked for? It was unlikely. He would need to talk to Kurapika directly, and as he understood it, the guy might not even be in the country right now. It was hopeless.

Rashida’s old, withered hand was partially visible, from where the black silk had shifted. He stared at it and thought, deeply.

Like many hard decisions in Leorio’s life, he had made them quickly. This one, he had made the moment he recognised the floating Kurta eyes in their chambers. The rest of the time he spent just accepting the choice he would have to make. Accepting that yes, he was really about to uproot his perfect life, where he had everything he could possibly want, everything he dreamed of when he was just a starving nobody in a street gutter somewhere. And yes, he was going to do it for a guy he’d hardly spoken to in the better part of a year. Yes, him, yes, really.

“Jesus Christ,” Leorio muttered to himself, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

*

The De Luca compound had two entrances that were both heavily guarded. Any number of state-of-the-art security systems were rigged along the back and front entrances, body sensors, heat detectors, CO2 emission detectors, independent motion systems. Not to mention the gauntlet of hired guards and professional security experts which watched the doors like pack of hawks.

It was a good thing Leorio didn’t need an entrance.

He approached the wall in the blindspot between two security cameras on the western wall, which backed almost straight onto the river and was therefore deserted. He had noticed it two weeks ago and had meant to mention it to De Luca—he was glad he hadn’t.

Focussing the nen in his hands, he pressed them flat to the thick stone. It was only very recently he had leaned how to open portals to places he couldn’t see, and it still unnerved him. He slipped through the wall and collapsed the portal behind him, a wave of fatigue prickling at him. He stalked through the dark granite corridors.

De Luca didn’t have many security cameras inside the building, which was why it was so heavily guarded at the entrances. She said she thought they looked ugly, but Leorio suspected she was just paranoid about being watched.

He pushed open the doors to the storage room, and a cool breath of air rolled over him. He closed the doors behind him soundlessly.

Leorio waited for his eyes to adjust. Part of him was sure he had walked in on De Luna or a cleaner, and he was about to be shot dead. But when his vision returned, he found himself alone with the intricate display of human suffering. He pulled a glass case out of his messenger bag.

Originally, he had bought it to hold the sorts of curry which always stained his old Tupperware. Now clear 70% ethanol sloshed around in it, the closest he’d been able to get to formaldehyde at short notice. He cracked the seal and left the box of clean alcohol open. Leorio pulled on a thick glove, and send out a tendril of nen which climbed the complicated displays and sheer wall until it penetrated the glass container.

Leorio dipped his right hand into the portal that opened before him and closed a hand delicately over the floating eyeball. He pulled it out and set it lightly into the box he had set aside. The next two followed it. A stuffed bear watched him impassively, its long claws curled towards its chest. Leorio preferred to look at it, when he wasn’t looking at the disembodied eyeballs.

It became routine. He dipped his hands in and out of the portal, adjusting it slightly as he moved from case to case. The withdrawal was completely seamless—if he had had time, he could have brought false eyes and put them into the cases. Then he might even get away with it. As it was, he couldn’t trust that De Luca wasn’t about to sell off her whole stoke—she had been talking about expanding business for months.

Finally, he was finished. He stood up and peered at the shelves, but as far as he could see, he had gotten every last one. Eighteen scarlet eyes bobbed in the box at his feet, glowing like red stars in the alcohol. He closed the lid on them, and left the way he’d came.

*

As he walked briskly back to his apartment, he texted his student advisor and his class tutor to let them know he was going on an indeterminate sabbatical, and he wasn’t sure when he was returning. He thanked them for their support in his studies. He texted Alina, a girl he’d been seeing on and off (more off these days, to be fair) to break things off with her. Despite the late hour, she texted back immediately—to let him know that she’d gotten engaged to her ex-girlfriend in the time since she’d seen him last anyway, but was glad for the closure. He raised his eyebrows at the indecipherable string of emojis she had sent after that, wondering what exactly a Christmas tree or a fairy wand had to do with anything.

Before working with the mafia, he had taken a number of precautions, which paid off now. First, he had a separate phone and had pretended not to notice when De Luca had a tracer put into it. He had already gotten rid of the phone—had taped it to the underside of his seat in a taxi he had taken. Hopefully that would have them chasing their tails for a day or two. Secondly, his pseudonym—Graham Vulf—was connected to a fake set of papers his hospital had set up for him. And he had just booked Graham a flight to somewhere warm and scenic for the foreseeable future.

Leorio let himself into his apartment but didn’t take off his shoes. He wouldn’t be staying.

The first thing he did was fetch his medical kit and push his glasses back so he could slot an eyeglass over his right eye. He cracked open the glass box, and retrieved one of the bobbing eyeballs, holding it delicately between broad forceps. The smell of alcohol and formaldehyde was sharp and acidic, irritating the inside of his nose.

He turned the glistening eyeball over, and inspected every side. A small scrap of optical nerve dangled wetly from the back of the ball, grey-pink and limp. It was certainly no golfball. He peered at the sides of the iris, and saw no seam, no needle-marks and no way for a false colour to be inserted. It glowed gently.

Formaldehyde mixed with blood usually caused a grey colouration, known as “embalmer’s grey”, which was pale and lifeless and attacked red blood pigments most vigilantly. He could see it in the desaturated veins which arced over the eyeball’s curves. The iris was still a strong, brilliant red. That meant it wasn’t an albino eye, it was something with a definite pigment, lit up by something other than haemoglobin.

The iris was intricately coloured, in a way that would have been impossible to fake. From a distance, it appeared to be a flat ruby, but this close up Leorio could see that it was split into sections that pooled colour in fragments, like the flesh of a pomegranate, or a stained glass window. When light caught it, it splintered crimson.

Leorio set the eye down, and it turned over in the preserving mixture, leaving him looking at blank white. He picked up another at random and found the same. They were the genuine article, apart from one glaring error. They were said to be one of the most beautiful objects in the world—but Leorio had never seen anything more hideous. He closed the lid and wrapped the glass box of eyeballs in thick packaging, until he could only see the faint glow of pink through the transparent plastic.

He threw together a very small backpack of things, mostly money, water and a change of clothes. For the dogs which might come sniffing for him in the morning, he left a few more false trails. He set off the washing machine, filled with his school clothes. He poured a cup of coffee and charged it full of nen so it would stay hot for hours. He took one pack of cigarettes with him but left another opened on the counter with one missing—as if he had just stepped out for a smoke.

As he was pushing the eyeball box into his messenger bag, he caught sight of the glass case resting in its dark silks. Leorio paused, breathing quietly. Rashida’s fingers were barely visible, more shadow than shape. He approached quietly and picked her hand from the side.

It wasn’t the smartest move—but he doubted his little distractions would fool many professional hunters for long. And she had been in a case for a very long time. He slipped the case into his messenger bag. He took a moment to look around the apartment for what he hoped wouldn’t be the last time. He left.

*

As Leorio drove, the sun rose over the suburbs and split through his rental car’s windshield in the just the right angle to stab his eyes. He sighed and shielded his face. This early, the road was mostly empty, and he was accompanied by mostly empty busses and taxis with foreign businessmen.

He had a heavy, lonely feeling in his chest, like he was carrying something low around his neck. He hadn’t programmed any location into the satnav, and he took exits at random. Gradually, he found the city fall away, to be replaced by wide fields and tall grain.

Leorio took an exit and drove over thin dusty earth. There were a few buildings around, but it was approaching four in the morning on a Saturday. Nobody would be awake yet. He pulled the bundle of silks from his passenger seat and tucked it under his arm. The box of eyes were in the trunk, wrapped in his old coat.

He knew that some of the land here was public property, but he wasn’t sure how to tell. He had chosen a mostly empty field. Weeds were thick in the hillside, yellow flowers and white flybys. Even at this early hour, bees flew and darted through the long grass.

Leorio dug at the base of an old tree. He didn’t have a spade or shovel, so he had brought a large metal spoon with him from his apartment. It had been a housewarming present from his neighbour who had, correctly, guessed that Leorio didn’t have any cooking equipment. Leorio hoped he could see him again someday, and tell him just what the spoon’s fate had been.

He had already lost the case Rashida’s hand had come in. The risk of some tracer being set into it was just too high, so he had dropped the heavy case into the river as he passed it. The mummified hand was dry and hard, the old skin had hardly any give at all.

“Sorry,” Leorio told Rashida after he had cleared a pit deep enough for her. “I know it’s not really fit for royalty.”

Rashida’s hand said nothing. He gently worked the paper tag from her little finger and crumpled it up. He left the ring with her. Her long fingers must have been beautiful in life, deep, rich and living brown, delicate as a goddess’s hands. Now her fingers were curled like tree roots.

He didn’t know much about Rashida, when it came down to it. She had been some kind of queen or empress, and she had been the last to die in peace. When her son’s kingdom had fallen, her tomb had been split apart and her rest had been interrupted with the blood of her children flowing through the streets. It was said she cursed anyone who owned her hand, because she needed her body to be whole to pass on.

“I don’t know what you’d like me to say,” Leorio said. “I’m not religious or anything. And definitely not your kind of religious, I don’t think anyone’s been for a long, long time. But you probably know that, eh…”

He ran a thumb over her old, hardened skin. He didn’t know what to say. A bee landed on the side of the old queen’s palm, and walked delicately, antenna waving. It took off upwards, curving lazily through the early morning air. What could you say, to comfort someone who had lost so much? Who was now unreachable to him?

Leorio set the hardened hand into the grave. It was deep enough at least, to avoid dogs digging her up again. And hopefully, deep enough that if she was discovered again, she would be anonymous bones. The tree roots would expand and fold her into its heart, where she would never be set out for display again.

“I hope this is enough,” Leorio murmured. “I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

Gently, he spooned dirt back over the hand. Pink earthworms wriggled in the thick, wet dirt clods, covered by the dry, dustier earth at the surface. When she was covered, Leorio moved rocks over her, and stamped down. The earth wasn’t smooth, and when he stepped back he could hardly see where he had buried her.

Leorio brushed dirt from his hands onto his jeans. He felt like he should say something else, but nothing came to mind. He chewed the inside of his cheek.

“Bye, Rashida.” Leorio scratched the back of his neck and turned, walking back towards his car.

Chapter Text

By noon, Leorio had been driving almost uninterrupted for almost nine hours. He was feeling very cranky, and slightly dizzy. Instead of picking random roads, he had instead typed in the address of a diner he knew his friend worked at. It was difficult to imagine the mafia would trace her to him, especially so fast—and anyway, he needed to see a friendly face.

He parked in the empty plot in front of the diner and climbed out of the car, stretching. Every bone hurt. He opened his trunk and pulled out the glass box of eyeballs, still wrapped in his old coat, and tucked it into his messenger bag. As he walked across the carpark, the box sloshed gently, and his unease spiked.

He pushed the door open and the bell tinkled above his head.

“One moment sir,” The waitress waved a black nailed hand at him without looking. She was carrying a tray laden with a full meal towards a grimy looking old man at the booth near the door. The old man had oily nails and yellowing teeth.

As Leorio watched, the old man’s hand travelled towards the waitress’s round backside. Leorio snatched his wrist before he could make contact and pulled it back.

“What’s wrong with you?” Leorio snapped.

“Huh?” The waitress turned around and glanced between them. Her face went bright pink. “What the hell?”

“Let go of me,” The old man snapped, indignantly.

“No, what do you think you’re doing?” Leorio growled. “You can’t just grope people!”

“Like you’re groping me right now?” The old man shot back, his face going red.

“It’s fine, let him go,” The waitress set the last drink down.

Leorio stared at her, before he reluctantly released the old man. The man shuffled away, smoothing his jacket down and muttering darkly. He wore a heavy, dark biker jacket, and his beard was braided into three wispy tails. The waitress’ eyes slid over the pair of them, before she smiled at Leorio and beckoned him to the bar.

Eyebrow raised, Leorio followed her. She was an apple-faced young woman with sheets of bright green hair that was frizzy with split ends. With a skip in her step, she rounded the bar and skidded into place in front of him.

“Thanks for the save, Leorio,” She said, brightly.

“Huh?” Leorio sat down on one of the creaking leather stools. “Do I know you?”

“You don’t recognise me?” The woman scratched her chin. She had a familiar face, but one Leorio couldn’t quite place. “I guess I’m not wearing my makeup, huh? It’s Mingmei.”

“Oh!” Leorio exclaimed.

Mingmei usually painted some kind of animal print or leaf pattern on her pale, bumpy cheeks, and not even the stern lab team could convince her to wash it off. But he supposed customer service would be hard to do if your face was partially camouflaged. She had also dyed her hair, and the natural black colour was still visible in areas she’d missed at her temple and the back of her neck.

“I didn’t actually need the save, but I really appreciate it,” Mingmei said. “So I’ll get you something on the house, how about it?”

“What do you mean you didn’t need it?” Leorio asked in an undertone. “Won’t your boss get mad if you speak out against a customer?”

“Well,” Mingmei stood on her tiptoes to peer at the old man, who was staring stubbornly at the road. “I actually did it on purpose.”

She unfolded her hand, to reveal a set of keys resting in her palm. They were heavy and glinted cooly in the midday sun. She folded her fingers back.

“Don’t tell, will you?” Mingmei chirped quietly. “He’s actually an auctioneer at one of those evil body auctions the city always holds. Plus, he’s groped me and the other girls before—and it’s a really cool bike.”

Leorio waved a hand, “I’m not one to judge. It’s not like I’ve never stolen anything before.”

Mingmei sighed in relief and tossed the keys to one side, so they rested on the little shelf behind the bar. She scrubbed her hands together, “So, I’ll get you some chips and a burger, alright?”

“Sounds amazing,” Leorio said. “Is it too early for a beer?” Mingmei’s startled stare said it was. “Alright, an orange juice please, with ice.”

Mingmei went into the back and Leorio rubbed his store legs. The messenger bag with his horrible prize rested on his lap. The old man attacked his steak ferociously.

After ten minutes, Mingmei returned with his meal. Leorio consumed it with vigour, hardly stopping to chew. It was trashy food, mushy and with too many cheap flavours, but to his hungry mouth, it was like something sent from heaven. He finished it in five minutes and drank the tall glass of orange juice only a little slower, relishing in the cool, rich juice.

“Can you even drive a bike?” Leorio asked.

“Sort of,” Mingmei tilted her head. “My dad can teach me the rest. What about you?”

“I used to,” Leorio admitted. “It’s a little dangerous. And it’s not fun when it’s raining.”

“You have no sense of adventure,” Mingmei criticised, taking his empty plate from him.

Leorio shook his head to himself. Startling light spill through the dusty windows of the diner, and low music played gently through the battered speakers. Every time he shifted his chair, it creaked loudly. With a meal in him, he felt a lot stronger and lot less worried. He had called Kurapika again from the car, again he hadn’t gotten a response and hadn’t left a message. He was still hoping he could reach the other man and get the crazy ordeal over with before midterms.

He only noticed because he had been staring out the right windows—but a crisp black car rolled into the driveway. Leorio stumbled out of his seat and dived behind the bar. Minutes later, as he pulled himself completely around the side of the bar, the bell rang as the door swung open.

“Oh, hello!” Mingmei said, bouncy false cheer returning to her face. “Can I help you?”

Leorio peered around the side of the bar, as Benedetta De Luca, flanked by her two younger siblings, approached the bar. The woman’s pale hair was longer than he remembered seeing it, falling in pale curls down to the base of her spine. Leorio glanced to the other two. The middle child was male, a man with a shock of deep red hair that was shaved in the back, and eyes like coals. He had teeth like a shark that he ground together almost audibly. Enrico De Luca. The youngest looked distinct from her siblings, a young woman with soft straight blue hair that reached her collarbone, and a pink dress that swirled around her ankles. She held her hands pleated together at her sternum, like a praying angel. Noemi De Luca.

“Have you seen this man,” Benedetta brandished a photograph of Leorio at Mingmei.

Leorio’s heart almost stopped.

“Hmm,” Mingmei took the photo and inspected it. Her dark, patchy eyebrows drew together. “Is he a celebrity or something? I don’t watch much television. Apart from, like, horse racing, but he doesn’t look like a jockey. Is that presumptive of me? I mean, his shoulders are kind of—”

“I mean in real life,” Benedetta said, sharply. “Have you seen this man in real life, here, within the last twenty-four hours?”

“Nope,” Mingmei chirped, and passed the photo back to her.

“Are you sure?” Benedetta asked, leaning forward. “You go to school together. You’re lab partners.”

“Lab partners?” Mingmei echoed, as if that were a ridiculous idea. “What am I, like, a scientist or something?”

“You’re a medical student,” Benedetta insisted, clearly losing her patience.

Leorio shifted slightly. He couldn’t move far. Even now, Benedetta had to only lean over the bar and she’d see him immediately.

“Oh my god,” Mingmei sounded delighted and shifted forward, leaning on the bar in such a way to block Leorio from sight. “A medical student! That’s crazy. Is this, like, new wave improv? Does this look like the sort of place a medical student would work?”

Benedetta sounded moments away from growling, “You’re Mingmei Lee, you’re a second-year medical student who—”

“I mean, I hate to be snappy, but I think you’ve got the wrong Mingmei Lee,” Mingmei tilted her head.

“There’s another Mingmei Lee who works here?” Benedetta gritted out. “Mingmei Lee is that common a name?”

“Well, maybe not for your average girl, but for chiaxan immigrants, like, you remember that old stuffy writer, Mingmei Rose? And, like, Lee is a common surname.” Mingmei tugged on a scruffy section of her bright green hair. “I mean, like, I would have to work two-hundred hours a week to afford to go to Bridgeport medical school.”

“You go to Red-Heart hospital medical school,” Benedetta corrected.

“Oh my god!” Mingmei squealed. “Go Mingmei! That’s, like, the best one!” Benedetta’s grip on the corner of the bar was knuckle-white.

Enrico punched his younger sister in the shoulder, who squealed shrilly. He growled, “I knew we should have never trusted your stupid dreams.”

“Don’t hit me!” Noemi wailed and sobbed, even as she punched him back, “Benny, tell Rico not to hit me! It’s not allowed!”

Benedetta turned and began to break up her siblings, who had engaged in a dramatic brawl in the middle of the diner. Leorio took the opportunity to snatch the keys which rested behind the bar and slip out into the back room. Mingmei stepped aside to let him pass and closed the door behind him.

When he was in the back room, Leorio straightened up, his back clicking. This was bad. This was really bad. He was glad he still had his messenger bag wrapped around him, but he had left his coat in the diner table. They knew Mingmei, which meant they’d uncovered his real name and identity. That meant he couldn’t contact anyone he knew, and he probably shouldn’t touch money in his accounts. He could probably still use the money he got from the zodiacs, but even that might be risky, if there were hunters hunting him.

Leorio opened the back door and stumbled out, closing it quietly behind him. The sun was dazzling. He couldn’t take his rental car—he had rented it in his own name, after all. Luckily, the old man’s hog was parked beside the diner, and the keys dangled from his fist.

He started the bike.

There was slam of doors behind him just as he peeled away from the driveway, and he turned his head to see Benedetta burst out of the diner and sprint after him. Her hair fanned out behind her head, even longer this time, spreading out like tentacles as she sprinted.

One tendril of pale hair shot forward like a spear. Leorio swerved to avoid it, and it curled around air, yanking backwards. He accelerated, and eventually pulled away, the motorcycle rumbling like a hungry animal. The diner dropped away.

Benedetta slowed to a stop. Her hair curled and curled, but eventually pulled back into its usual pale tail. She watched the dark motorcycle weave through traffic, until their quarry disappeared around the curve of the land.

Noemi came to a stop beside her and pulled on her thin skirts. “Aw, he got away.”

Behind them, the door tinkled as Enrico stepped out, dragging Mingmei by the elbow. “Because of this lying bitch,” Enrico snarled.

“Rico! Don’t be rude!” Noemi went pink and turned to her eldest sister. “Benny, tell him not to be rude.”

“U-um,” Mingmei scratched her ear with her free hand, “Sorry, I’m bad with faces?”

Benedetta watched her with cool, dark eyes, “Enrico, let go of her.”

Enrico glared at her for a moment, but released Mingmei, who darted quickly away. He straightened up. “What did you let her go for? We need her to tell us where the bastard is going!”

“My dreams tell me where he’s going,” Noemi said, and squealed when Enrico grabbed her by the ear.

“Your dreams are only 25% correct, dumbass!” Enrico yelled, yanking on her ear. “That means the rest of it is crap!”

Noemi wailed and wailed, “I’m sorry!!” She kicked Enrico in the stomach, who still didn’t let go of her. She aimed a hit for his ear, but he shoved her away. “If it wasn’t for me we’d—”

“We know where he’d going,” Benedetta said, her voice cool and strong.

She lifted the both of them by the backs of their necks, like disobedient puppies, and their legs dangled in the air. They stopped fighting immediately and stared up at her. She set them down.

“How?” Noemi asked, wiping her teary eyes.

Benedetta straightened up. “It wasn’t a full tank of gas. I could tell by the sound. So, there’s only one place he can stop at.”

*

Leorio’s motorcycle began to cough and gutter. It was early afternoon, and the sun was sinking lower in the sky. His mouth and nose was filled with the smell of car oil and the metal hub of the motorcycle was scorching under him.

With the last of the gas, he directed his motorcycle into a gas station. He parked and waved over the attendant, who reluctantly walked over.

“Could you fill my bike up for me?” Leorio asked, holding out a fist-full of bank notes.

The attendant glanced between the bike and the notes, before he accepted them with an eye-roll. As Leorio walked away, he caught the attendant saying something about a ‘lazy bastard’. Leorio stepped into the shade of a tall, robust oak tree, and pulled out his phone.

He waited patiently through the ringing and ringing. The owner of this number can’t answer the phone right now, please leave a message after the tone. To listen to your message, press the asterisk, and to rerecord your message, press the hash key. Thank you.

“Hey, Kurapika,” Leorio said, speaking lowly. “I know it’s probably a bad time, but if you listen to this message please call me back. I’m not just calling for myself this time… I’ve, well, got something you’ve been looking for, for a long time now. It’s eighteen of those things, actually, and it’s not easy to keep them safe. So. Call me. And if you can’t get through,” He leaned around the tree to catch a glimpse of the road sign, “I’m about a mile out from Kings borough right now. Well… see you, then.”

He ended the call, glad that he had not said anything particularly stupid yet. Part of him wanted to emphasis just how deep in shit he was if Kurapika didn’t answer soon, but that was implied. And anyway, if the eighteen scarlet eyes swimming around in his luggage weren’t enough to get him a call back, it was unlikely any force in heaven or earth would be able to.

Leorio took a moment to enjoy the sun. He sucked in a deep, clear breath, and let it flow out again. He would just have to wait and be smart and vigilant enough that Kurapika had something to come back to. And someone.

The gas station attendant looked up as Leorio approached and glared from under heavy eyebrows. He pulled the funnel out of the nozzle of Leorio’s motorcycle and set it back on the rack, screwing the cap back on.

“Hey, kid,” Leorio grinned. “Where’s the freshest butcher’s in Kings?”

*

Leorio lasted until late evening.

The King’s community station was a short, square building full of green stained-glass windows and complicated gothic architecture. People were everywhere. Leorio thought that might give him the sliver of an advantage, until he actually got inside the train station and realised that, despite his towering height, he had almost no visibility. Everywhere he looked there were people, obstructing his vision, distracting him, getting in the way. In the tightest knots of people he had to walk at a frustrating snail’s pace.

Leorio ate a scalding sausage roll while he waited for any one of the six trains he’d bought tickets for to arrive. He moved from the first platform over the steep staircase, pushing past the loud crowd and up the cold, wrought metal stairs.

As he descended the stairs on the other side of the pass-over, he saw a patch of blue in the corner of his eyes. He stopped dead, causing the crowd around him to trip over him and curse loudly, but Leorio wasn’t listening. Noemi De Luca lifted a hand from holding her white parasol to give him a little wave.

Leorio felt a wave of annoyance roll over him, “Oh, fu—”

Something very hard and flaming struck him on the side of the head, so hot it made his vision go white. He collided with the hard metal steps and took a moment to register his hair was on fire, before a heavy boot landed on his temple and he passed out.

*

Leorio came back to earth tied to a wooden chair, with a headache that felt like someone had buried a hatchet between his eyebrows. For a moment, he just sat, hanging his head and silently damning every member of the De Luca family to hell, a fiery terrible hell. Then he peeled his throbbing eyes open.

He was sitting, tied to a chair, in what looked like a hotel room. His nose dripped blood steadily onto his blue jeans. The left side of his face was aching heavily.

“Welcome back, jackass,” Enrico leered from the coffee table. “You look hell of a lot uglier with just the one eyebrow.”

“You need to control your fire more, Enrico,” Benedetta chided from somewhere behind Leorio’s left side. “You could have killed him. Then what?”

Enrico tossed his head like a petulant stallion.

Leorio closed one eye and then the other; despite the burn to his face, his vision seemed to be fine. And as far as he could tell there was no hearing loss either, although he would need a test to know for sure. All he was left with was probably the worst headache he’d had since he stopped drinking heavily.

A manicured hand landed on Leorio’s shoulder, and Benedetta leaned down to speak in his wounded ear, “You’ve been caught, Mr. Paradinight. Look.” A phone entered Leorio’s vision, and he strained to get a good look at it. The screen lock showed a picture of the De Luca siblings when they were younger, a stern twelve-year old Benedetta holding Enrico and Noemi in her lap. The photo must be nearly twenty years old. She tapped the time with her smooth, hard nail: 11:13 PM. “We estimate that you left your apartment at around two, this morning. That’s twenty-one hours and thirteen minutes, give or take.”

She flipped the phone shut, “You didn’t even last a day.”

Leorio pulled away from her and opened his mouth to respond.

“Oh!”

All eyes turned to the youngest sibling, who sat at the larger table.

Noemi De Luca sat in front of a pile of plastic wrappings she had cut through to get to the glass box. Her knife lay glinting in the packaging, and the smell of alcohol drifted through the air. She picked up one of the eyeballs and rolled it between her fingers. She sighed and leaned on her wrist.

“I thought they were supposed to be pretty,” Noemi whined.

Benedetta leaped towards her and snatched one of the floating eyeballs. She held it up to the light, ethanol rolling down her elegant fingers. “Brown? These are brown…”

“What?” Enrico yelped.

“These are fake eyeballs,” Benedetta hissed, tossing the eyeball back into the ethanol.

“Fake?” Noemi held three eyeballs at once and shifted them through her short fingers. “How did you find eighteen—”

“Pig eyeballs,” Leorio muttered. He pulled a humourless smile. “Offal is pretty cheap these days, actually.”

Benedetta stared at him, her eyes cold and hard.

Enrico leaped.

Leorio’s chair toppled backwards as Enrico landed on him, hands wrapping tightly around his throat. His head cracked against the floor. Enrico’s hands were a tight collar around his throat, and smoke poured out of the man’s open mouth, his eyes like bright embers. Leorio could feel his skin blistering.

White snaked around the other man and Enrico’s fire went out. Benedetta’s hair wrapped around Enrico’s wrist and pulled him upwards, until he released his grip and let himself be lifted upwards. Leorio sucked in a gasping breath, his throat stung savagely. He noted that Enrico’s heat had winked out the moment Benedetta’s hair touched him, even though he still looked murderous—which meant it probably had some sort of nen-cancelling powers.

“Reckless!” Noemi yelled at her younger brother. “Do you want to explode the whole building again?!”

Enrico actually looked embarrassed and worried for a second but snapped at his sister to shut up.

“Well,” Benedetta drawled, setting her younger brother down.

“Well,” Leorio croaked. His windpipe hurt felt like it was stuffed with glass shards.

Benedetta knelt by his chair and gently lifted it until all four legs were on the ground. She stayed next to him, her hair dancing and swirling like a willow in the breeze.

“You’ve made a terrible choice, Mr. Paradinight,” Benedetta murmured in his ear. “I hope you realise that soon.”
 

Chapter Text

Leorio woke up the next morning, having slept tied in the chair. Noemi fed him a breakfast of watery scrambled eggs, and Enrico took him into the bathroom to relieve himself, the whole time looking like he was about to snap and murder him. It was unnerving to have so much pure hatred directed at Leorio the whole time.

The entire time he was walking around, a thick tendril of pale hair was wrapped around his ankle. He tried to flare his nen, but nothing happened. He breathed deeply and tried to remain calm.

When he sat down again, he was strapped back into the chair, which is where he would remain for the rest of the day.

Twelve hours of questioning.

Benedetta wanted to know where the eyes were. Who he was working for. What he intended to do with the eyes. Why he took them. Where they are. Who he was working with. Why he had taken them. Where they were hidden. Why he took them. Where they were hidden. Why he had taken them. Where they were hidden. Why he took them. Where they were hidden. Why he had taken them. Where they were hidden. Why he took them. Where they were hidden.

The questions were easy to brush off at first, but they started to rattle around in his head. His face hurt. His throat prickled. He answered question after question, while his throat dried up and his tongue went thick and clumsy. No he didn’t know. No, he really didn’t. Enrico and Noemi circulated in and out of the room seemingly at random, usually only regarding him curiously before they cracked open a book or pulled out a games console. There was no clock in the room, so Leorio only had the sun in the sky to tell the time by. His entire view of the world was a blue square in the upper right-hand corner of the room.

Nobody ate around him, but still he grew hungrier and hungrier. His throat felt swollen. By the time his square of sky was a glowing auburn, his voice was so hoarse it was painful to speak, and came out more whisper than word. Benedetta finally released him, and left the room, followed closely by Noemi.

Alone, Leorio hung his heavy head. His bones ached dully. His muscles complained at being so stiff and constrained. Wafting from the other room, he smelled greasy take-out, and his belly clenched painfully.

Over the next hour, Leorio fell into an uneasy sleep.

*

It was almost completely dark in the hotel room when Leorio woke up to a hand on his cheek. He tried to flinch away, and would have toppled the chair over, had the hand not snatched his shirt and steadied him.

Panic clenched in his heart. He tried to turn in his chair, but he was tied down so tightly he couldn’t do much but twist a little. His ankles were locked in place.

Benedetta sat across from him, a collection of random items on the table between them. Her dark eyes were visible through the pale bars of hair which flopped over her face. Her expression was cold and impassive and reminded him dimly of—god help him—Kurapika.

Benedetta released his shirt. His breathing was quick and shallow.

She drew out a long, thin silver scalpel and poised it over his skin.

“Wait!” Leorio croaked.

“I’m not going to cut your eye out,” Benedetta murmured. “I’m popping your blisters.”

Leorio frowned. His brain felt a little mashed and it was difficult to peace it together. “You should… swab… iodine… first.”

Benedetta watched him intensely, before she drew out an iodine bottle from her medical kit and dabbed a little onto a non-fibrous swab. Has she meant to make that mistake—to force him to correct her—to build a sense of kindred identity? A moment when she listened to him, and gave him what he wanted? Leorio wasn’t suited to this second-guessing doublethink. Kurapika would have known—god, it was a little pathetic how much he thought about the man.

Iodine prickled his blisters. Leorio hadn’t seen his reflection, but from just how much iodine was going over his face, he was probably covered in blisters. Great. That was sure to improve his looks.

Benedetta set the iodine down. After a moment of silence, it became clear that she was waiting for him to tell her what to do next.

“Sterile needle,” Leorio muttered. Every movement of his throat stung. “Aim for… corners. Leave skin.”

Benedetta picked up a long needle and wiped it with rubbing alcohol. She held Leorio by the corner of his jaw, her manicured nails like clipped claws. Each prick of the needle was surprising. He closed his eyes. She worked diligently, and when Leorio flinched she didn’t slow down. Sticky liquid ran down Leorio’s face and pooled in his open wounds.

After it felt like she had pricked every inch of his skin on that side of his face, Leorio risked opening his eyes again.

“Petroleum jelly,” He croaked.

Benedetta wiped the blood and pus from her hands delicately, giving almost a regal air. She picked up a little petroleum jelly with the tips of her fingers and applied it to his face. The jelly itself didn’t sting, but the pressure of her touch was uncomfortable.

“You know, I forget you’re a doctor,” Benedetta murmured. Her voice was like a cool spring.

Leorio said nothing. His eyes were very heavy. There was a curl of hair around his ankle like a shackle.

“You could do a lot of good,” Benedetta said, “if you weren’t tied up rotting in here.”

“Then let me go,” Leorio croaked.

Benedetta smiled slightly, as if he had said something amusing. She spread the jelly over the shell of his ear, and plastered down the corner of his hairline. It was cool and smooth, and rested in chunks around the line of his jaw. His stubble had been burned away on that side of his face, and he had no eyelashes on that eye.

She cut a clean white length of gauze from the roll and trimmed it with long scissors. Her dark eyes flickered over his face and trimmed it a little more.

“I know you think you’re doing something honourable,” Benedetta said. “Not selling out your network. Not telling us where you’ve hidden the eyes. Perhaps you even think you’ll get out of here alive. And you may, yet.”

White gauze was stretched over his face and wrapped around his head. The tension was uncomfortable, and her long fingernails caught his skin in prickles. It was terrible to have her this close. Leorio felt like shrinking away. She tied the gauze off and pulled out a long needle filled with clear liquid. She pressed the plunger slightly, and a dribble of the liquid left the tip.

Leorio watched, unable to move, as the needle approached his exposed neck.

“But you’re not getting out of here without telling us,” Benedetta said. “You’re not going anywhere. And the sooner you realise that you’re more suited to the role of doctor than martyr, the better.”

She pressed the needle tip into the soft flesh of the underside of his jaw. He felt the liquid enter his veins and felt the effect only seconds later. His body began to shift out of focus, his mouth drooped open, his eyelids grew heavy. The last thing he felt as he slipped away was the gauntlet of hair around his ankle unfurling and releasing him.

*

Leorio came back to consciousness with the same feeling you might get dragging a body out of a half-frozen lake. His chest was tight and constrained. His body was trapped in the same position it had been in for over ten hours. There was nowhere to rest his heavy head.

Desperately, he wanted to get up. Just to move around and shake his uncomfortable body. But no amount of wriggling and pulling would shift the bindings. It only served to exacerbate his bruises.

He hung his head.

He was almost alone in his room, the midmorning sun streaming through the high window. The only evidence of life was the inch-thick band of blonde hair which trapped his ankle and led, Rapunzel-like, into the next room. They meant to leave him alone. It was to break him down further, come in tides, overwhelm him with questions one day and then dry him mad with silence and boredom the next day until he almost wished they would come back. He knew that. It didn’t make it easier.

He was hungry.

The hunger reminded him of his childhood. He remembered when he was eight or nine and so hungry he tied old bedsheets around his belly as tightly as he could to relieve the hunger pangs. He remembered chewing on cardboard and the foul aftertaste of ink. Leorio thought he had forgotten all about that until just that moment.

Leorio gave up on tugging at his wrist bindings and let his body relax as far as it could. He was lucky they had not tied one around his throat. He closed his eyes.

For a long time now, perhaps years, he had felt like an imposter. He was a strutting tom cat that pretended he could parlay with lions. That despite how they outsized him in tooth and claw, the lions assumed he must have some hidden ability, that he must be more intelligent, strong and quick than he actually was.

He rolled his head around the hard headrest. There was no movement he could make that let every part of his body rest. Every position in his limited repertoire left one of his muscles tensed and coiled.

“Kurapika…” Leorio croaked, and the noise surprised him. He swallowed. He didn’t remember thinking about speaking.

But why shouldn’t he? What was a hundred, two hundred missed calls but a prayer that went unheeded. Kurapika might as well be a distant star, for all the lonely wishes he’d hung upon his name.

The truth was, all of Leorio’s friends had a driving force behind them more powerful than gasoline. Killua, Kurapika, Gon, even all of the hunters Leorio had trained in first aid—in battle, they would get a second wind, they would unlock something powerful and deep to leap that extra step to victory. In a similar situation, Leorio would just die.

And now what? The De Luca family had snapped their fingers, and called his bluff.

*

He only realised he had fallen asleep when he woke up in the gloomy evening. Stars peppered the deep blue sky through the rectangular window above him. He let out a deep breath. His hunger has subsided to a low ache and his head hurt. He twisted slightly against his bindings.

Benedetta’s hair was missing from his ankle. He stared at his bare ankle for a long moment, before he twisted around, trying to check the rest of him. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t see even a blonde strand. He couldn’t feel it either. He tried to flare his nen, and felt it return to him, muted as if it were waking up from a deep sleep.

Just as Leorio was tried to work out how to portal himself out of the bindings, the door flew open.

Leorio flinched back, startled. A dark shape closed the door quietly, and it took a moment for his eyes to focus. A metal earring winked behind flat, smooth blonde hair that ended at his chin. His eyes were dark in the gloom, his suit was clean and fathomless black.

“Kurapika,” Leorio breathed, voice brushing inaudibility.

Kurapika stalked across the room. He fixed Leorio with an intense, dark look, “I’ve been looking for you.”

Something about Kurapika’s voice stirred in Leorio. He sounded more energetic than he’d ever heard him before, his voice bouncing and strong. Was he faking it? But why? Kurapika knelt behind his chair and sliced through his bindings with a sharp, steel penknife. Leorio felt the bindings fall loose and he rubbed his wrists.

Kurapika stuck out a hand to him. Leorio accepted it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

“You’ve looked better,” Kurapika said, voice light and oddly cheery.

Leorio let himself be pulled out of the room. He stumbled, but Kurapika didn’t slow down, tugging him out into the hallway. Leorio coughed on air, “What’s going on?” Every word seemed to take something from him, and he felt slightly dizzy. “Where are the De Lucas?”

“I killed them,” Kurapika said, lightly. “Come on. We’ve got to retrieve the eyes and skip town before the De Luca family sends more people after us.”

Leorio pulled Kurapika to a halt, and the other man finally stopped. His hair was shorter than Leorio had seen it last, cut to his jaw line neatly. His eyes were less shadowed, his face as a whole looked cleaner and younger. The earring that winked at his ear was not one Leorio had seen him wear in months.

“Kurapika,” Leorio said. He desperately didn’t want to ask the next question. “What will you do with the eyes, when this is over?”

“Sell them,” Kurapika answered, confidently.

Leorio stared at him, uncomprehending.

“O-oh,” Kurapika faltered, his expression growing nervous in a very un-Kurapika-like grimace, “By sell them, I-I mean not sell them but collect them? And add them to my… our… collection?”

Leorio raised his eyebrows, “Oh, I see.”

Kurapika smiled back at him, relieved. He wound a lock of pale hair around his finger and tugged it, giggling girlishly, “Sorry, ’Rio. It’s been a long kind of night; my mind is all a wobble.”

Leorio nodded, drew his fist and punched him.

The nen puppet’s face split down the front, wind escaping in a steady hiss as Kurapika’s hair scattered in waves and his earring wrinkled and dropped off. Noemi De Luca stood behind the corner of the hallway, gleaming nen strings still attached from her fingertips to the rapidly deflating Kurapika-puppet. She grinned sheepishly.

Leorio leaped over the puppet’s remains and aimed a punch for Noemi’s smug face.

A titanium bat interrupted his swung, cracking like a bolt of thunder over his hand. He dropped like a stone. Before he could cry out, a wave of blonde hair encircled his mouth and nose, and a boot landed on the back of his head. Enrico rested his baseball bat on his shoulder, fresh blood running down its smooth, glossy side.

“Well, your acting is shit as always,” Enrico aimed the jab at his younger sister, who swooned at the cruel words.

“Shut up Ricky,” Noemi released her nen strings to clutch her face and whine. “It’s harder than it looks!” The Kurapika puppet, now completely deflated, flopped like dirty washing into a heap at Leorio’s side.

“He has a point, Noemi,” Benedetta stepped out of a side room, her hair flowing down her front and across the floor to where it enveloped Leorio like quick sand, “Why did you have to act this Kurapika character so effeminately?”

“Eh?” Noemi looked stunned for a moment, before she squealed in realisation. “Wait, Kurapika’s a guy?! But the picture on the hunter website had such long eyelashes—!”

Leorio tried to move, when the tide of hair eclipsed his vision, he gave up and sank down into the wave of apple-scented locks. He felt a needle push into his neck.

*

When Leorio woke up next, he noticed the feeling in the room was very different.

All three De Luca siblings encircled him, Enrico at his right side, Noemi at his left, Benedetta sitting directly opposite him. He was sitting at the table with his body stretched out awkwardly, his broken hand tied to the back of the chair, his healthy hand pulled almost all the way across the table and enfolded tightly in Benedetta’s hair. His broken hand was devilishly painful. But they’d forgotten to tie his ankles.

The mood was taut and silent. Even Enrico looked stricken.

What interested Leorio was the lines under Benedetta’s dark eyes. She looked as exhausted as Leorio felt, and that made him hopeful. With a delicate touch, he tried to flare his nen and found that he could, just a little. That meant she was slipping. He had thought before that her power must run out eventually, despite the breaks she’d been taken, and he felt a painful twinge of hope.

“I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” Benedetta said, solemnly. “You still have one last chance to tell us what you know. You can stay our violence, even now.”

Leorio watched her gloomy expression and shook his head. He wasn’t sure he would be able to speak, if he tried.

“Alright,” Benedetta muttered. “Just know, this was your choice.” She beckoned to Noemi, who drew out a long, sharp knife.

Leorio realised what they were about to do in the moments before him.

A pure, white-hot animal fear shot through him like a strike of electricity. He tried to rear back, but the unbreakable bindings of hair kept him tethered to the table. His thoughts were blank, and he tried to speak, but no sound came out. He was trapped, utterly. That terror, that terrible feeling of seeing a horror coming and being unable to do anything, anything to stop it.

Noemi cut off his first two fingers, just above the bottom knuckle on his right hand.

Leorio screamed hoarsely, like an animal. Then he passed out.

*

He came back around as Enrico tied a tourniquet around his lower arm, every tug to tighten it jolting the livewire wounds on Leorio’s hand. Leorio had a dizzy, weightless feeling like everything was drawing to a close.

“Well?” Benedetta asked. “Are you going to take us seriously?”

Leorio rolled his head around and opened his eyes. His body felt heavy. “A’right.”

Benedetta blinked at him.

“Me’n Kurapika,” Leorio said, deliberately slurring his voice. “He’s sort of… connected to the kurta clan. He lived w’h them when he was younger. So, we want to g’t the eyes. Bury them. Be respectful.”

“I see,” Benedetta relaxed slightly. “That makes sense.”

“Did it w’h Rashida,” Leorio mumbled to himself. “Buried her out in a field.”

“We know,” Noemi purred. “That was super cute!”

Leorio’s eyes slid to the ceiling. So, the old queen didn’t get her rest, after all. Maybe there was no justice in the world.

“You’re a good man, Leorio,” Benedetta said. Her voice was like silk against his ears. “Tell us where the eyes are. We’ll deal with Kurapika, if you’re worried about him. We’ll even drive you to the hospital. You can get your hands treated, you can get some rest. The De Luca family won’t bother you again, and you can live your life as normal.”

It sure was tempting. Leorio’s gaze slid back to her. He doubted the mafia would just let him get away with it, though. He had gone too far to turn back now.

“Can I get a cigarette?” Leorio croaked. “I’m gaspin’ for one.”

Benedetta smiled, “Of course.” She signalled to Enrico, who stood up. As he passed, Leorio noticed he had two Khyber knives strapped to either side of his hips.

Enrico returned with Leorio’s messenger bag bundled in his fist. Without the glass box, the bag was almost empty. Enrico pulled a slightly squashed pack of cigarettes and tore it open, pulling a single cig out. He held it out to Leorio, who took it with his teeth. Enrico sat back next to him.

“A lit one,” Leorio glared.

Benedetta signalled to Enrico, who sighed and pulled out a lighter. Leorio watched him, very intrigued, as the man lit Leorio’s cigarette. Without his nen powers.

Leorio hadn’t been lying. He took a deep breath of smoke. The itchy anxiety of nicotine-withdrawal had been driving him crazy, like a frantic hamster trapped in his brain. As he held the breath in despite the terrible pain in his hands, despite how hungry and light-headed he was, he felt a deep sense of calm wash over him.

It was still all to play for. Leorio knew that if he turned his broken hand around, he could get a pretty good grip on the back of it. All he ever needed was an opportunity, and damn, there was a chance in hell he might survive. He exhaled.

Leorio muttered something around his cigarette.

“What was that?” Benedetta asked, leaning forward.

Leorio spat the lit cigarette into her eye.

She screamed, reeling back, and Enrico lunged for him—but Leorio slid sideways and lifted the chair with his broken hand, swinging it over his head and bringing it down like an executioner’s axe on Benedetta’s head. The wood split and there was a satisfying crack of bone. She collapsed.

“Bastard!” Enrico wrapped around Leorio from behind, but Leorio shoved him backwards, forcing him back.

With a lucky strike of his elbow, Leorio shook him off. Enrico overbalanced and fell, shattering the glass coffee table. Leorio followed him down. Immediately, Enrico’s hands wrapped around Leorio’s throat, just as Leorio hoped they would. Enrico wouldn’t use his fire, not in close combat with his sisters present, he couldn’t control it. And he was too stupid to do anything else.

Leorio pulled the Khyber knife from Enrico’s belt and drove it into his eyeball.

Enrico yelled, earsplittingly loud. Blood burst from the man’s eyes and soaked Leorio’s face in searing scarlet. Enrico could do nothing but paw at his own face, mad with pain.

“S-Stop it!” A voice squealed behind Leorio, “Let him go!”

Leorio wrapped his broken hand around the handle of the Khyber knife and, using his knee for leverage, yanked it out of Enrico’s skull. The man flopped down, lifeless, and Leorio stood up. He faced the only De Luca sibling he hadn’t savaged.

Noemi stood behind the table. She had a pistol pointed at Leorio’s chest, but her hands were shaking and shaking. She couldn’t stop looking at the bloody remains of her brother lying limp behind him. She took a shaking step back.

“Drop the knife,” Noemi commanded, her voice wavering.

Leorio waited a moment. He had a strange, sizzling sensation, as if heat was pouring from every inch of him. As if, when he opened his mouth, steam might roll out. The knife slid from his bloody hand and clattered to the floor.

“R-right,” Noemi’s hands shook. “J-Just stay there.”

Leorio flexed his remaining fingers. His nen was returning, more powerful than he’d felt it before, like an electric wave through him. When she fired, would he be able to use portals to redirect the bullet back at her? He didn’t know, but he was bloody minded enough to try.

“Stop!” Noemi commanded, her voice petulant and shrill. “Stop! Stay where you are!”

Leorio approached her, nen sparking and jumping in his skin.

She fired.

Her head split, the re-directed bullet carving between her eyes and striking red across the wall behind her. She sunk to her knees and was still. Her glassy eyes were fixed on the ceiling above his head. At the rectangle of dawning day.

Leorio snatched his bag from the side of the room and slammed the door behind him.

*

By the time Leorio reached the hospital, he was half-dead.

His stumps had begun to bleed steadily, soaking through the spare shirt he had wrapped around his hand. All the jolting to his broken fingers on his other hand had fired a pain in his arm that travelled straight up the bone. He hobbled through the streets, running on the very last dregs of his willpower.

He was hungry and weak. He had to keep walking because if he stopped, he would collapse. The bright neon lights of the emergency room glowed dizzyingly. Every part of him felt stretched out and shaved to a point, pulled out taut, until he was just skin stretched over bone.

Leorio stumbled through the automatic doors and passed out on the floor of the ER waiting room.

*

Leorio resurfaced with both his hands wrapped in thick dressing and the gauze on his face redressed. Three fingers on his left hand were splinted together, to keep the two broken fingers straight, leaving his index finger free. On his other hand, his stumps had been cleaned and treated. The tourniquet was missing.

He settled his head back on the pillow. He was still wearing his street clothes, and his bag was at his bedside. Through his heavy hands flowed the pleasant numbness of localised anaesthetic. There was only one other patient in the four-bed hospital room. She lay in the bed diagonally from him, sleeping deeply, the covers pulled up to her nose. She was the picture of peace.

Leorio must be the only person in the world who found hospitals supremely comforting. There was just something so relaxing about the expanse of clean, sanitized white walls, the low beeping of monitors, the rhythmic hiss and release of dialysis machines. He liked the hive of activity at all hours, the muffled noise of nurses passing in the hallways, the murmur of talking in the next room, the distant noise of a television. Even the too-bright yellow lights were a welcome sight.

Leorio slipped out of bed, putting an arm through the strap of his bag and pulling it over his shoulder. He would seek out a doctor and arrange for a flat fee and a quick release. He had the cash on him, and he couldn’t stay long. He had work to do yet.

*

The park behind King’s Memorial was a wide, field filled with too many trees to play ballgames in, and too few benches to have picnics at, so was mostly empty on weekdays. Grey-green grass crunched under his sneakers as he crossed through the old oaks. Bright red crisp packets were attached to the scrub bushes he passed, and he kicked plastic water bottles half-filled with dry earth out of his way.

He checked around him, but he couldn’t see nor sense anyone close. He had changed into fresh clothes and taken a complicated route from the hospital, but he couldn’t be too careful.

Leorio knew something most people didn’t. King’s park didn’t have buildings because originally, the ground was too prone to sink holes to build upon. This was because, despite feeling solid, it was actually a honeycomb of underground caves and dried springs. And Leorio could do something most people couldn’t—he opened a small portal at the dip in ground between two acorn trees, and pulled out a broad glass box.

The eyeballs rolled around in their solution, irises the colour of open wounds.

“Hey,” Leorio murmured. “Did you guys miss me?”

He brushed off the worst of the dirt and slid the box into his messenger bag.

*

The night train rolled on quietly, shaking his dark compartment. City lights blurred through the dark night outside, like a cloud of fireflies spinning over each other. The windows rattled and let in cold air.

Leorio had sat for too long, and his body was still stiff and uncomfortable, so he stood. By then, a lot of his body was blooming a variety of purples, yellows and greens. His burn was ugly and tight and peeling. People avoided him, which was fine by Leorio’s standards. He stood for the whole journey, holding the bar with his finger and thumb of his left hand, letting the roll and turn of the train rock him gently.

*

On the edge of King’s borough, he finally reached a small, dingy motel. He had eaten a couple hamburgers in quick succession, and he could taste the cheap meat between his teeth. It was the sort of place, which was obviously old, but had been cleaned religiously. The sheets smelled of detergent and were an off-white colour. Despite the rigorous efforts of the cleaning lady, grey dust stains still accumulated in the corners of his room. His front door was barred by a metal screen that was difficult to get open.

Fatigue was itching at his eyes. He set the box of eyes on his desk, and peeled his jacket off, mindful of his wounded hands. By then, his anaesthetic was starting to wear off, and a dull ache was starting up in his finger joints. Or where his finger joints would have been.

Leorio fished out his phone, finally remembering he should probably check it. He tried to turn it on, but found the battery was dead. Figures. He plugged it in and crawled into bed.

*

At around four in the morning, his phone began to ring.

Chapter Text

Leorio peeled his eyes open and stared at the ringing phone like it was an alien object.

His surprise was so complete that he forgot to answer it.

When the ringing stopped, he dove for it. The dive cause him to smack his stumps on the corner of the bedpost and he flopped to the floor to cradle his throbbing hand. Fuck, that hurt. While he had slept, most of the painkillers had worn off, and he was reminded just how much damage had been done to him. He managed to unfurl enough to grope for his phone.

In his hands, it began to ring again. This time, Leorio pressed accept and held it to his ear awkwardly with his splint-tight fingers.

“Leorio, where are you?” Kurapika barked, instead of hello.

Leorio took a moment to answer. His brain hadn’t quite woken up yet. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Kurapika allowed, “Where are you?”

Leorio rubbed his face, “I’m… in King’s borough, still.”

“You are? I haven’t been able to locate you. What’s your address?”

Leorio took a moment to answer, sorting through the leaflets until he found the motel he’d chosen. He read out the address to Kurapika. He opened the door to check the room number and relocked his door.

“Alright,” Kurapika said. “I’ll be over in two hours. I’ll see—”

“Hey,” Leorio interrupted. He was sensing Kurapika was about the hang up. “Could you—could you bring me some painkillers?”

There was a short paused.

“Painkillers?” Kurapika echoed. His voice had lost all power, like he was stunned.

“Yeah. Prescription strength, but not opium-based, if you can find it.”

Another short silence, but Kurapika recovered. “Alright, I will. I’ll speak to you soon, Leorio.”

“Sure, bye,” Leorio hung up and crawled back into bed.

*

Leorio could not sleep, after that. His hands had woken up.

It felt like he’d dipped both his hands into boiling oil. His broken hand prickled and burned right through the bone and his missing fingers was ferocious and angry. But mostly, it was draining. He couldn’t do anything to distract himself, so he just curled into a ball under his duvet and think dark thoughts.

He couldn’t bring himself to hate the De Luca family. For all the hell they’d put him through, he couldn’t think about them without seeing the glassy dead eyes of Noemi, the bloody mess of Enrico’s remains. He had to do it—they wouldn’t have let up until he was chopped all up into neat centimetre by centimetre squares. But still, he wished he hadn’t.

Leorio waited in the foetal position, his head buried into the pillows with his hands in the hollow above his knees. Every throb of his heart pained him. His skin thrummed.

At just before six, there was a knock on his door.

Leorio roused himself and used his elbows to pull himself out of bed. The covers fell from his shoulders. He peered through the lookout and unlocked the door, letting it open.

Kurapika stood in the hallway like an apparition. His eyes were shadowed and his hair was long enough now to curl upwards slightly when it hit his collar. No earrings. Big, dark coat that reached his knees. A smooth, non-descript black suit and white dress shirt, black tie—a funeral outfit, if Leorio had ever seen one. He carried a small briefcase.

“Ah, hey,” Leorio croaked.

“What happened to you?” Kurapika asked, voice hoarse. He glanced over Leorio from top to bottom.

Leorio raised a shoulder in a half shrug as he undid the chain latch with his finger and thumb. He stepped back to let the other man in.

Kurapika passed him, careful not to jostle him. Halfway through the doorway, he stopped dead.

“You g’tta move,” Leorio slurred, and moved the door a little to show he couldn’t close it yet.

“Leorio,” Kurapika’s eyes were sharp and dark, “L-Leorio, your hand—!” He stepped forward and closed the door, reaching for Leorio’s hand.

“Oh,” Leorio let him pull his right hand into the light and turn it over.

Kurapika’s expression was blank. He touched his skin very gently, like he was holding something made of fragile glass. Despite the thick, bulky bandages, the absence there was striking. Kurapika’s expression twitched, like he wanted to scowl, but wasn’t sure if he should. His fingers pressed lightly into the wounded skin.

Leorio hissed and snatched his hands back.

“Sorry,” Kurapika murmured.

“It’s alright,” Leorio said, tiredly. “Did you bring some painkillers?”

“Of course,” Kurapika said. He turned to set his suitcase on the desk and came face to face with the eighteen scarlet eyes in their glass box. He quickly dragged his gaze away and snapped open his suitcase. He retrieved a small glass vial and prepared a needle full.

Leorio rolled up his arms and dabbed antiseptic onto his wrists, “Can you inject me?”

Kurapika nodded and held his wrists delicately to avoid touching his hands. He slid the needle into his left wrist and then his right. Leorio sat on the corner of the bed, feeling very tired.

“Will you stay?” Leorio blurted out.

Kurapika looked startled.

“For now, I mean,” Leorio conceded. “Just don’t—don’t go when I’m asleep.”

Kurapika softened. “Of course.”

Leorio nodded as he climbed into bed. His pain was being melted away, along with his consciousness. He pulled his covers over his head and slept deeply.

*

Leorio woke up groggily and threw the covers off his head. He had been sleeping entirely too much, and now he was hungry. He rubbed his face with the back of his wrist.

“Are you alright?” Kurapika asked.

Leorio’s eyes focused on him and he grunted. He glanced at the ugly digital clock on his bedside table. “Have you been sitting there the entire time? You know you can take your shoes off if you want.”

Kurapika didn’t respond. He sat on the edge of the cheap motel chair, with most of his weight on his feet, his shoulders hunched over. The scarlet eyes had been spirited away out of sight, presumably into Kurapika’s suitcase. He still wore his dark coat.

Leorio narrowed his eyes and swung his legs around the edge of the bed. “You’re leaving?”

“Were you expecting me to stay?” Kurapika asked. His tone wasn’t accusatory, only mildly surprised, and for some reason that just made Leorio angrier.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Leorio snapped, “Maybe I thought you cared more than that!”

“It’s because I care,” Kurapika leaned forward. “The danger these eyes put you in—”

“Right, that’s the reason,” Leorio felt a hard ball of anger in the base of his throat. “It’s not that now you’ve gotten what you want you’re happy to go back to pretending I don’t exist.”

Kurapika’s eyes narrowed, “That’s not fair.”

Leorio stood up, “You are so selfish! How about a little gratitude that I put my life on the line—”

“Except I never asked you to do that!” Kurapika snapped.

Leorio took a small step back. He looked like he’d been slapped. Anger drained out of him like air from a popped balloon and his face fell slightly.

Kurapika watched him, eyebrows drawn together.

“I…” Leorio glanced down at his hands. He took another step back and sunk onto the corner of the bed. He fished his shoes out from under the motel bed and began to pull them on. Into his knee he muttered, “Yeah, I guess not.”

“What are you doing?” Kurapika asked.

Leorio stood up again, tapping the toe of his shoe to settle it the rest of the way on, “You... I… I’m going to go for a walk. You can go when I’m gone. Before I come back.”

Kurapika said nothing, only watched him for a long moment, before he gave a short nod. His expression was indecipherable, but Kurapika’s face was usually like that.

Leorio closed the door behind him.

The air was cold and slightly damp.

It was a grey afternoon. The blocks around the motel were empty and dark, the sides of the buildings streaked with mysterious black and brown stains. Brown leaves were plastered in the gutters and turned to dark mulch. A sour smell hung around this part of the city, like something organic decomposing.

Leorio’s head was stuffy. The medical numbness in his hands made him feel like he was carrying two clubs.

In the next block over, there was a little more life in the city. Leorio approached a young hotdog vendor, who broke out of the post-lunch daydream and leaned over his cart.

“Hey, stranger!” The vendor called, waving a spindly arm at Leorio. “Hey, you look hungry, you want some fuel?” The young man had a thick city accent that softened his consonants to a smooth roll. He dropped a sausage on the sizzling cooker.

Leorio dug out his wallet and made his way over.

“Can I get you a brew too?” The vendor asked and took Leorio’s tired silence as a yes. He punched a few dials on his machine and it began to hiss and clank unhealthily. “Onions?” He asked, already dropping a few slices of onion onto the hot plate.

“How much?” Leorio asked, unzipping the change section of his wallet with his teeth.

“Sixteen hundred jenny,” The vendor proposed cheekily.

“Sixteen—!” Leorio flushed red. “Eight hundred! I’ll give you eight hundred.”

“Sure, eight hundred for the hot dog, eight hundred for the coffee,” The vendor grinned.

Leorio snapped, “Eight hundred for all of it.”

“Man, you drunk or something?” The vendor shook his head, “You’re not thinking straight. You can’t get another meal for under twenty hundred in a city like this. I’m doing you a good deal.”

“You’ve got no other customers,” Leorio said, glancing up and down the mostly empty street. “I’m doing you a good deal buying anything. Eight hundred’s all the money I’m giving you.”

The vendor flipped over the sausage with dramatic disgust, “You’re joking, mister. Every day I get lines and lines of customers. S’cuse business for not being booming at three in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, and I bet you don’t try to charge them outrageously,” Leorio narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, not outrageous, only sixteen hundred,” The vendor grinned. He dropped an open bun onto the hot-plate to toast the insides.

Leorio shook his head, “This conversation is getting circular.”

“Denying reality tends to get like that,” The vendor shrugged his shoulders. The coffee machine hissed, and a portion of coffee dropped into the waiting cup.

“Denying—!” Leorio swore under his breath. He shook his head sharply. “You’re awful rude to your customers.”

“Welcome to Yorknew,” The vendor said, breezily. “Your coffee’s ready. Milk, sugar?” He held it out to him.

“No thanks,” Leorio asked, and reached for the coffee.

As his splinted hand wrapped around the coffee cup, heat immediately poured through his skin. The broken bones sparked with lancing pains.

Leorio dropped it reflexively.

Hot coffee splattered across the vendor’s hot plate. Leorio got splashed in a scalding arc up his arm.

“Ah shit,” Leorio said, cradling his burned arm, “Sorry.”

“What the fuck—” The vendor straightened up—and then caught sight of Leorio’s hands. He took them in for the first time, and the anger faded from his face. “Christ, your hands!”

“Yeah,” Leorio said, drying hot coffee from his arms with fistfuls of paper napkins. “Look, sorry about your hot plate. Is there anything I can do?”

“Don’t sweat it,” The vendor said, scooping the few things he had frying onto the drying rack. He cracked open a bottle of water with his teeth and poured it over the hot plate. Steam rolled up in waves and he pushed the bubbling water around with his spatula. “What happened to you?”

“Car accident,” Leorio said.

“Man, figures,” The vendor shook his head, “You should avoid cars. The government pumps them through of damaging chemicals in order to brain wash you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Leorio said, dryly.

The vendor put together the hot dog and scooped the onions into it with the wet spatula. He drizzled ketchup on it and wrapped it in a careful padding of napkins. Leorio accepted it gently.

“Here,” The vendor pulled out a can of iced coffee and pressed it into Leorio’s hand. The chill of the drink was a balm on his hot skin.

“Thanks,” Leorio said, and dropped eighteen-hundred jenny in exact change into the man’s hands.

“Have a good day now,” The vendor gave him a wave.

Leorio nodded and began to walk back around the block.

He ate his hot dog in the shade of an empty bank building. He idly read the bright blue advertisements pasted in the window. The hot dog was slightly mushy and almost too hot to taste, and the ketchup was rich and fruity. He ate every last bite and wiped his mouth with the excess napkins.

Maybe it was for the best. Maybe him and Kurapika really did belong to two different, parallel worlds. Maybe it was really Leorio being selfish—how could he expect Kurapika to trust him to help protect the eyes when Leorio couldn’t even protect himself.

He snapped the tab on the cold coffee and drank a large gulp of it. It was cold and refreshing, but too sweet for Leorio’s taste. He drank it all. Hopefully it would do something to dispel the foggy cloud in his mind.

As Leorio padded back to the motel, he wondered how he was going to pull the pieces of his life back together.

It hadn’t even been a week. His grades would still be good, despite the absences. His tutors liked him. Perhaps he could claim the absence had been caused by a sudden onset delusion caused by stress. Was that believable? Well, he could always lie and say it was urgent Zodiac business.

Leorio took a deep, deep breath, letting his chest fill with air until it was almost uncomfortable. Then he breathed out. Maybe he should take a real sabbatical. He wasn’t sure he could face going back to school and sitting in lectures as if nothing had happened.

As he walked up the stairs, he crumpled up his empty can of coffee and tossed it into the trash can.

Leorio opened the door and paused.

Kurapika sat at the desk. He looked like he hadn’t moved since Leorio had left. He looked up at Leorio through a sheet of pale hair.

“Hi,” Kurapika said, quietly.

“Hey,” Leorio said, and closed the door behind him.
 

Chapter Text

Kurapika hardly talked as they walked to the train station, and Leorio could feel the agitation roll off him in waves. He hardly talked. He bought tickets almost silently and stuffed one into Leorio’s hands. The eyes were in Kurapika’s suitcase. Somehow, he still managed to walk with it normally, letting it swing in step and didn’t glance at it once. Leorio ruined his cover by staring at it like it was on fire.

They found their seats five minutes before the train left the station. Kurapika shrugged off his coat and dropped it into the empty seat to discourage the men and women which shuffled past their compartment from coming in.

Leorio waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. So instead, he stared out at the mass of people on the platform outside, the snatches of green stone visible in the gaps in the crowd. It was peak time, and the train station was filled with people returning home after a long day at work. Leorio pulled an abandoned newspaper from between the gaps in the seats and spread it out in front of him.

“Where are we headed?” Leorio asked, inspecting his ticket. “After North Station, I mean?”

Kurapika blinked, “Oh… Europa City.”

Leorio raised an eyebrow, “Why?”

“It’s easier to stick to cities until we’re sure we aren’t being tailed,” Kurapika said, pulling a thin book from his notebook. “Besides, I have ties in Europa which will help us, and there are places we can stay.”

Still vague. Leorio scratched the corner of his jaw. He supposed after years of working on his own, Kurapika wasn’t used to breaking everything down for someone else. Or perhaps he was paranoid enough to think the train carriage was bugged.

With a shudder, the train began to roll out of the station. The carriage turned slightly, as they rolled over the snake’s tail of the station exit, track joining track. A woman passed their compartment, bouncing a fussy baby on her hip and cooing.

Kurapika pulled out his phone and began typing while he glanced at the pages of his notebook. Leorio saw lines of text in Kurapika’s neat handwriting. Occasionally, he would glare and mutter darkly.

Leorio didn’t ask. He wasn’t even entirely sure Kurapika wouldn’t change his mind at North Station and split, leaving Leorio in the dust. Honestly. He felt like he was wooing a coltish, flighty debutante. That—was an odd choice of metaphor, but he forgave himself. It had been a strange week or so.

“Tell me about what happened,” Kurapika said.

Leorio perked up, “Oh. Well, I knew the De Lucas during a placement with the family through the university. I was originally just supposed to treat some of the lower ranks, but I ended up treating Greta’s legs. I saw the eyes in their vault and, well, I took them with me out of the city.”

Kurapika inclined his head, “They didn’t like that.”

“No, ah… they didn’t,” Leorio admitted. “As far as I know, the De Luca children were the only ones to follow me, though. For whatever reason they didn’t send more people after me.”

“The De Lucas don’t have a standing military force,” Kurapika said, curtly. He then waited expectantly for Leorio to continue.

“Right… well,” Leorio stretched slightly, “I was caught by the three siblings and… questioned. That was after I left you a voicemail. After a few days, I escaped. Then I called you again.”

Kurapika watched him for a moment, “The De Luca siblings, are they dead?”

A hard lump formed in Leorio’s throat, and he looked down. “Yeah. I guess Benedetta might be alive. But I killed the other two.”

Kurapika nodded silently. He flipped through his notebook and wrote a few lines in blue ink, before he drew a deep breath. “I don’t know if Benedetta will still be a threat. Their family has some sort of nen deal, as I understand it, they lose almost all power when they’re not together. So, it’s within the realm of possibility that she has lost all of her power.”

Leorio wiped his mouth with the back of his wrists. For some reason, that didn’t make him feel any better. As he moved his hands, he saw Kurapika’s gaze follow them. The man’s eyebrows were drawn together, and he seemed to almost be—glaring.

“What else can you tell me about the De Lucas?” Kurapika said. “Do they know who you are?”

“Yes, they do,” Leorio said. “One of them—Noemi—had a hunter’s license, I think.”

“She must have bought it from somewhere,” Kurapika shook his head. “I already checked, none of them are on the directory.” He glanced back at Leorio, motioned him to continue.

“What else do you want to know?” Leorio asked.

Kurapika glanced at him, “Anything. I can only find out so much from the outside.”

“I don’t know much about the De Lucas,” Leorio admitted. “I know they’re mostly drug dealers, and small-time crooks and don’t have a lot of ready money. Probably because they bought up a lot of artefacts. They have a lot of territory, I think. I read an article exposé that they took over from the Carron family.” He thought for a long moment. “I think that’s it, really.”

Kurapika blinked. He set his notebook down, “That’s all you know? You were on a placement with them for months. You were on speaking terms with the head.”

“I wasn’t interested in any of that, though,” Leorio said, shortly. He didn’t like how Kurapika was looking at him—like he was an idiot. “I didn’t want to know. Why would I be investigating them like they owed me money? I was just going to finish the placement and live the rest of my life without thinking about them.”

Kurapika nodded. He scratched something down in his notebook. “It’s fine. I can gather information on them.”

Leorio stretched. The tingles were returning to his injures.

Kurapika’s eyes followed his hands immediately. A creased formed between his eyebrows and his eyes narrowed darkly.

Leorio glared back, “What’s that look for?”

Kurapika shook his head, and dragged his eyes away from his hands, “I’m not annoyed at you.”

“Oh,” Leorio said. His heart sank slightly, and he covered his stumps with his splinted hand. “Well, it’s uh—alright, if you don’t like it. It’s okay to find it—”

“No,” Kurapika interrupted sharply. “I don’t find it gross, either.”

Leorio perked up. He expected Kurapika to say something else, but for a long time he didn’t. The train clattered onwards. The cityscape had become grey and lifeless as the sun sank lower in the sky. Shadows stretched over the tracks.

Kurapika leaned forwards and rested on his elbows. He stared at the tabletop. Something difficult worked its way across his countenance.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, just…” Kurapika muttered, eyes still fixed on the tabletop. “I… it’s scary. To think that you would go through something like that, for me.”

There was a silence, filled only by the rattling train.

Leorio opened his mouth to respond but couldn’t think of anything to say. He took a deep breath and stretched out his hands across the tabletop. He took Kurapika’s hands in his own and gave a light squeeze, which he hoped would telegraph the warm feeling rising in his chest.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Leorio said. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Kurapika glanced up. Even though he didn’t look soothed, he turned his hands over to hold Leorio’s. There was something strange about Kurapika’s eyes, a glint in them. Just beyond his pupil, from this close and this angle, he could see a hint of pink behind his opaque coloured contacts.

Kurapika took a breath, “Are you—”

There was a clatter and Kurapika drew back sharply, startled.

The compartment door drew back, and a woman pushing a trolley leant on the open door. She glanced between them, “Do you want something to eat? Drink?”

“Oh,” Leorio straightened up, “Yes please.”

He bought two egg sandwich and a can of soda. Kurapika didn’t want anything. The woman with the trolley pulled the glass compartment closed and trundled onwards. The train swayed slightly as it turned a curve.

“What were you going to say?” Leorio asked, around his mouthful of egg sandwich.

Kurapika lifted his head slightly, and then he glanced away, “I don’t recall, sorry.”

Leorio raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He passed his spare sandwich over table, and Kurapika straightened the sandwich up but didn’t move it. Outside, the sun was sinking deeply. A bright white line glowed across the horizon, and the sky between the buildings was a fresh, bright orange. Black birds pitched and wheeled over the satellite dishes on the apartment buildings.

“Can you inject me?” Leorio asked. His hands were starting to smart.

Kurapika blinked, “Of course. Do you need it so soon? I thought it was only taken every twenty-four hours.”

“Eh, for most people, maybe.” Leorio stretched his hands back out. Kurapika touched him very lightly, tying a band around each of his forearms. Leorio pumped up a vein by opening and closing his fist, his skin growing pinker. “I’m sort of immune to sedatives.”

“Really?” Kurapika asked. He dabbed alcohol onto Leorio’s wrists.

“Yeah, I had a lot of surgeries as a kid,” Leorio said.

Kurapika slid the needle first into his right arm, and then his left. He untied the bands and slipped them all back into his suitcase. He snapped it shut.

“Thank you,” Leorio said.

Kurapika nodded vaguely. He watched the city pass through the window; his own faint reflection blinked slowly. Light was leaving the city, pulling the world into a velvet blue night. Yellow train lights bleached the surroundings.

“You can sleep, if you want,” Leorio suggested.

“No,” Kurapika said. “I’m not tired. But you can, if you want.”

“Nah, I’ve slept a lot today already,” Leorio scratched his cheek.

Kurapika glanced over at him. With his contacts in, his eyes looked very dark. “So you’re staying up?”

“Thought you might like my company.” Leorio grinned.

Kurapika raised his eyebrow, “I might.”

*

Kurapika ended up sleeping.

Or, maybe he didn’t. Leorio only noticed him shifting position, his eyes falling shut. But he didn’t relax. The man simply rested his head on the side of the panel and went still. The train carried them onwards—in the black of the night they could be going anywhere or not moving at all. On a long-haul journey, the conductor would have shut off the walkway lights for those trying to sleep, and the train station announcements would have been read in an undertone. But in a city train, the blinding lights kept the passengers awake, and the announcements jolted Leorio like a cattle-prod.

Five minutes before they reached North Station, Kurapika’s eyes slid open and he glanced around the dark compartment. His actions showed none of the shivery confusion Leorio always felt when he slept on transportation. Kurapika pulled his coat back on as they announced the North Station stop.

Leorio followed him onto the platform. The air was sharp and still, the city rumbled incessantly. The headlights of passing cars dazzled him.

“Hey,” Leorio grabbed Kurapika by the shoulder to slow him down, “Where are we going?”

Kurapika glanced back, like he was surprised to see him, but recovered quickly. “I’m going to set up a hunter escrow.”

“Huh?” Leorio frowned.

“It’s a company which will store the eyes away until I can safely recover them,” Kurapika said. “It’s an unnecessary risk to keep them at hand.”

Leorio’s frown deepened and he folded his arms, “No offense, but isn’t that an even bigger risk? How can we trust the company not to make off with the eyes themselves?”

Kurapika paused, before he turned around to face him properly. He touched the suitcase lightly, “The eyes might mean something very dear to me. But to most people in this world, they are just expensive merchandise. No company would risk their entire reputation to make a couple billion and dozens of powerful enemies.”

Leorio didn’t like it, and he made a bitter face. Finally, he said, “Well, if you think it’s alright. But I still don’t like it.”

The ghost of a smirk crossed Kurapika’s face, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

*

The eyes being stored in the vaults didn’t lift any weight from Kurapika’s shoulders.

That made sense, Kurapika supposed. It wasn’t a problem solved, only a problem deferred. And anyway, it was unlikely he was going to relax any time soon. Even after all these years, big cities unsettled him. He hated how much noise there was, how dark the streets, the ugly smells. He hated a black night sky with almost no stars.

Kurapika checked them into a local hotel. As they walked up the stairs, he made a conscious effort to reveal his plans, “Tomorrow we’ll go to a dance at a cartel meeting. I’ll do recognisance.”

“A dance?” Leorio wrinkled his nose. “Why are they having a dance?”

“They’re frequent events,” Kurapika lifted a shoulder, “It gives them the air of respectability they want. It allows them to show off their money and influence. They can butter up prospective partners. Lots of reasons.”

“I’m not going to dance,” Leorio said.

“You don’t have to,” Kurapika unlocked their hotel room. The room smelled of laundry detergent.

Leorio followed him inside, “Are you going to dance?”

Kurapika shot him a flat look and didn’t answer him. Instead he shrugged off his coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door. He set his mostly empty suitcase against the nightstand. “I’m going to take the first shower,” He said, trotting into the bathroom.

*

The gala was held the next evening, on the banks of the river. Kurapika spent the time before it researching the De Luca family while Leorio slept intermittently and ate small meals. By the time evening came around, Kurapika had been about as productive as Leorio—there was precious little information his sources could turn up from a distance. That was how the mafia usually was. Nobody would tell him anything unless he asked in person and gave the illusion of privacy.

Two hours before the gala, a maid knocked on their hotel room door. Leorio answered and a warm pile of pressed clothes was dropped into his arms. He thanked the maid and closed the door, puzzled.

Kurapika glanced up from the desk, “They’re for you.”

“Me?” Leorio pulled the blazer up by the lapels. It was eggshell blue, oddly soft to the touch. A white, starched shirt was folded underneath the iron-pressed pants. There was even a pair of glossy black dress shoes. “This looks pretty swanky.”

“You need a dress suit for the gala,” Kurapika said. “Sorry, I couldn’t bring the ones you used to wear down from York New. This will have to do.”

“Oh, those would be pretty tatty by now,” Leorio said. He held the blazer up the light, like he was expecting it to vanish. “Man, I haven’t worn one of these in a long time. I kind of miss them.”

“They suit you,” Kurapika said.

“Oh, tha—” Leorio stopped mid-word, and his face twisted. “Did you just make a pun?”

Kurapika smirked but said nothing.

“Wow, you’re developing a sense of humour,” Leorio shook his head and tucked the suit under his arms, “I’ll check outside for flying pigs.”

“You do that,” Kurapika advised, mildly.

Leorio opened the bathroom door, “And I guess I shouldn’t ask how you apparently know all my measurements?”

“No, better not,” Kurapika said, returning to his phone.

*

Kurapika heard Leorio gasp as they approached the gala, and he paused. Leorio’s face was the picture of shock, his dark eyes wide, his mouth slightly agape. It looked like he had forgotten to breath for a moment.

“That’s a lot of flowers,” Leorio said, finally. He offered a small smile.

Kurapika nodded.

The front of the building was spread open, and fresh blossoms covered the entire front in a wall of colour. White bordered the display in silky orchids and weepy strings of wisteria blooms, threaded through with veins of scarlet chrysanthemums and baby blue hydrangeas. As they approached, the wall seemed to tower over them, and dozens and dozens of blood spatter poppies fluttered in the wind. Yellow dandelions bowed their heads over the walkway, studded with stalks of lavender. White-hearted yarrow skimmed the space just above the pavement.

Kurapika felt a flicker of nen and glanced over the display. Someone’s ability kept it fresh and clean, and their nen was dusted lightly over ever blossom. It was impressive, from a technical standpoint.

“These are insane,” Leorio muttered, staring at the floral menagerie. It was too much to take in at once, and his eyes skimmed every section of the extraordinary display.

Kurapika glanced at the row of dark flowers over the doorway. He recognised them as Queen of the Night tulips, the closest any breeder had come to a truly black blossom. In reality, the flowers were a deep, velvety maroon, the firm petals glossy and purplish at the corners.

“It’s crazy,” Leorio said, “It’s like—Eden.”

“Not really,” Kurapika said, joining the line outside the gala. “There weren’t any flowers in Eden.”

Leorio looked stunned, “Really?”

“Not in Genesis,” Kurapika waved a hand. “Milton added them.”

A small crowd of bouncers checked Kurapika’s hunter license and bowed, letting him and Leorio pass. The double doors were opened from an unseen signal, and the pair stepped into the darkness of the gala.

Compared to the low evening light, the inside of the building was even darker. The drapery on the walls and the deep chestnut floor gave the gathering a mulberry colouring. It took a moment for Kurapika’s eyes to adjust, and he watched dark clothed men and brightly dressed women intermingling. Waiters weaved between the guests, carrying platters of champagne and small pieces of food.

“Be careful,” Kurapika said, “one of the family’s sons usually has some pranks set up. Don’t do anything risky and don’t talk to suspicious women.”

“Those are my two favourite things to do,” Leorio murmured.

“I’ll ask you to refrain,” Kurapika led them away from the door. A dark-haired woman crooned softly on the stage, accompanied by lilting piano. “You’re welcome to try to fish for information. It’s relatively low risk here, everyone’s bringing new recruits in. But be aware people are unlikely to tell you anything.”

Leorio nodded while his eyes tracked a waiter who passed them with a platter of golden champagne flutes, “Can I drink?”

Kurapika looked amused, “You don’t have to ask me for permission. You’re my partner, not my subordinate.”

“Noted,” Leorio snagged a bubbling flute and took a swig of the amber liquid. “Oh, that’s nice. But you probably shouldn’t have any of it.” He licked his lips. “Tastes suspicious.”

Kurapika rolled his eyes and split off, slinking through the crowd on his own. He saw Leorio set off in the opposite direction, towards the buffet. Kurapika turned his attention back to the crowd, and searched out the man he’d been corresponding with. Fabien Bruguière, a Europa local who had a foot in both sides of the business, smuggling contraband into the city and using his chain of laundromats and accounting offices to launder the money.

Fabien Bruguière was an old, heavy-set man with a dark beard and darker hair. His eyes were shockingly blue, like chips of winter sky, and blazed out of the gloom of the gala. He talked to a tall, busty woman who had thick curls of black hair and a nearly sheer white dress.

“Kurapika,” Fabien greeted, with what seemed to be a slightly forced smile. “Can I introduce you to my daughter? This is Chiara.”

Chiara smiled placidly. Her teeth were chemically white. She had a slightly dizzy expression, and Kurapika wondered if she was already drunk.

“It’s nice to meet you, Chiara,” Kurapika nodded at her. He glanced back at Fabien. “I’m slightly surprised to see her. I thought you were keeping your daughters out of your line of work.”

Chiara’s bright expression darkened, and she glared at him.

“Well, I know I said that,” Fabien scratched the back of his thick neck. “But, she’s old enough now to make her own decisions.”

Chiara grimaced at Kurapika, her earrings winking as her head moved, “I’m twenty now. And I’m not stupid.”

“I never said you were,” Kurapika blinked at her.

Chiara flipped a tide of her curly dark hair over her shoulder and stalked away, heels clacking on the hardwood flooring.

“Excuse her,” Fabien said. “She’s had a hard week.”

“It’s fine,” Kurapika said.

“No doubts she’ll remind you of that terror Nostrade girl,” Fabien sighed, “Daughters are so hard to raise in the world today. God has blessed me with six of them, and I worry I’ll spoil all of them.”

Kurapika paused slightly. This seemed to happen often to him—almost strangers expressed worry or sadness and he didn’t really know what to say as a response. People seemed to see him as a kind of confessional booth.

“Tell me you’re in Europa for business,” Fabien said.

“I am,” Kurapika said. “And no, it’s not Nostrade’s business, it’s mine. But I’m afraid I’ll likely return to his service upon it’s conclusion.”

“Ah,” Fabien looked disappointed. “You know you’ll always have a job here, if you want it.”

“I appreciate that,” Kurapika said, and because he needed to dangle some bait: “I might consider your offer soon. I’m not sure Nostrade has the particularly high-quality informants I need.”

Fabien looked pleased, “Can I ask what your business entails?”

“I’m helping out a friend. They’ve gotten embroiled in a conflict,” Kurapika watched Fabien closely, “with the De Luca family.”

Fabien nodded, “They’re real devils. It’s a blessing that they’re mostly toothless now their patronne has a foot in the grave.”

“Do you know where such devils could be found?” Kurapika asked.

“Not this side of the river,” Fabien shook his head. “They have a mansion up in the mountains, but Europa is free of that kind of beast for the moment.”

“Really?” Kurapika frowned. “Perhaps you should look into it. I heard you complain about the lack of good suppliers—the De Luca have good connections for certain kinds of contraband.”

Fabien looked a little sick, “No, no, mon ami. Not the De Lucas. I would lose many contacts trying to loop up with them—nobody in Europa can bear them. Their methods are… extreme.”

Kurapika tried to keep the surprise from showing on his face. This was a cartel which regularly curb-stomped and executed traitors. It was difficult to see what would make them clutch their pearls.

“Ah,” Fabien noticed his expression, “You haven’t heard about their lobotomies?”

“Lobotomies?” Kurapika echoed.

A group of well-dressed women passed them so close, Kurapika felt the scratch of sequins on the back of his head. He took step forward. Fabien waved hello and pulled out a thick cigar from his suit pocket and shook it slightly.

“Qui,” Fabien sliced the end off his cigar and lit it. He balanced it between his lips. “Fairly foul behaviour. When someone has displeased them, they do the two things in quick succession. First, they cut off all their fingers. Then they use a long, thin serrated knife and push it past the eyeball—" He tapped his eye on the side closest to his nose. “—and sever several important connections to the brain. You can reattach fingers, but you can’t stitch up the brain, you see?”

Kurapika stared. It felt like the bottom had dropped out of the world. He almost staggered forward, a dizzying feeling crashing over him. Fabien breathed out a cloud of acrid smoke.

“They call it a ‘white elephant’ gift,” Fabien said, although his voice was barely heard over the rushing blood in Kurapika’s ears. “Because they deliver the victim back to their families. Of course, the medical expenses are hell, and they’ll never recover—but many take a month or two for the seizures to destroy enough of their brain and turn them into a vegetable.” Fabien blinked, and finally noticed how pale Kurapika had become. “Say, mon ami, are you alright? You’re terribly pale.”

“Fine,” Kurapika croaked. He pressed a hand to his mouth.

“Here,” Fabien snagged a champagne flute from a passing waiter and passed it to Kurapika. “Drink this.”

Kurapika accepted the flute and downed it in two gulps. He pulled two flutes more from the waiter, drunk both of them, and set all three empty glasses down on a side table. They were spirited away by another attendant. As the alcohol began to hit his system, Kurapika took a few calming breaths.

Fabien patted his shoulder, “Take it easy, mon ami.”

“Thank you,” Kurapika straightened up and took a step back. He licked the back of his teeth. The champagne had a strange aftertaste.

“The De Lucas are losing power,” Fabien assured him. “Have been for months. They have been angering too many people for too long.”

“I see,” Kurapika wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

There was something curling around in his stomach. He put a hand on his belly, and something stirred in the depths of his guts. It was like a gong sounding, a bad omen.

Fabien frowned at him.

Kurapika straightened up, “E-excuse me.” Without waiting for Fabien’s response, he turned and darted through the dark crowd.

As he stumbled across the gala floor, his suspicions were confirmed. He tensed his jaw, a thick knot of bile rising in his throat. Desperately, he searched the crowd for a familiar face. His chest seized and he ground his teeth together as his stomach lurched. Finally—he caught sight of eggshell blue.

Kurapika fell into Leorio, wrapping his hands around the man’s forearm. His whole body shuddered.

“Kurapika?” Leorio’s voice came as if from far away, and he set down the plate he’d been carrying, “Are you alright? You’re sweating.”

Kurapika opened his mouth to respond—but vomited.

He tried to recover composure, but his stomach muscles had taken over. Leorio said something Kurapika didn’t catch. His belly twisted into a knot, tight, tight, and he bit the side of his hand trying to hold it down.

From then on, it was a blur. Kurapika’s eyes watered so badly he had no idea what was happening. All he knew was he felt Leorio wrap an arm around him and march him quickly out of the gala, shoving people aside and shouting. When Kurapika’s legs began to shake, Leorio lifted him by the middle, off his feet, and left.

Cold air hit him squarely in the forehead, and Kurapika’s feet touched the ground. Leorio shepherded him into the side ally, the shadows falling over them. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and old piss was thick in the air.

Kurapika’s hand found the hard stone of the wall, and he released the contents of his stomach into the gutter. It burned the back of his teeth. He felt bizarrely grateful he had not eaten breakfast, as he stared at the yellowish muck.

“What are your other symptoms?” Leorio asked.

Kurapika opened his mouth to respond but had to close it again. He gritted his teeth.

“Here,” Leorio pulled Kurapika’s long hair back from his face with one hand, while he pulled his tie off with the other. He made a makeshift hairband and tied it around Kurapika’s forehead to keep his bright hair out of the vomit. He admired his handiwork, “You look adorable.”

Kurapika let out a low growl and spat up a few sloppy grey lumps which dropped into the drain. “Poisoned,” Kurapika croaked. He retched again.

“Maybe,” Leorio rubbed his knuckled up and down Kurapika’s spine. “Did you drink the champagne?”

“You drank the champagne,” Kurapika pointed out groggily. Stomach acid burned the back of his throat and when he swallowed it renewed the taste of vomit in his mouth.

“I tasted an emetic in it,” Leorio said. “One of my roommates tried to prank me with it a long time ago. Didn’t work.”

Kurapika leaned his full weight against the grimy wall. He retched, but nothing came out but spit. Even though his belly was empty, his diaphragm kept seizing. He gave Leorio a dark look, “You’re—not puking… don’t tell me you’re immune to it.”

“I am,” Leorio said. “Here.” He held out a thick wad of napkins he must have snagged from somewhere.

Kurapika accepted the napkins and mopped up his face. He noticed, belatedly, that he’d puked all over Leorio’s nice shoes, and covered a lot of his trousers too.

“Wash your mouth out too,” Leorio swapped the dirty napkins for a half-filled bottle of water that must be his own.

Kurapika took a mouthful of water, swirled it around his teeth and spat it back out. His stomach kept seizing, but the impulse wasn’t forcing him anymore. He felt slightly dizzy and lightheaded, and he leaned heavily on the wall.

“Are you like Killua?” Kurapika croaked, glaring at the ground.

“Oh, what—immune to everything?” Leorio raised an eyebrow, “No, not really, as nice as that would be. I’m only resistant to a couple sedatives, and this kind of emetic doesn’t work on me because it works on stomach lining and I don’t have any.” Leorio helped him up, threading an arm under his shoulder to help him walk.

Kurapika rested his weary head on Leorio’s shoulder, letting the other man take most of his weight, “What the hell you mean—you don’t have any.”

“I don’t have a stomach,” Leorio said, and Kurapika could feel his chest vibrate subtly as he talked. Leorio pulled a cigarette, bit it, and fished around for a lighter with his free hand while he held Kurapika against him with the other. “Had it removed when I was about fifteen. Got my gullet stapled right to my small intestine. No stomach, I don’t even miss it much.”

Kurapika blinked blearily. His eyes were still wet, and tears stuck to his lashes. He let Leorio lead him back to their hotel, “I didn’t even know… you could do that.”

Leorio lit his cigarette and tucked his lighter back into his pocket. The smoke smelled sharp and bitter. Leorio didn’t seem to mind being covering in drying puke—he didn’t look twice at it.

“You should get into researching human biology, Peeks,” Leorio grinned down at him, “Maybe I’m biased, but it’s very interesting. A human being can survive and heal from a helluva lot more than you might think.”

Kurapika wiped his wet eyes with the back of his hand. “Yeah… I can believe that.”

Chapter Text

Kurapika woke up gradually, aware of the thrumming of the shower in the next room. At first, it had been folded into his dream: he was nine years old again and fishing on the great Kurta lake while it stormed gently. He was teaching Pairo to thread a chunky piece of bait around the hooks. Rain disturbed the lake surface, pattering across the floor of their boat, sluicing cold water down the back of Kurapika’s robe. Pairo kept spiking his thumb with the razor end of the hook. Blood beaded across his skin, and he popped his thumb in his mouth—only to grimace at the slimy taste of the bait smeared over his hands. Kurapika laughed at him. At Pairo’s aghast look, Kurapika had apologised through the giggles.

When he opened his eyes, he could still feel the memory lingering like an afterimage reflected on the back of his eyes. He could see it all—the bruise-grey sky, the chilling water, the heavy smell of the bait softened by the smell of rain.

Kurapika peeled himself off the mattress and threw the covers from his legs. He felt a little weak—probably because he’d puked up most of his lunch and dinner. Kurapika had never drunk enough to be hungover, but he imagined this was what it was like.

He stood up. His body felt slightly grimy and sweaty. Had he been too hot? Feverish? At that moment, he only felt slightly cold. But there was only one shower, and it was still occupied, so he just changed into clean clothes and picked up a hairbrush.

Kurapika stared into the mirror. His eyes were slightly dry and irritated, like they always were when he slept with his contacts in. Belatedly, he took them out, dropped them in the bin, and dripped some eye drops. He rubbed his face. The contacts would have to go back in in a few hours.

He dragged the hairbrush through his hair. It was too long again. He fished out a hairband from his bag of toiletries and scraped his hair up into a short, tufted ponytail. It looked like a pale rabbit’s tail, all fluff, the shorter parts of his hair flopping around his neck.

Kurapika caught a glance of movement in the mirror, an turned around.

“Wow,” Leorio said. He was dressed only in boxers and a bathrobe. “Your hair?”

Kurapika glanced into the mirror, and back to Leorio, “What is it?”

Leorio scratched the corner of his jaw, slightly flushed, “Oh, it’s cute, that’s all.”

Kurapika frowned at his reflection, before he tossed his hairbrush down and headed for the kitchenette. He tossed two slices of bread into the toaster.

Leorio trailed after him. He made a beeline for the coffee machine, “Do you want one?”

“Thanks,” Kurapika said.

As Leorio worked, Kurapika watched him. It was pretty incredible how well he worked missing fingers. Kurapika saw their absence starkly, as obvious as a glowing neon sign. It was like part of him was on fire. Kurapika forced his eyes away and stared at the woodgrain pattern of the tabletop instead. But he couldn’t drag his thoughts away.

I don’t have a stomach. At the time, Kurapika hadn’t thought of it much. He had been busy puking. But now it scratched at the back of his mind, like a hungry animal. Leorio had scars. He’d seen them before. He’d assumed they were from fights. But for the most part they were very deep, very old, and ruler straight.

“You are thinking too much,” Leorio advised him, setting two cups down under the nozzle of the coffee machine. It began to chug, releasing a slow stream of hot black coffee.

“Do you really,” Kurapika paused slightly, wondering if he was crossing some sort of boundary, “not have a stomach?”

“No,” Leorio frowned. “I don’t.” He moved his bathrobe aside and Kurapika got a look at the flat plane of his stomach. There was a thin scar that arced over one hip, and anchor-shaped scar which stretched from one hip to the other like a broad smile. Another that bunched up skin just below his ribs. “No stomach, no uterus, ovaries or cervix, no appendix, no gallbladder, and just the one kidney. All removed.”

“That’s… a lot,” Kurapika said.

Leorio smiled half-heartedly, and let the bathrobe drop, “Well, I’m a tough customer. Takes more than that to knock me down.”

“You must have been pretty sick,” Kurapika said.

Leorio paused, in the middle of taking the coffee cups out of the machine. His smile faltered.

“What’s wrong?” Kurapika asked.

“Um,” Leorio set the coffee cups down very gently on the table. “I wasn’t sick, Kurapika. I sold them.”

Kurapika went still. It took a moment for him to unfreeze himself. “Oh. I see.”

Leorio pulled the white towel from around his neck and scrubbed his wet hair. Kurapika glanced at the man’s scars—all greyish and dark, deeper than just the layers of skin. He pulled a cup of coffee towards himself and took a deep drink. It was very hot and bitter, and stirred him fully awake. Leorio padded out of the room, dripping water gently. Kurapika’s toast popped up, but he wasn’t really hungry anymore. He spread butter on the dry toast anyway.

Leorio padded back into the kitchen. He was dressed in his old clothes, blue jeans and a ratty band shirt, which had been freshly laundered. That reminded him—Kurapika picked through his bag for his wallet.

“What are you doing today?” Leorio asked, picking up his coffee and leaning on the cabinet. The hotel’s kitchenette was small, and even leaning back, he was only a pace away from the other man.

“I have to meet my informant again,” Kurapika said. “I didn’t get much information out of him yesterday. We’re having lunch.”

“Ah, sure,” Leorio said. “I’m assuming that’s not something you need me for, so I’ll probably go to a museum or something. Unless you can think of something useful for me to do?”

“About that…” Kurapika pulled a thick wad of notes from his wallet and held them out for Leorio. “Here.”

Leorio stared at them sceptically and didn’t make a move to accept them. “What’s this?”

“It’s for you,” Kurapika said. “So you can buy another suit. I vomited on you yesterday.”

“You vomited on your own suit, which you bought with your own money,” Leorio said. “I was just wearing it.”

“Still.” Kurapika kept the money out, “You should buy another one.”

Leorio gave him a flat look.

“I ruined it, so I should pay for it,” Kurapika insisted.

Leorio sighed. He put a hand on the money and gently pushed it back towards Kurapika. “Put it away.”

Kurapika finally relented, slipping the money back into his wallet. He had a queasy feeling in his gut. “I’m causing you to lose money. You’ll have to pay for this semester even though you’ll probably repeat it—not to mention all the other costs. It’s my mission. I should pay you.”

Leorio folded his arms and gave him a long, hard look. “Kurapika, I can afford it. I’m not on your retainer. And maybe this sounds crazy coming from me—but not everything is about money.”

Kurapika looked at him warily for a moment, before he folded his wallet and tucked it back into his messenger bag. He took a bite of his toast.

“I’m gonna head out,” Leorio said, pulling on his shoes. “But hey, I appreciate it. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to pay me.”

“I understand,” Kurapika said. “Let me know if money gets tight.”

“Will do,” Leorio said, throwing his messenger bag over his shoulder.

Leorio closed the door behind him.

Kurapika could almost feel how empty the hotel room was without him. By now he had been a very long, long time alone, but having a partner in his mission was… nice. Even with only a few days of company, he felt a lot more at ease.

He ate his toast.

In the past few years, ever so often he was gripped by a shaky kind of fear. The irrational bout of anxiety that Leorio, Killua, Gon, Melody—everyone he had known was going to die or was dead already. It was the feeling that people he cared for were somehow just fleeting, just alighting in his life and would scatter if he moved too quickly. The feeling would seize him in a paroxysm, particularly when he was parted from them, which would linger like a bad fever for days afterwards.

It was stupid for that feeling to dispel itself. Just because Leorio was closer, it didn’t mean he was safer. Leorio was not a master nen user. Kurapika would not always be there to pull him out of harm’s way. But still—Kurapika couldn’t bring himself to worry about him.

*

Fabien Bruguière waited for him under a deep black umbrella, in the outdoor seating area of an upper-class coffee shop. He sipped a thick, dark expresso and raised both heavy eyebrows at Kurapika when he saw him approach, instead of a wave. He set the coffee down.

“Kurapika, you’re looking better,” Fabien smiled.

Kurapika offered a stiff smile, “Yes, I feel it. I apologise for my rudeness yesterday.” Kurapika sat down opposite him.

Fabien shook his head, “It should be me apologising! It was my cousin’s son who spiked the champagne. And I thought I had problems parenting… the tyke has been sent upstate to sit in the factory and rethink his temperament. Are you really alright?”

Kurapika waved down a waiter and ordered some green tea, “There were no lasting complications. It was disruptive, but not incapacitating.”

“Ah… tell that to the ladies who were banging down my family’s door last night,” Fabien looked tired for a moment. “They were not happy with us at all. It’s a gift that we didn’t lose any contracts over it. My brothers are working overtime to smooth people over.”

“Then I appreciate you making time to talk to me,” Kurapika said. “It sounds like you have a lot on your plate.”

“Oh, but where would we be without the occasional havoc,” Fabien said. He cracked open his briefcase and pulled out a few sheets of folded paper. “Here, I took the morning to pull up a list of personnel the De Luca family has on retainer. This isn’t everyone, but no doubt they’re reluctant to send their best men out of YorkNew.”

“Oh?” Kurapika picked up the sheet of paper and unfolded it. With a quick glance down the list, all that seemed to be there were the standard fare of hired bodyguards and weapons experts.

“Yes, there’s been some trouble in the city,” Fabien said. “There’s a lot of talk that the heirs are dead.”

Kurapika raised his eyebrows, “Really?”

“If rumour is to be believed, yes,” Fabien said. He sighed. “They may be devils, but it’s a sad thing, to have you children slaughtered.”

Kurapika thought for a long moment and decided to say nothing. A waiter came and set the green tea in front of him, and he thanked them.

If Fabien had found his silence odd, he didn’t comment on it. Instead he took another sip of his coffee, “Anyway, the family is now embroiled in a miniature civil war. Greta didn’t play nice with many of her cousins and brothers. Well, you never can in that kind of family. If you ask me, my money is on her cousin, Giuseppe, winning the head—but it’s still possible that the whole family will splinter. Which means, of course, that the other families will absorb their parts.”

“How certain are you, that the heirs are dead?” Kurapika asked.

Fabien raised his eyebrows, “Oh, you sound rather interested.”

“It might factor into my plans,” Kurapika said, obliquely.

Fabien hummed under his breath, a single note, “I wonder what your friend could have done that got him the attention of the heirs. They’re a pretty feisty bunch—or were, as the case may be.” He scratched his chin. “Did your friend break Noemi’s heart? I heard she had her lovers fired, ostracised and run out of town when they displease her.”

“It’s not something like that,” Kurapika said. “He meddled with one of their interests. I believe he was right to do so. That’s why I’m helping him.”

Fabien laughed, “That sounds peculiarly noble coming from a person like you. He must be quite a friend for you to put on airs for his sake.”

Kurapika took a sip of his green tea. The flavour was light and herby.

“The truth is we won’t know for certain who’s counting worms until after the business with succession has been sorted and they’re all in mahogany coffins. That could be months from now,” Fabien finished his coffee. “But if you need more information on the De Lucas, there’s some people that know much more than I do.”

“Oh?” Kurapika asked.

“The Carron family,” Fabien said. “They’ve been feuding with the De Lucas since time immemorial. Maybe twenty years ago they were chased out of YorkNew and they moved up to Kepler. It was probably the right move—Kepler’s got a rich trade, and you’re not constantly rubbing shoulders with the other families. But their wounded pride means much more than any of that. No doubt they had their spies in every section of the family’s business. They know every time Greta so much as sneezes.”

“And you have an opening with them?” Kurapika asked.

“Sure, my second wife’s a Carron,” Fabien waved a hand. “If this friend of yours ever went against the De Lucas, he has a home there. They’ll probably stuff his mouth full of gold if he had anything to do with their misfortune.”

“Whereabouts in Kepler do they live?” Kurapika asked.

“I’ll text you the address,” Fabien said, “And I’ll give them your contact details. Take the ferry.”

Kurapika bid him farewell and made his leave, dropping a few notes onto the table for the tea. Fabien accepted a call from his wife, and immediately started arguing with her. Kurapika left the café and headed north. He shot a text to Leorio, who replied within a minute. Was texting harder with less fingers? It didn’t seem to slow him down.

He walked down 41st street. The air was cold and the sun was bright. Yellow stone bordered all sides and the dark green trees wafted their leaves.

It was the blue sky that reminded him. One morning, many, many years ago, his cousin had been teaching him to hunt. He’d set off the startler which had fired a loud, cracking explosion across the lake. A cloud of black birds had shot upwards into the crystal clear sky. Kurapika had swung his crossbow around wildly, the mess of birds almost dizzyingly fast. When they had cleared, his cousin had looked confused: Why didn’t you fire?

Kurapika had looked dazed: Which one was I supposed to shoot?

His cousin had laughed, not unkindly but genuinely, in that high cackling hyena-laugh he did when he was caught by surprise. Kurapika had turned bright red and angry, embarrassed beyond measure. The moment had been mildly humiliating, but his cousin hadn’t brought it up again and had shot a duck on the way back to the main village, which he had let Kurapika carry.

The memory came unbidden. Kurapika was thinking of that time more and more; but not in the same way he had for years before.

For a very long time, he had only been able to recall the massacre. Every reminder of the people he knew would drag him back there, to the sodden grass and the black, dried blood. Empty eye-sockets. His mind wouldn’t let him extend back further. He had no access to memories of a time before. It was like he had been born that terrible night, the man he was now crawled bloody and angry from that dark wilderness.

But now it came back to him. Unfurled before him in random moments. Like secret, shy gifts.

He stepped to one side to let a woman trailed by children pass. A stray cat slinked across the railing on the other side of the road. Kurapika found the museum Leorio had mentioned in his message. The front of the building was dominated by a huge sculpture of two women holding hands.

Kurapika paid the teller and, ticket in hand, walked into the museum. The front halls were filled with squalling children and harried looking teachers. Kurapika slipped into an exhibit about ancient art. Sour-faced woman in royal dresses glowered down at him from the paintings. The room was gloomy and cold.

“Kurapika!” Leorio caught his shoulder, “You finished your lunch date?”

Kurapika nodded, bemused.

Leorio notice the ticket in his hand, “You really payed the entrance fee? Even though the side-door was wide open and unwatched? You are such a chump.”