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It’s summer, and summer is supposed to be nice, but it’s too hot and Killua’s too tired, and the sun is too bright, and he still isn’t used to freedom so he can’t decide what to do and he spends the whole fucking day lying in bed with the curtains drawn listening to the fan and the people outside who know what to do with their fucking lives.
See? This is the part of freedom that no one fucking tells you about. The part where you have no fucking clue what to do with your life because it was always set out for you and it was going to be so easy to just follow that because you were fucking good at getting fucked over, you know? And you knew when to keep your mouth shut, and you knew how to do what you were told, and you knew everyone around you and they all knew you and they didn’t think of you as the scary, strange person that makes them frightened, uncomfortable or, at the very best, sad.
Killua rolls over onto his stomach. The fan chops air over his back. He watches the blades spin. He’s sick to his stomach again. Maybe he hasn’t eaten enough. Maybe he’s eaten too much. Maybe he’s nervous about something. He always feels like something is wrong. He can’t fucking relax. It’s like something is behind him all the time. Like he’s going to keep running like hell forever.
Gon’s sitting with the puppy. He’s better at keeping his life together. He eats loads of strawberries, fingers and lips stained bright red. He brings home records and plays them in the evening with the windows wide open and curtains pulled back. He pulls Killua up off the bed and then Killua wants to join him, laying out a little dinner, watering the plants, taking the puppy on walks, but there’s something in him that makes people pass them, wide margin, on the side walk. And he’s never gonna get it out. So he eats strawberries and drinks sparkling water, but the past is behind him like a pit, and the ground underneath him keeps crumbling.
And he thinks. He really thinks that he would be happy someday, even with the pain that slips from his stomach to his heart and makes it hard to get up because he’s shaky when he stands. Shaky like Illumi has long fingers that can take your air. Shaky like Kalluto is somewhere, and he’s never gonna know where, because he left, and he gave up on Kalluto, and he was, like, eleven, so can he really blame himself, but he’s eighteen now, and all he can think about is that Kalluto’s still a child somewhere, killing and being tormented, killing and being tormented, killing and being tortured – the only symphony their family knows how to play.
And how does Gon look at him and not see a murderer and a coward?
And when he says, ‘I miss my brother,’ the record keeps playing, and the curtains keep waving in the wind, and there’s nothing that changes in the world around him, so it’s like he didn’t say it at all.
Gon says, ‘Do you want to find him?’ Which means he did say it, said it out loud, and Gon knows who he is talking about, maybe. Or maybe he’s thinking about Illumi, maybe Milluki. But they were older than Killua and tortured him, so he never misses them. (Not enough to count.)
‘He’d be sixteen now,’ Killua says. ‘It’s his birthday.’
He stands despite the pain, despite the stars that jump in his vision, despite the dizziness that makes the pale wooden floor look like a whirlpool.
‘But what about Alluka?’ Gon asks, and he’s right. He’s so right. Because Killua doesn’t know if Kalluto would turn them in, call the family, capture Alluka. Fuck, maybe he’d try to capture Killua. It’s a bad idea.
‘I think he loved me,’ Killua says. But it’s been years since he saw Kalluto, and he doesn’t know if he knew what love was back then. He’s pretty sure he knows what it is now. Love brings that kind of pain that makes you seize up because you’re suddenly thinking that there are so many fucking variables in the world, and someone could die just like that, and you can’t imagine your world without them, so you call just to hear their voice, and love is like that. It’s good most of the time, but it hurts more than any torture ever could.
‘That’s why you threaten the children,’ Illumi says in some far off memory. ‘People would do anything for their family, especially their children.’
‘I don’t even know if he’s alive,’ Killua says. (‘Have a big family in case you lose some. It’s a dangerous line of work, Kil.’)
Gon watches him. The fan chops the air. The curtains are all billowy, something beautiful in the world, but it feels like there’s a knife through his throat, and he can’t get it out. And maybe he saved a million lives or something in a war when he was just a kid, but does that really outweigh the things they made him do, way back before he was a child soldier, back when he was still a child assassin because fuck being normal or whatever.
‘Do you think he’s alive?’ Gon asks. He still has that light in his eyes, the same one that he had when they met. Killua doesn’t know if there’s anything that could put it out.
‘I don’t know,’ Killua says. He’s trying not to imagine Kalluto dead somewhere. He’s trying not to imagine his body decaying. He’s wondering what he would look like now, if he were alive. (If he were dead.) ‘I guess.’
He pours water into a glass. It fizzes. The bubbles jump into the air. There is light all through the room, light through the glass, light bouncing off his hand.
‘Alluka’s safe, so. It’s fine.’
He gulps down the sparkling water, and it burns his throat, but not enough to dissolve the knife still struck through it.
Gon looks out the window. His fingers run through the golden fur of the puppy. The curtains flutter white over green leaves, and the record plays. Killua can’t hear the music. He sits on the bed again and sips the water, and he watches the way the light moves over the floor as the sun sets on another summer day that he spent in bed because he doesn’t know what to do with his freedom, because he can do anything but go home.