Work Text:
"Kite."
Ging's voice was as gruff and unaffected as always as he observed the pile of limbs in the shape of his former...companion. The slight tremble and crack to his voice would have been unnoticeable to all beings, save one; the poetic justice - or cruel irony, rather - of the moment supplemented by the fact that that one being lied before him, dead.
Unlike their son - his son, Ging desperately emphasised to his numb mind; a last-ditch attempt at retaining his composure - Ging was able to accept that this creature was nothing but a shell; a corpse, holding none of the life held by its former inhabitant. Realism, however, could not erase the emotion of confronting the only person with which one had ever been in love; the person one had first called companion, then spouse; the person with which one had shared the bond of a child, not even if one was the strongest being alive, from which Ging could not be further.
Mustering the last shreds of feigned indifference left in his heart, Ging gathered the frigid, stiff corpse in his arms, faltering only slightly as familiar tresses of hair brushed his skin. He forced his features into their standard expression of a scowl; his facade would have to last until he had buried Kite and was alone again. He refused to insult both his personal pride and Kite's memory by publicly succumbing to his grief.
°°°°°°°°°°
Ging had never had the ample levels of tact required to be a traditionally 'good' parent to Gon; 'That had been more of Kite's forte, even from afar', he thought painfully. Since losing Gon to Mito, Ging had never anticipated that his first words to his son's face in 13 years would be informing him of his mother's identity and final resting place in the same sentence.
As Gon approached Ging after an excited exclamation from the former and an awkward "Yo," from the latter, Ging's brain short-circuited as he scrambled to find something to say to his child. It was mere hours after Ging had buried the person that Gon had not even known to be his mother; unless he had listened to the entirety of Ging's record tape, which Ging doubted if Gon was anything like he thought.
Ging did not dare look Gon in the eye, instead folding his arms and mumbling, "I buried Kite. He was your mother, so you'll have to come pay your respects. Let's go."
He drowned out the noise that exploded around them, unwilling to hear whether or not his son had responded or reacted emotionally and unwilling to hear hundreds of people telling him what he already knew - that he was a horrible father.
He shoved past the crowd roughly, not needing to look behind him to know that Gon was tailing him.
°°°°°°°°°°°
The creature only accepted a handful of things as facts thus far in its short life - it had its memories from its former life, and it knew the name by which it identified. It was unsure of what words to refer to itself, by human terms - 'he', its brain helpfully supplied. Once again, it was a male being in a female body, which was becoming an annoying pattern, as it recalled being male but born as a female in its past life as well.
'Clarity will come with time' it thought to itself as it traced a finger along roughly engraved letters on a crudely mined slab of stone. It sniffed the air deeply, identifying the approaching scents of what its brain could only classify as 'kin' while slowly reading the inscription left on the slab:
Here Lies Kite Freecss
Gentle Soul, Hunter, Husband, Mother