Chapter Text
The thought to take a shower first passed in his head when he bounded his way into his apartment. His blazer was ripped to the point he was curious how it still managed to stay on his person and his nice dress pants had become ripped on the knees and the legs as if he was trying to invent some new sort of style. Instead, he used his arms to wipe off the dirt and splatters of blood still dotting his face, the sleeve of his white dress shirt coming back to his vision a dark brown when he pulled away. He swept his blond fringe from out of his eyes and stumbled out of his barely furnished living room and into a backroom much more so bare. He turned on the light to brighten up the room, slinging the duffle bag in his sore arm lazily onto a table. It gently hit the surface, him careful not to break what was inside the bag.
His hands trembled as he opened the bag by its zipper, the noise louder than the screams of agony of the man he pierced through the heart while it rang in his ears. These days, everything inanimate was louder than screams, louder than cries, louder than bombs. Finally, after hesitant pauses, he got the duffle bag open, the polyester gliding over his hands like it’ll leave a paper cut. Not wanting to waste any more time, he takes a large jar out of the bag, filled with a perseverance gell and eyes glowing in its substance.
The last pair of scarlet eyes.
He turns the jar around in his hands gingerly, it was cool underneath his touch like it came out of a refrigerator rather than traveled hours in a warm jeep across multiple cities. His own eyes gazed over the jar, studying the red iris floating into the gel and chokes before turning away. He knew those eyes from anywhere, the flicks of gold only belonged to one person in his clan. A guilty feeling washed over him and forced himself to look again, holding the jar to his chest more needily, his body finding the wall, needing something to lean on while he fought for his composure.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he feels foolish talking to a jar of eyes, but he’s been through this thirty-five times now and he didn’t care if he looked just as foolish each time. “It’s just, looking away was more from relief than anything. I think Mother would be happy to know you’re here now.”
After a few more quiet pants for breath, he leans from off of the wall and turns to the only thing in this room besides the wooden floors and rigidity table-- the bookshelf containing thirty-five more pairs of glowing eyes. Tenderly, he sets the far beside another pair in a jar, staring at him. Anyone else looking at these eyes would see money signs first, but after that, they would realize they couldn’t tell the eyes apart, not like he could. They wouldn’t see his family in those eyes.
“Mother,” he says softly, adjusting her jar just a bit, “after a long while, I found Father. I know you missed him, your cries hunted me in my sleep… or maybe it’s the deprivation. I can’t tell anymore. This is it. This is all of our clan.”
Stupidly, like a dependent child, he awaits an answer. His eyes dance amongst the jars, waiting for word. He forces himself to step away and to remember he’s the only here with a soul. The rest are just unjust spirits living in jars. He limps back to the front of the room, picking up the duffle bag, and turns off the light.
“Goodnight,” he tells the jars meekly, shutting the door behind his descending form.
Kurapika’s been on this journey since he was nine years old. With every new door that he unlocks another is waiting there, unbreakable. That has been his life for thirteen years now, but back then as an inconsolable child with heavy survivor’s guilt, he couldn’t do anything for his clan but seeth in rage and sadness. Now he’s wielding chains wrapped around his knuckles and a tainted heart that blurs right and wrong and merely calls it all justice in the end.
He used to cry at first; after taking lives. The smell of blood was strong and the stench of sin was prudent and never rubbed off--it followed him everywhere. His tears never fixed anything and never did feelings either, because if they did his clan would still be here and he wouldn’t be searching the world for their eyeballs while their form of being was lost in the fire. So he stopped crying and stopped caring, his fist just pulled without mercy when the Spiders wouldn’t break or his nun-chucks harmed after impatience. And after all of that, after all of that killing or injuring, he’d drive hours back to his empty apartment settled in York New and face the feeling of loneliness once more.
But now all of that is over. The killing, and fighting. Kurapika figured maybe the pain in his heart would disappear too, but it’s still there. And it’s pounding against his ribcage like it’ll make him explode. He lived all of his life piecing together his family, secretly hoping, in the end, it’ll make him complete again too. But somehow the loneliness is much thicker and it’s enveloping him into his own little cocoon. He lived all of his life for vengeance and hate, never once thinking he’d have a life after it was all said in done. He needs to bury his family, he knows this much. However, after that, it’s always a background thought to just join them in whatever afterlife they go to next.
After taking a shower and patching up his wounds as best as possible, he went back to his living room and laid along the couch. The feeling of hunger panged him but he felt he didn’t deserve to eat, despite this final victory. Training his eyes to the outdated tv on the cheap stand he found someplace he couldn’t remember and dazed out.
His eyes must’ve closed at some point of staring at the unfunny sitcom because when he opens his eyes it’s all info commercials and banging on his apartment door.
Kurapika sits up rigid, he can see the glow of his eyes in the hue of the wall beside him. He listens for a moment more at the persistent knocking on the door before finding the strength to move and reach for the baseball bat he always kept at the side of the couch. He left his nun-chucks in his bedroom he can’t bring himself to sleep in because it’s too far away from the front door. His logic seemed to do him well as he picked up the sleek metal and inched himself off of the couch. His bare feet padded consciously to the door, the tv going numb in his mind while he walked to the small foyer. After mentally counting to three, he unlocks the door and swings it open, getting ready to do a batter’s swing that would knock blood.
Kurapika heard a whimper leave his mouth when his body knocked backward and hit the wall, the baseball bat thumping to the floor with a clang, and his front door slammed shut afterward. Kurapika wasn’t tall or exactly intimidating in stature, but he was reasonably strong without his nen abilities, especially when it came to thinking quick in dire situations. So it startles him when he finds himself pinned against his wall as if he was nothing more than a ragdoll. Angrily, Kurapika whips his head up to meet the eyes of the intruder, opening his mouth to shout but a large hand clasps over this mouth. That only leaves his eyes to do the focusing for him. Hovering over him is a tall, lanky man. He’s dressed in a white-dressed shirt and slacks, a lab coat hiding most of his formal wear. He’s wearing glasses that dangle off his nose, like an elderly man, one lens shattered.
His ears pick up on footsteps trailing outside of his door. They falter there for a moment and the stranger and him meet eyes, his showing fear, and Kurapika’s certain his are, too--but for different reasons. Kurapika wishes he could mute the tv, as the audio feels blaring but he’s certain it’s not as loud as he’s making it. His body and the intruder’s smushed together in a little gap of the corridor felt agonizingly hot as they waited for the people to pass by. Kurapika knows his eyes are glowing and that’s all the strange man is looking at, taking deep, heaved breaths as if he had run a marathon. For what felt like forever finally ended when a muffled voice called out and the footsteps scurried off in another direction. For a split second, they stayed like that, huddled together until Kurapika snapped back to being on alert and pushed the man off of him, making him stumble back and find purchase on the wall to not fall on his ass.
“Who are you and what the fuck are you doing?!” Kurapika shouts, using his foot to roll the bat back to him, quickly picking it up again and getting into a swinging stance.
The man wobbled onto the soles of his dress shoes--all parts him put together in a dressy, yet clumsy way. He reached up and pushed his broken glasses back up his nose, staring at him sheepishly, but Kurapika knows he’s searching for the red glow of his eyes, however, Kurapika managed to turn it off when he pushed him away.
“Answer me,” he grits out when he still doesn’t respond with nothing more than a chuckle. “You break into my house, and have danger at my doorstep! You owe me the generosity of your name and you better pray that I don’t kill you.”
The man runs a hand through his messy, spiky hair and gives that stupid, wonky smile again before putting his hands in his pockets. “Technically, you let me in. I just took the offer.”
This would be around the time Kurapika would ask for forgiveness from some obscene god if they were to ever exist and swing the bat into his head. But he finds himself faltering at the usually easy task and his eyebrows pinch together in confusion.
“What?” he sputters, “No I didn’t!”
“Well, you did. Did you not psychically open the door?”
“I opened the door because you were knocking on it like a maniac!” Kurapika says, “I never invited you in!”
The man shrugs and gives him another dorky smile that Kurapika wants to punch off of his face. “Either way, thanks for that. Those guys just won’t give up. You give your patients cannabis a couple of times and the cops think you’re a death token!”
“That was the police?!” Kurapika shouts, rushing to look through his peephole.
“Geez, calm down,” the man says with a sigh, “they couldn’t come in here without a warrant, anyways.” When Kurapika turns to glare at him, he smirks in return, “what, are you hiding something?”
“N-no!” Kurapika chokes out, looking off to the left of himself. “You still haven’t told me your name.”
“Are you still planning to kill me afterward if I tell you? Personally, I don’t think that’s a fair deal.”
Kurapika pauses to look back down at his hands, grumbling when he sets the bat against the wall tentatively. Like he found that as a good enough answer, the man pops the collar of his lab coat and speaks.
“Leorio Paladinknight M.D.,” is all he says and Kurapika stares at him deadpanned, irritated. “And you are?”
“None of your concern. Now show yourself out of my house. And if you ever have the police after you again, don’t come to my door. I don’t care to be tied to your back-alley doctoring.”
“It’s not back-alley doctoring. I’m an actual doctor with my own clinic, certainly, you’ve been there before,” Leorio explains, eyeing the bandaged cuts on Kurapika’s arms and legs and he covers what he can with his hands, his face warm.
“I’ve never heard of you, and with the way you have the police on your ass, you’re not a very good doctor.”
Leorio crosses his arms and puts on a serious expression. “I’m the best at what I do, which why they’re after me. I used cannabis with my internally ill patients. Science has proved it helps, but because it’s a criminalized drug, it’s basically banned in the practice of medicine. At least, around here it is.”
Kurapika, even though he should be kicking Leorio out, is curious. “So they have evidence against you?”
“Not exactly, only an assumption and the words of people who held grudges with me. But that’s not enough to convict me. I just need to lay low for a while.”
Kurapika’s eyes widen and he raises his arms out. “No, no, no.”
“Oh, come on--”
“You cannot stay here. Absolutely not.”
“Just until the cops are out of the area, and I’ll be outta your hair!” Leorio practically pleads, walking closer with each step Kurapika took away from him and his puppy eyes. “I’ll pay you!”
“Are you calling me broke?”
“N-no! I mean, you prefer to live like this?”
“Get out.”
“Please, man, please,” Leorio clasps his hands together. “I’ll sleep on the couch, and I won’t ask for anything.”
Kurapika has never shown kindness. And if he ever did, it wasn’t salvageable. Kindness goes beyond pleases and thank yous and catching things that fall or holding doors open for those going in after you. Kindness was optional and best generally behind closed doors, and people have barely shown him that. And Certainly not this man in front of him who could’ve gotten them both in trouble. He tells himself this isn’t kindness, rather, that he couldn’t have Leorio caught leaving his apartment if the police were in the area still. This is not kindness, because he doesn’t know what that is. It’s simply logic.
“Okay,” he says and he has a deep feeling he will regret this. “You can stay.”
“Yes, thank you--!”
Kurapika holds a finger out, “you are allowed in the kitchen, the living room, and the bathroom. But never, are you ever, allowed in my bedroom or the room across from it. Ever. Is that clear?”
“As clear as crystal, little blondie.”
“Call me that again and you can find somewhere else to squat.”
“Then tell me your name or you’ll suffer my nicknames.”
Kurapika scoffs, wrapping his arms around his shivering body as he was wearing nothing but a tee-shirt and shorts, stalking down the hallway of his apartment. “It’s late. I’m going to bed.”
“Awe, so soon, little blondie? We just became friends!”
Kurapika gifts him with the sound of his bedroom door slamming closed behind him.