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Chrollo Lucilfer, above all other things, considered himself a wanderer. Though it was true that he was a musician—the most talented musician among mortals, at that—it wasn’t what kept him alive. Without the change, the constant movement that took him to every new thing he loved to discover, he would most certainly be dead, and his lyre and his voice would perish with him.
Ever since he was a child, he had always been hungry for more, never satisfied with singularity. When he mastered his voice, he picked up a lyre, and when he mastered the lyre, he picked up the flute, and then the panpipes, and then the harp, until he had nothing left to do but to follow the song in his heart and create new melodies where he went.
It had never been his intention to enchant people with his talent, and yet, he’d amass a following no matter which village he stumbled into.
He would always value the bonds he created, but he couldn’t bring himself to value them over his music, his journey, and so his days passed like this: he would drift from place to place, occasionally gracing others with a performance of his newest song, changing with the seasons and following the river’s current.
At one such performance, Chrollo was figuring out a tune on his lyre, surrounded by humans and animals alike. He was leaning casually underneath the shade of a tree, sunlight peeking through the leaves and warming his arms. He’d once again never meant to attract a crowd, but as he’d begun to play, they gathered around him.
He didn’t care much for the attention. It was convenient, of course, when he needed a favor, but at the moment he was more preoccupied with finishing his song than with impressing the crowd.
He strummed a chord and plucked a string and finally, finally, lined it up perfectly with the sound of his voice. And as always, once he’d caught on to something, he couldn’t stop, tapping his feet as he harmonized with the notes on the lyre.
He was aware of all of the eyes on him, which made it all the more troubling when the unexpected happened—he lost the melody in his head and his voice faded away.
With furrowed eyebrows and gritted teeth, he tried again, but he had only a chorus, not a bridge. His song was infuriatingly incomplete.
To his surprise, however, Chrollo heard from above him a light hum that picked up right where he’d left off in his song. Aside from his own, it was the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard in his entire life, and it seemed to be reading his mind, pulling from his subconscious the notes that he couldn’t quite figure out. His fingers continued to strum the lyre as he looked around, looked up and down for where the voice could possibly be coming from.
Before he could figure it out, the song ended, and so his playing stopped. He could hear only the breeze and the creaking of branches. Slowly, the people around him began to leave, and he stood, still confused.
He squinted as he looked around the area. There was no one to be seen, no sound that helped him pinpoint where the voice came from. Under his breath, he sang the tune that the voice had helped him create, and suddenly, there it was again—the voice.
“Hello?” he said, loudly. “May I know who you are?”
A figure appeared from above, hanging upside down from a tree branch. Golden eyes met Chrollo’s grey. The nymph before him, with uncharacteristically red hair and a wide, knowing smile, blinked once, twice, tapping a finger to his chin. “Who, me?”
Upon hearing him speak, Chrollo knew he was the source of the voice. “Yes, you,” he replied, and then he frowned. Who was this man that so easily pulled thoughts from Chrollo’s head and turned them into song? He was offended and yet intrigued that there was someone who knew his music better than himself, someone whose voice almost rivaled his own.“How did you do that, earlier? With my song?”
“I was only continuing what you had already built,” came the nymph’s reply, and he swiftly launched himself out of the tree, landing soundlessly in front of Chrollo. He brushed a leaf off of his chest and held out his hand. By way of introduction, he said, “Hisoka.”
Something inside Chrollo seemed to warn him against Hisoka. His inner alarms were going crazy. Wood nymphs weren’t supposed to be so musically inclined, nor did they normally look like this. And yet—Chrollo took his hand and shook, for his curiosity was getting the best of him. “But how did you know which direction I was going to take?” he asked, tilting his head in confusion. He realized he hadn’t introduced himself, then, and quickly added, “They call me Chrollo.”
“Oh, I know,” Hisoka said, raising an eyebrow. The look on his face was enough to make Chrollo reconsider his choice. “Why, you’re the talk of the town.”
His frown deepened. “Answer my question.”
“I did,” he countered. He waved a hand, gesturing to the lyre in Chrollo’s arms. “I thought of the parts of the song you’d already sung and kept it going from there.”
“But…” Lowering the instrument, he stopped for a moment, thinking about how to phrase his feelings. “I couldn’t finish it myself. How did you figure out which direction I wanted to take it?”
Hisoka laughed. “It’s like this, see.” He reached out, taking Chrollo’s hand to lead him away. “When you’re walking with someone and they go ahead, you follow them.”
He let go of his hand and still, together, they wove through the trees, skipping over a stream.
“Now, if I were to stop—” and Hisoka did stop, here, he paused, leaning against a tree. “Where do you think I’d go next?”
Chrollo turned, pointing past the trunk of a tree. “There, maybe.”
“Yes, there.” Hisoka motioned for Chrollo to keep walking, and Chrollo obeyed, and now he was leading the way, walking onwards with Hisoka in tow. “This is all I did.”
It was Chrollo’s turn to stop, and he crossed his arms, looking at Hisoka. “You’re lying,” he said, annoyed. “How did you know where I wanted to go?”
“Ah, well.” He shrugged, a surprisingly graceful movement. “That’s on you and you alone. It’s not that I knew where you wanted to go, Chrollo. It’s that I guessed where you were going, and you decided that it was right.”
For once in his life, Chrollo had no response. He was silent, dumbstruck, taken aback.
Hisoka seemed to pick up on this, a sheepish smile on his face. “Here, I’ll show you,” he offered gently, nodding towards Chrollo’s lyre.
And Chrollo, who had never hesitated to play for anyone before, felt his cheeks grow hot. He stepped back. “The lyre is—troublesome,” he stuttered. “It falls out of tune so easily—”
Hisoka stepped closer, pressing a finger to Chrollo’s lips to silence him. “Don’t talk,” he said. “Just play. Lead, and I’ll follow.”
So, balancing the lyre carefully on his arm, Chrollo began to play. The tune he spun was unlike anything he’d ever come up with before. Usually he drew inspiration from his surroundings, his own life, which was why he loved to travel so often—but right then his inspiration was standing right in front of him, and so his song was simultaneously erratic and confident, skipping around much like they had just now during their walk.
This time, Hisoka didn’t seem to need Chrollo to start him off. He sang as Chrollo played, and Chrollo’s strumming almost fell background to the melody that Hisoka created. Chrollo hummed a few notes and the two joined in harmony, voices intertwining. Their song was short, but far from simple, and just as quickly as it had begun, it was over.
“How odd,” Chrollo murmured, speaking out loud without meaning to. Hisoka seemed to capture him and understand his ideas better than anyone else had.
Their gazes met, and for a moment, they couldn’t take their eyes off of each other.
This was it, Chrollo realized. His next new thing, his muse. “Would you stay with me, please?” he blurted, and Hisoka’s eyes widened in surprise. “If you have nothing else to do?”
“I’d stay with you whether or not I had anything else to do,” Hisoka quickly replied, and Chrollo felt his own expression settle into a satisfied smile.
From that day onwards, the two stayed together. Chrollo promised to himself that, because Hisoka so easily inspired his music, he would explore him from head to toe. He wanted to know all there was to know about him; thankfully, Hisoka was full of surprises, and so they never ran out of things to do or songs to create.
For days, weeks, months, they were each other’s companions. As with their music, they took turns leading and following each other, making a game out of predicting their next steps. The two would walk arm-in-arm through mountains and valleys, into villages and temples and marketplaces, searching together for something new to catch their interest.
Though they’d been together for a long while, Chrollo was still endlessly curious about Hisoka. He found it bizarre and yet extremely exciting that despite their closeness, it felt like he knew next to nothing about him.
Occasionally, Chrollo would take count of his Hisoka knowledge. He knew that, much like himself, Hisoka was a wanderer. He knew Hisoka had no family, nor did he plan on finding any. He knew Hisoka had no friends, nor did he plan on making any.
He knew Hisoka had no lover. They’d never established anything between them, and it would be wrong of Chrollo to assume something that Hisoka might disagree with. But was it so wrong of Chrollo to hypothesize? They traveled together, ate together, shared secrets and weapons and bodies, and wasn’t that what lovers did?
Whenever he led the way, he would check behind him to make sure Hisoka was still there—but Hisoka never seemed to do the same, confident that Chrollo would always follow him.
This was exactly what Chrollo meant when he thought about how little he truly knew Hisoka. There was a fine line between actions and behavior, and when it came to Hisoka, Chrollo could barely differentiate.
He also knew this: Hisoka easily stirred up trouble—where Chrollo was a people-magnet, Hisoka was a risk-magnet, the sort of man to get into fistfights and loud, heated debates. But just as freely as he’d led Chrollo through the forest and added onto his song, Hisoka would defeat opponents and slip away from the commotion he made.
During a particularly rough fight, Hisoka had grabbed Chrollo’s arm and fled. The two ran out of the village and flew through the trees, zigzagging left and right to escape the people he’d angered. At one point, Hisoka let go, and he separated from Chrollo; they parted ways, only for a moment.
Chrollo decided not to worry about Hisoka, the same way Hisoka never worried about Chrollo. He knew that they would find their way back to each other. He kept running until he was sure he’d lost their opponents, and then he stopped to catch his breath.
He heard a loud cry, the cry of a voice he recognized easily, and began to run again.
He was at Hisoka’s side in minutes, but the man was lying on the ground, face pale. He stared up at Chrollo, struggling already to stay awake. “How humiliating,” he managed to say, and Chrollo dropped to his knees, heart pounding.
“What happened?” Chrollo asked, but he didn’t need to—he saw the bite marks on Hisoka’s ankle and knew immediately what was going on. “No,” he protested, moving forward to take Hisoka’s hand, “that’s ridiculous, after all we’ve been through?”
“This was—” Hisoka coughed mid-sentence, seeming embarrassed. “Quite the turn of events,” he finished, and he managed a laugh. Chrollo leaned in, aching to hear his final words, but Hisoka said no more, and as fluently as he did everything else, he collapsed, head falling gently onto the grass.
Chrollo stared at his lifeless body in disbelief.
For the first time in months, he had nothing to say.
He sat just like that, kneeling across from Hisoka, for hours. The sun went down and all he could do was wait for the moonlight to appear so he could continue to stare. The only sound he could make out was the wind and his pounding heart—maybe his ragged breathing, if he focused, but he couldn’t focus because all he could see was the corpse in front of him.
Death would visit soon, maybe.
He waited for another few days, unmoving, and eventually, Death did come. A shadowed figure rose from behind Chrollo and hovered over Hisoka, and once again, all Chrollo did was watch.
The figure went to pick up Hisoka, and finally, Chrollo spoke.
“Wait.”
Surprisingly, it paused, turning to Chrollo.
Chrollo gathered all of the smooth-talking skills he’d learned over the years and poured out his proposal. “Let me accompany you to the Underworld,” he said quickly, desperately, “and convince Hades not to take him. Don’t you know me? I’m Chrollo Lucilfer, I’m a musician, the most talented musician of the mortal world, really, and without my muse, I won’t be able to write. Doesn’t my music far outweigh a single life?”
The shadow didn’t bother to let him finish. In seconds, Chrollo was enveloped in darkness.
Whether or not he’d succeeded in making his point, he didn’t know—it was as if he’d fallen into a deep sleep, a sort of death of his own.
Perhaps he wouldn’t wake.
/
Hisoka was miserable. To some extent, he normally enjoyed pain, for it was out of the ordinary and usually led to more exciting events. But the Underworld was boring, plain and despondent and gloomy, and the knowledge that he was trapped there for eternity was enough to fill his heart with dread.
Out of nowhere, however, someone grabbed him, checking to make sure his chains were intact. He was led into a cavernous room, dimly lit by a few torches.
In front of him was Chrollo, looking worse for wear. Hisoka hadn’t seen him in what felt like forever. His time in death had given him an opportunity to reflect on his life and he’d realized that Chrollo had more of an effect on it than Hisoka would like to admit.
He felt his heart skip a beat—he hadn’t felt this sort of anticipation in quite a while.
Upon seeing Hisoka, Chrollo smiled.
“Did you come here for me?” Hisoka asked, and for once there was no underlying statement or hidden remark, only genuine curiosity.
Chrollo tipped his head forward a little bit, his gaze never wavering. “I did.”
“It’s an honor,” he replied, “but you shouldn’t have.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “Why wouldn’t I—”
“Enough, you two,” Hades said then. His voice boomed and echoed loudly through the room, though he’d not taken a physical form for them. “Now, Hisoka. Chrollo claims that you are his muse, and that he’s unable to play music without you. Do you think this is true?”
“Ah,” Hisoka said, and clearly there was a correct answer here: “Yes.”
“Show me, then. Prove yourself. Play for me.”
In Chrollo’s arms appeared a lyre much like his own. The two made eye contact, and the look in Chrollo’s eye was cool, determined. Hisoka knew that this moment was meant for Chrollo, and Chrollo only, and so he kept his mouth shut and listened as he began to play.
Chrollo didn’t take his eyes off of Hisoka as he sang a song of misery, his music echoing through the chamber and growing in intensity. There were no words to describe Chrollo’s song, and Hisoka knew that even if he was given the chance, he wouldn’t be able to add onto it.
If this was how strongly Chrollo wanted Hisoka back, then Hisoka would go back to him at all costs.
The song cut so deep that not even Hades could bear it any longer. After a minute, he said, “That will be all,” and Chrollo snapped his mouth shut, not wanting to disrespect him. Hades hummed in thought and then said, “Fine. If you must, you may have him back.”
The shackles disappeared from Hisoka’s arms, and he let out a sigh of relief, holding up his hands.
Chrollo stood. Hades said, “Wait,” and Chrollo sat back down. “As you two were in the land of the living, you must also act similarly in the land of the dead. Chrollo, Hisoka is yours, but you must lead him out of the Underworld on your own. There is a staircase—it is long, and winding, and in complete darkness. Hisoka will follow you to the sunlight, and you two can live the rest of your lives together. But there’s a catch: under no circumstances may you look back at Hisoka. You cannot look at him until you both leave the Underworld. So long as you obey these conditions, you two will be brought back to life. Understand?”
“I understand,” Chrollo replied immediately.
“Hisoka?”
“Yes, I understand,” Hisoka answered, and he stood. In front of them was the entrance to the staircase, covered in deep shadows. He let out a sharp breath and gestured toward it. He felt Chrollo’s eyes on him and said, “Please, turn away.”
Chrollo nodded and took the first few steps of the stairs. Hisoka followed not too far behind, taking the steps slowly, but surely. They walked on top of jagged rocks, enveloped in darkness. Once or twice, he heard Chrollo stumble and cough, but Hisoka refused to slip. In his ears he heard whispers, cries of the dead, elders and children saying join me, stay, but Hisoka stayed vigilant, continuing to take each step. Sometimes, Chrollo would call out Hisoka’s name, and Hisoka would quickly reply, reassuring him of his presence.
Hisoka hated depending on others, but since it was all he could do, he was confident that Chrollo would lead them out of the darkness. When Chrollo spoke, he would answer. It was all he could do to avoid his own demise.
/
Chrollo saw light.
His pace quickened and he fumbled even faster up the stairs, grabbing onto the stones jutting out of the walls for support. Upon seeing the sunlight, Chrollo was already imagining the rest of his life, the plans he had, the things he would do. He was even able to tune out the voices he’d been hearing the whole journey—he didn’t have to call out for Hisoka, now, he was sure that he’d be there, that soon the two of them would collapse into the grass, laughing and preparing the story to tell to whoever they’d meet next.
He could nearly see the outside world.
But mere feet away from the exit, he heard Hisoka. “Chrollo!”
“Hisoka?” he responded, pausing, but refusing to look back.
“Chrollo,” Hisoka said, anguished. “Chrollo, please, turn around.”
“I’ll be able to see you soon.”
He felt Hisoka’s hand on his, and again, he heard, “Turn around.”
“I can’t.”
Hisoka’s hand moved away. “Alright,” he said, and it sounded like he was walking away—
“No,” Chrollo muttered.
Hisoka was there, he knew he was there. He had always been there.
Had he even followed Chrollo into the stairwell?
Louder, he said, “Hisoka!” and he turned around. His heart pounded. He needed to make sure, otherwise how would he lead him out—
“Chrollo?” came Hisoka’s steady reply, and Chrollo got a glimpse of him, then, only a few steps behind him. They locked eyes for a split second, both in complete shock.
The sunlight was barely able to reach Hisoka’s face before he gasped and disappeared into thin air.
A victim of his own doubt, Chrollo had lost. After fighting so hard for Hisoka, he’d grown selfish, foolish. All he had to do was lead.
Perhaps, Chrollo thought, he was right. Perhaps the Hisoka he’d seen just then had only been a figment of his imagination, a hallucination created to cope with the fact that Chrollo had just taken the entire flight of stairs on his own, with no one to follow him.
But either way, he was alone.
And though he left the Underworld, stepping into the light, he knew his life was lost, for he was never to wander again.