Archive of Our Own

Later, Killua will think, I should have felt it.

He will think that, as he was running with Alluka cradled in his arms in the woods somewhere, it should have pierced him through the heart like the sharpest and swiftest arrow; that he should have stumbled as if tripping over a root and sent the both of them sprawling in the dirt; he should have come up gasping, kneeling in the brittle underbrush and pressing the heel of his hand to his chest; he should have known.

But apparently should didn’t matter, and these things didn’t work like that, and instead Killua had to walk up to the makeshift ward set up in the hospital parking lot with Alluka’s hand in his and dangerous anticipatory hope climbing up his throat and he had to see that all those friends who had come to guard Gon until his return were instead gathered with their heads bent and voices hushed near the entrance. He had to watch them turn their heads in unison to look at him with shock and terrible sorrow and he had to stop dead in his tracks and clutch Alluka’s hand hard hard hard until she murmured a concerned onii-chan ? 

He had to see Leorio push his way to the front of the small crowd gathered there and look at him so stricken and hurt and hear him say with all the grief in the world, Killua, and Killua had to just stand there and feel a huge and horrible wave break over his head and, entirely without his permission, start to cry.

Someone had ushered him inside the building and set him gently down on a bench but Killua couldn’t really remember who. Leorio probably. His eyes had been too blurred to see anything and his ears were full of a ringing sound but someone tall and big and warm and crying had hugged him, he thought, so by process of elimination that must have been either Leorio or Knuckle.

Alluka was still holding his hand and she kept tugging at his sleeve and trying to talk to him but every time he tried to explain what was going on his throat would close up so all he could do was wrap one arm around her and try not to lose it completely.

Leorio was talking to a few of the other hunters a little way down the hall and he could hear snippets of their conversation, something something election, something something chairman, something something vote, until Leorio’s voice rose to an aggravated shout:

“I couldn't care less about that right now! Pariston can win, I don’t give a shit! I am not going back there.”

He stormed away then, pulling out his phone and hitting the buttons furiously as he went, rounding the corner to the next hallway. Killua heard him yell, “Kurapika where the hell are you —” before his voice faded into incomprehensibility. 

Alluka rested her head on his shoulder.

Everything went all fuzzy again for a few minutes and then the next time Killua looked up Bisky was in front of him. Her expression was carefully calm and controlled but she was wringing one of her gloves between her hands.

“Killua —” she began.

Killua didn’t let her finish. “I want to see him.”

Bisky’s expression cracked a little then, uncertainty and sorrow evident in the tilt of her eyebrows and the wet glimmer of her eyes.

“I’m … I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I have to.”

Bisky swallowed. “Killua, you know that … you can see him, but you won’t be able to … see him.”

“I want to,” Killua said again. “I have to.”

Bisky took a shaky breath and her expression wobbled and for a moment Killua was sure she was going to start crying, but she only said. “I suppose … I can’t stop you. Not you.” She started to wring her glove in the other direction. “Come with me.”

Killua stood and followed her as she started down the hall, feeling Alluka’s hand in his only faintly. Everyone they passed turned to look at him; Killua could feel their pity. He couldn’t help but think, forever after this, everyone he ever met, everyone who passed him in the street, would be able to see it: the loss, running up against the edge of feeling and spilling over it, marked indelibly into his body, as permanent and obvious as a severed arm. 

Bisky turned a corner and stopped in front of a curtained-off section, pausing with one hand poised to draw aside the plastic sheeting.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

Killua stepped forward and pushed the curtain aside himself.

Inside, masked nurses were cleaning up equipment: ventilator and monitors and IVs all unplugged and quiet and still. In the center of it all, the bed, and the white sheet, and the too-too-small shape underneath. 

Killua couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t feel anything else — step by inevitable step he went towards the bed, lifted a suddenly heavy arm, drew back so slowly the sheet. And underneath … underneath there was nothing he could recognize. A pile of bandages, a mummy. 

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. This couldn’t happen. Killua had to see Gon again, had to talk to him. There was so much he had to say still, Gon couldn’t go until Killua talked to him, and he’d never be finished talking to him, a lifetime wouldn’t be enough for it. He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear it.

He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t breathe —not for long endless moments, not until he became distantly aware of a small hand tugging on his sleeve and a gentle voice calling his name: Killua, Killua.

Killua came back, and turned, and looked into his sister’s face. His sister’s white face with black-hole eyes.

“Nanika,” he gasped. Nanika, who was powerful beyond measure, who would do anything he asked, who could heal. 

“Nanika,” he said, voice wavering. “Please, can you bring him back, please?” 

She stared at him. The line of her mouth was flat, implacable. With each passing second he felt his heart sink lower, his vision grow blurrier. He was sure, terribly horribly sure, that she would tell him, this was the newly found limit of her power.

But, then.

“Not easy, Killua.” she said. “Not alone.”

Killua’s next breath was gasping. “I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll do anything.”

And so, she told him.

It was only a chance, not a promise, and there were rules, and they were very strict. Killua hadn’t expected anything less, though. Every covenant had its conditions. But breaking these rules meant losing everything (losing Gon); there would be no second chances, there would be no leeway. One second of weakness would bring it all crashing down. So Killua held those rules, those conditions, as close to his heart as Kurapika kept his pointed chain; in either case, breaking them would have much the same effect.

Nanika held on to Gon’s hand; her other hand reached out to Killua and he took it. She looked at him with a solemnity he had never seen on her oft-smiling face.

“Come back, Killua,” she said, and then he was gone.

Killua walked. He followed a road. It was made of gravel, dirt, chunks of old cobblestone, stray pieces of asphalt. The scrape of Killua’s feet with every step sounded muffled and distant. 

On either side of the road, fields stretched out into the distance. Fields, in some places, of tall yellowed grass; in others, rows of rocky dirt sported the stubble of some old harvest. Sometimes there were trees, bent as if they had weathered many storms, their sparse leaves dull red and brown. The sky was solid, gunmetal gray. 

There were people, too. Some of them stood out in the fields, perfectly still with their faces turned to the sky. Others sat cross legged at the side of the road as if they had been there forever, and would stay there forever, too. One woman perched in the branch of a solitary tree rolled her head listlessly against its trunk to watch him pass.

At one point, he walked by a man standing at the edge of the road who began to follow him. Killua did not turn to confront him, and the pace and weight of his footsteps indicated no intent to attack, to Killua’s practiced ear. Still, Killua remained tense as he continued onwards. And soon, the man was not alone. The further Killua went, the more people joined the strange procession: men and women, young and old. A few children, although Killua noticed there were not many children in this place at all, and certainly none younger than him. 

For a while, Killua pretended not to notice or care about his followers, until the footsteps he counted amounted to more than a dozen, with no sign of stopping and every sign of continuing to amass more. He spun around and extended his claws.

“Who are you and what do you want,” he demanded.

The man who led them all looked directly into his eyes. “It’s you,” he said. “You killed us.”

Killua paused, and flicked his gaze quickly over the pale gray faces of the growing cloud, but felt no twinge of familiarity.

“I don’t remember you,” he told them.

Truthfully, the first twelve years of Killua’s life was becoming, more and more, a lengthened blur of pain and blood and loneliness. Ever since he had run away and met Gon and, more recently, pulled the needle from his brain, the memories were growing muted and distant, except for on particularly sharp nights and moments of poignant terror. And the memories of his kills, of time spent with his “kill switch” on, were even dimmer still. The one time he’d made the mistake of casually mentioning it in a conversation with Leorio, Leorio had gotten all concerned and used words like “repression” and “dissociation,” but Killua just told the old man to chill out, it didn’t much matter to Killua either way. Not like the memories were all that great anyway.

 The faces of the crowd twisted in anger, and they rumbled with discontent.

“You slit my throat,” one person said.

“You broke my neck,” said another.

“You killed my husband first,” said a third. “I had to watch you tear out his heart.”

Killua analyzed the body language of each person in turn, but saw no intent to attack. The whole crowd stood almost slackly, arms loose and heads tilted oddly as if they didn’t even have the strength to stand straight. Still, he dared not relax. 

“I don’t do that stuff anymore,” he said.

That sent a sort of ripple through them. Killua saw several faces darken.

“What should it matter to us what you do now?” said the first man. “You’ve done your damage already.”

“Murderer,” someone hissed.

“Devil!” another shrieked.

“Ruiner,” someone else moaned.

This, Killua thought, must be where another person, a better person, a person who wasn’t so irrevocably messed up inside, would feel guilt and shame and repentance. This was where he was supposed to outstretch open pleading hands and beg for forgiveness. This was where he was meant to be driven to his knees by the weight of his sins.

But Killua wasn’t that person, and however much he might reach for shame, he could only manage a measure of regret — overshadowed mostly by anger.

“What do you want me to say?” he snapped. “That I’m sorry? Well, it was never my choice. I never wanted to do it.”

The man’s head tilted, just a bit too far to the side for it to be natural. “If you didn’t want to do it, why aren’t you sorry?”

Killua swallowed. “If I spent every day being torn up about it, I’d never do anything else.”

Killua was learning, more and more each day, his own capacity for love. His heart ached like an unused muscle sometimes, filled to the brim around his friends, his sisters. But no matter how he tried, love for faceless masses eluded him. His world was small, and he guarded it fiercely, and anything beyond that was new to him. He could regret all that death he caused, but at the same time he couldn’t feel sorrowful about it. He could bitterly hate all that painful training he’d gone through, but at the same time he was grateful for all the times it had saved his life, had saved Gon’s life, had even most recently saved Alluka’s life. 

He was learning to be good, yes, but he didn’t think he could ever learn to be a hero.

“You don’t deserve to live free of that burden,” one woman said, her face twisted in disgust.

Killua clenched his teeth, and spun around on his heel. “Whatever,” he said, resolving to go back to ignoring them. 

He set off walking down the road once again, but now that the gates had opened, his ghosts were silent no more.

“And now you, bringer of death, want to reverse it?”

“Selfish. Hypocrite.”

“Who are you to be the exception? Who are you to defy the ultimate law?”

“You should have been the one to die.”

“You don’t deserve to have him back.”

“You don’t deserve his kindness. 

“You don’t deserve his friendship.”

“You never did.”

Killua walked, and felt their spite hurled at him like stones, and every word rang true, but he understood what they did not: this wasn’t about deserving, and this wasn’t about fairness. This was about survival, because Killua needed Gon to be alive. Because Gon stood for everything Killua had learned to love about the world. Because even now that the darkness had swallowed him whole, Gon was still a necessary light. Because even if Gon were to one day walk away from him and never speak to him again, Killua needed to know that always, somewhere, Gon was living.

Selfish, maybe. Hypocritical, definitely. But Killua’s faulty battered heart wanted what it wanted, and disregarded the rest; he couldn’t change that, even if he tried.

So on he went, and the voices grew greater in number and volume until he couldn’t discern one insult from another. But then, gradually, a gray mist began to rise up from the fields and descend from the sky, growing thicker with each passing moment. The voices behind him went muffled, as if from a great distance, or through a thick cloth. And when he glanced behind him, their individual faces blurred into vague silhouettes, and soon they disappeared from view completely. 

Killua walked in silence except for the sound of his own feet kicking up loose stones on the ramshackle road. He felt like he was in a soundproof box. Everything had devolved into gradients of gloom, all except the road. 

He followed it. He didn’t know for how long.

The road ended eventually. But there was no door, no gateway, no stairway, no sign of what came next. There was only a copse of trees. Their leaves were green. It was the first real color he had seen in this place. They made a faint shushing sound as they swayed, although there was no wind. And beneath them, seated on a large white piece of crumbling stone, was a woman. She was very pale, with dark curling hair, her nose a long straight slant. Simple white dress and withered flowers in her hair. Killua stopped, and looked at her. She looked back, and smiled faintly.

“Will you sing something?” she said. She had a voice like a sigh.

Killua blinked at her. “Sing something?” He repeated.

“Yes,” she said. “Sing. Won’t you sing?”

Killua swallowed. “I don’t have anything to sing.”

She tilted her head. “That’s not true. Everyone has something.”

She was right. Killua knew songs, of course he did, but they were nothing worth singing — snippets of pop songs he’d heard in stores and public transit, strange old nursery rhymes he knew although no one ever sang them to him, the ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah, and the folk songs the villagers near Kukuroo Mountain would sing in the dark, there once was a master of death and he lived on the mountain of death and he killed and he killed and he killed, and the eerie lilting classical music he’d sometimes hear from somewhere in the depths of the mansion. None of it worth knowing. None of it worth singing. Certainly not here, not now.

The woman’s eyes were deep and sad. “If you want him,” she said, “You must sing.”

Well. There was something. Killua remembered now, though it had been what felt like so long ago. One sunny day on Whale Island (and oh, there were so many of those), Gon had taught him a few lines of a folk song, something all the islanders knew, something in his own language. Big rounded vowels and gentle looping cadence. Killua had fumbled through the pronunciation and Gon had hidden his face in his knees and giggled. Sorry Killua, I promise I’m not making fun of you. 

He’d taken Killua through it sound by sound, making big exaggerated faces around each syllable, until Killua was able to copy him exactly and they sang it together, short and sweet. Strange, how different Gon sounded when he sang. But at the same time, it could not have been anyone else’s voice. Killua supposed he was the same way. 

Killua asked, so what does it mean? But Gon only gave him a sly and lovable smile and said, can’t tell you that, Killua, and no matter how Killua chased him or tried to throttle him he wouldn’t give it up. It better not be something weird! Killua yelled at him and the amused edges of his smile softened and he said, it’s not, Killua. It’s not.

So maybe, maybe, that was good enough for this.

Feeling awkward, Killua cleared his throat, and despite his best efforts his voice cracked on the first syllable, and the woman was watching him so intently. Killua closed his eyes then, and recalled Gon’s face that day, the shapes his mouth made and the melody his voice followed. Imagined him there beside him, imagined they were singing together in the sun.

He didn’t open his eyes until the last word had faded into the still, heavy air. The woman was smiling again. A softness in her eyes.

“A happy song,” she said. “Thank you. Perhaps your ending will be happier than mine.” She stood. “Go on.” She gestured to the trees behind her. 

Killua paused to watch her pass, but she did not look any more at him. She hummed a piece of the melody Killua had just sung for her, and then started humming something else. Something haunting and beautiful. She wandered out beyond the road, out into the gloom. She didn’t look back.

Killua turned around. The trees seemed thicker now; it looked like there were more of them, it looked like they were greener. Killua stepped beneath their canopy. He pushed into the dense greenery, tripped over roots, shoved away branches, kept fighting and fighting his way forward until —

He broke through.

The first thing he saw was the sun.

It blinded him, for a moment; he raised a hand before his eyes. When he lowered it, he saw: green grass, blue water, a spiky-haired silhouette.

Gon was sitting there on the edge of a cliff. He was facing away from Killua, the peaks of his hair ruffled by the breeze, fishing pole in hand. He was humming quietly, tunelessly.

Looking at him, Killua couldn’t breathe. He was suddenly terrified that none of this was actually real. If he took another step towards Gon, if he said his name, he’d disappear and the sky would go gray and Killua would wake up and Gon would still be dead.

But before Killua could do anything, Gon said, “Hi, Killua.” 

He looked over his shoulder and his big amber eyes were partially squinted with the force of his lopsided endearing smile and Killua could just cry. Gon patted the ground next to him.

“Sit with me?”

There was no world in which Killua could have refused him. Dreamlike, he moved forward and settled down onto the grass beside Gon. Gon’s feet, dangling over the edge of the cliffside, kicked idly back and forth as he reeled his line back in — empty — and took a bit of bait from a plastic bucket on his other side and slid it onto the hook.

“Wanna do a cast?” he said, proffering the fishing pole towards Killua.

Killua just stared at him. Everything felt so surreal. “Gon,” he said, slowly. “Do you know where you are?”

“‘Course I do,” Gon said, looking around with his smile still in place. “I’m home.”

He flicked his fishing pole back, then forward. Killua watched the line soar out and down; it seemed to go much further than a real fishing line should. He swallowed, and tried again.

“But do you know where you really are,” he pressed.

Gon’s kicking feet stilled; his smile flattened.

“Of course I do,” he said again, much quieter this time. “I feel like … I’ve been fishing forever, Killua. But the sun never sets. And I never run out of bait.”

Killua’s hands curled into fists. “Gon … are you happy here?”

Gon hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I guess so. Honestly I hadn’t really thought about it. I just … am, you know?”

Something about that answer felt all wrong. To see Gon, the very same Gon who moved through the world like a tropical storm, stuck in stasis like this … if this was supposed to be some sort of heaven, it made Killua’s stomach turn.

“And,” Killua went on, “Do you remember how you got here?”

That knocked the smile off Gon’s face completely. He looked down at his hands, clutching the fishing pole tight.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I do.”

Killua’s next inhale was shaky. “Why did you do it, Gon?”

Gon didn’t say anything, and he didn’t meet Killua’s eyes. He bobbed the fishing pole up and down, and reached out to fiddle with the line.

“Did we win, Killua?” he asked instead of answering. “The other royal guards, and the king — did we beat them?”

Killua’s mouth felt dry. The events at the palace after he had left to chase after Gon weren’t of much concern to him, all of it swept clean out of his head as he had carried Gon’s lifeless body through the deep, dark woods. But he’d been told the end result all the same.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we did.”

“And everyone’s okay? Knuckle and Morel and Palm and everyone?”

Killua thought briefly of Shoot unconscious in the hospital, Netero blown to bits. “More or less,” he said.

Gon’s mouth curved upwards again. “Good. Then, I did my part, and everything turned out okay.”

Killua’s lungs stilled. He had to consciously force them to fill again. “ Okay ?” he repeated, breathlessly. “Everything is most certainly not okay!”

Gon did look at him then, his brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

Killua stared and stared at him. “Do I have to remind you that you’re dead, Gon!”

He hadn’t said it out loud before, and hadn’t really meant to even now. As soon as the word left his mouth, d e a d, he wanted to reach out and grab it and crush it in his fist. It couldn’t be real, and it wouldn’t be real, if Killua could do anything about it.

But Gon was just — of all things — giggling. “Oh, that,” he said. “I almost forgot.”

“What are you laughing at,” Killua demanded.

“Nothing, nothing, it’s just— “ his smile softened, and he looked right at Killua and gently touched his arm as if he was about to say something particularly heartfelt. “It’s really okay, Killua. I thought it was probably going to end this way. I only wish I could have gotten to say goodbye to some people. And that’s why I’m so glad you’re here now.”

Killua’s ears were ringing faintly, and a sudden strong urge to punch Gon in the nose jumped up his throat. He forced it down, and shook Gon’s hand off his arm. “I’m not here to say goodbye.” 

I’ll never say goodbye to you, not forever, not if I have any say in it.

Gon didn’t seem to register what he’d said. A strange dreaminess had come over his features, a vagueness to his eyes and smile, a softness to his voice.

“Will you stay a little while longer, Killua?” he said. “I think Mito-san is cooking crab tonight, I can smell it on the breeze. Maybe after dinner, Abe can teach you how to play cards and we can bet with buttons and one-jenny coins. And when it’s dark we can go out and light a fire and look at the stars again.”

Killua’s heart was racing, his breaths heaving in and out. “Mito-san isn’t here, Gon!” he shouted. “And Abe’s not here, and Whale Island isn’t here, and none of this is real, you know it isn’t!”

Gon blinked at him. “Does it matter, Killua?”

“Of course it matters!” Killua said fiercely. “Because I’m not going to leave you here. I’m going to save you.”

Gon’s face was blank. He turned his head away, and looked down at his reel as he drew his line back in. Empty, again. Killua’s stomach clenched into a fist.

“Come back with me,” he said, gripping tight handfuls of grass. It felt so real, cool and slippery between his fingers.

Gon was avoiding his eyes again. “I don’t think I’m allowed to do that,” he said.

“I don’t care. Come back with me.”

Gon didn’t say anything. A lump grew swiftly in Killua’s throat.

“Don’t you want to?” he asked. He pleaded.

Gon looked up at him, finally. “Why is this so important to you?”

For several moments, Killua could only stare at him, dismayed. Then he clenched his fists tighter, uprooting the grass clutched in his palms. He could feel himself trembling. “Because you’re important to me.”

Gon blinked at him, looking surprised, and the wavering feeling in his stomach curdled swiftly into something like anger. He stood abruptly. 

“Are you so stupid that you can’t see that?” he demanded, tears needling the backs of his eyes. “After all this time I followed you around and fought beside you and carried you? Did you really think I was just going to - to let you die ?”

Gon’s eyes were widened. He looked stricken. Killua would have preferred to see anything, anything besides surprise on his face. 

“You changed my whole life,” Killua said. A single hot tear slid down his cheek. “I never had a friend before you. And when I met you I felt like I didn’t need any others. I would have done anything for you. I would have died with you, if you asked. But you —” he sniffed, and swept a hand over his eyes. “You didn’t ask.”

Gon swallowed, visibly. “Killua … I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

A strange laugh burst out of Killua, watery and choked. “Yeah? Well.” He turned away from Gon, stumbled a few steps and sat down heavily at the edge of the cliff. “I got hurt anyway.”

Dozens of feet below, water lapped gently at the base of the cliff. The pond or the swamp or whatever it was connected to a broad, slow-moving river, which wound its way towards the sea. In the silence Killua could nearly hear the wash of the waves. Whale Island. He’d been so happy here, that one sunny summer. But even then he’d been terrified, beneath it all: nothing so good could last forever.

Behind him, he heard the faint rustle of grass, and felt Gon’s presence move close to him. Then, the touch of Gon’s hand on his elbow, a silent request. Killua turned his head slightly, a silent answer.

“I just thought,” Gon said, oddly quiet, “That it was right, the way it turned out. I deserved it, and Pitou deserved it, and you’d get to live — you’d be sad but then you’d be okay. I didn’t think you ever really needed me, anyway.”

Killua stared at him aghast. He knew he should be saying something, anything, to prove to Gon how deeply, awfully wrong he was, but all he could think was, how did they get here? How could Gon not take one look at Killua and know that the first thing he ever truly wanted for himself was to be his friend, to keep safe this one bright thing of his own? How could Killua not even suspect that beneath Gon’s smiles and sweetness and sunshine laughs was this casual disregard for his own life at best and his own worth at worst? Gon knew Killua was loyal. Killua knew Gon was reckless. But where along the way had been that fatal miscommunication, that allowed for Gon to believe Killua would mourn him only briefly and for Killua to believe Gon’s self-preservation was any stronger than his guilt?

“Well, you thought wrong,” was all Killua could force past the tightness of his throat. He closed his eyes against a fresh wave of tears.

Floating in the darkness behind his eyelids he felt Gon’s touch again; this time, his arms wound around Killua’s waist and the point of his chin came to a rest on Killua’s shoulder. Killua’s heart was already acting before his brain could think: he lifted his own arms around Gon’s shoulders and held him there. Gon turned his face down and his hair brushed into Killua’s face, filling Killua’s nose with that particular warm scent like Gon had been sitting in the sun for hours. 

Killua opened his eyes and saw blue sky, soft clouds. Like this, feeling Gon’s heart beat and his lungs move and his skin warm where it touched Killua’s own, he could almost pretend the image of Gon shriveled into a lump of bloodied bandages was a nightmare, not a memory — something long ago and far away and conjured up out of fear.

“I’m sorry,” Gon said into his shoulder.

Killua squeezed him hard. “Don’t say sorry,” he said. “Just come back.”

Gon pulled back and Killua let him, albeit somewhat reluctantly, allowing himself to keep a loose hold on one of Gon’s wrists. The wrist that, back in the real world, he no longer had.

“What do I have to do?” Gon asked.

“Just follow me,” Killua said. “Promise you’ll stay, no matter what.”

Gon nodded, eyes large with solemnity. “Promise,” he said. “And … what do you have to do?”

Killua’s grip tightened, then fell away. “Look ahead,” he said. “No matter what.”

It was different this time, on the road. The mist had only seemed to thicken, so that Killua could no longer see trees or fields or anything beyond what was directly in front of him. The silence had thickened, too. Killua could barely hear his own footsteps, even as he walked with the intention to make noise, to beat back the oppressive lack of sound. He couldn’t hear Gon’s footsteps at all. Could only trust that Gon was still following him at all.

Gon had promised. And Gon didn’t break promises that he had the ability to keep. Killua clung to that, brutally forced down the instinctual urge to check behind him.

There were still figures in the fog. Less of them, now, but their shadowy outlines lurked disconcertedly just beyond the edge of clarity, as if on the other side of a veil. They seemed to cluster on the fringes of his peripheral vision, and every cell in him urged him to look, look, don’t let them sneak up on you, don’t let them attack . But he kept his gaze locked on his feet, on the rocks beneath his shoes, on the path ahead. He dared not look sideways, lest he catch even a glimpse of what he wasn’t allowed to see, and accidentally end it all.

He could still hear their voices, though, as if from inside his head.

The mist is heavy, and always shifting. Are you sure he hasn’t gotten lost?

What will you do if you reach the end, and find you left him behind? 

He’ll wander here forever, in this gray place, with us.

He’d have been better off if you had just left him alone.

The road never really ends, you know. How long will you last, knowing you can never look upon him again?

You lost him long ago.

Are you sure he is behind you?

Are you sure?

Are you sure ?

They were lying. He knew that. They had every reason to want to see him fail. Who in this terrible nothing place wouldn’t want to feel the sun again? Who would not violently envy one who got the chance? They were lying, he had to believe that.

Every muscle in his body felt tense and anxious and strained. His hands were trembling ever so finely. He dug his nails into his palms, letting them sharpen. A few drops of his blood splattered onto the broken road, pomegranate-red, and he immediately regretted it — it felt like a concession to this place, felt like he was sealing a deal he didn’t want. Like if he left any part of himself behind he’d never be able to really leave. Would always have to return here, like the turning of the summer leaves into orange autumn, gray winter.

His feet were heavy. Every step felt just a touch harder than the last, like he was accumulating thick mud on the soles of his shoes. But when he looked down there was nothing there. Strange, to watch his feet touch the ground and scuff against the stone and dirt and gravel and feel the vibration of each step but hear no sound.

“Gon,” he said aloud, partly to find out whether he’d be able to hear himself and partly to see if he could hear Gon’s response.

The sound seemed to drop out of his mouth as a stone would, heavy and straight down to his feet. He listened hard, but could hear no answer from behind him. He swallowed thickly.

“Stay close, Gon,” he said, hoping, at least, his words would reach Gon even if he could get nothing in return. Gon was still there, he must be. This was just … just part of the trial.

He walked. And he walked. Without markers in the mist, there was no way to know how far he’d gone. No way to know how much further he still had to go. Killua tried to remember — had it taken this long, before? On the way down, he’d been driven by desperation to see Gon, to find him. Now, knowing Gon would be okay as long as Killua made it to the end, the road seemed to go on forever.

Killua, he heard. Gon’s voice, low and urgent. Killua paused, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing; focused all his other senses on what was behind him.

“Gon?” he said aloud again. “Are you okay?”

Silence.

His whole body trembled with tension. He struggled through a few deep breaths, and forced himself to keep walking. Part of the trial. Just part of the trial. It had to be.

A little while later along the same same same road, the thought clawed into his mind that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t going anywhere at all. 

This place wasn’t reality, after all. Maybe the road had bent in on itself, become an endless circle, a long spiral towards nothing. Maybe it wasn’t as easy to get out as it was to get in. Maybe he was supposed to leave the road, figure out his own path. Was it worth the risk to try it?

As he was considering this, he heard Gon’s voice again.

Killua. 

Even more urgent, and more distant. Killua stopped in his tracks again. Gon sounded farther away, and kind of scared. Killua’s heart beat at the back of his throat. 

“Gon!” he called. “Are you there?”

Silence again. Killua bit his lip hard. Maybe Gon had just fallen behind a bit. Maybe Killua was going too fast. If he waited here a while, surely he would catch up. And he would stay on the road, he decided, because the road was where Gon would expect to find Killua. So the road was where Killua would stay.

Killua waited there, in tense silence, counting the seconds, counting the minutes, well past the amount of time it would have taken Gon to catch up. So he was probably there, now, watching Killua patiently, waiting for him to keep going, to lead them out of this place. And Killua would. 

On he went. Gon was still behind him, Killua knew because Gon promised. And Gon never broke a promise he was capable of keeping. But what if he wasn’t capable of keeping this one? What if something had intervened, drawn him away or hurt him or taken him? What if he had called for Killua and Killua had just walked away without a second thought, what if he’d reached for Killua and was met only with empty air?

Just keep going. Keep going.

Suddenly, a shape materialized out of the gloom, directly ahead, and Killua’s next inhale stuttered. It was an enormous beast, towering ahead and over him. The silhouette reminded Killua of Mike, and of his father’s hounds — a fierce and hungry dog, but twice the size at least of Mike at his biggest and most menacing, with all his hackles raised. The shape of its ears was lifted and alert.

The creature turned the shadow of its head in Killua’s direction, and a painful chill scraped down his spine. One head, two heads, three; each one facing him, and even though its features were erased by the mist, Killua could feel its gaze keenly. He kept still, and held his hands out and open at his sides. 

For interminable moments they stood locked like that, Killua wondering all the while what would happen to him if he were to be eaten in this place, and whether his Nen would work here. But eventually, the beast turned its heads away from him again, and lumbered onward into deeper gloom. Something that big should make the ground shake, but it slid away as silently as shadow.

And ahead of Killua on the road, on the other side of where the beast had been standing, something was different. There was a change in the quality of the light, a hint of something warmer, something stronger. Killua moved forward with new urgency, breaking into a run when he realized: it was sunlight. Golden sunlight, breaking through the mist, casting slanted beams upon the gray road. 

He was nearly there, he’d done it, everything was going to be okay —

Killua!

He jerked to a stop, shoes skidding in the gravel a mere foot away from where the sun cast an enticing puddle of light upon the ground. That was Gon again, and that was a scream — a real scream, far away; a scared scream, a cry for —

Help! Killua, please!

If someone took his heart in their hands and tore it like a sheet of paper, it would have hurt less. Killua was pinned in place, quivering in suspension on the threshold.

Killua, please, please —

Maybe it was a trick, but maybe it wasn’t — maybe Gon was lost in the fog or being held back by the ghosts that hated Killua or maybe he was hurt, somehow — maybe Killua would step forward into the light and leave Gon here to die and be dead forever, and there would be nothing left for Killua to do but bury that bandaged lump of flesh in that hospital bed, go back to Whale Island and hug Aunt Mito and tell her he was sorry and watch her cry, steal some meaningless trinket from Gon’s bedroom and keep it in his pocket and touch it every day and be overwhelmed by the grief all over again, try to keep on living without the person who taught him how.

“Gon,” he gasped. “Are you there, Gon? Please, Gon, are you there?”

Killua, Killua!

Killua couldn’t leave him here, couldn’t keep his back turned on Gon crying out for him. He just couldn’t. He put his weight on his heel, and pivoted his feet, and —

Killua.

Killua stopped. That whisper in his ear, somehow so much more immediate than the screams in the distance. He closed his eyes and felt, impossibly, the barest touch on the back of his neck, right at the top of his spine: the slightest soft brush of fingertips.

Killua didn’t turn.

He stepped forward, and all at once everything was light and sound and brightness.

Killua opened his eyes as the flood of white light faded. He was still standing in that hospital room, next to Nanika, next to Gon. There was commotion in the hallway, people shouting and running towards them. But they didn’t matter to Killua.

Gon’s chest was moving, a steady up and down movement beneath the thick bandages. Killua heard him sigh out a breath; he was waking, but slowly. His hand in Nanika’s was familiar, calloused and tan. When Killua took it in his own it felt warm, and he felt the steady pulse where his fingertips brushed the soft underside of Gon’s wrist.

He looked up into Nanika’s face, serene smile and black expectant eyes, and there were a thousand things he could have said, thank you and how and I did it, I knew I could, but for some reason the first thing that came out of his mouth was,

“Will he remember?”

Nanika’s eyes bored into his own. “Will you?” she said.

And of course , Killua wanted to say, of course of course I always will , the things they’d said and the ways they’d understood each other better and the commitment they’d made walking back along that darkened path, how they’d chosen to stay with each other.

But by the time he opened his mouth, the memories — of the road and the ghosts and the singing and the sun and Gon’s arms around him and the promise of Gon’s almost-touch at his back — had already left him.