Chapter Text
26.
“You have to stop trying to go out, Alluka.” Grandpa Zeno said sternly, pouring tea into the teacups.
Even from his perch on the small pink chair, Grandpa Zeno still managed to look authoritative. The way he poured tea was so exact and deliberate. It was like a kata, his arm gently raised, gracefully moving first to Alluka, then to Miss Turtle, Mister Target, and then himself. The tea didn’t slosh in the cups. His eyes didn’t stray from her at all.
Alluka fidgeted under his gaze.
“I’m not trying to go out, I’m trying to go across.” she mumbled.
Grandpa Zeno didn’t roll his eyes like the other butlers did. He didn’t start screaming at her like Mother, or walk away in a silent rage like Father. He just nodded, his eyes soft.
“Why do you want to go across, Alluka?”
Alluka paused. No one she ever told liked the truth. But tea parties were for secrets, weren’t they? She pressed her lips together, then said simply, “It’s home.”
He nodded, sipping his tea slowly. “This is your home too.”
Alluka swallowed down her first answer this time. It’s not.
The fluorescent lights above them whined in a steady hum. It was nothing like the hum she remembered. The chattering of birds, telling you to come closer, just rest a while as they sang to make you forget. The buzzing of insects plated with glass and metal, ready to burrow into your bones to suck the sweet marrow within. The room here was so quiet. It was empty aside from the two of them.
This wasn’t home.
She shook her head, stepping around the denial. “Can Killua come visit soon?”
“No. He might get hurt.”
“We’d never hurt – !”
“I.” Grandpa Zeno interrupted. “Use ‘I’, Alluka.”
She swallowed, feeling a knot twist in the back of her throat. “I,” she repeated. Such a small syllable, and yet her skin burned with the lie. “I would never hurt Killua.”
“I know,” he said gently. “But he might get hurt anyways.”
“But why? Why can’t we go back?”
“It’s dangerous. You could bring bad things back with you.”
“Then we won’t come back!” she shouted, finally letting the heat under her skin come to the surface. She flushed, lowering her gaze to the table. Assassins didn’t shout. Assassins were quiet.
Grandpa Zeno didn’t even reprimand her. He just said softly, “Alluka, you belong here now.”
“In a box?” she said stiffly.
“Your parents will see reason soon. They’ll let you out again, you’ve just got to stop trying to escape.”
“They want me in another kind of box.”
“Perhaps. But that is beyond our control. You have to prove to them that you understand, even if you disagree. You need to stay here.”
Alluka felt a lump rise in her throat. Stay here alone, he meant. No one else had come to visit her in over a year. Just meals delivered from the slot, returned to the slot, day in, day out. The automatic shutoff of the fluorescent lights the only thing telling her that time was passing. For all she knew, maybe it wasn’t.
Ever since four years ago, that first time, the first incident, she had been locked here. It hadn’t been serious at first, just a latched door. But then after the fifth time, they had reinforced the door with steel. After the ninth, they had covered the windows with concrete. After the fourteenth, they had stopped letting butlers in altogether.
She was on her twenty-sixth escape attempt now. Now, not even her family members would come visit. They wouldn’t even come for a tea party, not even when she poisoned the tea.
Years ago, Madam Tsubone used to come every week. They would have tea parties, they’d play twenty questions (with penalties!), and she’d teach her how to slice away at all the soft and delicate parts of people.
Alluka knew that it was Madam Tsubone’s job. That she was only there because she had been ordered to train her in what it meant to be a Zoldyck. But Alluka had looked forward to those meetings nonetheless. It didn’t matter if Madam Tsubone was gruff, it didn’t matter if Alluka was bruised and burnt raw after twenty questions, or if she vomited blood after the tea parties.
It didn’t matter because she hadn’t been alone then.
There was something in other people she couldn’t help but be drawn to, something that clawed at her now that it was gone. A brightness in their eyes, playing with the darker desires of their hearts. Some people were more shadowy, others more light. But as she sat with them and talked, all the little promises and hidden wants they’d have would come spilling out of them like blood on snow.
In that way, each person was a kaleidoscope. Just give one twist and nothing you saw would look the same. Just one twist and you’d see their wants make the world explode into fractal brightness. One twist, and the feeling of humid air would wash over her, a steady reminder of there once being more more more.
But things had changed after that first time she tried to run away. On that day, Alluka had asked Madam Tsubone to stay. She still remembered Mother’s words when she sent Madam Tsubone away for good. She is too valuable.
Alluka still didn’t know exactly who Mother had meant: Madam Tsubone, or herself.
In many ways, Alluka knew she had anything she wanted. Her room was large, with pillowy soft cushions and a great big bed. She could write a note, slip it into the grate near the door, and she’d get whatever she asked for. A new doll, a slice of cake, another book, all of it was just a moment’s ask away. The walls of her room she had painted a few years back with the sky and trees from books, brilliant palms against a bright blue. Not like the sky she remembered.
She could have anything she wanted, as long as she obeyed. Anything she wanted, so long as she remained here. Anything she wanted, so long as it wasn’t anyone.
Was she even anyone, anymore? Or something else? Only valuable things were locked away, right?
Grandpa Zeno looked at her gently. “It doesn’t have to be forever, Alluka. You just have to be patient.”
Alluka paused, playing with her teacup, watching the amber liquid ripple unevenly. He probably didn’t understand. None of them did. But he had come to her tea party, after being gone for so long. What had it been, two years? Maybe this was her chance to make him see, too.
“I read books.” Alluka murmured. “I read them and the time goes by. I learn so many words from them they make my head hurt. But none of them is like what I know is out there.”
She paused, unsure of whether to continue. A crackling heat flared in her chest. No, she had to tell him, just this piece of the truth. Maybe this time it’d be one he could accept.
“I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe, Grandpa.” she said, her voice breathy and low. “Deserts turned into pools of water, each star so clear in its reflection that they almost became fireflies. Leviathans turned to stone from a single whisper in the dark.” She looked up at her grandfather, now not even bothering to hide her anger, her desperation anymore. “You’d really ask me to let that go? To leave that behind?”
Grandpa Zeno had stiffened slightly, barely perceptible to all but an assassin’s gaze. “That’s not the real world, Alluka.”
“But it is real.” she insisted.
She didn’t see why he was denying that. She knew it was real. She had seen it. She remembered being there, waiting in broken plains that never changed from half-twilight. Waiting to be called.
“It’s not for us.” he said again, his gray eyes growing hard and sad.
Alluka felt her mouth stiffen into a line. “Maybe not for you, but it was ours once.”
“You’d give up this world, for that one? There is no peace there. You know that.”
Alluka just looked back into her teacup, her face blank. Assassins don’t show emotions. Inside though, she knew one thing. There was one thing she kept repeating to themselves, a mantra digging deep, scraping into their bones.
It’s not peace we want.
Aye.