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It remains in his head, even to this day; the first time he saw the look of resignation on his father’s face. Without the amelioration of anger. Not even the satisfaction of having caused disgust. Just stone-faced acceptance.
Milluki chooses to remember his earliest years with a deliberate air of insouciance. Faced out of the gate with the mystery of why he was even born (an accident? Mom and Dad got careless; fucked without caution? But how, after seven years of experience and both of their rigid perfectionistic tendencies?), any attempt to analyze his childhood feels clunky, illogical.
He learned quickly that the best way to protect himself was to make himself as physically unwieldy as the thoughts he cannot process. Grow bigger. Outsized. Create a physical barrier against all strikes and blows.
Unfortunately, applying the same defense to his mind was not as straightforward a process.
No matter what Milluki does, he’ll never change that expression his father wears. Those cold blue eyes will not even flicker. Probably not even blink. The gaze doesn’t last long enough for any of that, not when it rests on Milluki. It does not linger long enough to consider a change of opinion.
At age 13, Milluki is fully rolled up in his self-imposed suit of armor, and it’s his older brother who is his newest target. Void-looking, perfect Illumi. The same blank, unimpressed gaze as Father’s. What goes on inside his brother’s mind? Milluki can’t crack Dad’s code, but he can attempt to worm something out of this one as a consolation prize.
The childhood protector. In Milluki’s collection of frustrating, clumsy memories, his older brother always is at the edges of things, if not directly in the fray. Coming to the rescue when things become too hot; that impassive face—even as a child himself—speaking words of cool reason to their father and grandfather.
Perhaps this is why Father’s expression grew resigned. Milluki blames Illumi and his too-hasty, save-the-day tendencies for it, anyway. In the back of his mind, he feels his brother’s sure, quick fingers dabbing cuts and burns and bruises with salve. Sometimes a kiss on the cheek. The kisses stopped when Milluki turned 5; when Killua was born, when another finally stepped into the role of the baby.
Milluki remembers the shift vividly: The bandaged forearm. Illumi wiping up trickles of blood in his matter-of-fact manner. Milluki sighs, lifts his chin for Aniki’s lips, that little peck to finish off the familiar ritual.
Instead, he gets a nod.
There you go.
Instead of growing soft, Illumi chose to grow hard, and his 20-year-old body gives the impression it will deflect bullets if need be. Milluki dreams, even in his newly teenaged mind, of beating those steely muscles to quivering livid meat. Lashing with the cat o’ nine tails. Forcing a sound out of his brother’s throat.
There you go.
Instead, he takes it out on Killua. Puffing inexpertly on cigarettes he’d stolen off Seaquant--that idiot who brags about being a Hunter, as if the stupid designation erases the fact he’s performing the bluest of blue-collar work—Milluki finds any excuse to torture his younger sibling. Whips, electricity, the knowledge that this one is the favorite, that this one is Illumi’s favorite.
There you go.
Killua, the brat, laughs in the face of it. Calls Milluki a pig. Makes faces and rude gestures. Tormenting him is not satisfying, at least in the expected terms of what a tormentor would want to exact. But at least it is a reaction, and not that terrifying, sickening thud of insurmountable resignation.
Illumi, blank Illumi, will run defense. Come into the dungeon, halt the proceedings, lead a snarling and bleeding Killua away. The thought of his oldest brother calmly bandaging his younger brother makes Milluki half-blind with rage.
The thought of the kiss—cold, thin lips on a bruised cheek—will make tears come to his eyes. Make him all the more determined to become even more outsized. My soft armor.
If Illumi is a needle in the hay, Milluki is a jewel lost in undulating waves. He will never let anyone come close; never again.
There you go.
Alluka holds his hand and gazes at him with huge blue eyes. Milluki grows crafty; commits murder by proxy. Watches the door to the playroom shut and lock.
Kalluto never says anything at all. Milluki dismisses him as a useless afterthought.
Illumi spins his needles between long fingers, and Milluki knows that the one his older brother is directing at Killua’s sleeping figure, hovering by the temple, is nothing more than a direct command from their father. Two of a kind, Dad and Illumi; those resigned, cold bastards. Yin and yang.
Dad’s rocklike attitude toward his second son is Illumi’s fault. Of this Milluki is sure. Illumi is more clever than he lets on. Under every robotically followed order, every unemotional word, every kiss-that-stopped-coming, there is Illumi’s own sinister agency.
Milluki watches as his brother inserts the needle, and to his horror he feels the tears scald his throat once more. Puffing at his cigarette—Seaquant’s cheap, shit brand; doesn’t Father pay the asshole enough to buy decent ones?—he rubs his own temple in a desperate, involuntary move.
There you go.
Illumi turns around, blinks in slight surprise at the sight of Milluki watching. “You shouldn’t smoke,” is all he says.
Milluki sucks on the end of the fag, puckering his lips slightly in disgust at the flavor of the tobacco. “Is that all you have to say?” The words are forced out around his teeth.
Illumi does not answer this; chooses instead his favorite weapon: That infernal, emotionless stare.
Milluki tries to remember. In his jumbled and junky album of past moments. When Illumi bent to kiss his cheek, did those eyes ever soften?
A tear escapes and trickles down. The cigarette, having gone too long without a pull, dies.
Illumi is already gone. Milluki looks at his younger brother, a newly controlled heap of bruises and white hair, curled up under blankets. He touches his own temple, once again.
I am my own self. My own person. Nobody has a hold of my mind but myself.
The thought depresses him.
He walks to his room, and like Alluka—except voluntarily—he closes the door on the world forever.