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Leorio had known that love was a complicated thing, which would fall into your hands when you least expect it.
When he had met Kurapika for the first time, on that first Boat that would carry them to a long adventure, his soft blond hair was carried by a sea breeze and he was full of fire, determination and fight.
He and Leorio had started off on a bad foot, but what they had gone through had bonded them unexpectedly close, closer than an outside observer may assume, closer than Leorio may have admitted out loud.
"Someone found him collapsed in a corridor, all by himself-" Cheadle Yorkshire sounded clinical, distanced, but her nails were digging into the report sheet she had been holding onto ever since she had called for Leorio.
"-CPR was performed immediately, simultaneous with contacting emergency medical staff, but not knowing how long he had been there already- even with all of our resources-"
She took a deep breath. "I had to pronounce him dead on arrival. I'm so sorry, Leorio."
They were still on a boat, new and larger than life, but Leorio had wondered if Kurapika knew it would be his last journey back when they had boarded it.
Love will fall into your hands when you least expect it, and then you will lose it when you least expect it. Through breakups, divorce, loss of feelings- or death.
Who did this to you?
This was not the same man he had met then. It couldn't have been. Locked in the morgue, the sea breeze would never reach him again. There was no fight left.
Instead he embodied pure exhaustion. His pale skin blended almost perfectly with the white sheet they had used to cover him, pulled back just far enough to reveal his head and neck. Kurapika looked so cold and Leorio had to resist the urge to reach out, to take him away from this cold and sterile place, back into the sun, where he'd always looked so radiant.
Leorio thought that surely he was going to cry, but no tears came. A deafening sound banged like steel pipes against a wall in the back of his head and his eyes stung with pain and exhaustion, but the tears just didn’t come.
“I don’t want to cause more chaos than there already is, so we should wait with official death announcements- but I knew you’d want to see him, Leorio.”
“Y-yeah, thanks."
Bile crept up his throat. The disgusting realization that Leorio wasn’t even sure what the last thing he said to Kurapika had been. They both had been so preoccupied with their respective jobs that they barely had time to talk, which hadn't been improved by Kurapikas increased avoidance tendencies.
He strained to swallow it all back down. Who did this to you?
“You can go, take some time for yourself, I don’t expect you to go back to work like this. Sanbica will be down here soon to perform the autopsy, just in case he may have passed from something infectious, I assume you want to know if we fin-”
“I’ll do it.”
Cheadle startled, before she glared at him sternly. “No. No, you will not, Leorio.”
“I’m more than capable of doing it, I’ve done it before.”
“Not on someone you know. Not on someone you love . Don’t be ridiculous-”
“No one else needs to see him like this. And I can’t just turn my back and pretend that some ‘rest’ is going to fix this.” He straightened his back and stepped closer to the examination table with cold determination. “You can’t make me leave him. Not now.”
The shorter woman seemed to contemplate her next move, her eyes closed as if she had gotten too tired to argue.
“It’s the same with all boars it seems, too thick-headed for your own good.” She shoved the paperwork she had been holding against his chest as she walked past. She, too, had started to have gray bags sag under her eyes. “If I won’t be able to stop you, at least know that I’ve warned you, Leorio.”
Cheadles steps echoed out of the room and into the hallway, until they were cut off by the automatic sliding doors that closed behind her.
Which left Leorio alone in the morgue, only with his thoughts, the lifeless body of the man he loved, and a neatly arranged table of medical instruments to take apart said corpse-body-person-lover.
Next to the sink lay a voice recorder, most likely left by the last person to work in the room, so Leorio took the liberty to use it himself. He placed it on the table before he put on a surgical gown and a pair of polyisoprene gloves. The device clicked to life with a gentle whirr and Leorio cleared his throat.
“This is medical assistant Leorio Paladiknight, it is currently… 4:03 a.m on the 26th of August. The Patient-”
He stopped to take a deep breath. With patients you have a chance of saving them .
“-The subject has been identified by at least two medical staff to be Kurapika Kurta, a 19 year old male. The subject had been found pulseless, CPR had been attempted for approximately 25 minutes, he stayed pulseless throughout and has been pronounced dead by Doctor Yorkshire.” As he talked he looked around the room aimlessly, unsure where to keep his focus, never having been good at keeping his eyes off of Kurapika. But now that his gaze wouldn’t be returned with an eye roll and laugh, it seemed indecent, inappropriate, and most of all, it hurt .
Leorio pulled away the sheet used to cover corpses and let it fall down the floor unceremoniously. Strict, guideline driven work would occupy his brain and hopefully would make the upcoming process easier. So he thought, hoped, or prayed, even.
Kurapika looked so small, almost delicately fragile under the sterile strobe lights. His clothes and any belongings he may have had on him at the time of passing had already been folded away neatly into a plastic bag. They had even removed the ruby earring he had worn.
The first touch would be the worst, he knew. The initial cold, the lack of response, the true lifelessness. Bile rose to the back of his throat again, the sting of it just painful enough to keep him in the moment.
Gently he lifted Kurapikas hand and arm by the wrist and started to examine his hand. “Right hand, no visible lesions or bruising. Rigor mortis has not set in yet.” As he looked over the fingers, he couldn’t help but to brush his thumb over the digits, like he had done times before. The stinging pain hadn’t left, wouldn’t leave, but also kept him from getting lost in the hollow feeling that spread throughout his chest.
He repeated the process on the other hand, which turned out to be just as markless as the right one. With a small metal scraper, he tried to collect debris from under the finger nails, but there was no dirt, blood, or even skin to collect.
After he had carefully observed along the lengths of both arms, he moved down to the legs and feet, carefully lifting them in hopes of finding at least a hint to what may have happened. Who did this to you?
The silence was almost as unsettling as the cold, but the only thing that would break it was his own voice in a lone echo. “Both legs are intact and without any notable markings, bruises or lesions.” By now Leorio's eyes had gotten used to the sterile lighting, which enhanced the sickly, clammy paleness of Kurapikas skin. “Pallor mortis has set in throughout all limbs and abdomen.”
With both hands, he started to press along the hips and abdomen, progressed further upwards. “The abdomen is soft, no discolorations…” He came to a stop, just for a moment, with his hands resting along Kurapikas waist. It felt slimmer than he was used to, and his ribs protruded more than he remembered. Who did this to you?
With his hands along the rib cage, he could feel each individual rib as he pressed down into the skin, counted them, further up towards the sternum-
Until suddenly, around the 6th and 7th rib, they gave in under the light pressure, with a grotesque crunch-like noise as the broken edges of the ribs disconnected way too easily. Without their protection, Leorio accidentally pushed too deep, and felt the soft caverns underneath.
This time he couldn’t hold the bile that he had swallowed down for so long now. He rushed to the nearby sink and retched and coughed until his stomach felt completely empty; though it continued to cramp together ,forcing him to dry heave until smaller blood vessels in the back of his throat burst from the strain.
It shouldn’t happen . As a medical student, he had performed CPR before. For good chest compressions, sometimes a few ribs would break, especially on someone with a smaller frame.
But to feel it on Kurapika was too much. Too real.
After a few splashes of cold water to his face and mouth, and a necessary change of gloves, Leorio returned to the table and cleared his throat. To stop before he even opened the body was not an option. He insisted on doing this, on finding out what happened himself- It was too late to back out.
“The 5th, 6th and 7th ribs seem… to be broken on the left side only. There is… a faint haematoma forming around the sternum, around 11 cm in diameter.”
CPR outside a clinical environment was successful about 10% of the time, and even in a hospital the success rate only went up to about 20%. Evidently, there was no one to blame for not trying hard enough. Yet he wondered, if he had been the one to find Kurapika, maybe he could have made the difference.
“Clavicles are intact…" With three fingers he pushed from between the clavicles up the length of Kurapikas throat, coming to a halt just under his chin. “...no obstruction of the airways.”
Finally, he had reached the face.
It came naturally to him to cradle Kurapikas face in his hands, brush his thumbs over his cheekbones, and take all the details in. “Facial structure is intact as well.”
With just a thumb on Kurapikas bottom lip, and the rest of his hand hooked under his chin, Leorio could open the man's mouth and shine a medical light inside. “No visible obstruction of the upper airways.”
Which left one thing.
Both thumbs stroked lightly over Kurapikas closed eyelids, and he wanted to thank god right then and there when he could feel the eyeballs that rested just underneath.
He parted the eyelids of the left eye.
And he was greeted by that beautiful, fatal scarlet red.
The last pair of those scarlet eyes, that would forever be closed now.
They won’t take yours - he promised, hoped it would reach him somewhere in the universe as he connected their foreheads, ghostly cold and feverishly hot, together- No matter what, they will never have yours.
After he had wrapped up the rest of the outer physical examination and confirmed no outward injuries or irregularities, he knew there was no more he could do to put off the next step:
He prepared a sharp surgical scalpel for the typical Y-Incision.
This, too, was something Leorio had done countless times before. It shouldn’t have made him nauseous to place the tip of the blade on the sternum. It shouldn’t have made him want to scream when he barely pressed down and the layers of skin came apart in blossoming layers.
He tried to be clinical about it. Tried to separate what his hands were doing from what his brain was thinking. Every autopsy was the same, the same layers of skin and muscle and bone, the same organs in only slightly varying positions and quantities. This didn’t have to be special.
He drew the blade down Kurapikas chest, from the top of his sternum to about 3 centimeters under Kurapikas belly button.
Then he made two neat incisions from either end of the clavicles to connect to the top of the first incision.
Just like that, he easily peeled back the flaps of skin that sectioned the torso, and revealed Kurapika’s insides.
Kurapika had always been beautiful in Leorio's eyes. His soft hair, radiant smile, the way he carried himself, his genuine demeanor…
Glassy, colorful organs laid inside the cavern of Kurapikas abdomen like an intricate stained glass window.
The small & large intestines curled and pooled together in pinkish ribbons, the lungs spread out like pale wings safely kept under cracked white fingers of the sternum and ribs, the liver was only a few shades darker than the familiar scarlet eyes. All of these things framed by skin flaps with a thin yellow fat layer and an intricate maze of veins and arteries.
This was inner beauty in the truest sense- a completion of a perfect picture, a perfect person made to love-
Until the eye was drawn just slightly off center, to a dark, almost black mass.
Where the heart was supposed to be.
Leorio discarded the normal routine which called for the inspection of the stomach contents, the intestines and all the minor organs- He reached for the bone saw and carefully worked to remove the sternum without causing accidental damage to what lay beneath.
Who did this to you?
He could feel a ghostly sensation that crept up his arms as he removed the cracked ribs entirely, it reached for him.
The organic mass laid there still, but a strong aura emanated from it. Nen .
Kurapikas heart was almost unrecognizable as such.
Seemingly from stress, the muscle had enlarged to almost twice its size. The pericardium, the sac that encapsulated the heart, had become leathery thick. Post-mortem nen seemed to lash and pour out as Leorio started to separate the mass from the major veins and arteries that connected it to the rest of the body. He sent a few pulses of his own nen through the organ as a safety precaution.
He extracted the heart and set it down on a smaller examination table.
Kurapika without his heart felt wrong- but he knew now it held the key to what had happened.
The pericardium and epicardium were harder than normal to open, as they had started to fuse not only with each other, but with the muscle itself.
Or maybe he was being too hesitant cutting into Kurapikas heart . The beat of which he had listened to in quiet moments. Of where all emotions were supposed to lie.
Finally, he had worked his way through the thicker skins to reveal the heart underneath.
The muscle had become blackened as if necrotic.
The ventricles had collapsed, the valves had been torn and ripped, and the septum that parted the left half from the right had a large tear.
And scar tissue covered the entire surface.
Who did this to you?
Leorio knew now.
He had given up dictating his findings to the voice recorder, so its low electric whirring filled the silence as he stared at the dissected leftovers of what once was a healthy, loving heart.
You did .
The post-mortem nen curled and twitched around the organ as if it was still trying to damage the few remaining intact cells of it.
Leorio's knees buckled under him and he fell to the ground.
Finally, the tears came. In searing hot trails they ran down his cheeks as he fought the sobs that shook his chest. He wanted to scream; maybe he did scream, but he couldn’t hear himself over the thunderous sound of his own heartbeat and the pain that sent jolts throughout his entire body in hot and cold flashes.
He wished he could be numb.
He wished he could be oblivious.
He wished there was a third party he could blame this all on. A villain that he could curse until his own dying day, someone he could swear to get revenge on.
But there were no more villains.
There was only a man who died for his own pursuit of revenge, and his lover who couldn’t stop him from essentially killing himself .
Leorio thought about what he could have done to prevent this. To reach out more. To force Kurapika to stop wreaking havoc on his mind and body. To beg and rant and do whatever it would take for him to listen .
Leorio thought about what could have happened if he had been successful. If they had never boarded this ship. If they had stayed together on land. If their feelings would never change for each other.
All of those hypotheticals were pointless in the end.
Kurapika was dead.
Kurapika was dead, and Leorio would never get to hear him laugh again, would never get to feel his warm skin on his own, would never be able to hear him say ‘I love you’ .
His legs still shook when he forced himself back up on his feet, hands sweaty and tears continued to run down his face.
There wasn’t a point in continuing the autopsy- though guideline wise he was supposed to examine each organ, including the brain- he knew what the cause of death was. That was enough for Leorio, and no one else would need to have a say in it.
When he picked up the heart again, the tendrils of nen briefly lashed out towards him, though they were quickly deterred. “Shh, I know, I know…”
As if it was a fragile ornament, he carefully laid the organ back into Kurapikas opened chest cavity, completing the mosaic of his innards.
In no rush, he fixed the sternum and the broken ribs back into their original places, needing them to look as though they still had to do their job of protecting vital organs. Needing them to give him the illusion as if they could keep Kurapika safe. To be the frame to his inner artwork.
Afterwards, Leorio stitched the flaps of skin back together in an evenly placed surgical stitch. A distinct memory of Kurapika observing him during his stitching practice came to him. The smaller man would rest his head on Leorio's shoulder, watching his hands work patiently, and then would praise him for doing a good job, even when his work still looked sloppy.
But now he was experienced.
Now he could do it beautifully. For him.
His work was done.
Kurapikas body looked intact. Leorio knew the cause of death.
He was supposed to leave now. Shut the body in one of the storage units. Give report to Cheadle.
And then?
What was Leorio supposed to do after? Go back to work? Pretend this wouldn’t change him? Pretend that he didn’t feel empty and hollowed-out?
He rested a hand on Kurapika’s shoulder. Despite the cold, he did gain a sense of comfort as soon as their skin connected. As though it were muscle memory, his hand drifted up to Kurapika’s jaw again, caressing the skin there with his thumb.
“You didn’t even let me say goodbye.”
Somehow, he felt as though the nen around Kurapika’s heart tried to reach out towards him again.
“They are going to cremate you. I don’t think you would have wanted that.”
Warm, comforting tendrils wrapped around his hand and wrist, crept upwards.
“I won’t let that happen. I’ll make sure you get to rest. We get to rest, finally.”
He could feel the nen as it reached his own heart, encapsulating it.
Leorio leant forward, slowly, and connected his lips to Kurapikas in a kiss.
Even though they were cold and chapped, the feeling was the same as the very first time.
He rested their foreheads together and exhaled.
“ I love you. ”
August 26th, 6:34 pm
Cheadle Yorkshire stood in an empty morgue, on an overfilled ship.
“As far as reports go, I was the last person to see him.” She turned to Mizaistom. “He avoided all the security measures set up around the medical ward. “
He wrote down a few notes and nodded.
“I don’t need to lecture you on medical safety protocol.”
“I don’t need to justify my delegations.”
She had come to check up on Leorio after she hadn’t gotten reported for a couple of hours, mostly out of concern for his mental health. Perhaps he had collapsed from the stress, or was too emotional to finish the process- she wouldn’t have blamed him. Her consciousness gnawed at her for even allowing him to do this at all.
But she had found an empty morgue, no corpse, no Leorio.
“I’ll get a search started; but to be blunt, I doubt with everything else going on, someone hauling a human corpse across the decks is going to draw as much attention as it should.”
“Still, I appreciate it, Mizaistom.”
They left the med bay side by side, but Cheadle took a detour through the medical offices, out onto a balcony.
The vast sea opened before her, dark blue that started to be bathed in glowing oranges and reds of the setting sun. The sea was still for the first time in days, though a different storm had brewed on board.
The sight made her heart ache. An ache born from instinct and experience.
“Safe travels, you two.”