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"That’s Killua Zoldyck."
The man in question disappears into a host of dark silk, satin and linen clad figures, whirling to the lilting melody of Senritsu’s mournful flute. Gon watches him go, hand raised, one foot in front of the other, and only bothers to half turn back to Kurapika.
His friend has grown over the years, though not by much. He’s a little taller, and his hair is longer. It’s tied, now, in a loose bun behind his head. He might have filled out, but it’s hard to tell beneath the cut of his dark, mildly expensive suit. Gon presumes he must be physically strong, to have found a job like this, though he suspects the poorly concealed Glock in his breast pocket helps, too.
He raises an eyebrow, and Kurapika smirks, just a little. Gon gets the impression he doesn't want to give much away: he was never very candid but even his usual expressions are muted, now. He wonders why. "That's just for show." Gon shrugs. He'd thought as much.
Kurapika tilts his head back, a gesture for Gon to come closer. After a last searching glance at the crowd, and a brief moment of wonder at how he could have lost his partner so quickly, Gon lowers his hand and turns fully, following Kurapika into an alcove beside the door. There are five in all: one main entrance, one behind the stage, three fire exits. All are being watched, but Kurapika was the only security guard actually greeting guests. That's done now: the Phantom Ball closed its doors at 11:30pm. Now Kurapika is there simply to watch the crowd, albeit as a more familiar face than the rest of those in uniform at the event.
"That's Killua Zoldyck." He murmurs.
Gon nods. "You said so before. I know. I told you, he’s my partner."
Kurapika frowns, just a little: his eyes are clear and silver-hazel and cat like as they ever were. They narrow, now. "You don't know what that means." It's hardly a question, and Gon's jaw clenches as he turns from the crowd he's been half watching to Kurapika directly.
"Tell me."
"You know the Bai Long?" Gon nods. "And the Zoldycks?" He pauses, frowns, shakes his head. Kurapika's gaze flickers over the crowd, and he presses further back into the shadows. "A family of eight. Six, now: mother, father, grandfather; four sons, one daughter. Killua is third, two older brothers, one younger brother and one sister. He and the sister left." Kurapika pauses, humming. "Seven years ago? I think." His hand rests on Gon's elbow, and it's still thin and slender and it's cold through the fabric. Gon follows him into the shadow and feels Kurapika's breath on his ear less acutely than he does the way his vigilance seems to have increased, to judge by the way he's now eyeing the room. "Mother, father and youngest brother are here tonight. Annual appearance. Eldest, too, somewhere. Haven't seen the second."
"And they're connected to the Bai Long how?" Gon keeps his voice soft in accordance with Kurapika's, and his lips barely move. His expression is calm; he could have been talking about the music to a casual observer. Or so he hopes. They're standing close enough that he feels Kurapika stiffen in surprise at his back.
"They are the Bai Long. They run it. They have done for generations. Everyone else is just cannon fodder."
"And Killua?"
Kurapika pauses. He's not wearing aftershave: he smells of soap and metal. The ballroom is nearly full, but they've got enough space to sink quietly into the background. There are too many people with too many more to meet and be seen by to pay much attention to a couple of wallflowers. "He left with the sister. Joined the NYPD and started some sort of vengeance mission." Gon glances at Kurapika out of the corner of his eye. Kurapika catches the look and offers him a half smile. "Be that as it may. I wouldn't trust him." Gon opens his mouth to respond, but Kurapika stops him by speaking first, and when he does he takes his eyes from the room for the first time to do it. "He was theirs. He did their work. I don't know if that's still true."
"You mean he killed people?"
Kurapika's gaze slips back to the crowd. "Killed. Tortured. Maimed. Dozens, if not hundreds. They start young."
Gon's mouth twists, but by the time he's facing Kurapika directly again he's arranged his features into a semblance of neutrality. He clasps his arm and feels that, indeed, he's developed a little muscle since they met as desperate teenagers. "Thank you."
Kurapika shrugs, but his eyes are serious. "I owe you."
Gon cocks his head to the side, stepping back. "Do you? I like to think we're friends."
That startles a real smile from Kurapika, though it comes and goes like the sun by passing clouds. "Be careful, Gon."
Gon offers him a mock salute, beaming. "Same to you!" And he turns and disappears into a flurry of waltzing dancers.
Killua lost Gon. He doesn't know how, or when, or where, but they got through the doors and he turned and he was gone. He wants to pull at his collar: it's stiff. For all he prides himself on the suit, he doesn't wear it often. It reminds him too much of parties like this. He watches the spinning faces carefully, most are those he does not know, and each new stranger is a relief. He can smell the chocolate fountain, and he's torn between heading for it and heading back to Gon when a small, slender hand catches his elbow.
Killua doesn't jump, exactly, it would be indecorous. But he's startled, nonetheless. He wonders when exactly his defences got so lax as he turns to meet a pair of rich and unusually bright violet eyes.
He should be frightened, or worried, or irritated, but the first thing that rises from his gut and to his heart is simply affection. "You've grown."
Kalluto has. He's taller now, not quite as tall as Killua, but he will be. His hair still hangs in neat, silky sheets down to his chin, and his face has not quite yet lost the curves of youth. Nonetheless, his cheekbones have sharpened since they saw each other last. He will be a very beautiful adult.
"That's not important." He says it as if they spoke yesterday, calm and soft, and yet Killua knows his brother just well enough to catch the way his eyelids flutter, minutely, in surprise. His smile curves a little higher.
"It's been so long."
Kalluto doesn't frown, exactly, but a wrinkle on his pale, smooth, brow counts for about the same. "That was your choice."
Killua's smile falls just before inspiration strikes. He spares a glance to the crowd before beginning, "you could -"
"You must come home." Kalluto cuts him off. He looks almost strange, sans his usual kimono, preferring instead tonight a neatly tailored tunic with a mandarin collar and loose linen trousers. It looks like a uniform and he does not look comfortable. Killua's smile fades.
"You know I can't." Senritsu's music aches over the cacophony of the crowd, and the steady rhythm of feet pattering and attempting to dance across the mahogany floor. The room is absurdly large, stretching wide and long, enough to comfortably accommodate the few hundred there. Kalluto purses his lips.
"You can. You won't." Killua wants to smile again. His brother can be so childish, still, and he's glad he hasn't missed the whole transition into adulthood. He offers a half-hearted shrug and knows it isn't enough, wonders where Kikyo is. She can't be far, if Kalluto is here.
"You know why."
"You can leave hi-, i-, you can leave her. She can stay away." Kalluto's stumbling over Alluka's pronouns sounds like stammering, and he blushes a little when he finishes. Killua knows he is not strictly allowed to call her a girl. So to do so now would be his own choice, as would rejecting what he’d been told to say. The affection lingering since they first laid eyes on one another rises in him again. He reaches out for Kalluto's arm, but he moves away. Killua persists.
"You have a place with us, you could -"
"I can't!" Kalluto doesn't raise his voice, quite, but he's as close as Killua's ever heard him and he frowns. Kalluto takes a deep breath, smoothing non-existent creases from his tunic. When he looks up, his eyes are pleading. "Come back."
Killua shakes his head, helpless. "No."
Kalluto's brow crumples like paper and he reaches out and takes Killua's hand. It's an intimacy for which he is not prepared and he's still busy being overwhelmed when his baby brother (the brother he left behind) squeezes his fingers hard enough to hurt. "Please. Big brother. If you don't, they'll..." Kalluto swallows, and his hand in Killua's trembles, just a little, just enough for a Zoldyck to notice, like the timorous heartbeat of a little thing. And Killua knows what they’ll do to him. He has the scars to prove it. And Kalluto does too.
"Killua?" Gon's voice rings across the short distance left between them and Killua squeezes Kalluto's hand and hates himself for the way a hesitant smile pulls at his little brother's features just before he lets go, shaking his head.
"I can't. I'm sorry."
Kalluto's smile falls and his features harden into neutrality, but not fast enough to mask the fear Killua sees there, or the anger. He's kicking himself, hard, when he turns into a broad chest he's beginning to think he'll recognise anywhere and looks up to see the sun burnt nose of a very relieved Gon Freecss. By the time he glances back again, Kalluto has melted into the crowd.
"There you are! How did you disappear?" Gon’s smiling, widely, it's sunny and bright and it would normally be enough but Kalluto is plastered across the back of Killua's eyelids, now and smaller, and younger, when this was easy because neither of them knew how hard it would be to bear, later. Gon frowns. "What's wrong?"
Killua shrugs and acts like his eyes aren't bright or hot or stinging. Gon's nose twitches, and he looks up toward the chocolate fondue, but Killua's not in the mood, suddenly, and it's at that point that Senritsu, who had been quiet, warbles into the first melancholic notes of her famous Sonata of Darkness. Killua is confused and tired and sad and aware, absently, that he should be working. He passes a hand over his features, running it through his hair while Gon watches, quiet and bemused. And then he straightens, and smiles, and meets his eyes, a deep russet bronze in the dim lighting of the ballroom.
Killua places one hand on Gon's waist and takes his hand with the other, and Gon lets him with little more than a quizzical eyebrow and slight quirk of his lips. Killua smiles and takes him in: broad and bold and warm and there, and feels the world shuddering into a more manageable speed. He finds the confidence to step forward, fingers tightening around what they can of the warm, hard girth of Gon's waist, lacing their fingers together leisurely before turning to look up from under his eyelashes. "Would you care to dance?"
Gon smiles, one big hand resting on Killua's shoulder and steps forward too so that they're chest to chest. Another breath and their noses would be touching. Gon's thumb brushes Killua's neck, in a way that is very much Not Required, and Killua’s heart stutters.
"But of course, Detective Zoldyck."
Gon looks good. He's a good-looking man already: tall, toned, and tanned. But in a suit like this he wouldn't have seemed far out of place on a red carpet, for all that on the way he'd kept fidgeting with his cuffs, and the fact his hair resolutely refused to accept any style other than unruly. He should have been a mess of contrasts: sunburnt nose, calloused hands, satin cummerbund. But he wasn't, the suit pressed just so into the dip of his hips, tapering neat and elegant down his long legs. He was strong and warm and he was pressed against Killua and there was only so much a man could be asked to take.
Killua wondered what Gon thought of him.
He was going to ask, or comment on the party, or, get back to his job, because somewhere between Kalluto and his dashing partner and every memory he had here rising Killua was losing track. (They always held the Phantom Ball in this particular room, and he and Gon had just twirled past a closet in which he'd once deposited a body.)
He was not least knocked off kilter by the fact that Gon wasn't half bad on his feet. His technical skills as a dancer were rusty at best, but they would be to a man like Killua, trained to meet such situations with a certain finesse. That aside, Gon was agile and graceful, and lighter on his feet than he looked. He spun a startled laugh from Killua and nearly took him off his feet doing so, but Killua had a feeling, to judge by the smirk teasing the corners of his mouth, that it was deliberate. So it was something of a shock when Gon spoke first.
"So are you a member of the Bai Long? Or are they just paying you?"
On stage, the music stutters to a halt as a stone faced Kurapika escorts Senritsu out through the back entrance, leaving a bewildered band to sit, stare, and, after a moment, recommence. Gon and Killua stand still amidst the revellers. Killua, frowning, goes to let go of Gon's hand, but Gon squeezes his fingers tightly and he doesn't want to force it in public. Instead he steps closer, hissing. "What?"
Gon's not smiling now. "You heard me."
"Ok. I'm not a member and I'm not being paid by them, where the hell is this coming from?" And Killua wonders whether Gon can feel how clammy his palms are already, if he can hear his heartbeat hammering through his skull. He wonders when exactly he got so bad at lying.
"Kurapika knows this world better than me." Gon does not add that he knew it once, too, though he did. "He shared a little friendly advice. Now I want your side."
Killua's frown has not left, instead it folds into a half hearted snarl. "My side is that it's bullshit, and I don't know what either of you are talking about."
Gon frowns, suddenly, and it's the first time Killua's seen him look truly angry and it's a little frightening, really. His hand tightens around Killua's hard and it hurts and he growls, "don't lie to me, Killua."
The lights go out.
Shouts, screams, and a lost trombone note rise shrieking in the darkness. Killua pauses, shocked, before twisting his hand from Gon's grip with ease, grabbing his wrist, and dragging him towards the nearest exit: one of the emergency side doors. (He's had the building's floor plan memorised since he was 3.) They burst outside and cool air hits his face, the silence of the stairwell standing in contrast to the rising noise inside. It's dimly lit by emergency lighting, and it smells of dust and metal. Killua swings the doors shut behind them with a tooth-jarring slam. He feels Gon's stare and says, a little breathless, with a gesture at the narrow, spiralling metal stairs, "this'd be too dangerous with a crowd. Someone could trip." He glances to the railing behind him, it reaches to a little lower than his waist, and a firm push has it wobbling. "Or fall."
He hears Gon say, "please don't die." And then two big broad hands settle on his chest and push, hard. And Killua doesn't resist because he's still looking for an attacker or a threat or something and he's too tall and his weight and height have him falling over and backwards, weightless, into the dark.
He has a split millisecond which stretches like elastic to realise that yes, Gon just did that, before he's twisting on sheer bestial instinct, pulling at his muscles to rotate, dropping his legs and grabbing the stairwell's metal grated floor with a slam, creak, and crack as something tears in his arm. He swings there for a moment, fingers white knuckled and aching, before getting his other arm up too and holding on, tightly, trying hard not to think about how many floors lie below his dangling feet. It's cold, out here, and Killua looks up at Gon and cannot read his features from this angle in the darkness. For a moment he waits for the inevitable stamping on his hands, and wonders how he could have been so blind, and why, and whether he'll solve his own murder in the few moments he has before he falls. But Killua can think of nothing in retrospect, of Gon’s behaviour or their hesitant partnership thus far to explain it. He thought it’d been going well. A small, snide voice in the corner of his mind that sounds a lot like the murderer he used to be wonders whether Gon would even need a reason to kill something like him. Killua grits his teeth and hangs and waits, and then Gon crouches down and apologies are bubbling over his lips but they're meaningless and Killua's still waiting for an explanation (and maybe some small desperate part of him is hoping he’ll say this isn't what it looks like or what it was.) And Gon's reaching for his hands and he can't decide whether to move them or trust him. And the black hilt of a katana hits Gon, hard, on the back of the head.
"Machi was right. You're not up to the job."
Gon drops like a sack of potatoes to one side and Killua tries to adjust his grip on the grille as his attacker steps forth from the shadows. He's sporting a moustache that remembers puberty well and hasn't got much further than wispy, a long, silky black ponytail and haggard, sallow features. He's wearing a dark blue traditional Japanese robe and in his hands is a sword, still in its sheath.
Killua has seen men about to kill before. This man is one of them. His face is like thunder and Killua is still swinging in the void of the stairwell and the screams in the room beyond have quieted, but not by much, and Gon is unconscious on the stairwell. And Killua shouldn't be so concerned because the man just tried to kill him, possibly, but he wouldn't be an easy partner to replace. So he starts to kick, hoping despite himself that he might build enough momentum to swing himself back up.
The man’s unties the hilt of his sword from its sheath with nimble fingers and practiced speed. The stairs below are at the wrong angle for Killua to jump: he’d break his leg and more at best, if he made it. Besides, it’d take him too long to get back up. By then Gon would be...
"Who the hell are you?" Killua snarls, realising that, dangling as he is, he isn't in much of a position to be threatening. Part of him thinks darkly he could win points for a last request. The stranger shifts his gaze lazily, mouth curved down into a sneer of disdain.
"I’ll get to you." He smiles, suddenly, wide and mad and yellow toothed. "I plan to enjoy myself." He turns to kick Gon’s unconscious body, hard, and turn him over with his foot, looking down and away into the shadows. "Uvo would have wanted me to." He laughs, and it might be choked by a sob but Killua can’t tell. His arms are burning and his fingers are sore and it’s only years of practicing for a situation like this one that means he hasn’t fallen yet. "Scratch that. The bastard would have wanted all the fun for himself."
There’s a very soft whisper of metal, and Killua holds his breath as the man begins to draw his sword, and then a small hand deals a quick, hard chop to the side of his neck. He crumples. Killua hangs and tries to see past the two adult bodies now lying inches from his fingertips. "The party’s inside, you know." He says, dryly, to the woman that saunters forward from the shadows.
"Not really my kind of party."
She stares down at him, stepping forward into the light of the stairwell, but her expression gives nothing away. Her eyes, bright blue and almond shaped, drift back towards the man in the tunic. She huffs, blowing a strand of shocking pink hair away from her eyes as she does. "Sorry Nobu."
Her gaze moves back to Killua, and despite himself, he shivers. Let alone stamping on his hands. He has a feeling she’d cut his fingers off and then follow him down to see if she could do more to what was left of his body, whether he was alive or not. It was a sinking feeling deep in his gut and he’d lived in danger long enough to trust it.
"You’ve been assigned Pakunoda’s case." It’s not really a question. Killua nods, swallowing the sudden dryness in his mouth, and opens it to ask why it mattered. The woman spoke first, squatting over his hands and resting her elbows on her thighs. Her stilettos are dangerously close to Killua’s little fingers and he tries not to flinch. "If you or your family killed her, then I’ll kill you. It will be slow, and it will be messy, and I’ll enjoy it. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise."
Killua doesn't say anything because he’s heard words like these before, though never with such venom. The woman’s expression remains impassive, and it’s hard to watch, with so little to read or catch. Like trying to grab smoke barehanded.
"I will avenge her. But I want to be sure. I want proof. Because there is no way I’m letting the bastard who did this get away with it if we got the wrong killer." Killua doesn't know where to start. Does she know Pakunoda killed herself? Why the hell would the Zoldycks have killed her? Why on earth was this woman talking to him?
He says, "so what do you want with me?"
She shrugs. There’s a lazy, tiger like strength in the curve of her arms and the roll of her shoulders that Killua expects has been underestimated before. "Physically, you two are the best on the force." She doesn't sound impressed. "And for your age and experience, you’ve got the best track record of any detective in decades. Plus, you’re a Zoldyck. They might be murderous bastards, but then, so are we." She grins, suddenly: her teeth are straight and neat and white and it is not a kind expression. "You’re best suited and best placed to reach the bottom of this on the straight and narrow."
"And you?" Killua asks, carefully.
"I’ll keep my friends busy." She stands, stretches, and looks down at him. "You’ve got a fortnight. And I’ll be starting with your sister."
Killua grits his teeth and tries to think of something, anything to do, and can’t and watches as she bends and picks up the other man, Nobu, with ease. "Be seeing you."
She turns, Nobu’s body slung over her shoulder, and walks back into the ballroom. It’s still pitch black, from what Killua sees, though now the screams have died down to unhappy murmurs. Machi swings the door shut behind her. Sweat is rolling down Killua’s forearms and his back, and he can’t hold on much longer. His mind is crowded, with Alluka and Kalluto and Gon and Kurapika and Pakunoda and Killua doesn't know where to start. Gon is still breathing, he can tell that much, and he wets his lips and goes to speak and then the whistle of static over a loudspeaker system pierces through the quiet. Killua frowns and listens, and there are two taps on a microphone before a smooth voice emanates, muffled, through the fire exit from the ballroom.
"Good evening, ladies and gentle people. My name is Shalnark, this is Feitan, and that’s Franklin. We’d like to dedicate this next piece to Silva Zoldyck. It’s war."
There’s a crash as Shalnark drops the microphone and a heartbeat of silence and then the thunderous assault of a machine gun and a hundred desperate, gurgled screams. Killua stares at the door, mind still catching up with what he’s hearing, and feels the stairs shaking and his skull aching at the noise and there’s nothing he can do. His chin barely reaches the platform and he can’t kick his legs because he’s been hanging here for too long now and if he does he’ll break his own grip and fall. And so instead he listens to the smaller screams of children dying mere feet away from where he hangs and feels the cold burn of his badge in his breast pocket and can’t do a thing. And he wants to shout but he can’t because if he does he’ll draw attention outside, to here where Gon is lying helpless and unconscious and he can’t do that either. The smell of blood and smoke and metal fills his nostrils and mouth and it’s bitter and hot and he spits and stares and sweats and he can do nothing. And he doesn’t know whether Kalluto’s still inside.
The doors shudder under the assault of stray bullets and after a second or two or more blood seeps, slowly, dark and viscous from the gap between the door itself and the metal. And all Killua can think, and all he can see, is that he took this job for a reason and that those reasons are dying messy and helpless and bloody and he’s just listening.
Gon shifts, murmuring, at about the same time the thunderous racket of the gun and the rapid wet tearing splintering sounds that follow begin to fade into diminuendo. By the time he blearily opens his eyes it’s done. Killua is still shivering despite himself, and the blood has run from his face and his body is drenched in cold sweat and there’s vomit in his mouth because he couldn't stop this. He never could. He’d done nothing, again. (Kalluto could have been in there.) And he thinks his hands are red again but he’s not sure whether that’s just the sweat blurring his vision as it drips into his already stinging eyes.
It’s not so much a conscious thought as despair that has him, with something like relief, letting go of the stairs’ metal grille. He swings there on one arm, flexing his aching fingers. He shuts his eyes and feels the cold night air and thinks he might hear sirens in the distance. He thinks of Alluka, fondly, and murmurs an apology to his ghosts for his cowardice. Killua uncurls the fingers of his right hand and for a moment he falls, and behind the darkness of his eyelids, it’s good.
Gon catches him.