Chapter Text
Dear Aunt Mito,
I love you, so much, Aunt Mito. I’m so sorry I have to do this, and that I can’t say goodbye, but I won’t be home for a while. More than a while. I’m going away with Killua. Well, it’s more like, he’s gonna run away, and I’m going with him. I’ve got to, I don’t have a choice, because I won’t let him go alone.
Please don’t worry about me. We’ll be okay. I won’t tell you where we’re going, because then you’d come after us.
I’ll see you again as soon as I can. I love you.
Gon
“This is the note that Gon Freecss’s guardian found the day he and Killua Zoldyck went missing ten months ago,” Izunavi says, addressing the officers and volunteers gathered at the station. The hand-written note stares down at Kurapika from the projector behind the station’s head detective. “Confirmed to be written in Gon’s handwriting. For this reason, Killua and Gon are presumed to have run away together. According to their peers at Hunter Academy boarding school, they are very close friends."
Lead Detective Izunavi swaps the projector image to a list of missing items.
“At the time of their disappearance, Ms. Freecss found a number of items missing, including two hunting knives, a hatchet, a multitool, two bows and arrows, and other hunting and camping supplies that suggest they planned on surviving off the land long-term.
“The two boys were recently involved in an altercation with several officers at the laundromat on Second Street, after a civilian called the missing child hotline. The two boys ran when Officer Kurta approached them.”
That’s accurate, Kurapika thinks, but fails to convey the look of terror on the two thirteen-year-olds’ faces when Kurapika had pushed open the door to the laundromat, despite the friendly smile Kurapika had worn. The boys had fled as though the gust of March wind from the door had carried the plague.
Kurapika is only half listening to Detective Izunavi’s briefing. They’d been there themself, as Killua and Gon ran to the back exit of the laundromat, where there were metal racks and dumpsters that gave way to a grassy field, and, in the distance, forest.
Unfortunately for the two runaways, Officer Tocino was standing in wait outside the door for just this scenario. He caught the white-haired one, Killua, by the arm with a Woah, there, kiddo. Kurapika remembered how the boy had frozen with fear– but his friend had not.
Tocino wasn’t prepared for Gon to rush him and bite the hand holding Killua. One swift kick to the gut later, and Tocino was on the ground as the two boys fled. Gon sent a metal shelving unit crashing to the pavement behind them to stop any pursuit, but it backfired: Kurapika saw a sharp corner slice open Gon’s arm, even as a plastic bin from the top shelf hit him on the head. Killua was there in a second, helping him up, and they ran. They were halfway to the woods before Kurapika had reached for their radio to call for backup.
Killua Zoldyck and Gon Freecss had been missing since the beginning of last summer, and this was the first sign of them. That they were flighty was expected, that they were violent was not.
Their case was fairly high profile, considering Killua’s family. All of his relatives were highly respected officers in one military branch or another, and the Zoldyck family had gained a large reputation. Gon’s family wasn’t famous, but the news stories described him as an endlessly kind soul full of joy, who smiled at everyone and wore his heart on his sleeve.
Kurapika was sure that if they were acting like this now, the root cause must have been something terrible. When Kurapika had lost their family at age eleven, it had changed them. The two boys must have gone through hell in the past ten months.
~~~
There’s still some lingering snow on the ground. The winters here aren’t typically that bad, but they’d gotten a freak storm earlier in the month. Kurapika keeps their eyes open for tracks as they walk through the forest at a brisk pace, regularly calling out “Killua! Gon!” because it’s protocol, even though it feels counterproductive because the runaways are definitely trying to evade the police. They follow the route assigned to them by Izunavi, which tracks close to the banks of a small stream, and to their left and right, they can hear other searchers combing the woods in a similar way. Kurapika tries not to think about how big this forest is, and how the two boys could disappear into its depths and never come back. They’re especially worried about Gon’s injuries– they couldn’t see how badly he was hurt while fleeing from the laundromat. Luckily, there’s not too much underbrush, so there aren’t a lot of places to hide.
They walk, and they shout, and they measure the distance they’ve come on their GPS device. Half a mile… one mile… one and a half… The sun will set in a few hours and Kurapika tries not to think about how hard it will be to find those missing kids if the trail goes cold again. Their families have already been called; Mito Freecss and the Zoldycks are already on their way. From what Kurapika remembers from the kids’ files, the Zoldyck family lives several hours away in the Dentora region of Padokea, and Mito Freecss has to take a ferry from Whale Island to the mainland before making the drive. Kurapika hopes that there will be a happy reunion tonight. They know what it’s like to be without their family.
It’s been about two and a half miles when Kurapika… smells something? Like wood smoke and, strangely enough, barbeque. They pause and give the surrounding area an extra look, because it’s the middle of the wilderness and barbeque is not a normal smell out here. Their eyes skip over a small patch of brush several times before they notice something out of the ordinary.
The ground between three young hemlock trees is covered by a low wooden structure made of stripped branches. It doesn’t make sense until Kurapika sees a small stream of smoke slip between the poles, and they realize it’s a smokehouse.
When they lift the makeshift door, they discover a hole in the ground where the warm ashes of a fire lay dormant. The main hole is connected to an air hole a few feet away, which channels oxygen towards the base of the fire. The engineering is actually quite impressive, and the result was hard to spot. Across the top of the makeshift smokehouse are rows of sticks bearing a few strips of meat. It’s not much– maybe what you’d get from a squirrel.
Nobody lives out here. At least, nobody is supposed to…unless two teenage boys made a homestead here in the middle of the wilderness.
If their food is stored here, then their shelter must be nearby.
Kurapika radios to report signs that the boys have been here before, if not recently, and keeps walking.
~~~
Maybe they wouldn’t have spotted it if they hadn’t been looking for a shelter.
It’s well hidden, tucked under a rock formation that must provide respite from the wind. The top is covered with pine boughs and leaves, providing camouflage, but a green tarp peeks through here and there. The forest floor in this clearing is more tracked up than in other places, Kurapika notices– evidence of frequent passage.
“Killua, Gon, my name is Kurapika,” they call out, just in case the boys are inside the shelter. “I’m a police officer. I’d like to help you.” Silence. They reach for their radio.
“This is Officer Kurta. I’ve located a shelter in the woods, potentially belonging to the missing kids.” They give the coordinates, then put down the radio.
“Officers Linssen and Basho, join Officer Kurta at those coordinates.”
“Killua, Gon, your families are worried about you,” they say to the maybe-occupied hut. “I won’t come any closer for now. I’ll just stay here, okay?”
It takes a couple of minutes, but Kurapika hears their coworkers approaching on two sides.
“Are they in there?” asks Basho as he approaches. Linssen says nothing but looks at Kurapika, awaiting their answer.
“I do not know. I think not, but it is better to assume that they are. If they are in there and we just barge in, that would be a disaster,” says Kurapika. Basho and Linssen nod.
“Gon, Killua, I am going to open the door now, okay?” they call, slowly approaching the shelter. “I am coming in.” They grip the slab of tied-together poles that makes a door, and flip it slowly.
The hut is empty. It’s a pit shelter, like the smokehouse, so the floor inside is lower than ground level. The walls and ceiling are made of more stripped young trees, lashed together and lined with moss for insulation. Inside, there’s a small fireplace with an equally small chimney that leads outside, one bed with two sleeping bags covered in furs. Two bows hang from the ceiling, a couple of hunting knives lay by the fire. A hatchet is leaning against the dirt wall near the door. There’s a quiver of arrows in the corner, a pot on the edge of the hearth, a whittling project on a small shelf, a photograph near the pack that serves as a pillow.
“No one is here,” calls Kurapika to their coworkers. They step forward into the shelter, marveling at the construction, at the hominess of this small space. Well, comparatively. The sleeping bags are laid on a mattress of pine boughs, and the furs are roughly processed and don’t look very comfortable, but were probably necessary for the colder part of winter. Kurapika crouches and flips through the pile, revealing layers of deer skins, rabbit skins stitched together, and one that Kurapika doesn’t recognize.
“Holy shit,” says Basho, peering through the door behind Kurapika. “Mountain lion.”
Kurapika’s hand freezes while petting the soft fur.
“That’s no joke,” Basho continues. “Those kids must be pretty tough. They got guns?”
“I do not know,” says Kurapika. “We should do a search. They certainly were not carrying anything big enough to hunt cougars when I ran into them earlier.”
“The photo’s definitely theirs though. That’s Gon and Mito Freecss,” says Basho.
Kurapika hears Linssen reporting their findings over the radio. They stand up and leave the hut, appreciating the fresh air because those skins didn’t smell the best.
“Killua and Gon aren’t here,” reports Linssen. “There is evidence that they lived here long term, but not that they returned after fleeing from our officers this afternoon.”
Kurapika frowns, listening to Linssen’s explanation. That’s right, the boys hadn’t come back here. If they had, wouldn’t they have grabbed some of their stuff? Their money, their knives, their pack…the hut would have been a mess from their scramble to escape. So, Kurapika’s pretty sure they didn’t return here after fleeing.
But…why? They had no reason to believe the police knew about this shelter, so they couldn’t have been expecting an ambush. They could have been confident that they would get here first before moving on, so it would definitely make sense to come back and grab some stuff if they were fleeing through these woods.
They didn’t make it this far, then, concludes Kurapika. Did the search party somehow pass by them in the forest? And… why stop? Maybe Gon’s injuries were worse than they’d thought.
Kurapika pulls out their phone and calls Lead Detective Izunavi.