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Mito’s nephew, upon return from his hunter exams, brought back a stray along with him.
It didn’t surprise her, particularly, because he had too big of a heart that would pound right out from his rib cage if he were to leave a poor cat out on the street.
Except, this wasn’t a cat.
This was a human boy. Pale as the first snow of winter with a head full of messy ashen hair and eyes so big that when Mito had first caught a glimpse of him, she felt as if she was stargazing.
Or perhaps, looking into a bottomless void, deeper than any ocean trenches.
Her dear Gon had brought back with him a poor sad child. One of calamity. He left large footprints on the earth he tread, but made no echoing sound or vibrations of footsteps behind.
It must have been a lonely existence.
When Mito had first questioned Gon about it, his first day back when they had some time to themselves. The sad child was outside, getting fresh air because this type of environment obviously wasn’t for him.
“Lonely?” Gon had asked, tilting his head to the side as if he had never even suspected it a possibility. “He may seem closed off, but that’s because he was trapped on that mountain for his whole life! I’m his first real friend, did you know that?”
His eyes shone with excitement, a soothing terra cotta brown, and Mito couldn’t help the smile that stretched at her lips.
It was true, she had read all of his letters and cherished them. It was no secret that his new best friend was an assassin of Kukuroo mountain.
Still though, looking into the trenches. His eyes. She hadn’t seen the eyes of a seasoned killer, nor any Ill intentions. Only a somberness, or nostalgia.
“I am proud of you Gon,” she patted the spikes of his hair down, and he whined and batted her arm away because he always hated it when she did that. “Show him what a good best friend can be, huh?”
“That’s what I planned on doing!”
When Mito set down the plates, piled miles high with spaghetti and other sides, Killua had looked at it, then to her, as if she gave him the world.
“You would feed your guests this much?” He asked. It was an off handed question, not meant for her to hear, but it was only because she had been listening for it that she did hear it.
“Of course I would!” She announced, startling the boy because he hadn’t been expecting her to actually hear. “In this household, the guest gets more privilege than the occupants, as it should be.”
Killua tilted his head at the concept, as if it was a new and unfamiliar one.
“That’s stupid.”
From next to him, Gon frowned. “I guess assassins don’t get that many guests, huh.”
Mito had to simply frown at her nephew's lack of tact, though at her reaction, his best friend reeled back.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered lowly, as if his simple comment could warrant her disappointment.
She softened, “don’t you worry about it. Eat as much as you want.”
Killua only started on the food when he watched Gon take more than four forkfuls. As if he didn’t trust it, like a skittish stray with their tail tucked between their legs.
She could almost sense his thoughts.
‘Gon’s aunt wouldn’t poison her nephew.’
He dug in with intense fervor, like her or grandma or even Gon would steal his food at any given moment. A protective arm wrapped around the plate.
“Oh, he just always eats like that!” Gon had told her, hours later when the topic had been lightly touched upon with delicate fingertips.
A normal occurrence.
Gon had never taken his food.
After dinner when Killua had nearly licked his plate clean, like he didn’t know when his next meal would be, Mito took one look at their dirty faces and announced that they needed to draw a bath for themselves.
“Oh come on!” Gon whined, “I wanted to play some more!”
“You have no more food to play with. If you don’t get up at the count of ten…”
An idle threat. One she always implemented as a way to get that nephew of hers up and going.
Killua shot up ramrod straight anyway, pupils pinpricks under gigantic lashes. He shook, quivered slightly.
Gon ran around, securing towels as she continued to count down. When he notices his best friend's standstill, he ushered him like a doll, pulling his jacket off to grab his tank top and lead him to the washrooms, all before she reached one.
What an interesting, sad child.
“What happens when she gets to zero?” Killua asked.
Mito hadn’t meant to overhear, but she was taking them extra towels to leave in front of the door for when they were done. Gon never brought enough along with him.
“What do you mean?” Gon asked, the sound of water sloshing over the rim of the tub and splashing to the floor. He must have moved closer to him.
“When she counts.”
“Oh!” Gon realized, and suddenly Mito had to bite back her guilt. Had Killua thought she would hurt him? “It’s all just a way to make her look tough, but she really is sweet, I promise.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
Their voices were muffled, but when at Killua’s low Mummer, she could hear him just fine.
“She tickles you!”
“That’s… all?”
“Yup!”
“Look aunt Mito look!” Gon held his fishing rod up high, and it gleamed under the stark sunlight as Killua strode casually next to him.
He looked almost translucent under the sunlight.
A deck of cards that would tumble over if she blew too hard. At the slightest whisper of wind.
He would get sunburnt if that nephew of hers hadn’t insisted Killua lather up, forcing the sunscreen onto him to rub it in.
“Show her, show her!” Gon nudged his best friend and the ex-assassin eventually relented and held up the fish he had caught. A small one. One that couldn’t compare to Gon’s normal catches, but this was important because it was Killua’s first fish.
Mito smiled encouragingly and firstly held a hand up for Gon to clap in their normal high five. He jumped up and clapped it giddily, leaving a small tingling red buzzing feeling on her palm. Killua watched curiously, and Mito only took a moment to think before holding her left out to him, just above his head…
And he flinched.
Killua's full body flinched, as if she was reeling back to slap him in the face, harshly. Dark eyelashes closed firmly, setting his jaw so he wouldn’t bite his tongue on impact.
Mito’s heart ached and clawed in her chest. It wailed.
“Killua,” Gon nudged him, “remember the high fives? We always do them!”
He hadn’t noticed, and Mito would have chewed him out, but Killua cracked open deep blue eyes and stared apprehensively, before Mito gently brought her hand down onto his own, hesitantly offered one.
“See? Isn’t my aunt Mito awesome!” Gon wrapped an arm around his shoulder and steered him off to the entrance of the house before Mito could do much more than that.
She watched their backs, Killua’s slightly hunched over, like a wet cat.
Killua was an awkward individual.
As he looked around her house on the top of the hill, it looked as if he didn’t know what to do with his body. How to navigate his limbs in a way that would resemble a human.
Almost puppet-like, with thin and frayed strings attached.
She had caught him staring at the pictures framed upon the mantle with that same distant look on his face.
Mito doubted she could get the drop on a trained assassin, but she made audible noise anyway as she approached. “That’s Ging, Gon’s father. He looks a lot like him, don’t you think?”
Killua took a moment of contemplation before slightly tilting his head in her direction. “I don’t think so, not at all. It’s their eyes.”
They Were the same color. The same shape. But they had a different luster to them, a light.
She hummed and smiled softly.
“I agree.”
It had been a rather rainy night, two weeks into the boy’s temporary stay until they were off again in search for Ging, when the storm rolled in and Gon crashed through the door with urgency and quite an emergent cry.
“Aunt Mito, Aunt Mito!” He cried, not bothering to shuck his muddy boots off of his feet nor close the door to separate them from the raging store. Luckily, that responsible friend of his quickly shut the door and wiped his shoes onto the rug, leaving tracks.
Perhaps the issue wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
“Yes Gon?” she asked calmly, wiping her hands onto the dishrag she had been using to wipe the kitchen table down. It had only been an hour since dinner and thirty minutes since the rainfall first started. The two never returned this early into the night.
Gon unwrapped a small furry thing from his green and ruined coat. Mito leaned in closer, and upon further inspection, discovered it was a creature native to the island, a small foxbear that whimpered and trembled from the cold.
She crossed her arms, “now what did I say about bringing animals into the house, Gon?”
Her nephew only allowed himself a moment to look guilty before he shifted the small bundle in his arms to reveal streaks of scarlet. “But we found her wounded and cold! We couldn’t have just left her out there!”
From next to Gon, Killua seemed rather unbothered, as if he could have. Mito knew him well enough over the past few weeks to understand his ‘survival of the fittest’ mindset, and hopefully Gon would implement some good morals upon him from whatever his family had gifted.
Mito sighed, “Okay, I'll make an exception for tonight. Do you and Killua want to give her a warm bath and dress her wounds?”
Gon’s smile broke into a large grin as he nodded up and down in rapid succession. “Come on Killua!” He pulled his friend by the hand, disappearing up the stairs.
That awfully caring Nephew of hers . Perhaps he would melt whatever barrier his best friend had his heart caged in.
When Mito poked her head into the restroom to see Gon fully submerged into the bathtub with the small Foxbear, forcing Killua and his soaked clothes into the warmth and suds, she knew she could go to bed without any issue involving foxbears and injuries.
Well, until she woke herself up, that was.
The rain pounded against her home like bullets, the thunder rumbling through the skies and dark clouds. In this weather, there wasn’t much more she could do than stare up at the ceiling while the lightning flashed threatening outside the window.
She lit a candle and made her way through terracotta hallways. Grams lay in her bed, breathing steadily and undisturbed by the noise. Just like Gon, they were both heavy sleepers, like slumber was a stone in a pond.
Gon lay under the covers of his bed… though there was no accompanying lump next to him. The first week, Killua slept on a pallet at the foot of the bed, though somewhere during their stay, Killua had migrated to sharing the bed with Gon. It was sometime after a raw screaming had woken her up, a nightmare of sorts.
How terrifying, coming from a child.
Mito gently closed her nephew's door to the living room downstairs, where the two had decided to leave the Foxbear overnight, covered in plush blankets on the couch. It was still there, though this time it had a guest in the form of Killua, who hovered above the small and fragile thing with a hand sharpened with iron and razor sharp edges.
“What are you doing?” She asked calmly, more heartbroken than betrayed as the child jumped in the air, caught red handed. His sharpened hand immediately softened at once, and he looked at the appendage as if it had personally burned him.
“N-Nothing!”
“You were about to harm it,” she suggested, tone light even though it was a heavy accusation.
Killua’s face went red with indignation and he sputtered, “it’s got a fever. should kill it and put it out if it’s misery.”
“And that’s what you we’re trying to do? Cure it? Have you even touched her yet?”
Killua regretfully shook his head, looking somewhat like a kicked puppy. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt it.”
Because wherever the kid went, grass wilted under his feet. Whatever he touched withered away under his wickedness.
Mito didn’t see any of that though, just a scared kid who only knew how to harm.
Mito softened.
“I’ll help you.”
Something shifted in the depths of those eyes, a light of hope, shining from a small peep hole in the darkness. “You will?”
In lieu of an answer, she sat down beside the small animal and gently scooped it up to cradle in her arms. Killua watched like the concept to pet a wounded animal was completely new to him, as if the poor thing would self combust in her arms.
“Do you want to try?”
Killua shook his head automatically, as if it was a reflex ingrained in his head to avoid all things harmed and helpless, should he not taint it.
“I’ll be right here,” she reassured anyways, “hold out your arms.”
The boy reluctantly held them out and she deposited the small, snoring animal into his arms. He held his breath, waiting for the pin to drop, and when it never came, he slowly sank into the cushions and relaxed. Only slightly.
She smiled, eyes wrinkling at the corners “Very good. See? It’s not so bad.”
“The last time I had a cat, my dad made me kill it.” Killua whispered into the storm, as if it was a secret shared between only him and the rain with Mito as a silent witness.
She swallowed down the lump in her throat, and reached for Killua’s hand. “Can I?”
He twitched but nodded shortly, and she took the chance to grab his clammy hand and manipulate it to pet the foxbear until he was stroking it on his own free will without her help.
She could see some sort of childish wonder enter his expression as the small thing leaned into his touch, bandages shifting ever so slightly against his chest.
He was wearing one of Gon’s hoodies.
That morning, Mito woke up to gloomy skies and light rain. When she made her way downstairs she had almost forgotten the events of the night before until she stumbled across Killua snoozing on the couch with the small creature.
Gon stood before them, watching on with a fond expression.
It must have been the rain.
Or it must have been Mito’s carelessness in letting them run the forest every night like the explorers they were.
Young boys couldn’t he tamed, but Mito surely could have been more restrictive about their time out of the house.
The next day, it was still gloomy outside with the rain pitter pattering with little downpours. Killua and Gon had been outside all yesterday in the storm, looking for the foxbear cubs family because it had miraculously healed overnight.
Mito had teased that it was thanks to Killua, and he only blushed and looked away.
They came back empty handed and had succeeded in their mission, but at what cost?
“Aunt Mito!” Gon called down the stairs to her as she put the bacon onto the pan with a dull sizzle.
“What do I say about yelling at me from upstarise! Come down and talk to me like a civilized person!”
Gon’s bare feet barreled down the wooden stair, only a flight, before he stopped at the base, looking frazzled and out of breath.
“It’s Killua! Somethings wrong with him!”
Mito immediately turned the stove off and untied her apron, throwing it onto a nearby chair as she followed her nephew up the stairs, quicker than she was accustomed to.
Killua, as it turned out, had fallen terribly Ill overnight.
“He felt like a furnace all night,” Gon worried, hanging around her like a lost dog as she pulled the blanket lower from Killua’s body to take in the full damage, “I thought it was because of the blanket.”
“Don’t worry about that now, Gon. Go fetch a pitcher of water and some washrags, you hear?”
Her nephew nodded and immediately clomped off while she got a closer look at the boy. The tank top he was wearing was obviously sweat through, and he twisted in discomfort.
His ashen cheeks filled with a bright pink hue from his nose all the way to his red ears. Eyes squeezed shut tightly in pain.
“Shh,” she soothed, brushing his sweaty hair back to feel his boiling hot forehead. A fever of at least 102, if it got any higher, she would need to call the medic of the small island. She had seen how bad sicknesses could get in the isolation of Whale island with the little help their medic could provide. He was retired, a fickle man.
At the touch, Killua grumbled something under his breath as his eyes fluttered open. His eyes were glassy with fever.
“You’re a Little sick, but don’t worry, it’ll go away soon enough.”
Killua furrowed his brow, as if the idea of sickness was completely foreign to him.
“Sick?”
“Yes, hun.”
Gon entered the room in a frenzy with twice as many medical supplies than she had asked for.
“Is he awake?”
Killua flinched at his loud voice, and Mito calmly shushed him as he climbed into the bed on Killua’s other side, sitting and biting his lip in worry.
“I can’ get sick…” Killua slurred with a leaden tongue, “immune.”
“Immune?” Mito questioned.
“He’s immune to poisons,” Gon explained hopelessly, “I don’t know if he’s gotten sick before.”
A childhood so caged within the same walls that he had never picked up any foreign bacterium enough to get sick? Killua looked sickly as it was. “That’s impossible. Poisons can be avoided, but fever can't, and you two have been out in the rain all day and night.” She explained calmly as she wrung a rag out and placed it onto Killua’s forehead.
For a moment he shrunk back, but then settled into the contact like it was a cool icy breath upon his fevered skin.
Gon looked guilty, “it’s all my fault, isn’t it?”
“No,” Killua sniffled, coughing weakly, “‘s not.”
It didn’t seem to consolidate him.
“How about you help me take care of him?” She suggested, and Gon lit up at the idea. “I’ll go make some soup in a minute!”
He would probably burn the kitchen down, but Mito would let him just this once.
“Take… care?” Killua asked, eyes widened in shock even if he probably couldn’t even get much effort to get up out of the bed. “Don’t have to…”
“Nope, it’s non negotiable,” Gon huffed, crossing his arms. “Here, take some fever reducer.”
Mito watched fondly as Gon lifted Killua’s head from the pillow and Killua blushed some at the baby treatment. He thankfully accepted the pill with some water even if he wasn’t used to the movement.
“There you go,” Gon smiled as he brushed calloused workers' fingers through Killua’s stark white hair as Mito cooled him down with more damp washcloths. They spent a long while in silence before Gon broke the peace.
“Ne, Killua?”
There was no answer.
“He’s asleep, Gon.”
Sure enough, he had relaxed from his hellish fever and closed his eyes to slumber.
Killua had woken up at many points throughout the night, nightmares clawing at him to grasp at his skin and tear at it. Old wounds reopening and pooling in a crimson stream down his eyes, through his tear ducts.
Mito would silently pass the two curled up on the bed, Gon swaying Killua, the other's face shoved into his neck like a primal need, as she set more water and fever reducers on the nightstand.
It was a nurturing thing she had never seen from her Nephew before, unless it was an animal or such.
At one point, deep in the depths of the night, Killua called out weakly, accompanied by a crash, and Mito rushed their way, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
There they were, on the hardwood of Gon’s floor while her nephew attempted to lift Killua up from his armpits, only half conscious and head lolling to the side. “His fever went up!” Gon panicked, scrambling and not knowing what to do.
“I’ll help you get him in the tub,” she calmly took his feet and together they lugged him, clothes and all, into the already running water.
His face was tomato red and he let out a very animalistic whimper once he hit the lukewarm water.
Gon lathered suds into his hair as Mito continued to monitor his temperature with a hand to his forehead until she deemed it safe.
Killua fell back to sleep within ten minutes.
When all was said and done, Killua seemed adequately embarrassed, and hadn’t mentioned it the entire time he was bedridden for a total of three more days as Gon continued to unlock the secrets of the Greed Island game.
Up until it became time to leave and they had stayed for an entire month.
Mito was sad to see Gon and his newly acquired best friend leave, but she knew, deep down in her heart, that they needed to see the world for themselves.
But before she bade them farewell, with a basket of goods for the boat ride, Killua accepted her high five without a flinch or stutter, and a warmth pooled into her chest.
Then, like she had to Gon and she had seen Killua watch with some faraway look, she pulled him into a tight hug. He, surprisingly, relaxed into it and from next to him, Gon grinned giddily.
“Come back anytime.” She murmered into his hair.
She couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine he was blushing like he always did when embarrassed.
“Yeah… thanks.”
They were two words, but held the weight of the world in meaning.
Thanks for showing someone maternal love who had never seen it.
Thanks for teaching someone how to cure rather than kill.
Thanks for nurturing someone who had never known a healing touch.
“Of course.”