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When he meets Gon, after ten long years, he's still not ready.
Ging hadn't expected the entrance he'd make, the drama of it all.
He hadn't expected how Leorio would drop everything to hold Gon. To embrace Ging's son in loving arms. Like he was the most precious thing in the world.
"I was so worried about you!"
His son shouts back, louder and twice as delighted. He sounds different, of course. Older. Ging had left before Gon could manage full sentences. The most he'd gotten out of him was a chipper "Gon!" His own name.
Ging was never one to coddle, didn't see any benefit in calling himself "Dad" just to hear it said back to him. Maybe he knew, all the way back then, that he was never going to be anything but a father to this boy.
Leorio is crying, Gon sounds like he's crying too.
Ging doesn't dare look back. He never looks back.
Ging's own father was a distant memory, strong arms and a steady gaze. A fisherman by trade. He'd loved little in life but the sea and her murmurings.
Ging couldn't remember how his mother died, quick and young, but he remembered how a piece of his father died with her.
He remembered seeing his strong arms curl around her coffin, hoisting it over his large shoulders, never faltering.
He remembered, later, peeking through a keyhole, seeing those same shoulders shake, hunched over an empty bed.
He'd never seen his father cry before then. He never saw it again.
Ging knew his father loved him, in his own way. A distant love, how a fishing boat loves it's catchings. His father mostly kept to himself, and trusted Ging to do the same. He never minded, never took it to heart.
He knew that he was made of too much of his mother. He'd inherited her wild spirit, all her old dusty dreams taking on new life in his soul.
When he told his father, years later, that he was taking the Hunter Exam, he hadn't said anything, just pushed away from the table and walked over to stare out the front window in silence.
A tree his mother had planted was growing out there, a young willow. Growing without her.
Ging and his father stood together under the dingy lamp, watching her wave at them, gentle in the breeze.
The next morning, his father saw him off in much the same way, arm bending with the wind.
Ging waved back. Just once.
The choice to leave Gon behind wasn't a difficult one.
He knows he cannot keep him at his side, cannot spoonfeed him adventure.
Ging is unanchored, a typhoon that will never find land. His world has no room for this child, this son of his. He can't lose himself in fatherhood. He can barely find himself now.
Gon needs a base, something grounded. A boy unrooted is a boy unfounded.
He doesn't want to see him again once he's left him. He tells him as much, practiced words trapped in a casette.
Ging leaves Gon with only one question.
"Do you want to see me?"
He hopes the answer is no. He hopes Gon hates him for as long as he lives.
Kite reminds him of Gon, in a funny way.
They're not at all similar, Kite is all snark and narrowed eyes. He's clever, anyone can see that, but only Ging can see the hunger in him, the vast untapped potential.
It annoys him, a little. It's part of the reason he takes him under his wing. To scratch that itch, to right the wrong hand he was dealt. Kite makes it easy anyway, a shy enthusiasm in him. Eager to please and quicker to learn. He's almost proud.
They're sitting, one night, by a fire Kite created. The stars are a beaming glow above, Ging surveys them absentmindedly.
"Do you know the constellations?" Kite asks, turning a rabbit over the flame.
"Sure. I can show you a few. Any good hunter should know his way around the stars."
Kite moves to sit with him, and Ging shows him all the biggest ones, finger tracing the shapes in the sky. Orion, Scorpius, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor.
He wonders if Gon knows the stars. He forgot to show him that.
Before they part, from right after he is born, Ging spends two years with Gon, this bright shining thing.
Gon is an enjoyable companion, forever curious, forever delighted. He understands the magic Ging is chasing. Better than anyone.
He must see it too, experiencing the world through their same brown eyes.
One of Gon's friends punches Ging in the face. He lets him.
Everyone cheers. It doesn't hurt too terribly.
Later, Cheedle asks "Why don't you go see him? It would make people a lot less angry."
"He didn't ask me to." Ging replies.
There are better people, he thinks, for doing those kinds of things. Stranger-punching people. He hasn't seen Gon in ten years, and it's still far too soon. He's not halfway ready, not halfway to being any sort of father. Gon must know that, he supposes, having made it this far.
A small part of him wonders if he really will die. Alone and young in a hospital bed.
Will anyone hold his hand, as it happens?
Does he even have a hand left to hold?
He doesn't know. He doesn't want to.
Greed Island is a wild idea, something big and impossible. Ging wanted to create it more than anything.
The island he secures is massive, a kingdom under his own name. He could settle here, make a life for himself.
He won't. Island life doesn't sit well with him. It doesn't tamper the flame in him, doesn't curb the hunger in his heart. He wants for more, always for more.
Wdwune asks him, once "Why are we doing all this?"
"Because we can," Ging replies easily, "Because it's fun."
As if it could be anything else. Anything but the thrill of achievement, of breaking new ground. They're going where nobody's gone before. Doing what nobody has done.
When the game is almost finished, he brings Gon to visit. He's only a baby at this stage, barely able to lift his head out of Ging's arms. He takes him across the entire island, shows him the vast canyons, the lush greenery, the ocean glittering all around them.
Gon is especially fond of the sea, chubby arms always reaching for it.
The last thing he shows him is the castle. The newly renamed Dwun is there, fussing with boxes as he adds the final touches to the decor. Ging slips through the empty rooms, footsteps echoing through the long stone hallways. He pushes through a large wooden door, stepping out onto a balcony that overlooks the entire island, Ging's creation shining in front of him.
Yet he only has eyes for his first creation, the baby cradled in his arms outshining anything the view could offer.
Ging tries to show Gon the wild expanse, gently turning his small head so he can see the world that he can rule one day, will rule one day.
When he asks Eta to record a greeting message for Gon on his way out, she asks "How can you be so sure he'll make it here?"
Ging doesn't have an answer, he just feels it. Gon will return to Greed Island.
He has to.
It was made for him, after all.
When his father dies, Ging doesn't make it home for the funeral. Not that there would be anything to go home for.
Shipwreck, the letter read, assumed dead. Body unrecovered.
There's more in the letter about Mito's parents, his aunt and uncle, but he can only think of his father. The man that he is, the man that he was, the man that he could've been.
He takes a keen interest in the waters. How the currents around Whale Island move. Where they would've taken him.
He travels from town to town, visits dozens of unclaimed bodies. He doesn't know what he's looking for. He doesn't know why he doesn't give up.
Every body is much the same, seawater bloated, swollen thick pale skin. He wouldn't want to see his father like this. He keeps looking for him anyway. Every mortician gives him the same pitied look.
Mito said he was crazy, said he'd be nothing but a pile of bones.
Unless he's alive, Ging thought, unless, unless, unless
He never finds what he's looking for, in the end.
When he meets Gon, newborn doe eyes swaddled in his arms, he thinks of searching for those same eyes in a mortuary.
He thinks of Gon searching for him, the same achingly numb desperation poisoning his small soul.
He doesn't want that for Gon.
But he doesn't want it for himself, either.
Ging, despite what people may say, does think about Gon during their time apart, now and then.
He thinks of him whenever he looks in the mirror. He thinks of him whenever he sets foot somewhere new. Wonders if one day, Gon will walk there too, following his phantom footsteps.
He's on his way to check out a recently excavated ruin, strolling idly around a seaside town as he waits for his ship to pull in. He's in no rush, as usual.
A boy, about six years old is darting through the markets. He's looking back over his shoulder when he crashes into Ging's legs.
Or tries to crash into his legs. Ging is rarely without his En, easily stepping out of the way.
"Sorry, sorry!"
A man is chasing the boy, grabbing his arm. He smiles at Ging apologetically.
Ging watches them as they walk away, heads close, steps in sync. Father and son.
He thinks about himself, then. Thinks about Gon, thinks about if everything were different. Thinks about his purpose. Thinks about decisions and wrong ones, about mistakes.
Thinks about a deep, consuming regret.
But then the ship's horn rings through the village, finally docked, and Ging doesn't want to dwell on it any longer.
He will fill his mind with architecture and history and ignore the leak in his heart that's slowly suffocating him, chest full of a liquid heaviness.
There has to be something out there that can save him. Something that can save him from himself. He'll go to the ends of the earth just to find it.
He waits at the top of the world tree for what feels like an eternity.
Gon's aura appears in his periphery eventually, springing up the tree with relative ease. Ging huffs, more anxious than he wants to let on.
A small head pops up, tufts of green hair sticking out of a scalp like grass. Ging shoves an apple in his mouth, faux casual.
"Took you long enough."
Gon laughs then, bright and childish.
They sit together, swapping stories for hours. Ging doesn't want anything from this interaction except for it to be over. He'll humour Gon, he tells himself. Reward him for a job well done.
Still, in his explanation, in his answering of Gon's question "What are you looking for?", he finds himself stressing words, trying to make Gon understand.
Know I did it for something, he wants to say, know you were not left for nothing.
He doesn't say it. Gon doesn't ask.
The interaction is over before it really begins, the night warming into day. He leaves Gon with his phone number. "If you need me," he says.
He doesn't mean as his father. Gon knows that too.
They part ways at the bottom of the tree, standing and facing each other.
"Where are you going?" Ging asks, unable to keep the question off his tongue.
"Home." Gon smiles.
Ging doesn't quite know what to say to that. A weighty silence follows, broken only by the rustling of the leaves above.
Gon rocks on his heels "Can I tell Aunt Mito you say hi?"
"Sure."
Gon doesn't ask him anything else after that.
Ging almost wishes he did.
Kite catches up to Ging eventually, as he always knew he would.
The first thing he says is "Here's your hunter license."
The second thing he says is "I met your kid."
Ging reacts to the first, a quick scoff, but it's the second thing that really catches his attention. He doesn't ask about it. Kite tells him about his whole journey anyway.
He gets to the part on Whale Island, tells Ging about this boy, bright and determined. His son.
Tells him how stupid he'd been, needing Kite to step in.
"Thank you." Ging says
Kite blinks "For what?"
"For knocking some sense into him. Everyone knows you shouldn't go into foxbear territory when there's cubs around."
Kite rubs the back of his neck, "I told him about you."
"Oh?"
"He's going to find you, one day. He has the same look in his eyes that you do."
Kite tells him more, about how Gon protected one of the cubs. How even though it clawed and scratched at him until he bled, he still held it tight to his chest, small arms never faltering.
Kite thinks it's admirable. Ging thinks it's stupid, dangerous to hold something capable of hurting you so close.
But it's not Gon's fault. Nobody stayed behind long enough to teach him that.
"Hello?"
"Ging?" It's Gon's voice on the other end of the line
"What is it?"
"It's my nen. I— I don't have it anymore."
Ging is reminded of how small Gon is, his voice shaking.
"No, you still have it." He remembered sensing it as he climbed the World Tree, all bright and excited.
"But I can't use my aura."
It makes sense. Nen pacts are notoriously tricky. If Gon was fighting with the intent to use everything…
"Right, well. You're probably back to 'normal' now."
"Oh." There's a thickness in his words, a telling wobble.
Ging tries to explain it, "You fought with the intent to throw everything away."
"I know, but—"
"Just try to find what you want to achieve as you are now. It would be ungrateful to want more than that."
Ging knows he's a hypocrite, has no place preaching humility. He has spent his entire life wanting more, always chasing more.
"Okay," Gon says, dejected "…Thank you."
He hangs up before Ging has a chance to reply. Not that he would've.
Lying in bed that night, he thinks about Gon. Their paths will probably never cross again, Ging's own leading him straight into the Dark Continent.
He thinks about wanting, about shrinking your desires to fit a single continent, a single island. It makes him shudder.
Ging thinks about his own wants. How large they've always been. He's never quite managed to fill them out. He wonders if letting the air out of them makes them easier to hold. He wonders if Gon will be happier like this, as a normal kid.
But Ging knows he won't be, like he knows he could never be.
He hopes, anyway. For the both of them.
When Ging returns to visit Mito, Gon in his arms, he sees his mother's tree in the garden.
Only the stump had been left, jarring and bleak.
"Rot", Mito explained. Unexpected, untreatable.
That, Ging thought, is love. That is what love does.
On his way out, he tries to leave Gon with his Grandmother, promising a return in the distant future. Before he can hand him over Mito steps in front of him.
She's shouting, loud enough for the whole island to hear.
"Coward! You're a no good coward!"
"There are things that I want." He explains
Mito is crying, tears and snot rolling down her face.
"What about your son? What about being a father?"
"Other things. Bigger things."
Mito gets really angry then, clutching one hand to her chest as she uses the other to shove him away.
"There's nothing bigger than this, Ging! You're going to realise that someday, realise exactly what Gon means to you. But it'll be too late then."
She tells him to never come back. He listens.
Ging doesn't tell her that it's already too late. That he already knows exactly what Gon is to him.
Gon is something Ging planted years ago, a tree in a garden he never wants to see.
Even so, when he drops Gon into Mito's arms, gone as soon as he came, he makes sure to leave footprints behind, boots heavy in the sand.
Just in case.