Chapter Text
Gon was dead, and Killua was a ghost.
No. Killua thought, with such ferocity it had to be true. Gon isn’t dead— not yet.
Killua’s skin buzzed. He had always felt a static in his blood. It was one of his earliest memories, the sensation of being somewhere tight and cold and aching with the need to run.
Nen is an amplification, Bisky had explained once. Everything you are, laid bare.
Killua pushed the sensation to the side and grasped Alluka’s hand tighter. The plastic coated seat gave off an acrid acetone smell as it burnt.
“Killua?” Alluka asked groggily, sitting up. Killua’s grip had probably woken her. He couldn’t forget— he had to be gentle. She was still a child. She still had a chance.
Killua pulled a hand down his face, surreptitiously clearing the tears sparking at the corners of his eyes. “Good morning,” he said.
“Where are we?”
“The hospital.”
Killua glanced around the room they’d thrown up for Gon. It had all the fittings of a hospital, from the whirring machines to the stinging smell of antiseptic. It was so familiar it was almost a comfort. He had recovered in places like this more times than he could remember. But he had always been the one in bed, aching as his body knit itself back together. To watch was different. It hurt in a way he had never been trained for.
“My friend is here, sleeping. He’s—” Killua forced the words to come out smoothly. “He’s very sick.”
Alluka’s gaze travelled towards the dark smudge in the centre of the room. The curtain pulled around the bed rendered Gon an absent shadow.
“I want to help get him on his feet again.” Killua continued.
“You want Something to take over,” she replied, and it wasn’t a question. “Just when I was able to spend time with you.”
“Don’t worry,” Killua assured her. “Like I told you, we’ll be together from now on.” He smiled softly. Manipulative. Necessary. “I promise.”
Alluka pursed her lips.
The fluorescent lights flickered. Another machine clicked on, whirring, clicking, insectile. Killua’s heart pushed itself between his lips in a whisper. “Please help me.”
The darkness that swallowed Alluka couldn’t see his lip tremble.
Alluka was gone, replaced by the specialist that they called Nanika, the Something. Killua could barely look at her placid eyes and empty smile— but she was part of his sister, and she would save Gon.
“We should go in,” Killua said to no one at all. Nanika rarely responded. “I just need a moment.”
If only you had run together, Killua. If only you had taught him how to.
“We should— we should go in.”
The plastic curtain screamed against the floor as he pulled it back. The two of them crossed the threshold, and it was like walking into death itself.
Gon’s will was so strong that it radiated off of him, a sick, nauseating heat. It clawed the oxygen out of the air, leaving something thinner and more ragged. Killua drew Nanika further behind him, like he could afford any protection from what lay before them.
Nanika’s expression was unchanged.
“Hand,” Nanika murmured. “Hand?”
Killua reached underneath the covers for Gon’s desiccated wrist. Nanika reached out to take Gon’s hand from him. Flakes of Gon’s skin stuck to his fingertips. He wanted to throw up.
Killua had to keep it together. His sister was here. But seeing Gon like this— Killua took a step back, biting his lip so hard that he tasted blood.
He had to keep it together. He had to. Just until it was over, and then he could go. It wouldn’t be the first time he had run to the desert and hoped no one noticed how the lightning hovered over a single spot, snapping at a huddled shape on the sand. He just had to keep it together long enough.
“Please, Nanika.” Killua’s voice shook. He shook. “I wish—” and the thought came unbidden, welling up from somewhere deep and vital. That I could do it all over. “For you to heal Gon.”
Nanika turned to him, sickly grin untempered by the darkness in the air. “‘Kay.”
But instead of turning to Gon, she waddled over and wrapped her arms around Killua. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not when her hands became warmer, but as they heated he realized that he most definitely was not.
“Nanika, what are you doing?” He asked, his voice rising in pitch as her hands became even hotter, brands on his back. He tried to gently press her away. “Nanika, I need you to stop.” When the smell of burning flesh reached his nose he tried to push harder, then with all his strength. It was no use.
“Nanika!” Killua yelled, teeth grated against the pain. “Please save Gon!”
There was nothing in the world but heat and pain and grief, because under all of it, this meant that Nanika couldn’t do it, couldn’t grant his wish. Why else would she be doing this?
“Please, Nanika,” Killua murmured, his vision blurring. For all his training, there was only so much pain the body could take. “—Gon.”
Outside, the pigeons on the roof took off in a flurry of wings; whatever mangled scream had come from inside, they wanted no part of it.
The first rays of sunlight fell in lazy lines, warm and pleasant on Killua’s face. Killua rolled away from the light, surprised at the give of the bed beneath him. Too soft to be from the hostel.
And he could smell—
Incense and old blood. Home.
He jolted out of the bed, feline speed undermined by an unusual lack of grace. He scoped out the situation without a conscious thought. His old room, his old bed. It all looked the same as it always had.
Like a shrine to me. Like I’m coming back.
He had just enough time for the thought before the severity of his situation crashed into him. He had let his guard down around Gon. Stupid. Stupid. Illumi must have found them, taken them home. It was bad enough being back at the manor, but—
He couldn’t feel his Nen. Not just suppressed, not pacified, but gone. He couldn’t even sense where it would go, the glove of it slipped silently over his skin. His hands tightened at his sides.
What had Illumi done?
Killua flung open the door. He had to run, now, before his family caught up with him. Without his Nen, he was naked.
There were parts of him that were more scar than skin. But he had stolen his sister. Whatever his punishment was, it would hold nothing back.
Perhaps this time you will learn your lesson. One of a dozen memories rose of Illumi saying those words, the same tenor and pitch, the same unmoved eyes. The same pain.
He steadied his breath against the note of panic that wanted to rise. It was only pain, he told himself. But it will be worse. Killua cursed and kicked the wall, hard enough that the reinforced cement fractured.
“Killua, language!” A voice shot down the corridor.
His mother gathered her skirts and sped down the hall. How that woman moved in that many layers was beyond him, but she knew how to hustle.Killua reached instinctively for his Godspeed, but his body remembered what his mind refused to accept. There was nothing there.
A second, smaller figure tagged behind his mother. Kalluto, trailing where his mother led.
It was enough to give him pause. He hadn’t been alone in Gon’s room. Alluka.
He danced back, but met his mother’s searching gaze, thoughts racing. He wasn’t in chains. They weren’t punishing him yet, and he would take advantage of that while he could; he wasn't above asking.
By the time they were finished, he might not even be above begging.
“Where is Alluka?” He started. “What happened to my nen? How the fuck—” an iron-rodded fan smacked him upside the head.
“I said, language, Killua,” Kikyo chided. “You’re too young to be talking like that.”
He grit his teeth. “Sorry, mother.” His mother tsked, but she loved it when he played family with her.
Kikyo pressed a cold hand to his forehead. “Where have you been hearing things about Nen?” She asked. “You and I are going to talk to your father, and when Illumi gets back, I’m going to give him a firm dressing down.”
She grabbed his arm before he had a chance to protest. He was in no place to resist her efforts.
“He’s not here?”
Kikyo pursed her lips. “Illumi told you before he left, I’m sure. Two weeks, no more. If he’s gone any longer—” and now she assumed his voice, replicating the tone so well that an oily shiver traveled down Killua’s spine: “assume that I am dead, do not look for me no matter how tempting it may be.”
The words were familiar, and when Killua placed them, he couldn’t find any of his own.
Illumi had said those words to Killua— but that had been years ago, the day Illumi left to take the Hunter exam.
What the fuck.
His eyes flicked to the sides of the hallway— and yes, there it was. He’d loved the dumbwaiters when he was a kid. They had made the mansion’s walls into his own secret world, one of the few places he had ever found that were truly his own.
In the moment that Kikyo crouched down to brush the hair from his eyes, Killua twisted from her grip. His wrist smarted from the friction, but it did nothing to slow him down as he tore for the dumbwaiter. He flung open the shutters and dove in before his mother could come after him. Bracing his hands and knees against the vertical chamber, he shimmied his way up until he was high enough that he was undetectable, cloaked in musty darkness.
He considered the fact, very briefly, that he should no longer have been able to fit up here, given how much he’s grown in the last year or two. Yet that seemed like the least of his problems.
One second he’d been standing in the hospital room with Nanika and Gon, and the next he’d been here. He’d wished for Gon to be healed. Nanika had taken Gon’s hand— that much he remembered clearly. But when he tried to press further into memory, into the brief few moments where he’d made his wish, his head starting swimming and his arms trembled where they held him up.
Had there been a fire? All he saw was a blur of color and pain, the feeling of constriction bearing down on his chest.
Killua gazed down the shaft below and ran through his options.
Theory one was Illumi. He could have used his needles, taken away his Nen, and convinced the other Zoldycks to gaslight him. A reach. The lie was too farfetched, too easily disproved. Sloppy wasn’t Illumi’s style.
Theory two: a hostile Nen user had Killua trapped in his own memories, or the like. One of the Spiders had a Hatsu that worked with memories, so it wasn’t impossible.
The final theory was the one Killua felt least likely to be true, and the one that he wished for most ardently; somehow, some way, he’d been sent back in time. Every fibre of him knew that it was impossible. Every fibre of him sang with wanting. It'd be too neat, too easy— and if Killua had learned anything, it was that the universe was diametrically opposed to making things easy.
Unable to conclude what the ever-loving fuck was going on, Killua was forced to move on to his next problem: what was he going to do about it?
The obvious answer was to play along with whatever fantasy had been drawn up until he could fill in the blanks about what had happened.
Control the controllables.
He glanced at his clothes, now smudged with dirt but certainly distinguishable as the outfit he’d worn most during the exam. The date was obvious, then; he’d slept in these clothes because today was the day he made a run for it. Instead of getting dragged through half the house by his mother, he was supposed to have stabbed her.
So much for playing along.
Killua clambered down the dumbwaiter shaft until he reached an opening, ignoring the dissonance between his mind and his body. Fourteen year old him was taller and stronger than twelve year old him, and this diminished capacity would take some getting used to.
He was greeted by an empty hallway. Good.
Gon had learned Zetsu during the Hunter Exam. It’d taken Gon, knowing nothing, several days. It had to take Killua less than one.
Moving with the grace of an assassin— although a more imperfect one, now— Killua loped to his room. At the foot of his bed lay his pack, the clothes shoved haphazardly inside and woefully crumpled already.
All that remained was to make his escape. This time he wouldn’t get caught.
7:54 AM; he’d give himself until noon.
Killua’s watch-alarm beeped, insisting that his time was up. He saw no reason to fight down his grin as he showed his airship ticket to the flight attendant and she let out an equally bright chirp to confirm his first class reservation.
If everything was this easy, he’d be in and out of the Hunter Exam even faster than last time.
There was something gluttonous about letting himself sink into the airship seat. Gone was the prickle of real electricity under his skin, his constant companion these days. For once, he felt tired in a way that didn’t beg the skin off his bones.
It was an indulgence, undeserved but deeply welcome. The last time he had rested, really, was before everything had started in East Gorteau, before—
Killua tensed. Was he wasting Gon’s last moments in an airship seat?
Even if I am, there’s nothing I can do about it. And it was true; Killua hadn’t found a single crack in the illusion. He had to bide his time until he had more information. Or until this airship crashed. That should be happening soon, too.
Right on time, the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, the pilot would like to inform you that we’re having minor technical difficulties. Please keep your seatbelts buckled.”
Killua wedged his feet under the seat in front of him as the airship hit what was the first of many buffeting winds. It was going to be a bumpy ride.
Around him, the other passengers piped a chorus of distress. Killua cocked an eyebrow at the people retching into plastic bags. Did these people really think that they were going to pass the Hunter Exam? And if they did, could any of them be delusional enough to think that they would make good hunters? Getting a license was only the first step. There were plenty of weak hunters out there, too.
Until you are the strongest, you will always be weak to someone. Illumi had repeated it often.
You will always be weak to someone.
The overhead luggage compartment shuddered with the airship. The airship sputtered and dipped erratically. This is ridiculous. I should just bail now.
Killua hovered halfway out of his seat. He hadn’t done this the first time. How closely should he have been trying to stick to his original actions? What if he changed something irreparably?
Could that be part of the trap?
Killua eased back into his seat. A blaring alarm screeched from the intercom. “This is your pilot. My co-pilot’s taken a hit to the head—” the signal cut off for a moment. “We’d like to request that you stay calm as the airship makes an emergency landing.”
“Emergency landing?” A man demanded, face ruddy and crumpled with indignation. “We’ll be leagues from the exam site!”
“I’m suing this company,” a woman muttered to her companion.
“I can’t walk that far!” Another.
The noise level rose and rose, voices pitching louder to be heard over the harrowing whine of the engine.
“We’re going to die!” Wailed a boy not much older than Killua. His friend leaned over and tried to comfort him, but Killua could see fear in his eyes, too. He was trying to hide it, but neither of them knew what would come next.
All the sound was suddenly too loud, the airships’s groans too grating. They were approaching the ground, but Killua couldn’t get out of here soon enough. He made a snap judgement. So what if it messed things up? Things were going to get fucked soon enough anyway.
Prying himself out of his seat, Killua paced down the aisle to the emergency exit.
“Sir, you really need to keep your seat,” A soft-eyed air attendant objected. “The flight’s almost over. If you’ll just sit for ten more minutes, sir.”
“I’m going,” Killua snapped, and it seemed that she sensed that if she didn’t get out of the way her heart was coming out of this airship with him. She scrambled back, pressing against the wall. Smart.
Killua hardened his hand and stabbed the metal of the door. It parted easily enough, made of the same cheap metal as the rest of this wreck. Killua pried open a hole large enough for himself to slip through.
“Sir…” started the flight attendant again weakly. He had to give it to her; she kept her feet well, especially with the hole sucking everything that wasn’t strapped down out into the storm. A flurry of papers tore by. He leaned back so that they wouldn’t hit him.
“What?”
She pointed a trembling finger. “Your bag is open, sir.”
Killua glanced over his shoulder, somehow calmed by the ripping air currents. “Oh. Thanks.” He tugged the zipper closed and held the straps with both hands. “See ya.” He waved.
“Uh, yeah.” She waved back in spite of herself. “Thanks for flying with us.”
Killua grinned as he tipped back out of the airship. It was only fifty feet or so— he should be able to make that landing easily as long as he rolled off some of the momentum.
He fell back into open sky, and for a few precious moments, Killua felt weightless
But he knew where he was going. He knew who he would find. Gravity never waited for long, and he fell, as he always had, without a cry.