Work Text:
When everything feels like it's either black or white,
and there's one last choice left to make,
darling, darling...
Whenever things are uncertain,
come on, choose something sweet.
As for me,
I don't mind a little bitterness.
Yeah... that's just fine.
White.
Everything was white as far as he could see.
There were no walls, no ceiling, no windows. The horizon simply dissolved into the same endless pale void in every direction.
He assumed there was a floor beneath him, even if he couldn't actually see it. Otherwise, he would have been floating, and somehow that didn't feel right.
Hisoka slowed to a stop.
How long had he been walking? He couldn't remember.
He glanced down at himself. Black dress pants, a crisp white shirt, and a fitted vest. His feet, however, were bare. No shoes. No socks.
Strange.
He vaguely remembered putting on a pair of polished shoes before... before...
The thought slipped away before he could catch it.
He lifted his gaze once more.
White.
Nothing but white.
What exactly was he supposed to do? Continue walking? Sit down? Wait?
More importantly...
How had he gotten here?
"You idiot."
Hisoka's head snapped upward.
There was nothing above him.
"You absolute idiot."
He spun around, searching every direction at once. The voice echoed strangely, close enough to whisper into his ear yet impossible to place. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, carried by no air at all.
"You even went as far as making me kill you."
The magician froze.
He knew that voice.
Or rather... he felt as though he should know it.
His mind was sluggish, thoughts drifting through thick fog that refused to part. Every memory felt just out of reach, blurred around the edges like an old photograph left too long in the sun.
Then one thought surfaced with startling clarity.
He was dead.
And this wasn't the first time.
The realization settled over him with surprising ease, as though remembering something obvious he'd merely forgotten for a while.
The first time had been after fighting Chrollo.
His Nen would restart his body, just as it had done that time. But that alone wasn't enough. His soul still had to find its way back.
He began walking again, this time with purpose.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he called into the endless whiteness, his voice swallowed almost immediately by the silence.
He knew what he was looking for.
A door.
Finding one, however, was considerably more difficult when there were no walls to put it in.
There was also... it.
That was the real problem.
Death.
Last time it had worn familiar faces, borrowing the likenesses of the opponents he had longed to fight. It had offered him endless battles, roaring crowds, impossible victories, an arena that never emptied and opponents who never stopped getting stronger. It had known exactly what to tempt him with.
Hisoka wondered what it had prepared this time.
"Hisoka."
At the sound of his name, he turned once more.
Someone was standing behind him.
Long black hair framed a pale face, his skin almost luminous against the endless white surrounding them. Large obsidian eyes stared back at him, impossibly dark, so empty they seemed capable of swallowing everything that looked into them. A smile rested on his lips, wide enough to feel almost unnatural.
Hisoka's mind struggled to place the face. The fog inside his head resisted every attempt to think clearly, but after a long moment, recognition finally settled in.
"Oh." A small chuckle escaped him. "Well... this is new."
It was Illumi.
Or rather, it wore Illumi's face.
Physically, it was flawless. Every strand of black hair lay exactly where it should, every delicate feature perfectly reproduced. Yet something about it felt fundamentally wrong.
"So this is how you want to play?" Hisoka asked, tilting his head with amused curiosity.
"I don't know what you mean, dear."
The response only made him laugh again.
The word dear sounded strange in Illumi's voice.
Not incorrect, just... misplaced.
As though someone had borrowed the assassin's vocal cords without knowing which words belonged to them.
Illumi usually called him something else.
Something...
His thoughts drifted uselessly through the fog until a single phrase surfaced.
"Fucking idiot." The voice from outside… from outside whatever this was, resounded all over the place.
His smile widened.
Yes.
Sometimes Illumi called him that, usually after Hisoka had deliberately ignored one of his carefully constructed plans. Occasionally after accidentally ruining one instead.
The magician lifted his gaze toward the endless white above them, the motion seemed to shake something loose inside his mind.
Memories rushed back all at once.
The Black Whale.
The succession war.
Illumi and one of his siblings infiltrating the Phantom Troupe as double agents, patiently waiting for the right moment to betray them.
And eventually... they had.
The details remained frustratingly blurred, as though parts of the memory had been erased, but one image surfaced with perfect clarity.
Needles.
Flying toward his throat.
Illumi had killed him.
Hisoka couldn't even bring himself to be upset about it, it had always been a possibility. They had discussed it often enough that it eventually found its way into their prenuptial agreement.
Apparently, he had exercised that right.
How fortunate, Hisoka thought with quiet satisfaction, to have someone as reliable as Illumi.
That meant the mission had succeeded.
The Spiders were dead.
And somewhere in the world above, the real Illumi was probably sitting beside his corpse, calmly waiting for him to return.
His attention shifted back toward the figure before him.
The imitation was still smiling.
If anything, the expression had become even wider while he'd been thinking.
Uncomfortably so.
It reminded him of an actor who had been told to look happy without ever being told when to stop.
Hisoka simply turned away.
He still had a door to find.
He took one step, the floor vanished beneath him, ice-cold water swallowed him whole. It rushed into his mouth and lungs before he even understood he was falling. His arms flailed instinctively, fingers grasping at nothing as panic seized his chest. Then his hand struck porcelain.
He pulled himself upward, breaking the surface with a violent gasp.
His lungs burned as he coughed, water dripping from his hair and eyelashes.
He was sitting inside a bathtub.
Blinking rapidly, he looked around.
The white void was gone.
He recognized the room immediately.
His own bathroom.
Not his current one.
The private bathroom in the traveling theater he had lived with when he was twenty, back when he had been starring in several productions in Glass Gland Land.
His gaze settled on the door.
He knew what this meant.
The game had truly begun.
Before he could even climb out of the bathtub, the doorknob turned.
The door opened and Illumi stood on the other side.
He looked so young, probably around sixteen.
His hair cut much shorter than he wore it now, and the oversized jacket hanging from his frame did little to hide how slight he still was. He was trying so hard to look masculine, jaw set with practiced seriousness, shoulders held stiffly.
Beautiful.
And, if Hisoka remembered correctly... he was here to kill him.
Understanding settled over him almost immediately.
These were his memories.
And Death had decided to begin with one of his favorites.
The day they met.
Illumi had been hired to assassinate him.
Hisoka couldn't help smiling to himself.
What an adorable meet-cute.
For a dangerous moment, he wanted to stay.
He wanted to hear those first awkward conversations again. Watch Illumi pretend not to be curious about him. Relive every tiny moment that had eventually led them here.
He couldn't.
Without acknowledging the younger assassin, he pushed himself out of the bathtub and sprinted toward the door.
His fingers had barely brushed the handle before the world lurched.
The bathroom disappeared.
Warm porcelain became wrought iron beneath him.
He blinked.
Now he was seated at a small table outside a café, a steaming cup cradled between his hands. Around them, the city glowed beneath thousands of Christmas lights. Storefronts shimmered with decorations, children ran through the square bundled in winter coats, and in the center of the plaza stood a towering tree covered in ribbons and golden ornaments.
"...You know," he heard himself say.
The words left his mouth without permission, spoken by memory rather than choice.
"This is the first time I've spent Christmas with someone in a very long time."
Illumi sat beside him, not sixteen anymore, the Illumi he knew now.
His long black hair shifted gently in the winter breeze as he watched the lights without saying anything for a while.
They hadn't planned to spend Christmas together.
It had simply... happened.
"I want to spend every Christmas with you, Hisoka."
The words came with a bright smile.
Wrong.
His stomach tightened.
That wasn't what Illumi had said.
He remembered now.
'What is so special about Christmas, anyway?'
That had been the real answer.
Matter-of-fact. Completely sincere.
Hisoka almost laughed, ff course Illumi would say something like that.
The realization shattered the illusion just enough for him to move.
He stood so abruptly the chair toppled behind him and hurried toward the café entrance. The sign hanging from the glass read CLOSED, but he grabbed the handle anyway.
The door swung open.
There was no darkness waiting beyond it, as it had the previous time he was here.
Instead… There was a street on the other side of the door.
His breath caught.
He recognized it instantly.
Meteor City.
The air itself felt different there, thick with smoke and rust, carrying the smell of metal, garbage, and rain-soaked concrete. Dilapidated buildings leaned against one another like exhausted giants, and somewhere in the distance, dogs barked over the clatter of scrap collapsing onto itself.
Near the middle of the street, a child struggled to his feet.
Twelve, perhaps.
His clothes were filthy, his face bruised so badly one eye was beginning to swell shut. Blood stained the corner of his mouth as he pushed himself upright with obvious effort, every movement slow and painful.
Then the boy looked up.
Amber met amber.
Hisoka froze for a secons, then slammed the door shut.
His hand remained clenched around the handle for several long seconds, his pulse hammering against his ribs.
When he finally let go...
The handle dissolved beneath his fingers.
The café was gone.
The city was gone.
Once again, there was only white.
"What a painful existence."
The voice came from directly behind him this time, so close he could almost feel the breath against the back of his neck. Before he could move, slender arms slipped around his waist, embracing him from behind with unsettling familiarity. The touch was warm, the weight convincing enough that, had he closed his eyes, he might have believed it.
"There is nothing left for you there," the entity murmured softly. "Stay, Hisoka."
The magician remained perfectly still.
His pulse had yet to settle after what he had seen through the café door. Even now, his heartbeat pounded painfully against his throat. There was a reason he avoided dwelling on his childhood whenever possible. It wasn't because he had forgotten it.
It was because he remembered it far too well.
"Stay with me, my love."
Slowly, he turned within the embrace until he was facing the thing wearing Illumi's face.
It truly was remarkable.
Every feature had been reproduced with impossible precision: the smooth skin, the long black hair, the wide obsidian eyes. Looking at it felt like looking directly at his fiance.
And yet...
It wasn't.
"This isn't real," he reminded himself aloud, as though hearing the words might keep his thoughts from drifting.
Death smiled.
"But what does reality have to offer you, my dear?" it asked gently, lifting one hand to cup his cheek. "Pain. Loss. Disappointment. Here..." Its thumb brushed lazily across his skin. "Here I can give you everything you've ever wanted."
"You aren't him."
Whether he was answering the entity or reassuring himself, he wasn't entirely sure anymore. There was an uncomfortable pressure building behind his eyes, thoughts slipping through his grasp almost as quickly as he formed them.
"You're simply confused, love," it replied, the smile deepening into something unmistakably seductive. "Let me show you how real I can be."
It moved before he had time to react.
Their lips met.
Instead of pulling away, the man kissed it back almost instinctively.
His arms wrapped around the familiar body, his eyes drifting shut as the kiss deepened, warm and achingly familiar. For one dangerous moment he allowed himself to forget where he was.
When he opened his eyes again, the white void had disappeared.
He was no longer standing.
Illumi lay beneath him.
Younger again, perhaps twenty years old, his black hair spilling across the pillows, almost long enough to reach his chest. The room around them was immediately recognizable: dark wooden furniture, paper screens, the scent of polished cedar lingering faintly in the air.
The Zoldyck estate.
More specifically... Illumi's bedroom.
Their mouths found each other again almost immediately, hands wandering with practiced familiarity as they clung to one another. Against his better judgment, the magician felt himself relaxing.
He liked this memory.
No...
Out of everything Death had shown him so far, this one was his favorite.
If events unfolded as they had originally, someone would eventually walk past the bedroom door. He would have to hide before Silva noticed the intruder tucked away in his son's room. He still remembered the thrill of it, believing himself untouchable as he slipped beneath the Zoldycks' noses, fully intending to steal one of Silva's most precious possessions under the man's own roof, his oldest son’s virtue.
"Isn't it fun?" Illumi whispered between kisses, smiling up at him with unmistakable affection. "You get to initiate me into the art of sex in my own childhood bed."
The words stopped him cold.
His body went completely still.
That...
That wasn't right.
He had been the one who said that.
Every ridiculous word of it.
Illumi had only frowned in response, knitting his brows together in that adorably confused way he had whenever Hisoka became overly theatrical.
'I don't understand what's supposed to be appealing about that,' he had answered. 'It isn't my childhood bed. It's simply my bed. None of what you just said makes any sense.'
Then, after a brief pause, he had glanced toward the bedroom door and added with complete seriousness,
'Would you hurry up before my father walks by again?'
That had been real.
This wasn't.
Something wasn't right.
He knew that with absolute certainty, yet every time he reached for the reason it slipped through his fingers. There had been something he needed to do, somewhere he had been trying to go, something important he couldn't afford to forget.
What was it?
Illumi kissed him again.
The thought dissolved almost instantly.
The room grew wonderfully quiet. Outside, autumn leaves danced beyond the window, golden light spilling lazily across the floorboards. There was nothing beyond these walls worth thinking about. There was only Illumi beneath him, his familiar warmth, his quiet breathing, the softness of his hair between the magician's fingers.
For a few blissful moments, everything else ceased to exist.
'And now I have to carry you around too.'
His eyes flew open.
The voice hadn't come from the room.
It echoed faintly from somewhere beyond it, distant enough to sound like a memory, yet close enough to demand his attention.
'Do you have any idea how heavy you are?'
A smile tugged instinctively at the corner of his mouth.
Of course he knew how heavy he was. Most of that weight was muscle, something Illumi appreciated far more than he ever admitted aloud. The assassin never truly complained whenever Hisoka sprawled across him after a long day. Besides, the younger man was absurdly strong. He could carry far more than that without difficulty.
Complaining simply happened to be one of Illumi's favorite hobbies.
Nagging, the magician often liked to joke, was his lover's love language.
"...Illumi," he whispered.
The word struck something loose inside his mind.
Suddenly he remembered.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
He had been searching for something.
The door.
Illumi's bathroom.
Without another glance behind him, he hurried across the bedroom and pulled it open.
A woman's scream met him immediately.
"He is your father, and you will respect him!"
The scene waiting beyond the doorway was nothing like the room he was in.
The air smelled of damp wood, stale alcohol and rust. The house looked as though it had been stitched together from scraps no one else wanted, warped planks nailed unevenly together, mismatched furniture salvaged from countless different places. Empty beer cans and cloudy bottles crowded one corner of the room, stacked carelessly against the wall.
Near the center stood a woman with long, wavy brown hair and tired amber eyes.
She was painfully thin, exhaustion carved into every line of her face, yet there was still something undeniably beautiful about her.
His mother.
Opposite her stood a child.
Probably around ten years old.
Covered in dirt.
Furious.
"He isn't my father!" the boy screamed, his voice breaking beneath the force of his own anger. "He's just some man who comes over to fuck you when his wife isn't looking!"
The rage in that small body was almost unbearable to witness.
It was the kind of anger that never truly disappeared, only settled deeper inside until it became part of the person carrying it.
The slap came so suddenly it cracked through the room.
The child hit the floor.
Before the echo had even faded, the magician slammed the door shut.
Silence returned.
He remained motionless, one hand still wrapped around the doorknob, staring blankly at the worn wood in front of him.
That had been the only time his mother had ever hit him.
A few weeks later, she had died.
He still remembered her body lying motionless on the floor of that same little house.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered.
The words escaped almost without his noticing. A moment later they came again, louder this time, as though someone unseen had demanded an explanation from him.
"I didn't mean to."
A crack splintered across the wall beside the door, likely from how violently he had slammed it shut. It spread with alarming speed, branching like lightning through the room. The bedroom around him began to collapse, the walls, ceiling, and furniture breaking apart into countless fragments. Yet instead of crashing to the ground, every piece dissolved into pale sand before it could land, drifting lazily through the air until almost nothing remained.
He spun around.
Illumi was still there.
Or rather, where the bed had been only moments before.
The assassin doubled over, blood pouring from his mouth in violent, choking bursts.
"Illumi!"
The magician was at his side instantly, dropping to his knees and catching him before he could collapse completely. Blood had always been fascinating on Illumi, precisely because seeing him injured was so rare. And he killed so cleanly too. So seeing blood on him, whether it was his own or not, was a privilege.
This was different.
Utterly different.
"Illumi," he called again, one hand supporting the back of his neck while the other tried futilely to wipe the blood from his lips. "Look at me."
The younger man couldn't answer. He was choking, crimson spilling between his fingers, each desperate breath sounding wetter than the last.
There was nothing he could do.
Nothing.
His eyes rolled upward until only the whites remained visible.
Then his body went limp.
"No..." The word caught in his throat.
He cupped Illumi's face with trembling hands, tears blurring his vision before he even realized he was crying.
"Illumi, no." His voice cracked under the weight of panic. "Please... no."
Warm tears slid freely down his cheeks, dripping onto the assassin's face as he desperately searched for any sign of life.
Then, without warning, the body in his arms shifted.
The blood was gone.
The stiffness vanished.
The familiar weight remained, but when the man lifted his head again he no longer resembled the twenty-year-old from moments before. Instead, he looked exactly as Illumi did now, long black hair cascading almost to his butt, flawless skin untouched by injury.
And he was smiling.
That same impossibly wide, rigid smile.
It felt horribly wrong.
"Wasn't that fun?" the entity asked softly.
Still struggling to steady his breathing, the magician stared at it without answering.
The thing wearing his lover's face gently brushed damp strands of hair away from his forehead, its fingertips lingering against his cheek with practiced tenderness.
"If you stay here," it murmured, "we can play like this forever."
Its thumb stroked his skin almost lovingly.
"We can have sex..." it continued with that same serene smile. "And you can kill me."
Hisoka's fingers closed around the entity's wrist before he consciously decided to move.
He knew it wasn't Illumi.
He knew that.
Yet the warmth beneath his hand felt identical.
"Again and again," the entity whispered, leaning close enough that their foreheads almost touched. "You can break me however you want... and I'll always come back."
Its smile never faltered.
"I'll be your perfect toy."
The magician looked into those familiar black eyes for a long moment before a small, exhausted smile tugged at the corner of his own lips.
A sad one, almost apologetic.
“A toy,” he says, his eyes shining with something close to reverence, like a man who had just met God. “I thought that was what he was, didn't I?”
He looks upward, as though hoping the real Illumi might answer him, give him a sign, anything to tell him where to go from here.
“I thought he was a toy, like all the others. Something I could take down from the shelf whenever our paths happened to cross. Like a child opening a toy chest and pulling out a doll he hadn't touched in months.” A small laugh escapes him, empty and humorless. “I thought I could play with him whenever I pleased. I could be rough with him because it didn't matter if I broke him. That was the whole point, wasn't it? How exciting it sounded... to toy with a Zoldyck until he was broken beyond repair.”
His gaze lowers again, settling on the entity before him.
“But it became... strange.” He speaks more quietly now, almost to himself. “He wasn't breaking the way I'd hoped he would. I started wondering if perhaps he had already been broken before I ever met him. Broken from the inside out, like an expensive china doll cracked so delicately that you only notice the damage when you hold it against the light. Broken from growing up in a house where love had never existed.”
A smile tugs at his lips.
“But it turns out he wasn't a toy at all.” His fingers curl slightly, as though trying to grasp something invisible.
“He was a puzzle.” The words leave him almost reverently.
“And without even noticing, I'd been putting the pieces together for years. Slowly. Patiently. Like a project you cover with a cloth between sessions, only to come back weeks later and continue exactly where you left off.” His smile widens, bittersweet now.
“One piece became ten. Ten became a hundred. Then, one day, I stepped back and realized I could finally see the outline of the picture.” His amber eyes soften. “And I became obsessed.”
“The only thing that mattered anymore was finishing it. I wanted to see him complete. I wanted to know what the finished Illumi looked like... and then destroy him. Sweep the whole puzzle off the table. Watch every carefully placed piece scatter across the floor until he looked exactly as he had before I picked him up.”
He lets out a quiet breath.
“I thought it would feel wonderful.”
His voice nearly disappears.
"And then... I did it." He laughs, a loud, manic laugh that echoes endlessly through the white expanse. It spills out of him uncontrollably until even the entity seems startled, its uncanny smile faltering for the briefest of moments.
"I solved the puzzle, and it was beautiful." His eyes shine with something almost feverish. "It was so, so beautiful... and so impossibly complex. I'd never seen anything like it before. It was rare, one of a kind, and I wanted to throw it onto the floor. Maybe even burn the pieces afterward, so no one else could ever accomplish what I had." He lets out another laugh, softer now, shaking his head almost fondly. "But it was too magnificent. I just couldn't bring myself to do it."
His expression softens, the wild delight slowly giving way to something quieter, more reverent.
"So I didn't. I framed it. I made sure not a single piece would ever come loose again, and I kept it." His voice lowers as though he were confessing the greatest secret he had ever carried. "I kept it in my room so it would be the first thing I saw when I woke up and the last thing I saw before I went to sleep. And even when I can't see it, its beauty... its perfection... follows me everywhere."
He slowly raises a hand to his chest, finally releasing Death's hand as his fingers settle over his own heart.
"Right here." For the briefest instant he feels something beneath his palm.
Not his own heartbeat, but another hand.
Warm, impossibly gentle, brushing against his chest as though someone on the other side were still reaching for him, still waiting patiently for him to come back. It has to be his imagination. It has to be. Yet the sensation is so vivid that he finds himself leaning into it before it fades away.
He looks back at the entity, his expression calmer now than it had been since arriving in this endless white place.
"So, yes." A small smile curves across his lips. "Illumi isn't a toy."
There is no one there.
He is alone once more.
The magician lets out a quiet sigh and starts walking again. The last time he had done this it hadn't taken nearly this long to find his way back. Then again, he didn't know the rules of this place. He had no idea how long a soul could remain here before something irreversible happened, and he had no intention of finding out.
Something appears in the distance.
At first it is nothing more than a dark silhouette against the endless white, but as he approaches it slowly takes shape. A tree, standing alone in the middle of a patch of vibrant green grass. The sight is so unexpected that he nearly laughs.
Then he notices the children beneath it.
He stops in his tracks.
Gon and Killua.
He recognizes them immediately. They don't seem to notice him at all, too absorbed in whatever game they're playing. One chases the other around the trunk of the tree, laughing breathlessly before the roles reverse a moment later. They look completely carefree, untouched by everything that had happened in the living world.
"You can have them."
The whisper curls around his ear from directly behind him.
It is still Illumi's voice.
"You can have both of them if you want."
A quiet laugh escapes the magician.
"You know..." He begins as he turns around. "For someone who works so closely with him, you really don't know hi-"
The rest of the sentence dies in his throat.
The entity is no longer wearing the face of the man he loves.
Or rather...
It is.
Only much younger.
The black hair barely reaches his shoulders now, and an oversized kimono hangs loosely from his small frame. He can't be older than ten. His smile is exactly the same as before, just as stiff and unnatural, yet on a child's face it is infinitely more unsettling.
"You can have all of us," the child says, his voice soft and innocent.
The sight makes something twist painfully inside his chest.
How he wished he could have met Illumi at that age.
He looked so much like one of his younger brothers.
What was the boy's name again?
His thoughts blur together, slipping through his fingers before he can catch them.
His mind grows foggy once more.
'Kalluto.'
The voice doesn't belong to the entity.
Hisoka's head snaps upward.
It comes from somewhere far away.
Somewhere beyond this place.
The living world.
'You should try to get some sleep while you can. We need to be ready for whatever may come.'
Illumi.
His Illumi.
Without another thought he breaks into a run, his bare feet striking the invisible ground as he races toward the distant sound.
'Yes, he will come back.'
The voice is louder now.
Closer.
He thinks he can make out the faint outline of something ahead of him, a shape waiting at the end of the endless white.
'And if he doesn't...' Illumi continues, his tone calm enough to send warmth blooming through the magician's chest. 'I'll find a way to bring him back.'
A small smile begins to form on Hisoka's lips.
'...Just so I can kill him again.'
He can't help laughing.
There he is.
The real thing.
The object he had seen in the distance was a door.
A completely white door.
He reached for the handle and pushed it open.
It was his apartment.
He found himself looking into his own bedroom, where another version of himself lay sprawled lazily across the bed while Illumi emerged from the walk-in closet, half dressed.
“I left a top here the other day. Would you know where it is?” the black-haired man asked expressionlessly.
“I thought I was your top,” the magician joked.
The assassin rolled his eyes.
“I’m serious.”
“I think it’s still in the laundry. Sorry.”
Illumi sighed softly. He crossed the room, opened one of the dresser drawers without asking permission, and pulled out one of Hisoka's oversized shirts, the fabric hanging loosely from his frame.
“You keep so much junk around,” he observed. “You should clear out one drawer so I could put my stuff.”
Standing unnoticed in the doorway, the real Hisoka felt his stomach tighten before he even heard his own response. He watched the man on the bed slowly raise his head, his smile sharpening into something dangerous as his amber eyes settled on Illumi.
“And why would I do that?” he asked.
“Well...” Illumi replied, as though the answer were obvious. “I already spend a lot of time here anyway, and I sometimes leave some of my things behind. I would like to have a permanent place to store them.”
The word permanent echoed through the room.
The observer instinctively braced himself. He already knew what came next. He could see the exact moment his own expression soured, watched the easy amusement disappear behind something much colder.
“Are you fucking inviting yourself to stay?”
“I am just saying it would be more practical if-”
The sentence never reached its end. The Hisoka from the memory was already climbing off the bed, making for the bedroom door without another glance.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here.”
He walked directly toward the doorway. As their shoulders nearly brushed, the real Hisoka caught a glimpse of himself up close. His face was twisted with anger.
No.
Not anger.
Fear.
The memory-version disappeared past him without ever noticing he had crossed paths with his future self, leaving Illumi standing alone in the middle of the bedroom. The assassin remained perfectly still for several long seconds, his gaze lowered to the floor as though replaying the conversation in his head, searching for the precise moment everything had gone wrong.
Slowly, almost absentmindedly, he reached out and closed the bedroom door. His fingers lingered around the handle long after the latch had clicked into place, refusing to let go.
What a fool.
Watching it now, with all the clarity that had only come after losing everything, the magician finally understood what he had been looking at all along.
He had wrapped his terror in anger the same way he wrapped his scars in Texture Surprise. It had been another illusion, another performance, another desperate attempt to hide something far more fragile beneath something intimidating.
Because he hadn't been angry that Illumi wanted to leave things at his apartment.
He had been terrified.
Terrified of what that simple request actually meant.
Not long before that conversation, he had already realized his feelings had grown into something he no longer knew how to control. He loved having Illumi around. He loved the conversations that drifted effortlessly between murders, the dangerous jobs that somehow became fun when they worked together, the sex, the lazy mornings tangled together beneath the blankets, even the comfortable silence that settled between them when neither felt the need to speak.
But all of those things had become frightening the moment they stopped feeling temporary.
His whole life, the magician had drifted from person to person without ever allowing anyone to truly remain. He enjoyed people, certainly. He played with them, admired them, discarded them, mourned them when they stopped being entertaining enough.
He had never let anyone stay.
Not really.
He had been terrified of the vulnerability his feelings for Illumi demanded.
Of the commitment.
Of permanence.
He had always enjoyed living on the edge of death, throwing himself into battles simply because they thrilled him, never caring whether he walked away victorious or in pieces. But somewhere along the way, being with Illumi had begun to sound dangerously similar to having a future. A forever. An always.
And that frightened him far more than death ever had.
"Hisoka."
He recognized the voice immediately.
Without rushing, the magician turned around, one hand still wrapped tightly around the doorknob.
"Please stay."
A tired smile tugged at his lips, though there was no laughter behind it.
"That's a low blow, don't you think?"
His fingers refused to loosen around the handle.
He couldn't let go.
Not this time.
Death had abandoned Illumi's appearance. Instead, it now wore the face of his mother, no doubt inspired by the memories it had dragged him through only moments before.
Even knowing it wasn't really her, the man couldn't help smiling with unmistakable affection. It was a gentle smile, one born from longing rather than deception.
"You know..." he murmured, studying her carefully. "You and Illumi actually have a lot in common."
The entity tilted its head.
"Not only did you both end up making a living through killing people, he's also something of a shapeshifter. And you're both terrible actors." His smile widened just enough to become almost amused.
"I, on the other hand, know quite a bit about acting." He shook his head lightly. "My advice would be to study your characters a little better." His gaze never left the woman's face.
"My mother, for example..." he continued quietly. "She was a real piece of work."
There wasn't any resentment in his voice anymore. Only the detached fondness of someone finally capable of looking back without trying to rewrite what had happened.
"She was completely unfit to raise a child. Sometimes she'd swear she could see or hear things that weren't really there, although I suppose that worked in her favor. She made a little bit of money each day reading tarot cards and palms, and whatever nonsense she came up with sounded convincing because she genuinely believed every word of it."
He let out a small breath through his nose.
"Then she'd take the little money we had and spend it on booze instead of food."
For a moment, his eyes drifted somewhere far beyond the white void surrounding them, as though the memories had become clearer than the world itself.
"Most of the time, I was the adult." His voice remained calm, but there was something heavy beneath it now. "Actually... I was the adult all of the time."
"I was the one who kept us alive. I stole money, stole food, did whatever I had to do, and she'd thank me so sincerely whenever I came home with bread, as if I had somehow earned it honestly." A faint, bitter smile crossed his face.
"Then she'd start talking again about how everything would be better once that asshole who got her pregnant finally left his wife."
He shook his head.
"He never was going to."
"There were plenty of other little bastards like me scattered all over Meteor City. Hell..." His eyes lowered briefly. "The man wasn't even enough of a man to give me his last name."
The memory still haunted him.
He couldn't remember the man's face anymore, nor his name, and perhaps that was for the best. Some people deserved to fade into obscurity. Yet there were things memory refused to erase. The easy way he would greet him with a cheerful, 'Hey, buddy,' before ruffling his hair. The gentle smile. The casual suggestion that he should go play outside for a while whenever he came to visit his mother.
He had forgotten everything that mattered about him, except the parts that hurt.
"She spent all those years waiting for him to choose her, and he obviously never did," the magician continued, his voice quieter now as memories he had spent a lifetime burying rose to the surface one after another, impossible to stop. "And when I finally decided I'd had enough... when I stopped taking care of her... she drank herself to death."
He swallowed.
"She didn't even last a week without me." The words lingered in the white emptiness between them. "I blamed myself for years."
His gaze softened as he looked at the thing wearing his mother's face. There was sadness there, but no accusation.
"She was a lot of things. She wasn't perfect." A small, genuine smile appeared despite everything. "But you know what?"
His voice carried an unwavering certainty.
"She would never want me to stay here."
Without another hesitation, he tightened his grip on the handle and pulled the door open once more.
This time, whatever waited beyond it, he had already decided he would walk through.
The apartment was still there.
Only a few minutes had passed since the last memory.
Illumi lay across the bed with his tablet balanced on his lap, apparently reading something. His expression remained as unreadable as ever, but the magician knew him well enough to recognize the lingering disappointment hidden beneath that carefully composed face.
Then the other version of himself stormed into the room.
A plastic shopping bag swung from one hand.
He remembered this.
After leaving the apartment in a panic, he hadn't actually known where he intended to go. His feet had simply carried him to the nearest convenience store, where he'd wandered the aisles until he'd filled a basket with sodas, chips, candy, every snack he could remember Illumi liking, regardless of whether they made any sense together.
An apology disguised as groceries.
The memory-Hisoka tossed the bag unceremoniously onto the bed before crossing the room in quick, agitated strides. The anger still clung stubbornly to every movement, hiding something much uglier beneath it.
He reached for the dresser, wrapped a hand around each of the handles of the top drawer, and yanked with enough force to pull the entire thing free.
Its contents exploded across the floor.
Old shirts he hadn't worn in years, loose papers, forgotten receipts, broken sex toys he'd never bothered throwing away.
Random clutter accumulated over a lifetime of refusing to let go of things that no longer served any purpose.
Illumi had been right, it was all junk.
The assassin watched the entire spectacle in silence, saying nothing as clothes and objects scattered around. His expression barely changed, though there was the faintest widening of his eyes as the drawer slammed back into place with enough force that the real Hisoka found himself surprised the wood hadn't splintered.
The younger man still didn't speak.
Instead, the magician dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed. A frustrated grunt escaped him as he buried his face in one hand, his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ground painfully against one another. He sat like that for several long seconds, trying and failing to steady his breathing before finally speaking without looking up.
"There." His fingers dragged slowly down his face. "That one's yours."
Another exasperated sigh escaped him.
"You can have the whole dresser if you want." His shoulders slumped in surrender. "I don't care."
Illumi approached him carefully.
Not all at once.
His hand came to rest lightly against the middle of Hisoka's back first, hesitant enough that he could have pulled away if he wanted to. It was almost experimental, as though the assassin were quietly testing whether the storm had truly passed before daring to step any closer.
"You really overreacted earlier." There was no anger in his voice. No accusation. Just a simple statement of fact.
Of course Illumi would hold him accountable for what had happened. He wasn't the sort of person to pretend everything was fine simply because enough time had passed.
"I just wanted to know where the clothes I'd left here were whenever I came by." His fingers rubbed slow, reassuring circles against the magician's back. "I'm not asking for your hand in marriage or anything."
A humorless laugh escaped the other man.
"I know."
He scrubbed roughly at his face, praying Illumi wouldn't notice the moisture clinging stubbornly to his eyelashes.
"But it also means..." He paused, searching for words he had never expected to say out loud. "It means you have a place in my life."
The room fell silent.
"I thought I already had."
The answer was so immediate, so sincere, that it struck him harder than any blow ever could.
Watching the memory unfold, the real Hisoka felt another piece finally slide into place.
It had never occurred to him, back then, that none of this had been easy for Illumi either.
The assassin had been raised to need no one. Friends were unnecessary. Emotional dependence was weakness. Lovers were, at best, useful and temporary arrangements.
Yet somewhere along the way, he had quietly begun making room for someone else.
Not with grand confessions or dramatic declarations, but through the small, practical gestures that came naturally to him. He lingered after missions instead of leaving immediately. He spent holidays together without ever admitting he'd wanted to. He left clothes behind because, unconsciously, he'd begun expecting to return. He wanted a drawer because, in his mind, he already belonged there.
He had been reshaping his entire life, one careful adjustment at a time, until there was enough space in it for Hisoka.
And all the magician had seen was a threat.
I don't deserve him.
That had been his first thought.
It remained one of the truest things he had ever believed.
"Whenever I get the chance," the version of himself in the memory said quietly, "I'll make you a copy of the key."
His shoulders loosened as though surrendering to something that had frightened him for far too long.
"So you can let yourself in even if I'm not home."
Illumi didn't answer.
Instead, he slipped both arms around him from behind, resting his chin lightly against the back of Hisoka's shoulder before pressing a soft kiss into his hair.
Watching from the doorway, the real magician felt something inside him ache with unbearable tenderness. There had been no dramatic turning point after all. No single moment when they had suddenly become a home for one another.
Without another glance behind him, Hisoka took a step forward.
The magician woke with a violent gasp, his entire body jerking upright as though he had been dragged to the surface after drowning.
The sudden movement startled Illumi so badly that he flinched in his chair, while, on the opposite side of the cramped wooden cabin, Kalluto stirred awake on the worn sofa where he had apparently been sleeping.
"Shit, Hisoka." The assassin immediately pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a brief moment before exhaling in obvious relief.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was?" he scolded, his voice carrying far more emotion than he probably intended. "I thought you were going to come back much sooner."
Hisoka simply stared at him.
Alive.
Beautiful.
Real.
Slowly, he allowed himself to sink back onto the wooden table beneath him, forcing his breathing to steady now that the suffocating whiteness had finally disappeared.
"Where are we?"
His eyes wandered around the room. Everything was built from unfinished wood, and although the gentle swaying beneath him made it obvious they were still at sea, this certainly wasn't anywhere aboard the Black Whale.
"We're on a boat," Illumi answered matter-of-factly.
"The Black Whale?"
"No." The younger man shook his head. "An escape boat. I prepared it beforehand."
There wasn't even the slightest hint of pride in his voice.
"I knew you'd start something, so after you killed Chrollo, I killed you so we could escape." He spoke with the same calm tone one might use to explain the weather. "The whole thing went down."
"The whole thing?" the magician repeated.
"It started in the lower levels, but after we killed the Spiders the ship sank surprisingly fast. I don't know how many people survived." He paused briefly, mentally reviewing the timeline. "That was a couple of hours ago. The few lifeboats I saw all seemed to be heading toward the Dark Continent."
"I see." The words left him almost absentmindedly as he pieced everything together.
Then his gaze shifted toward the youngest Zoldyck.
"And how is our little spy doing?" he asked with an unmistakably teasing smile.
Kalluto immediately puffed out his cheeks, crossing his arms before pointedly looking away.
"He's a bit upset," Illumi explained.
The child let out an offended noise.
"But he should have known better than to develop genuine feelings for them. He understood from the beginning that this was always a possibility." There wasn't any cruelty in the assassin's voice. If anything, it sounded oddly matter-of-fact, as though he genuinely believed he was offering his sibling a valuable life lesson.
"Besides," he continued, "it's important to learn who you can trust."
"As if you're one to know!" Kalluto shot back, glaring at his older brother.
Illumi ignored the interruption entirely.
"Other than that," he went on as though nothing had happened, "he did a very good job."
The compliment landed instantly.
Hisoka watched the youngest assassin's ears redden before the blush slowly spread across his cheeks, despite how stubbornly he tried to maintain his offended expression.
Some things, apparently, were universal among siblings.
"As for us..." Illumi continued, returning his attention to the magician. "According to our agreement, since you died, I now legally own everything that previously belonged to you."
"Well," Hisoka replied lazily, folding his hands behind his head, "that won't be a problem. Once we get married, I'll own half of it again."
"Actually..." The assassin's expression remained perfectly serious. "Since you died, the prenuptial agreement fulfilled its original purpose. Legally speaking, it is no longer binding."
For a second, silence filled the cabin.
Then the magician smiled.
There it was again.
That wonderfully practical mind of Illumi's, capable of turning even death into a contractual inconvenience.
"In other words," he declared dramatically, placing a hand over his chest as though deeply wounded, "I've been demoted from fiancé to boyfriend."
He looked at his lover with exaggerated disbelief.
"Am I right?"
"Precisely." The assassin reached up almost absentmindedly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear before smoothing it back into place with the same meticulous care he applied to everything else.
"If you would like to establish a similar arrangement," he continued as though discussing an ordinary business contract rather than their engagement, "we can negotiate the details further."
He paused for a brief moment.
"But this time, I am going to require an actual ring before proceeding with the negotiations."
"As you wish, my dear." The magician smiled, reaching out to gently cup Illumi's cheek. His thumb brushed lazily across the younger man's skin, as though reassuring himself that it was warm, that it was real. "You may have to wait a little while, though. As you know, I'm completely broke at the moment."
"Well," Illumi replied without missing a beat, "you'd better start working, then."
His expression remained perfectly neutral.
"You've already started over from nothing more than once."
A soft laugh escaped the older man.
"You really do know me, love."
Night settled quietly around them.
The tiny escape boat offered little in the way of comfort, so they made do with what they had. Kalluto was given the worn sofa without discussion. He was still growing, after all, and needed proper sleep if he was ever going to reach his full potential. Neither adult argued the point.
That left the floor for them.
Curled beneath a pile of blankets that did little to keep out the cold, they lay pressed against one another simply to share what little warmth their bodies could provide. The sea rocked the boat in slow, rhythmic motions, the silence between them broken only by the creaking of old wood and the distant sound of water against the hull.
After a long while, Illumi finally spoke.
"What did it offer you?"
The question caught Hisoka off guard.
"You said it offered you things the last time you died." His voice remained as calm as ever, but there was something quieter beneath it now, something almost hesitant. "I started wondering whether this time... maybe it offered you something you couldn't refuse."
The magician turned his head to look at him.
"You think I don't have any self-control?" A faint smile tugged at his lips. "I have a lot more restraint than you give me credit for."
Illumi simply looked back at him.
"What was it?"
For a moment, the older man didn't answer.
Instead, he studied the familiar face beside him, tracing every feature with his eyes as though committing it to memory all over again.
He was here.
Alive.
Real.
Not an imitation. Not a memory. Not Death wearing borrowed skin.
Just Illumi.
"It offered me a version of you that nags a little less," he finally replied.
Judging by the assassin's utterly unimpressed expression, the joke failed spectacularly.
The magician couldn't help laughing anyway.
He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss against the tip of Illumi's nose.
"You have no idea how much I missed you," he whispered.
If he ever visited Death again, it would not be alone.
After all, all he had ever wanted was someone he could love until the very end.