Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Crack.

Hands electrified in a steely blue light, dexterous and sharp, deliver another imperceptible punch to his chest. He stutters a warbled choke, attempting to raise his elbows defensively against his assailant. But the sparks of lightning are fast, faster than his reflexes, faster than his nerves will ever be, fast enough to disappear as they make contact with his billowing shirt—only to reappear seconds later against a new location on his body. His opponent is a flutter in the wind, a mere speck of blinding cerulean light here and there, a ghost of a human presence in the thick night. 

Crackle. 

A bolt of lightning resounds within the clouds, disrupting their forms into a chaotic whirlpool. He is only able to recognize the searing pain of the previous attack when electricity dives from the atmosphere and onto his body. Flames engulf his back. He shouts a flurry of curses, attempting to extinguish the tongues of fire threatening to breach the meager protection of his shirt by flailing desperate hands across the fabric. 

But his opponent is, as he has been the entire fight, miles ahead of him. His hands shed their crackling coat of electricity; no more Nen is needed to leisurely push him onto the ground, subduing the flames with the wet, murky mud. 

He coughs, then compensates for the lack of time in the fight to breathe properly by inhaling strong gusts of the cool, breezy air. It sends a shivering sensation down his spine, calming the last remnants of adrenaline still pulsing within his bloodstream, soothing the ringing in his ears. His entire body throbs with exhaustion, pain coursing through every joint and muscle. Squinting, he manages a dumbfounded stare at the boy in front of him. Sparks of lightning fizzle across his skin until eventually dying out.

His opponent collapses to his knees onto his body, straddling him to the ground. He cannot get up anymore.

He has been defeated.

Silver hair sparkles like gemstone dust underneath the moonlight. Its owner does not wear an expression of victory; instead, his eyes are morose, lips pressed into a fine line. He hasn't broken the slightest sweat. His tunic looks brand new, no hint of dirt or grime staining the fabric. Yet somehow, amidst his undeniably powerful win, his face wrenches in hurt—like he's the one that has lost.

"Two years," says his opponent, just the slightest breath, "is a lot of time to lose."

"I gained it back," he replies, panting. But his chest grows tight. He's afraid this conversation is predestined. 

"But time didn't stop for anyone else. Not for your enemies, not for your friends...not for me." Blue eyes seem to glass over, then are quickly hidden under a curtain of soft white fringe. "I'm afraid we may never spar again."

"Don't say that," he grits out defensively. "I caught up with you before, and I'll do it again."

"I won't forgive myself," his opponent whispers, ignoring his words, "if it happens again. If I can't protect you, no matter how strong I am."

"Killua—"

"If we meet again," silver hair guards a wounded expression, "you have to be as strong as me. And we'll fight to test it."

His opponent pauses, waiting if he has anything to say. Anticipating. Praying. Silence stalks on. Eventually, the weight on his body releases. Silent footsteps fade into the night. 

"Until then, our paths will not cross, Gon."

Four years later

Gon wakes up in a pool of blood.

His eyes flutter open, adjusting quickly to the blaring red sun above him. Narrowing his stare, Gon throws a hand over his forehead, finding the action slightly difficult to execute. The reason, he soon finds, is the large steel blade currently wedged into his shoulder.

Raising an eyebrow curiously, Gon wraps his fingers around the hilt of the lodged knife and pulls, gracefully releasing it from its hold in his skin. He doesn't reveal the slightest wince, only choosing to intensify the Ko around his injured shoulder. Though the precaution is unnecessary. Because as he turns to scan the oddly misshapen ground underneath him, he does not find an accumulation of his own blood; rather, there is a slimy, dark green pus that floods out of the mangled, flattened corpse of the monster under his body.

Events leading up to his current situation flood past the dull headache in his brain. Recent training activities have brought him to Meteor City, where a collection of scattered, malicious, and hungry monsters lurk, the remaining remnants of a successful mission in the Dark Continent a few years prior. Banished from their original homes at the hands of powerful starred hunters, they teem with unbridled and insatiable rage. Due to an evolutionary hiccup as a result of perfect environmental conditions—toxins, a heavy atmosphere, and tumultuous terrain—these monsters were born with their Nen unlocked, and they’ve spent their entire lives mastering the individual styles innate to their aura. The monster underneath Gon’s body was no exception. It was a remarkable Conjurer, able to continuously make and fire bullets out of thin air mere inches from Gon’s skin.

His foundational training had been empirical for at least a few years as Gon focused on regaining his Nen and fortifying his Hatsu . But holding Ren for days at a time and whittling the margin of error in his defensive/offensive Ko ratio to the thousandth percent can only get him so far. He was hungry. Hungry for real, unexpected, and adrenalizing combat. And he found his answer in the hideously grotesque monsters wreaking havoc on the already destroyed Meteor City.

Or rather, Ging did. And with his ass still in flames years after the Hunter Association discovered his deadbeat nature towards his only son, he sporadically pays his due diligence as a faux affectionate father by sending Gon to new ends of the world in hopes of assisting his training endeavors. Having been a front-runner in the Dark Continent expedition, Ging knew the sheer power of the native monsters firsthand. 

But he also knew his son’s resolve. And, very expectedly, Gon has obliterated thirty-five of these monsters in one week.

Gon lifts himself off of the brutalized monster’s corpse with a low grunt, brushing dirt off his drawstring pants. Unfortunately, the garment is now stained with a rather unflattering chartreuse hue directly on his butt, but the pants have seen better days anyway. He has been in this ghost town for a while. Head still pounding, he brings a calloused hand to his temple, trying to connect the segmented images of fighting this monster to lying unconscious on its corpse.

“It hit you at a pressure point,” calls a voice from behind the hill in front of him, seemingly knowing the confusion racking Gon’s brain. He lets his hand fall back to his side. “You’d already punched a hole in its gut, but its last conjured bullet hit you right at above your lymph node. It wasn’t aiming there, and you were busy lodging your fist in its intestines to see it. It simply got lucky. You can never let your enemy get lucky like that.”

“What rank was that one, Bisky?” asks Gon, throwing another glance back at the monster. Indeed, its midsection is a nauseating glob of organs and bodily fluids, meshing together in an unappealing splatter. In total, the fight lasted only a minute or two. This enemy was far from a difficult one, predictable and unstable in all the ways Gon has been trained to anticipate. Yet his teacher is right. He was unlucky, and as a result he lost consciousness for a few seconds—a fatal mistake in a real battle.

“Well,” Bisky emerges from the dry hill, heat waves pulsating over her figure in the distance, “probably another B rank. I don’t think you’ll find anything higher than that here. Or, you’ve probably killed them all by now.” She crosses her arms over her chest, glaring down at her pupil. “It’s too damn hot here for me to waste energy lecturing you about that pathetic conclusion. You know what you need to work on.”

“Yeah,” Gon nods, suddenly aware of the thick coat of sweat on his face. Indeed, the temperature is oppressive out here. He’s training his endurance, too, so he also hasn’t had a lick of water in hours. “So are we done here, then?”

“Depends if you’re satisfied or not.”

“I’m not, but we are done,” he declares, finality in his voice. “These monsters…they’re fun, but they don’t compete.” He doesn’t miss the way Bisky’s shoulders tense at his words. “Maybe I need to go back to fighting Hunters. Starred ones. Bisky, can we duel again?”

It’s a half-joke, and he expects Bisky to hit him with a classic fist against the head. Instead, there’s a tense pause of silence. She makes her way down to the base of the hill where Gon stands, bloodied and dressed in whatever fabric left of his clothes survived during his week here. His expression is calm, curious—eyes aflame with a light that Bisky is now careful not to extinguish. He’s never stopped being a good kid, but he’s never stopped being dangerous, either.

The sight of him chills her to the bone.

“To be honest, Gon,” she finally says, a deep sigh emerging from her gut, “I’m not sure how much more I can teach you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re still worlds ahead of me.”

“I don’t mean it in that way. But if your goal is still what it was when you came to me, then we’ve come to a point where I don’t know how to measure your proximity to it anymore.”

Gon’s expression doesn’t change. “Take a guess, then.”

His heart races. Bisky’s words have not come out of the blue. He’s been particularly perceptive to the deaccelerated pace his teacher has taken in the past few weeks, the way sparring feels more and more equalized, the morphed expression regarding his combat abilities from omniscient to uncertain. He knows his progression has been exponential, intensified by the mixture of relearning old knowledge with an unshakable determination. And he feels it. There’s a new caliber to his Nen—a quiet, contained fire of force and emotion.

Bisky furrows her brows, irritated. “I’m not a mind reader. I can only surmise he’s been training just as hard as you. And you had a catch up game to play.” Gon begins to deflate, but not before her tone hardens. “But what I can give you is my gut feeling.”

Gon holds his breath.

“I think you’re ready to look for him.”

Killua Zoldyck has been all but wiped from the face of the planet.

At least, that’s what it feels like. As Gon scrolls through the hundredth webpage, hunched over a desktop in a quaint internet cafe, he’s yet to find any substantial information about the man past the age of fourteen. He’s checked every channel—underground forums, the Hunter website, even manually phoning mutual figures from their past—but after eight hours of relentless searching, he is none the wiser.

Of course, Gon expected this. It’s not like he hasn’t had an infinitely more challenging chase with his own father—he’s a sucker for the thrill of it, anyway. He takes a sip of his umpteenth coffee for the night and stares at the gritty ceiling. When he was a naive teenager, unassuming of the monumental words Killua had spoken during their duel four years ago, Gon tried to phone him up, confident the spark would ignite right back. Not only did Killua very pointedly not respond, but the number didn’t exist anymore. Originally Gon imagined that he was the sole exclusion of Killua’s contact. And this hypothesis made sense. He still has no idea why Killua made such an ultimatum the last time they met, but it was a statement as final as ever. It didn’t seem that he had any intention to revisit Gon and their relationship any time soon.

But strangely, most of the world is shielded from any knowledge on the ex-assassin’s whereabouts or expeditions. There are only a select few figures in Killua’s circle who know even the most basic information about the elusive man. It would help in his search that Killua has a remarkably unique appearance. But Gon hasn’t seen him since they were sixteen years old, when his figure was electrified in a stunning cerulean light, silver hair sharpened to spikes and whipping above his head, expression unable to hide the turmoil in his mind. Who knows how much he’s changed since.

Their circles overlap, though, albeit very slightly. A few days prior, Gon rang Alluka, asking her where he could find her older brother. Her voice over the phone was an intensely mature, gentle tone, catching him off guard. It had been that many years, then. Such a prolonged amount of time had passed where the young, bubbly girl he met at the base of the World Tree had become a reserved, cautious woman. 

“I’m sorry, Gon,” she said, her voice crackling over the speaker of his phone. “But I’m afraid my brother instructed me not to tell you about his whereabouts. I hope you will not take it personally. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to call again.” The line was killed.

Despite the disappointing response, Alluka’s words only intensified Gon’s resolve. He knew Killua wouldn’t make this easy for him. The both of them always sought a challenge.

Still, there’s one other person who may be able to offer less inhibited information. As the sun slowly climbs above the horizon, signifying yet another night Gon has spent rotting away in the internet cafe, he takes note of the changes present in Yorknew City since he’s been there last, several years ago. A new coffee shop down the block, more rich people, and pavement cracking at the edges. He hasn’t necessarily missed it. Gon’s training has taken him across the globe to far more exciting, adventurous locations, but he isn’t the one who chose this location. Kurapika is.

Rubbing his eyes of lingering grogginess, Gon forces himself up on his half-asleep legs and makes his way out of the internet cafe to their designated meet-up spot: a timid breakfast shop a few blocks away. Every September, without fail, Kurapika shows up for the annual underground auction like clockwork. It’s one of the countless bases he keeps tab of just in case an indication of his clan’s eyes show up again.

This month is no exception. As Gon is halfway through his stack of pancakes, Kurapika all but collapses into the booth in front of him. Somehow, his disposition seems to always be more exhausted than the last, eyes bloodshot and skin pale. His blond hair is well past his shoulders by now and is tied into a loose ponytail that sits over his right shoulder. Though Kurapika is one of the hardest of his friends to keep tabs on, he’s also the one Gon never really has to. One look at the steely expression that stays planted in Kurapika’s worn face tells him that the Troupe is still his primary concern.

Though Kurapika seems to startle a bit in surprise when he lays his eyes on Gon. Indeed, he realizes, it’s been a while since he’s seen Kurapika too. With the intense training regime Bisky has all but mandated on him, he can imagine his physique is much different than it was when he was a teenager.

“Thanks for meeting me,” says Gon, pouring the other a cup of coffee. Kurapika takes it in his hands without a second thought. “How’s the auction going?”

“The usual,” Kurapika murmurs. “I apologize for making you come all the way to the city to talk with me. These days I just can’t afford to get off schedule.”

“Don’t stress about it. I’ve been bouncing around all over the place, anyway.” He pauses, lowering his voice. “I won’t waste your time. I’m trying to find Killua.”

“I thought that might be the case. Honestly, I was wondering what happened. You guys used to be attached at the hip.”

Gon furrows his brows. “Nothing happened. He just…” He isn’t exactly sure how to explain how this situation has arisen. Four years ago, Kurapika had also been at their reunion—a large congregation of their friends in a hotel in Swardani City. It would be the last time anyone in their circle saw Killua. He showed up three hours late, stayed for thirty minutes, and left silently into the night without a single person noticing.

All except Gon. He followed after the retreating boy, inquiring where he was headed—and Killua responded with the quietest utterance of two words. “ Let’s spar.”

Gon left the city the following morning with the ultimatum hanging over his head like a heavy cloud. Maybe it was a test. If they were to pair up again, tackle the conundrums the Association throws at starred hunters like themselves, Gon knew he’d have to train and regain the potential he once had. But it just didn’t make sense. The words were coated in hidden meanings that were undecipherable.

Now that Gon is stronger, he’ll just have to find Killua and decode them himself.

“I heard that Killua was recruited to finish the Dark Continent expedition,” continues Gon. Kurapika stops stirring his coffee. “And I know you were also on that mission. So I thought you might be a good place to find some intel on him.”

“Well,” Kurapika lets out a slow, level exhale, “we left the Continent two years ago. He could be anywhere by now.”

“Ging tells me otherwise.” No he doesn’t. But Kurapika doesn’t need to know that he’s bluffing through his teeth. He’s not leaving this diner without at least some lead.

“What does he tell you?”

“That the expedition didn’t end the way the Association says it did.”

Kurapika examines him for a moment, trying to find any indication of an emotion in his face. But Gon is relentless. He wears a casual, attentive expression as easily as a shirt. Eventually, Kurapika leans forward, dropping the volume of his voice, as well. “Well, it makes no difference to me if you’re lying or not. Eventually this will come out to the public. The expedition…hasn’t ended yet.”

Gon raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know all the details,” says Kurapika, “because I’ve found myself preoccupied with other developments recently. But it seems there are a few high-grade enemies who have made their way to human-occupied areas. They’re B or A ranked, undoubtedly—only the most reputable Double and Triple starred Hunters have been tasked with their extermination. I can only imagine Killua is one of them.”

“So he’s a Bounty Hunter, then?” Gon asks. Kurapika shakes his head in response.

“I don’t know what his motivations are in his involvement with the Dark Continent. I never worked alongside him while we were there. Originally, it was probably the money. Or maybe even just the thrill of the action. But now…I can’t imagine what has made him stick around.” He corrects himself. “ If he has stuck around.”

But Gon knows Kurapika’s intuition is incomparable. If his gut feeling is saying that Killua is still involved with the after effects of the Dark Continent expedition, it’s likely he really is. “So I just have to find the remaining enemies to find Killua.”

“I don’t think a reminder of how dangerous these ring-leaders are will permeate your brain,” says Kurapika, sighing. “But I know you, and you’ll find them no matter what. So I’ll save you some time. The last spotting of one was in Gordeau Desert, just a few days ago.”

Gon’s eyes widen. “That’s—”

“A door away from here, I know. You’re welcome.” Kurapika manages the smallest smile at the sheer upturn Gon’s face takes, a brilliant grin aimed in his direction. “If you hang out around here for a couple days, you might run into a Hunter tailing it.”

Gon wouldn’t be walking out of here with just a lead. He’d find Killua in a blink—the entire city was at his disposal. Before he’s able to get down on his hands and knees and shower Kurapika in gratitude, the elder holds up a hand and etches a scowl back onto his face. “That intel is sensitive. I just put my Hunter status at risk by telling it to you. So pay back the favor and give me some information in return.”

Gon shrugs. “...Okay, what do you need?” Unlike his peers, he hasn’t been doing much other than beating up some Continent weaklings and practicing his Nen. His goal is fine-tuned and focused, unwavering from when it was set four years ago. 

“Why couldn’t you just call Killua yourself and ask him where he was?”

When Gon doesn’t respond, instead shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Kurapika crosses his arms. “So he’s not contacting you. When’s the last you heard from him?”

“...The reunion. Four years ago.”

“Why didn’t you start looking for him earlier?”

“He gave me a condition,” manages Gon, working his jaw. “That the next time we met, I’d have to be as strong as him. And now I am. Or, at least I think I am.”

Gon almost expects Kurapika to have some expert analysis of those words—tell him exactly what Killua meant, tell him that he gave the same condition to all of his friends. But he knows that’s a lie. He doesn’t even have to meet the distant, somber look in his gray eyes to know what he’s thinking.

“Do you think he wants to see you?”

“Of course he does,” says Gon. Because there’s no world he can bear to imagine where that wouldn’t be the case. 

Nightfall comes for the third time in Yorknew City. Though the air is chilly, hints of autumn permeating the atmosphere, Gon pairs his restitched, sage green drawstring pants with a thin tank. A chase is bound to warm him up anyway.

His game of careful investigation has proven to be quite difficult due to the auction. The population in the city has nearly tripled, and the streets teem with civilians, auctioneers, mafia bosses, and Hunters at every hour. Neon lights pulsate from buildings and project into the clouds, casting a foggy bright cloak onto every block, making it impossible to scout from an aerial view. As a result, Gon is forced to conduct his search on the ground, slithering through the crowds with darting eyes and cautious footsteps. If he weren’t in Yorknew for the reasons he is, this would have been a fantastic weekend to spend here as a visitor—hopping high end clubs, sharing wines with experienced Hunters, digging through piles and piles of invaluable jewels and trinkets. But he knows those experiences are nothing compared to what he’s seeking. 

Music blares through speakers at ear-shattering volumes, and he keeps bumping into hyper buyers roaming the night markets. Gon only has his sense of sight to rely on. Though even that is often obscured by the flashes of bulbs strung above his head and the smoke of cigars from passersby. A quiet, steady coating of Ten surrounds his body, hands clenching and unclenching, lips repeatedly licking his lips, chest slowly rising and falling in an almost predatory preparation.

His efforts are rewarded a quarter past one in the morning. 

The cloaked figure almost passes him by. It’s a shabby garment, torn at the sleeves to reveal the slightest slivers of pale wrists, leading to hands that hang limply against his sides. He walks with his head tilted to the ground, hood almost obstructing any glimpse of the person it conceals. Almost . Because, no matter how much time has passed, Gon has that gait ingrained in his brain—those graceful, quick fingers committed to memory. 

Their shoulders barely touch as they walk in opposition, the lightest hair's breadth of fabric rubbing against Gon’s bare skin. Time seems to slow down as the hooded figure tenses in the slightest capacity. A thousandth of a difference in his aura, undetectable to anyone but him in the crowd. Gon digs his heel in the dirt, entirely imperceptible, reveling in the way he is able to read his target down to the atoms in his movement. He stops walking.

The hood moves upwards the slightest inch. A hint of blue peeks out from the shadow it casts—a primal, alarmed iris of a hue that isn’t shared by anything else in the world. Gon’s lips curl into the beginnings of a smirk, heart pounding in his chest. That’s how he knows.

“ Found you.”

Chapter Text

Killua is gone in a flash. In a handful of milliseconds, the space where he once stood in the crowd is empty, an odd perforation in the bustling crowd. Those nearby blink in confusion, wobbling their heads in every direction in attempts to understand the sudden gap in the tight streets. For the average set of eyes, it’s as if he teleported entirely.

But Gon knows. His trained eyes easily follow the trace of Killua’s figure as it scales the wall of a skyscraper. He’s at the roof in less than a second, cloak billowing in the icy wind as he approaches the clouds. Though his figure isn’t lit with a tell-tail shroud of electricity that would indicate Godspeed, the clothes on his body are choppy when they move, static weaved through the stitches of their fabric. Killua is most definitely electrified. And he probably thinks he’s fast enough on his own to outrun Gon without the use of his signature move.

Gon grins. That’s fine. He’ll give Killua a head start on the chase. 

He’s a lot less subtle about leaving the crowd than Killua is. Years of perfecting his Nen abilities have allowed him to expand his territory into the realms of Emitters and Transmuters, and unlucky for Killua, his special abilities are all but unknown to Gon. As a result, he’s spent meticulous hours crafting the perfect way to catch up to the speed of lightning. A burst of bright, golden aura escapes from the soles of his shoes, projecting his body hundreds of feet into the air, as the crowd below him shouts in sudden chaos. Wind whips in sharp, cold tongues against his skin, but he’s never felt more warm in his life. At eye level with Killua’s back, his heart skips a beat at the way the cloak doesn’t hide the sudden tension in his spine. 

Yeah, he decides. He’s strong enough now.

Killua wastes no time propelling himself away from the rooftop, passing the stretch of the roof’s ground in just a few strides. At the building’s edge, he places his hands on the thin railing and pushes himself onto the roof of the adjacent building, body flipping in the air, and continues his dash. Gon can hardly contain the heat drumming through his chest. Just from the few seconds he’s spent chasing this mysterious figure from his past, he is deeply aware of the sheer elevation in strength and speed Killua has gained. Bisky was right. But there was no world in which Gon imagined that Killua would ever stop developing his power anyway. Despite the revelation, though, Gon can only feel excitement blossoming in his chest. Somehow, the speed of lightning has grown slower. 

Or rather—he’s gotten faster.

Gon lunges forward, prepares another aura boost from his foot, and takes one aggressive leap to pass the building’s rooftop and onto the next. He tails Killua close enough to watch the end of his cloak ripple violently in the wind. The skyline of bright buildings, fireworks, and blimps are mere flecks of kaleidoscope colors in his peripheral vision, his pace fast enough to blur the ends of his eyesight into streaks. Their chase feels animalistic, decisions being made based on pure innate instinct, no time to possibly strategize. Killua bounds from one roof to the next, climbing perpendicular to buildings when the height difference is particularly large, and Gon follows. His eyes stay unwavering on Killua’s figure swathed in drapey dark fabrics, hood firmly attached to the top of his head. Each step Gon takes is bathed in golden light, and the night is illuminated briefly at each collision of his foot to concrete.

By the time they’re ten miles across the city, Gon is close enough to extend a hand out and grasp the slightest piece of Killua’s cloak. Immediately, its owner whips around and delivers a roundhouse kick that collides with his wrist, alleviating the hold on the garment. It doesn’t hurt in the slightest, Gon marvels with alit, determined eyes, but the angle in which the kick was delivered easily destroyed the seemingly firm grasp he’d finally had on Killua. The interaction is infinitely quick. Killua bounds backwards, waiting for his foot to come back down to stabilize his stance and proceed on the chase. But Gon is smarter than that. He sends another burst of aura spiraling to the other’s direction, as fast as a bullet, and Killua barely sets a toe onto the ground before tipping his body backwards, back parallel to the floor. The blast of aura escapes the tip of his hood before slamming into the wall behind him. 

Gon doesn’t give Killua the chance to recover. He’s in Killua’s space before long, sending a flurry of punches and kicks to every part of his cloaked body. Killua easily defends every attack, but he’s yet to switch the dynamic of the battle to give him the offensive. Fatigue seems to slowly encroach into Killua’s lightning fast movements, the slightest millimeter choppier in his blocks against the repeated aggravations of quick feet and hard hands against his body. Gon realizes this with a widening grin. He’ll capitalize on it.

As Gon intensifies the speed of his attacks, he’s able to find it—a gap in Killua’s defense. Gon raises his arm to deliver a punch to Killua’s face, eyes gleaming as Killua’s arms raise to make a defensive X in front of his body. But the attack is feigned. Gon uncurls his fist and takes a pale forearm in each hand. The slightest inhale of surprise escapes from behind the fabric of Killua’s hood, and Gon pivots his foot, boot disintegrating the tile underneath him. He lunges, all but slamming Killua’s back into the wall.

A quiet curse leaves Killua’s lips. Gon’s lungs burn in adrenaline. He pushes Killua further into the crumbling brick, damaged from his previous aura blast, and keeps his face mere inches from the lightly billowing hood of his cloak. Calloused fingers tighten their hold onto Killua’s forearms. His sleeves drop ever so slightly as Gon brings his wrists to eye level.

Gon can’t deny the way his chest is heaving, the way sweat drips down his back and stains his tank. Though he’s reigned victorious in this chase, Killua is as slippery of an opponent as ever. He takes a moment to catch his breath, refusing to alleviate his hold on Killua’s arms even the slightest. The other has an unreadable language to his body, head once again angled to the ground, fingers twitching restlessly as they hang suspended against the brick. The bass of music pounds faintly in the distance. Lights flicker incessantly in their peripheral visions.

Gon slowly brings a hand up and uses the arm in his grasp to limply push the hood away from Killua’s face. There’s a bit of resistance, but eventually Killua realizes it’s futile. He turns his head up to meet Gon’s eyes as the fabric slowly uncovers his soft, wild crown of silver hair. The hood falls softly to his shoulders.

Gon’s eyes widen. His lips stay clamped shut, a bead of sweat leaving his forehead and collecting at his chin. Something is different.

Startlingly blue eyes pierce into his gaze. He knows their color like the back of his hand, a rich indigo that flickers cerulean during moments of anger. But they’re different now—more angular, thickly framed with dark fluttering eyelashes, frustration etched into the brows that stay furrowed above. The skin rimming his tearline is red and raw, corneas dimmed, indicating an exhaustion unlike anything Gon has seen on his face before. Gon’s gaze settles on the thin cut spread over Killua’s nose bridge, then the gash on his right cheekbone, then the smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. He examines those slightly parted lips, hue scarlet and skin fraying from repeated tears of his own canines, barely revealing his gritted teeth. Killua’s hair is a bit longer than before, tufts peeking out from behind the nape of his neck. Hair ties on his wrist reveal it’s long enough to pull back now.

Something is different.

Twenty years manifested into something much different in Killua’s caliber than Gon anticipated. His maturity is a quiet, intense force. The features on his face keep Gon at arm’s length, hiding a swirl of turmoil hidden deep in his gut. Gon lets his eyes follow the slope of his collarbone onto his body. The aura he’d experienced earlier is unimaginably powerful. It is kept elusively contained in his lithe form, even more obscured by the tattered cloak that encompasses most of his figure. His age is evident: a stronger, more intense projection of the fighter he’d seen in the past. 

Gon swallows. It’s hard to do. His tongue feels dry. Killua does not release the angered, defiant expression on his face, even when Gon is sure he can feel the heat of his tan skin emanating onto his own. Blood rushes in his ears. 

Yeah, something is different—confusingly, abrasively, startlingly different. 

“You're beautiful,” breathes Gon. 

It comes out before he even knows the words have rolled off his tongue. He’s rehearsed what he wants to say to Killua, what he wants to ask, when he’d be able to find him again. He’s rehearsed it thousands of times. Yet, there’s an unexpected force that wrenches that whisper out of his lips, a deep heat that blossoms from the bottom of his gut to the tip of his throat. A whisper he had no idea he’d say aloud.

Killua inhales sharply, eyebrows grinding together in building confusion. “You can’t be here,” he manages, and Gon’s skin tingles at the new tone of his voice. Metal earrings swing against his cheeks viciously. But there’s another emotion haunting his irises, one that quickens his breath into a shudder that racks his entire chest. Gon tries to decipher the hidden feeling.

He glances to the arms in his hold and almost gasps in surprise, finding them a bit more reddened with strain by the contact. They drop back to Killua’s sides as he quickly releases his grasp. Even if Gon is strong, he knows he’s not powerful enough to do that. For some reason, some time in the past few minutes, Killua started using Zetsu .

Gon immediately switches off his aura in habitual response. “Is someone after you?” he asks quietly.

And he finds it. The emotion building within Killua’s cold blue eyes is fear.

“You can’t be here,” Killua repeats. He covers the slip of terror as quickly as it was released, fixating Gon with a glare. “I told you our paths won’t cross.”

“Until I was as strong as you,” says Gon, “which I think I proved pretty easily just now.”

“I’m weak right now. It’s not a fair fight.”

Wind howls around them. Gon is acutely aware of their close proximity, mesmerized by the frosty cloud that escapes Killua’s lips with every exhale. He examines the fresh scar on Killua’s cheekbone very pointedly. “Are they the reason? Why you’re weak right now?”

“It’s nothing.”

“ Killua,” Gon softly laughs. “I thought you’d be a little happier seeing me after four years. If you’re that upset with the fight, let me stick around and we’ll do a rematch.”

If he squints, he swears he can see the gears turning in Killua’s head. Something is eating him alive. The expression on his face constantly switches from defensive, to confused, to angered; sometimes Gon swears he can see a hint of longing in his icy features. It doesn’t seem like he’s ready to respond anytime soon—knowing him, he’s probably just at a loss for words and won’t admit it—so Gon continues the talking. “You know, all I’ve done this whole time is train. Build up my Nen so I could finally track you down.” Killua won’t meet his eye. “I’ll let you off the hook for explaining that ultimatum of yours if you tell me who cut you up.”

“Gon,” his voice shakes with a rising edge, “I don’t have time for this. You need to get out of here.”

“You don’t have time to talk to your best friend? After four years of absolute radio silence?”

Electricity begins to crackle across Killua’s skin. His eyes gleam, anger carving into his expression. His teeth grind and part in an on-and-off-fashion, as if Killua wants to— tries to—say something, but he stops himself before the words leave his mouth every time. The need to understand his mind is agonizing. “I’m trying to protect you.”

Gon’s eyes widen the smallest distance. “So you are fighting someone. We could get them together, you know.”

“We can’t—”

“Just like old times.”

“It is nothing like old times anymore,” spits Killua. The sheer venom in his voice threatens to stab Gon in the chest. He seems to realize the expression of bitterness in his words from the way hurt washes over Gon’s face like a wave, and his eyes soften. “Look, I—Gon, I’m sorry I can’t afford you more time right now. But I meant what I said. Stay away from me. I can’t watch you get—”

He abruptly stops, catching his tongue mid sentence. Gon knows. He knows there’s an untamable fire deep in the corners of Killua’s being, and it kills him with every word he utters. But more clearly, that fire is related to him. And every minute Gon stands here, he adds more timber to the flame. “...Just trust what I say and know it’s for your own good.”

Gon doesn’t want the fire to go out. He wants to know— understand the enigma of sorrow and anger in Killua’s mind. But he knows that boy like no one else, and the emotional wall behind his steely eyes is all but unbreakable. It was there when they were kids at the base of the World Tree and when they were sixteen and throwing fists to ignore the pain clouding their visions. And it’s there now. He soaks in the sight of Killua, and like he’s wished a thousand times for the clock to turn back, Gon hates himself for ever letting him go. “You don’t have to isolate yourself like this, Killua—”

Icy, blinding light slowly creeps onto Killua’s cheeks. Gon trails off, watching the pendants hanging from his earrings burst into beams of blue, funneling sparks through the metal wiring that dissipates into the skin of his earlobes. Within moments, Killua’s entire body is shrouded in electricity. Gon almost has time to be in awe. Batteries . It’s such an ingenious use of hidden in plain sight accessories that he can’t stop the tug of his lips upwards into a grin.

But he doesn’t have to. Something beats him to it, and Gon suddenly can’t move a muscle. His nerves finally catch up to present time as a flash of searing pain courses through his entire body, feeling the telltale static of electricity pulsating over his limbs. He’s able to wrench his eyes to the side to witness Killua’s retreating figure hop the edge of the building. With the speed of his escape, Gon can barely make out a flash of his silver hair as it is quickly covered by the hood of his cloak. He’s unable to do anything but watch him fade into the distance.

And just as quickly as the temporary paralysis arrived, Gon is released of the electricity and falls to his knees, wincing. He takes the front of his tank in his shirt, a few of the cotton strands charred to black from where Killua presumably placed his hand and delivered the shock. Gon lets the breath hostage in his chest out. 

There’s no world in which he won’t chase after Killua. And there’s no world in which Killua can possibly not know that. Gon knows what it feels like to let him slip through his fingers and disappear into the world, and it’s a regret deeper than anything he’s ever felt.

He isn’t making that mistake again.

“That blonde idiot,” mutters Ging. He finishes the last sip of his whiskey and slides the empty glass to the bartender for a refill. “Telling you information is one of the most dangerous things I can think of. You’re as hard headed as me.”

They’re in a luxurious bar off the coast of Padokea, a town over from Heaven’s Arena. It’s one of the few places Ging will actually frequent since entry requires a Hunter’s license. As a result, the bar prides itself on being a lively hub of wandering, often famous individuals seeking information, connections, or a generally fun night with like-minded frequenters. The music is loud enough to hide the most secret of conversations, lights low enough to mask the most critical of meetings. Gon doesn’t care too much about drinking, but he understands the sentiment and is well through his third martini. It’s imperative he gets Ging loose-lipped enough to reveal something about the Dark Continent, something pertaining to a specific white-haired man, and his father probably feels the same way about Gon. Drinking, he has come to realize through countless similar conversations with endless different Hunters over the past years, is something akin to a handshake—agreeing to trade away secrets piece by piece.

Gon isn’t sure how to classify his and Ging’s relationship. It certainly doesn’t feel familial. If he had to guess, Ging probably views him as one of his coworkers, especially now that Gon has elevated in strength. There’s no need to show any inclination towards protecting him anymore, although Mito forces him to employ some empathy here and there. Gon gets phone calls every so often, but they’re mostly work related and usually contain offers for various missions Ging is individually too busy to commit to, thus delegating the responsibility to his son. And Gon will happily accept this dynamic. He hasn’t ever needed a father in his life, and the side quests only help him improve his handle of Nen.

“He was all scratched up,” says Gon. He’s doing his best to read Ging’s expression, but his father has the best poker face he’s seen in a while. Makes sense, given the resume he has. “He’s fighting someone. I can’t imagine why else he would be so adamant that I had to leave.”

“He’s a Hunter. It’s more likely he’s doing that than anything else.”

“Ging,” Gon pleads, “this is important . You know it’s all I’ve been working towards for four years. I’m not half-assing this. If Killua is running away, I need to find him.”

“You sure have an ego,” drawls Ging. His glass is returned full, and he takes it between his lips again. “He told you to stay away. I think you’re a little off target to take that as a reason to tail him all over the planet, huh?”

“You don’t know Killua like I do.”

“I don’t have to. I know that people change .” He pauses, watching his son straighten in his seat as the words take him by surprise. “You might have been his whole world when you were kids, but the Killua you knew back then is an entirely different person now. If I’m being frank, you probably don’t know jack shit about him anymore.”

Gon’s eyebrow twitches. He’s too scared to confront that possibility, so he lets anger overtake his demeanor instead. “Are you trying to piss me off, Ging?”

His father shrugs in indifference, tone level as if they’re discussing something as mundane as the weather. A simmering rage festers in Gon. “I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just explaining to you that even if you study the Dark Continent inside out, you’re gonna be none the wiser about that guy.”

“That’s bullshit. Kurapika confirmed that the expedition hasn’t ended yet.”

“Last I knew, it did for Killua,” says Ging. Gon quiets, but his expression stays locked in vexation. “We recruited him for the Dark Continent ‘cause he’s notoriously strong. I’m sure if he actually cared about the Association’s rankings, he’d be at my level by now. But he didn’t talk much. Just kept to himself and looked out for the team pretty well. We had him handling an A-ranked monster, and I watched him deliver its head back to us. That’s all we hired him for. After that, I obviously never saw him again.”

Gon works his jaw in confusion. “So he finished his mission?”

“It’s like I said,” sighs Ging. There’s a slight flush to his worn cheeks. He’s probably six or seven drinks deep by now. It’s not that he’s any less powerful than he was a decade ago, but Gon is able to see him with a bit more clarity now for who he is—an irritable, flighty man with a permanent stubble and unreadable eyes. “The facts of the expedition aren’t gonna help you. If you want my advice—”

“I don’t.”

“—then you should just leave him alone,” Ging finishes, shooting an irritated glare at his son. “He clearly hasn’t changed what he wants from you for four years, so I’d stop second-guessing his sentiments.”

Gon is utterly, entirely, and sickeningly pissed off. Sure, he never expected Ging to be revolutionarily helpful, but he didn’t think he’d take the liberty to go so far as to presume Killua’s emotions and squash his hope. Gon knows better. Knows from the heartbreaking look on a moonlit face four years ago, the festering uncertainty in cloudy blue eyes three days ago. How dare Ging believe he knows Killua better than the man he calls his best friend. Disgusted, Gon slams his chair back and stands to his feet, barely containing the aura around his body so he doesn’t explode the establishment in rage, and presses thirty-thousand Jenny onto the countertop. “I can’t believe I thought you’d be of any use. I’m leaving.”

He’s two strides away from the bar top when Ging calls after him.

“Wait.”

Gon doesn’t bother turning around, instead forcing Ging to continue speaking so he can judge if it's worth listening to. “Just how close were you?”

“What?”

“You and Killua.”

Gon finally does spin back on his heel, locking accusatory eyes with his father. “Why do you care?”

“That’s your problem,” Ging points out. His gaze shifts to Gon’s trembling fists, nails digging so harshly into the skin of his palm that it frays into shallow cuts. Before Gon can interrupt again, he raises his voice and continues. “You gotta control that anger, Gon. I thought you’d learned by now. I’m not asking out of ill-manner, I’m just curious.”

Gon swallows. Ultimately, his father is right. He does know better by now—knows not to entirely lose his composition to the point of harm, or so he hopes—

But.

Something about Killua, something with deep-seated roots in his bones, threatens to pop the lid off of his emotions. Not just anger. Everything . Every emotion Gon feels is painted in a brilliant picture of white hair, pale skin, and blazing, passionate blue eyes. Ging’s question is impossible to respond to. It’s a question Gon doesn’t even know the answer to yet.

“I mean, I never left his side for two years of my life,” is what Gon decides on. “I’ve never had a friend like him since.”

Ging seems to know it’s not the response he wanted to settle with. There’s so much left to say, but he just doesn’t know how to articulate it. He examines his son for a few moments longer, and Gon swears he sees the slightest crack in his stone demeanor—a hint of understanding, maybe even remorse. Finally, he lets out another deep sigh, finishes his glass, and speaks in a low, tired voice.

“It’s not my business to know how far you’re willing to go to find him. To be honest, I don’t know whose side I’m even on.” Ging mutters the slightest curse. “But if you’re okay with getting your hands dirty, I might have a way for you to get answers.”

Gon doesn’t let his heart float yet. “I’ll do anything it takes.”

For a moment, Ging almost seems disheartened at his assertion. His face remains steadfastly resolute, but his shoulders sink the slightest, fingers twitching against the wooden bar top. Then, he wryly smiles.

“Can you beat the information out of someone?”

Of course he can.

The monster’s face is a nauseating pulp of green, mucus-like blood. Its eyes are swollen so tight the lids are shut, cracked jaw slack with almost every tooth in its mouth out of its cavity. The tangled, broken, and twisted limbs pooling around its mangled body are not a much better sight to the eye. It lies pliantly on the cobblestone ground of the courtyard, every aspect of its figure indicating sure death, only defied by the slow, shaky rising and falling of its chest. Beneath its body, blood pools in ripples into the stones’ grouting. 

Gon stands at its broken feet. The green substance coats his battered knuckles and stains streaks across his face, hair, and clothes. He lets the aura gently fall away from his fists and relaxes his fingers to finally stretch in the cool air. He nudges his boot lightly into the rib of the monster, watching it twitch in response, before he finally speaks.

“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes blank and voice monotone. His demeanor does nothing to hide the lie dripping from his words. “I don’t like senseless violence, either. But you know how this can be avoided.”

The monster tries to release some sort of groan, but it garbles in its throat. Gon helps it onto its side so it can retch onto the ground. The vomit comes out as easy as water, unobstructed by the gaping hole that once was its mouth. When Gon gently rolls him back over and the monster feels the warm, fiery aura returning to his fist, it convulses in fear and grates out a response.

“Southwest of…Kankin continent. Outpost is b-based there.” Its voice is an eerie, multi-layered tone in a foreign accent, but the terror is evident in its trembling speech. “Don’t kill me. P-please. All I know is this…”

Ging watches his son’s back straighten at the final revelation. The muscles ripple under his dark, blood-stained shirt, fortifications of the dangerous machine he has watched his son become. He directs a group of doctors, hired by the Zodiacs, who stand frightened in the corner over, beckoning them to start the monster’s necessary surgical operations. Gon turns around, expression still steely and darkened, before finding Ging leaning against one of the pillars of the courtyard. He immediately brightens and bounds over.

“I got us a confession!”

“So I saw.” Ging doesn’t let his lips move from their straight, tight line. “Thanks for that. It’ll help the rest of the Zodiacs still with monsters to kill, too.”

 “No, thank you , Ging.” Gon’s grin is brilliant, a stark and frightening contrast to the splatter of murky green blood spanning from his temple to the base of his chin. The light in his eyes is back, but Ging distantly wonders how quick it’ll be before it’s out again. “I’ve got a lead. A permanent one, this time.” 

Ging can’t be averse to the sight. Gon is his son, after all, and they both cradle rage in their souls like its oxygen in their bloodstream. He supposes Gon was always like this, whether  determined and animalistic breaking fishing rods to snipe the biggest fish, or risking it all for a pact of revenge. “Gon,” he says, but it almost feels like he’s talking to himself. “You done that before?”

Gon blinks. “Hm?”

“Tortured someone. For information.”

There’s silence. Then, a quiet, brief laugh. “I don’t think that was torturing, really,” says Gon. “I just beat it up. And I’ve done plenty of times to monsters and humans alike. But it’s easier when I know they’ve done something to hurt good people.” Neither of them need to say a thing to understand the qualifier Gon undoubtedly has to that word—good by his standard. He finally brushes the blood off his knuckles and onto his pants, grimacing at the way it sticks to the fabric. After Ging only offers a brief smile in response, Gon gives him a small wave and turns on his heel. “I’ll be on my way, then.”

Ging curiously watches as the doctors all but drag the beaten body of the monster indoors, streaks of blood following them like a trail on the ground. He recalls the silent, methodical way Gon unleashed his torrent of punches onto the monster, unforgiving despite holding back a bulk of his energy. There’s no point in telling Gon that no other Zodiac was able to wring a confession from the captured monster. It would only serve to intensify his resolve.

He examines the aftermath of the monster’s beat down on the courtyard. That settles it, then. 

That’s how close Gon and Killua were.

Chapter Text

The continent of Kankin is a vast, wild, and foreign expanse of jungle. Gon can recall only a handful of times he’s ever set foot on this land, and he was largely in metropolitan areas the whole time. The more untouched parts of the continent are dark and mysterious, particularly the southwest corner, just as the monster revealed. It’s an elusive place, with plants he’s never seen in textbooks before and animals that seem more mutated than natural. Bird calls he’s never heard before reverb in the foggy distance. With every crunch the heel of his boot delivers onto the wet, gravely ground, he can swear he feels more and more sets of eyes following his movement.

Sweat bleeds down Gon’s forehead as he treks through the thick foliage of the jungle. Trees soar dozens of feet above him and coat the sky in a blanket of opaque, waxy leaves, obscuring most sunlight from touching the ground. He wields a machete that is constantly in use to slice through suffocating bouts of plants. Half his mind aches to shed the oppressive jacket he wears in the blazing, mid-day heat, but the area is notorious for its venomous creatures and poisonous weeds. He can’t afford to discard its protection.

Maybe Gon should have tussled up that monster a bit more. Wandering such a vague expanse of jungle is probably one of the most aggravating things he’s done in a while, and maybe with a couple more punches, the bastard would’ve choked out some coordinates. But Gon knows it was on its way to the pearly gates, and it would have been closer to a coma than anything else. It’s only been a week of wandering, but at this point Gon swears he can see his past footsteps on the jungle floor, and he feels like a dog chasing its own tail.

If that monster was lying to him, he’s beating the everloving shit out of it again, he thinks grumpily.

That’s another thing. He’s found a few mutant squirrels and scurrying foxes here and there, but Gon has yet to encounter an actual Dark Continent monster. If the supposed outpost is somewhere in the vicinity, he should have found it by now, or at least be close to it. Yet all he encounters day in and day out is more and more foliage.

Sunset begins to encroach onto the day, and though he knows there’s still an hour or so until nightfall, Gon is too exhausted and pissed off to gain any more ground. He collects the game from his scattered traps and lights a fire, beginning to cook yet another tasteless and unappetizing dinner. His tent is a large but thin contraption. It offers little to no protection for the sudden drop in temperature that occurs after sundown. Still, it’s a temporary living situation that’s a hundred times better than training his sleep with a boulder held inches from the top of his head. Not that he really does any sleeping out here. He’d be a fool to let his guard down alone with B and A-ranked monsters teeming the land.

So, with his back resting against the rough bark of a tree, Gon elects to simply lay near the fire and gaze at bright tongues of fire. Flames crackle quietly as he tears his teeth into the rough meat of a caught rabbit. 

He clearly hasn’t changed what he wants from you for four years, so I’d stop second-guessing his sentiments .

He blinks hazily against the light of the fire. Gon usually never has to worry about second-guessing his own intuition. It’s a deep set concoction of confidence, sheer resilience and determination that motivates him to stick resolutely to his ideals, one that has kept the resolve in his heart so strong for the past four years. But there’s a stomach-dropping feeling creeping its way into that medley of emotions. One that he’s experienced before, beaten and defeated on the cold ground as Killua declares an ultimatum. One that opens a possibility that Gon is so horrifically, anxiously terrified of.

Maybe things really aren’t the same anymore.

And Gon is no idiot. He understands the tone of conflict in Killua’s strained words when he tells Gon that he has to stay away, that their paths can’t cross, that their lives are far too separate to ever collide again. He reads it like words on paper, because he knows Killua down to the freckles on his cheeks and the flecks of baby blue in his irises. He knows that there are a thousand reasons Killua could be running across the planet, refusing to stop to share a breath with Gon—a thousand reasons independent of him. And yet.

Yet Gon thinks back to the words Killua all but cried out on that icy night four years ago, lips trembling in a pain so profound it haunts Gon to this day. He thinks about the undeniable fact that Gon has, in fact, fulfilled his end of the deal, proving with unshakeable certainty that he is as strong as Killua, that the ultimatum is now voided. He thinks about the strange hint of finality in the ultimatum to begin with, as if it was never about the power in the first place. And he thinks, and thinks, and recalls the times he’s witnessed tears stream down Killua’s cheeks, his eyes glass over with wetness, his back heave in silent sobs, and realizes , gut-wrenchingly, heart-stoppingly, that the common denominator is always—

Boom .

It’s so quiet that the rodents finding a comfortable refuge of heat near the fire do not stir from their slumber. But to Gon’s sharp, primal sense of hearing, it’s loud and clear—a sudden, deep commotion dozens of miles into the thick of the jungle. Maybe it’s a collapse of trees as an unknown force creates a rift in the ground. Maybe it’s desperate limbs orchestrating together in a tense fight. He’s at his feet before he even realizes it, pupils dilating to soak in any light to possibly guide him through the winding, dim wilderness.

The faded rumble comes again. It’s so far and diluted that it almost sounds like the timid bass of a drum. But Gon doesn’t need to let it echo a third time for him to abandon his campsite, scale the trees, and bound recklessly through the canopies. He’s a flurry of flexed legs and billowing fabric in the wind, though his presence is entirely undetectable. As he stalks the sound, it grows in vehemence, strong enough to shake leaves loose from the trees and scatter panicked creatures across the jungle floor.

Gon approaches a clearing just as a blast of white, searing light all but slams into him. He winces, bringing a hand up to his eyes in an attempt to see past the brilliance clouding his eventually. Eventually, it fades into an dissipating cloud of dust that reveals a duel of two individuals clashing in diligent, ferocious fervor at an almost untrackable speed. But Gon’s eyes are fast enough. They widen, starstruck as the pace of his heart quickens. His lips part subconsciously in an excited smile.

Killua’s cloak is removed—no, Gon realizes, finding the tattered article in pieces near his feet, it was torn off of him. Blood runs down his temple as he pants in exhaustion, but adrenaline keeps his sapphire eyes wide and traversing, watching his enemy jump in a rising attack. Gon isn’t sure if it will be a habit for Killua to be infinitely more exhausted each new time he finds the mysterious man. A dagger stays planted in his trembling fist. The metal casts a glint of moonlight right into Gon’s lingering eye.

The monster is an uncanny, horrifying tornado of gangly limbs and hollow, black sockets for eyes. It, too, carries a profound sense of fatigue—Killua has undoubtedly worn it down with a series of attacks. Gon wonders how long the attack has persisted. The other’s hair is matted with sweat, navy turtleneck ripping at the seams from continued abuse. Given their levels of damage, Gon is unwaveringly certain that the fight is equal, or even in the monster’s favor. It’s a startling realization. Just a simple scan of the howling, attacking monster confirms he’s no more than a lower B rank—Killua could take on one of those when he was fourteen.

He’s surprisingly at his limit.

But Gon watches. Curiosity nips at his wandering gaze, waiting for electricity to leave his body and reveal some new, exciting manipulations of his power, conceptualized and fortified over the years. The monster throws a long, erratic arm in Killua’s direction, barely missing the skin of his cheek. Its claws find refuge in the dirt behind his tense, flighty body, and it pulls upwards so a new wave of soil and foliage comes crashing into the clearing. The interaction is barely half a second long. Killua isn’t able to recover his balance when another limb comes flailing towards him, then another, and another, and another .

Bloodied claws coated in a fiery, intense aura slash shallowly across his chest, and Killua cries in pain. His body beats across the jungle floor and slams into a tree trunk a dozen or so meters from the initial attack. Gon’s breath leaps into his throat.

That’s enough. He’s seen enough.

It doesn’t take long for the familiar, white-hot aura to surge back into his bloodstream and pool into his hands. Gon releases his footing from the tree branch, gaze certain and fixated on the monster’s writhing body, as a ring of scarlet power coats his raising fist. The creature doesn’t have any time, nor foresight, to react. Before long, Gon’s entire arm is bathed in a golden light that is intense enough to illuminate the entire clearing. His fist collides with the monster’s head.

For a moment, things are quiet.

Then, the creature is tumbling. The force of Gon’s punch has all but decapitated it, tearing through the diameter of its long, grotesque head. A sickening layer of scalp stays held within the grasp of Gon’s fist. It falls ungracefully on the sheer opposite end of the clearing and onto its neck, where the appendage is bent in an unsightly manner. A low growl forces its way out of the monster’s broken mouth. Its arms twitch in a heated, infuriated response.

Gon doesn’t give it the chance to expend its rage. Though his nature is stubborn, there is one piece of advice that Gon has dutifully applied to his Nen, and it’s Knuckle's words of warning several years ago. It takes him less than a second to catalyze his fist into an unforgiving, deadly attack. Before the creature can halt its breath in a forced defeat, Gon has fists at every part of his body, unrelenting and aggravated. Light flashes incessantly across the clearing with every impact.

When Gon stands to his feet, back straight and jaw clenched, he finds the monster’s corpse to be a mushy puddle of intestines and mucus. Satisfied, he turns his heel and saunters back to his main objective.

Killua is still catching his breath. He’s all but collapsed to his knees on the broken, uneven soil, arms barely supporting his heaving shoulders as fingers grip resentfully into the dirt. Even when Gon is just a few footsteps away from his hunched, trembling figure, Killua doesn’t look up. Blood drips from the base of his chin and stains the ground in a collecting pool.

“Are you okay?” asks Gon. He isn’t sure where to start, what to say first. He settles with this. 

Killua doesn’t respond, though his hushed pants of exhaustion suddenly cease. Gon notices the small pigtail in the back of his hair, messied from the commotion of the fight, with wisps of white locks escaping the tie with every turn of his head. He’s captivated.

“Killua?” Gon bends his knees and takes a hand up to move the hair shielding his pale face. “What’s wr—”

In a flash, Killua brings his face up. His expression is contorted in anger, frustration, despair—every emotion of pain that Gon can possibly think of. Blood, bruises, and cuts coat every inch of his skin. A scarlet hue burns into the freckles of his nose and cheeks, and there’s a semblance of wetness rimming the edges of his bottomless, haunting eyes, like Gon is quite possibly the worst thing he’s ever seen. Like Gon is the utter bane of his existence.

But Gon isn’t able to dwell long on this heart-wrenching expression before Killua snarls and tackles his body to the ground. The force of his head against the dirt rakes a shocked grunt from Gon’s throat. Before he’s able to register the spike of aura over Killua’s figure, a deep and melancholy hue that Gon is devastated to even see, Killua is climbing over his confined body and straddling his torso with shaking legs. His bruised knuckles release from their supporting positions in the dirt and raise to Killua’s ears in powerful fists. Gon is forced to confront the enraged, hopeless man sitting before him, unable to move from the hold Killua is keeping against his middle.

Killua screams through gritted teeth, despair clouding his tone. He brings the left fist down to pound against Gon’s chest. Gon catches the wrist before it can. The right fist follows. It finds the same fate. Killua shakes in unbridled, raw frustration, features contorting in a way that Gon has never seen before. He can only stare in silence, jaw slightly slack, as he keeps Killua’s arms suspended inches above the cotton of Gon’s shirt.

It’s the most unexpected thing he has seen in his life. He’s watched Killua endure the most horrific of beatings, discovered his scars from the most terrible of torture, and yet—he’s never seen Killua bellow in pain the way he does now. There’s no force left in his shaking fists, and Gon realizes this numbly—even the grip of Killua’s legs against his body has alleviated, now revealing a frail and vulnerable disposition to the man before him. He releases the hold on Killua’s wrists, watching as they softly fall against his chest.

“ Why,” Killua all but hisses out, “can’t you just stay away from me?”

“Do you really want that?”

Killua’s eyes narrow further. Gon can’t tell if it’s a production of his rising anger or a way to hide the growing moisture in his eyes. Pale fingers curl back into fists, taking the fabric of his shirt between them. “ What?”

“Do you really want me to leave you? Is it really something to do with me?”

“I don’t have to tell you shit. You—”

“You do,” interrupts Gon, imprisoning Killua’s eyes with a resolute, serious gaze. There’s a slight twitch to the heaving body sitting on his own at the stare. “Or at least, you have to tell me why you want me to stay away. If it’s because of me,” Gon swallows, “I’ll leave you alone. But if it’s because you’re fighting someone, you have to be stupid to think I’d stay away.”

Killua’s face slightly crumbles, eyes widening in sudden emotion. “I don’t know what happened these past four years,” Gon continues. The fingers wringing the front of his shirt tighten, as if holding onto the clothing like a lifeline. “But I want to understand. So just tell me the truth.”

Anger flashes back through deep blue irises. Killua raises a fist again, as if ready to pummel Gon’s chest again, but it’s clear as day his hand won’t leave the air. There’s too much longing in his eyes for him to land the strike. “None of that matters. If you care about your life, then you should get out of here.”

“Is it so terrible for me to care about your life, too?” Gon reaches a hand up to try and wipe the blood from Killua’s cheek. Cold fingers grab it before it gets too close and slam it back against the ground. 

“I don’t care what you want! I’ve made this decision for the both of us.”

“I refuse it.” Killua scoffs as Gon narrows his eyes. “Answer my question, please.”

“I can’t.”

“ Killua.” Gon eyes the cuts across his body, so unprotected and exhausted that he’s half afraid the wind will blow the other away. The sight pains him. “The truth is all I’m asking for.”

Killua swallows. His fingers twitch in the cool evening air. There’s something so terrible about the way he looks at Gon, the way his body can’t fight the urge to lean into the affection painting Gon’s face, the way his eyes ache with a sense of solitude that he can’t hide. Something so terrible about the restraint Killua can’t keep up anymore, tears spilling over the waterline. Something so terrible about the evident pushback in Killua’s psyche on letting him fall into the comfort of their friendship once again. 

He cries silently. There’s a whirlwind of emotions in his furrowed eyebrows and glassy irises, fixating Gon with a certain kind of disbelief, as if he can’t possibly imagine that he’s here right now, that he stares at Killua with such a strong commitment. The tears running down his cheeks don’t encounter any obstacles, falling in droplets onto Gon’s shirt. Gon desperately wants to take his fingers up to wipe them away. But he doesn’t budge. Killua still carries a certain rage deep within his heart.

“It,” Killua whispers, “was never because of you.”

Gon lets the words seep into his skin. Killua wipes the edge of his eyes with a wrist and pushes the remainder of his grief back into his chest. Just a sliver of distraught for Gon to see, bandaged as quickly as it came. He leans back, rises to his feet, and walks away to stand a hesitant, protective stance several strides away from Gon. 

The areas where Killua’s body had touched his own sting like wounds. He finds himself aching again for the comfort of having his best friend finally so close, so within his grasp, even if the anger in his brilliant blue eyes burns like fire. Gon also stands up, brushing dirt off his clothes and painfully noting the wetness of shedded tears on the front of his tunic. They stand a distance away from each other and stare—one wary of their proximity and the other begging to be closer. 

“Why did you push me away?” Gon finally asks. “All those years ago.”

Killua takes a deep breath. A long pause of silence elapses, and Gon almost thinks he’s going to avoid the question again before a soft voice speaks. “Because I can’t bear it. Being the one that can’t protect you.”

“Why would you—” Gon stops. He’s seen this image before—this image of Killua, so heartbreakingly distraught and staring cautiously at him as if he’s the scariest, fragilest, most devastating thing to walk this planet. He saw it when Killua was just a frightened child and haloed with a stark coat of electricity. Gon remembers the scream that escaped his throat, so loud and pinched and horrified that his own name in the sound was foreign to him. And Gon sees it now. His heart drops to his feet, and he takes a step forward. Killua takes a step back.

“That…” Gon’s voice is pained. “That was never your fault.”

“Maybe,” murmurs Killua. “But that didn’t matter. It was still fresh in my mind four years ago.” It still is now lies unsaid in the wind. “And I’m sorry I sent you on a wild goose chase. But I truthfully didn’t think you’d ever be able to get as strong as me.”

Gon’s eyes widen. It finally settles in. “You were prepared to never be by my side again,” he says hoarsely. The words are hollow. When Killua nods, a slight wince in his face, Gon feels faint in his legs. His hands curl into fists and tremble by his sides. Gon takes a stride closer, then another, and another, and Killua doesn’t move. He just matches Gon’s stunned expression with dull, sad eyes—as if he’s accepted the consequences of his decision, the distraught he’s sure to now face.

And when Gon is just a footstep away from Killua, anger in his vision, he hates the admission of defeat in Killua’s demeanor. Gon hates that he doesn’t move an inch. But most of all, Gon hates how he can tell that Killua does not regret it.

“How could you even think that?” whispers Gon, words hot and teeth gritted. “How could you be so okay with leaving everything we had behind?”

“ Okay? ” retorts Killua, incredulous. The sadness in his gaze is still there, but it matches competitively with a growing flame of anger. “Is that what you think this is? You think that the boy who risked his life to bring yours back was okay with it?”

“Then what the hell , Killua?” Gon’s voice is rising. “What was the point of all this—this distance? Why make me train like a machine of war for four years straight if you didn’t mean any of it?”

“Don’t you dare say that. Don’t act like I wasn’t in ruins because of you.”

“Okay, so I’m supposed to just believe you abandoned it all because—what, because I was too reckless to be protected?”

Killua’s lips tremble, his glare so potent that Gon feels it like beams in his skin. “Of course. I should’ve known you wouldn’t understand.”

“So make me understand, Killua!” shouts Gon. He’s so close, so near to Killua’s skin that he could reach out and take him, take him in his hands and scream at his infuriated features to never let him go. “I don’t care if you need to yell at me, tell me I was the stupidest person ever, if you need to list out every grievance that you carry but just talk to me, god dammit Killua, I can’t—” His breath stutters. “Just tell me what I have to do for you to let me stay. I can’t bear to watch you hold your tongue anymore.”

Gon hates this. He hates that their reunion can feel so painful, as if their lives colliding again is refuted by the universe. He hates thinking about his childhood sharing memories with a younger, more unabashed Killua because he’s furious that he ever took those moments for granted. It doesn’t make any sense. Every reunion with friends and loved ones he’s had has been nothing but pomp and excitement.  Yet somehow, the person he misses the most keeps him at a stranger’s distance.

The anger on Killua’s face finally lifts, albeit just a bit, as concern dusts his cheeks a faint pink. “There was a small part of me that had hope,” he quietly says. “That you’d get as strong as me, maybe even stronger, and I’d never have to worry about it again. Never have to pick up the pieces you leave behind.” He keeps his eyes glued to a nearby tree. “I gave you that ultimatum because I was scared , Gon. I’m so terrified of being the person next to you who isn’t able to protect you again, who instead has to find you two steps away from death. Especially when you had to start from scratch again. And even though I knew it was impossible, I told you that and hoped you would try.”

The words are a punch in Gon’s gut. He knew they were coming. He knew the half-assed apology he gave all those years ago would never be enough. “It was never your responsibility to clean up after my messes,” he says weakly. 

Killua manages a smile, but it’s bitter. “Funny how we both felt it.”

Gon knows. He knows he doesn’t deserve to be this close, desperate to hold onto the man in front of him. Yet he stays put. “But I’m as strong as you now. I proved it. I survived just fine on my own for four years.” His brows furrow. “So why are you still pushing me away?”

“Because things changed.” Killua’s expression is unreadable. It’s reserved, like he’s already mulled over the words he’s saying thousands of times. “I was naive. I thought…if we were equal, the guilt would never eat away at me. But you deserve so much more than someone whose very existence puts you in danger.”

“What? How are you possibly putting me in danger?”

Killua doesn’t answer. Instead, he finally moves his eyes back to Gon’s own. His waterline is the slightest bit puffy, skin taut and red from the furious hot tears a few minutes earlier. He wears his beauty like a distraction, and Gon finally side-steps the adoration he has for his moonlit features and focuses instead on something more sinister, more unsettling hidden in Killua’s face. How many days has it been since he’s slept? How many new scars are littered across his skin? Gon examines the fabric loose over Killua’s torso, billowing against his ribs. When’s the last time he ate? What incredible force is he competing against that is deteriorating him into the exhausted, frail figure he sees now?

“It doesn’t make sense for you to be here,” Killua finally says. “Because you’re only going to get hurt again. And the only thing I can do is keep you away so you don’t get caught in it all.”

“You’re my best friend.” Gon is raising a hand. Slowly, very surely, very knowingly, only continuing its ascent with the permission of Killua’s lingering eyes. “I’m already caught in it all.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“So,” Gon’s hand is inches from the other’s pale, bruised face, “if I’m strong enough, and I’m bound to find you no matter where you run off to, then I’m here because I want to be, aren’t I? That means I’ve accepted the risk, whatever it is, and you don’t get a say in it.” Killua’s eyes grow cerulean in defiance, and Gon can’t subdue the grin stretching across his face. “If I promise to you that you never have to worry about protecting me again, that I can hold my own weight and that my messes are mine to deal with, will you let me stay here and fight with you?”

“No, because it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah,” hums Gon. “That’s the point. That’s why I need to stay. It’s dangerous for you, too.”

Killua looks like he’s about to cry again. A shaky breath shudders its way up his diaphragm and out of his lips, hitting Gon’s nose in a frosty blow. “I’m fighting a really powerful monster, Gon,” he whispers. 

Gon’s fingers finally lay on Killua’s cheek. He savors the feeling of the contact, the heat of his hand permeating into the cold, pale cheek underneath. His calloused thumb drags over the cut below his eye, and downcast eyelashes tickle his skin. There’s so much blood and destruction and damage on Killua’s body, and maybe it’s always been that way, but Gon has never hated the sight of it more than he does now. He wonders how he ever let Killua get so hurt. 

“I know,” Gon smiles. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

Killua has been on the run for six months, Gon learns. Six months with some sporadic, thirty minute naps here and there, a protective ring of aura so wide that he wakes up with less energy than he went to sleep with. Six months across the world living in the most grimy of forests, the most dangerous of cities, the most isolated of islands. He doesn’t have much, just the tattered fabrics on his body that have survived his nonstop sprint of survival and a plethora of metal jewelry and wires—batteries, just like his earrings. Hostels were the easiest methods of accommodation, as he could swipe some new clothes and have a much needed shower here and there for a handful of Jenny. But now that monsters frequent urban areas more and more, he’s confined himself to the Kankin continent in fear of his own enemy venturing too deeply into human territory.

Gon hasn’t asked about the monster Killua faces. The fact that Killua runs away from them leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He’s worked his jaw for hours in curiosity thinking about what makes this opponent deadly enough to have one of the most powerful Nen users in the world in a fit of anxiety. Though he has plenty of questions, Killua doesn’t seem like he’ll reveal any more information soon. Gon’s already on thin ice for just being allowed to stay in his vicinity.

Gon throws a few more logs of dry wood into the fire. There’s just a couple hours before sunrise, though he isn’t tired. A steady course of adrenaline pumps through his veins. He’s so invigorated with newfound purpose and excitement that he tremors happily in his seated position against the base of a tree. He was sure it would take more persuasion to bring Killua back to the campsite and force him to sleep. Yet, the moment Gon’s sixty-meter En radius expanded over the forest, touching every cell of Killua’s body, he was convinced. Convinced that for the first time in over half a year, he was safe enough to relax.

Killua sleeps quietly a few feet away from him in the tent. Gon’s jacket sprawls over his shivering body as a weak attempt at a blanket. There’s still a faint pinch to the skin between his eyebrows and scrunch to his closed eyes, like he’s being tormented even in the recesses of his sleep—and knowing his history with nightmares, he probably is—but at the very least, Gon is grateful his heart has slowed to a calm, resting rate. 

Gon’s gaze lingers on him. Every time he’s lucky enough to see the silver-haired man again, he lets it. There’s so much mystery and despair hanging over his worn body, and all Gon wants to do is take him to the furthest corner of the world where no one can find them and unpack all of it. Was it like this when they were kids? So much filtered communication,  tip-toeing around subjects they’re too scared to confront? No, Gon likes to think they shared everything with one another. Gon didn’t have secrets. 

Killua murmurs fitfully in his sleep. Maybe he did. 

And he can’t help but wonder—ruminate over all the sites and missions and memories Killua has acquired not just from the past four years, but even before. Gon is painfully aware of the length of time they’ve spent away from each other. Their time shared as kids is barely a third of the years he’s passed growing older, taller, stronger, and away from Killua. It’s hard to put into words how devastating the newfound age and reservation embedded in Killua’s face feels. They’re all years he can never get back—years that he could have spent next to his best friend’s side, if he had maintained more composure. If he had been stronger. If he had tried harder to make Killua stay.

The gift to watch Killua grow into the powerful, enigmatic fighter he is today was taken far too early from him. Gon is desperate to know if the tie between their personhoods has been severed, too. Will conversation flow as easily as it used to? Do they still enjoy the same things? And there’s a newer question—a more insidious, intrusive poison, one that Gon is desperate to push from his mind. He keeps his eyes on Killua’s slowly ribcage, watching his chest slowly rise and fall with every breath.

I wonder, he thinks, a pang of longing in his bones, if I’m still your best friend .

Chapter Text

Killua is silent for the first twenty minutes of his wake. He rose a few minutes before sunrise, lapping up just three hours of sleep, in a tense, urgent manner. With Gon’s own mind occupied as a jumbled mess of thoughts, he almost didn’t notice the bloodshot, blue eyes that sprang open, alert and primal. Killua sat up in a flash and held his breath, his knuckles white as snow as he clutched the jacket over his body like it was his next-best shield. His disposition, Gon noted painfully, was like a terrified prisoner in the heart of a predator’s lair.

“Killua,” said Gon, lamely. He dropped his layer of En and rushed to the tent. The other turned, finally registering his presence as the events of the previous night caught up to him. Finally, a small semblance of relaxation fell upon his tight shoulders, but there was still a certain degree of caution to him, as if he wasn’t entirely sure if he could trust the situation yet. It was a blow across the face for Gon.

And he hadn’t spoken since. He simply worked on dismantling Gon’s tent as they packed their belongings to shift locations; staying in one place for too long felt like being sitting prey. Gon was busy collecting his traps and packing them neatly into his backpack. But they both felt it. The heavy, thick layer of tension in the air—a change from being each other’s entire universes for so long to just strangers sharing the same space.

When Gon grants himself the quickest glance behind him, he watches Killua’s back flex in movement as dexterous— dangerous— hands pull the tent stakes from the hard jungle soil. And when he squints, he notices the small, fuzzy mark of black ink on the pale nape of his neck. A tattoo. Gon wonders what it is, what it represents. He wonders if there are more across his body.

And slowly, as terrible and suffocating as thorns on vines, he feels a certain emotion stab its way over his body and into his chest. Gon hasn’t felt it before. Never to this intensity. It’s something akin to envy, some deep bitterness that furrows his brows in contempt and tightens the clench of his jaw. He should know. He should know what that tattoo means. There was a point in time where he knew everything about Killua, down to the mole on his left hand and the quirk of his smile. He wonders if there are others who have had the privilege to know the Killua that he sees now, and he wonders if they know what the tattoo means. He’s unfairly angry at them.

That should be him .

So he does something about it. “Killua,” he says, fully abandoning his task to turn around and face him. Killua keeps his back to his gaze, still diligently dismantling the tent, but he lets out a quiet hum in response to signify he’s listening. “When’d you get that tattoo on your neck?”

Killua tenses. His movement pauses, fingers twitching, and Gon can tell there are gears turning in his head as he thinks of a response. Gon earnestly leans forward, supported by elbows digging into his crossed legs.

“Um…” Killua’s voice is timid. “Like, three years ago.”

“What does it mean?”

Killua pulls out the stake. It’s the last one, and as a result, the tent comes tumbling down. There’s nothing left for him to excuse himself with, to distract the conversation with. He concedes and turns his head to look at Gon. “Nothing,” he says flatly. “It’s just some random flower I got because it looked pretty in the tattoo book. I got it when I was out on a mission, and we all made bets to get tattoos. So this was mine.”

There’s something wrong with Gon. The statement is as casual as ever, something said with so little care that it’s clearly as unimportant as a light anecdote. And if it were anyone else, it would be. Gon wouldn’t care. But something is deeply, disgustingly wrong because he feels like the floor has been ripped from under his feet, and he isn’t sure why. There’s anger building up in chest, but he’s smart enough now, mature enough to know that he’s just being envious. But the emotion feels misplaced. Gon has embarked on plenty of missions himself. He knows that you’re bound to get close with your teammates. And yet.

He doesn’t have anything to match with Killua. But there’s an unknown team of unimportant people out there who do.

“I see,” Gon all but grits out, tone so low and harsh that he’s almost afraid Killua will notice. Luckily, he’s barely inconspicuous enough. Killua just shrugs in response and folds the tent into a little square, tucking it into the tent bag and slinging it over his shoulder. Gon moves like he’s in water. He doesn’t care about organization anymore and just tosses the remainder of his belongings in his backpack. Oxygen has never felt so bitter on his tongue. 

Killua examines the clearing. There’s still an emotional wall in his psyche, and Gon can see it, but he’s determined to render it to rubble. “We should get going,” says Killua, but it’s not as much of a suggestion as it is a command. He’s already picked up a considerably fast pace. Gon knocks some sense into his brain before jogging after him.

The heat is just as relentless as it was the day before. Gon is sweating buckets before long in this thick, aggravating jacket of his. Killua is devoid of his shredded cloak, exposing his forearms to the harsh wilderness of the jungle from the rips of his turtleneck. He has half a thought to offer the jacket before realizing if anyone can survive the toxins and poisons of this continent, it’s a Zoldyck. He examines the air of resolve in the other’s demeanor. Gon is bewildered that three hours of sleep could do this much for him. 

It’s silent as they walk through the jungle. Killua seems fine with it. Gon isn’t.

“Do you have more?” he blurts. Killua’s eyes widen in surprise, blinking calmly at the man beside him.

“What?”

“Tattoos. Do you have more of them? Anywhere else?”

Killua swallows. He suddenly looks defensive. “A few.”

“Where?”

“What are you getting at, Gon?” asks Killua, furrowing his brows. He’s preparing to close himself off again, hide behind a mask of malice. Gon won’t let it happen today. His gaze is relentless, drilling lines into Killua’s eyes, then the bridge of his nose, hesitating on the flush of his cheeks.

“There’s,” Gon lingers on every word, choosing each with careful precision, “so much that’s new to you now. Like a layer of you I just know nothing about.”

“I mean yeah, it’s been years—”

“I want to know everything about you again.”

Killua doesn’t respond for a moment. He breaks their eye contact and stares ahead, lips parting in unsaid words. Gon can’t tell if he’s flustered, but the tips of his ears grow slightly pink. “There’s not much new to learn,” he mutters. “I’ve just been killing monsters.”

Gon takes note of the gentle, haunting profile of Killua’s face. Blue veins course like rivers underneath his pale skin, rippled in scattered sunlight that bleeds through slivers in the treetops. He subconsciously reaches out to take one of Killua’s long, intricate earrings between his thumb and index finger. There’s the smallest flicker of static against his skin as he examines the endless ridges of wires and plates of metal in their design.

Killua tenses at their proximity. He’s about to swat Gon’s hand away when the latter says, almost in wonder, “And these. I couldn’t believe how genius these are, Killua.”

“They’ll shock you if you touch them for too long, idiot.”

“So they’re always pumping electricity into you?”

Killua squirms. He angles his jaw away from Gon’s hand, as if it’s too stressful to be so close to the heat of his skin. “Yeah. It was getting to be a hassle to try and find a place to charge all the time. So I just…bring that charge with me.”

Gon hums in admiration, finally dropping his fingers back to his side. “You’re so different now.”

“So are you.”

“Huh?”

Killua raises an eyebrow, his eyes carefully climbing back up to meet Gon’s. “You don’t think you are?”

“I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

Neither of them speak for a lingering moment. Gon is riddled with anticipation, so eagerly curious to know what Killua is thinking. Is he just as desperate to learn each and every new thing about the other? There’s such a thick cloud of opaqueness over Killua’s gaze. He’s keeping a guard up.  But with every question Gon asks, he finds it chipping away, piece by piece. 

He’ll ask for as long as it takes. “How am I different?” Gon continues.

There’s a sudden electricity to Killua’s stare, entirely independent of the wires lacing his skin, that threatens to pull Gon in. Killua lets his gaze wander across Gon’s hair—shorter now, but still characteristically pulled up and away from his temple—, then meets his eyes again. His stare possesses him with a dangerous kind of observance, like Gon is the most curious artifact Killua’s ever seen. But it continues. It follows the expanse of his shoulders, the width of his chest, the height of his stance. Fast over the holster of tools across his belt, slow over the veins and trembling fingers of his hands.

“You look dangerous now,” Killua says cautiously, his gaze returning.

Gon’s heart pounds in his chest. “Is that a good thing?”

“For anyone else, no.”

“For you?”

Killua ponders for a moment, tongue darting out to lick his lips. “I guess,” he decides quietly. “‘Cause you still look at me like you always do.”

“Which is…?”

Killua doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. Gon knows his eyes can’t possibly betray the adoration he has for Killua, the sheer excitement and energy to keep looking, to keep searching his brain, to keep him by his side. He hopes he’s doing a good enough job to hide the more elusive, darker edge of his gaze. It’s a kind of sadness—the type filled with regret and longing.

Conversation isn’t as difficult as Gon had worried, but it isn’t any less tense. He’s all too aware of the dynamic of their exchange; Gon is all too desperate to ask an endless influx of questions, and Killua is all too accustomed to dodging them like they’re poison.

Biting his lip, as if guilty for his inhibition, Killua takes the flask of water from the pack across his belt and extends it to Gon. “Thirsty?”

Gon takes it. He responds to the polite inquiry by pushing them back into unravelment. “Are you going to talk about it?”

“What?”

“The monster.” Gon takes a swig of the water, trying to ignore the way every bone in Killua’s body seems to stiffen. “Are you going to talk about why we’re running away from it? Or at least, what to expect?”

“No,” Killua says shortly. Gon waits for more of an explanation, but all that comes after a tense couple of seconds is, “Just know he’s strong.” He takes the flask back after seeing Gon is finished, tucking it back into his satchel. Then he faces forward. And that’s that.

Gon doesn’t try to reopen the subject. He could make an argument that knowing even the smallest semblance of information about this enigma of a monster would keep him safe in case he ever shows up—he would know his abilities and be able to formulate a sensible defense plan. But it’s a poor case he’s bound to lose. Killua pushed him away for four years to keep him safe. There’s no way he would create a situation where Gon was fundamentally at harm because of his lack of admittance.

“Can I ask a question?” a sharp voice interjects through his occupied brain, and suddenly every thought is flushed down the drain to make space for a much more important, pressing subject: Killua. More specifically — Killua is talking. Questioning , of his own volition. Gon’s head turns to face his companion’s in a flash, anticipation clawing at his lungs. Yes. Of course you can. Ask anything that’s on your mind. You can do anything you want .

Gon isn’t ludicrous enough — yet — to gush this stream of approval, so he settles with a rough, “Yeah.”

“How did you relearn Nen?”

Gon beams. “I got into contact with Bisky a few years back. Well, I was actually doing some sparse training on Whale Island with her, but we focused on Hatsu stuff after — uh, the reunion. So I just redid all the foundational —”

“That’s not what I meant,” interrupts Killua. Gon blinks in confusion. “So you didn’t have any difficulties in regaining it? Like…manipulating it again?”

“Why would I?”

Killua has a strange expression on his face. It’s almost disbelieving, with a slight tinge of something unsettling—like wariness, or more intensely, caution . “I…I thought that…Ging said you’d called him and said you couldn’t feel your Nen anymore.”

Ging . Killua’s statement is a revelation of information that Gon greedily laps up. So they had definitely exchanged some amount of conversation during their expedition in the Continent, and those exchanges had, in some capacity, been about him . He has half a thought to ring up Ging and give him a piece of his mind for withholding such crucial information. But there are far more important things to focus on right now. Like Killua’s eyes, the color of the ocean and the sky all at once, that stare at him with such anxiety that Gon almost crumbles.

“I did,” Gon agrees, thinking back to all those years ago. He’d sat in worry on the balcony of his home in Whale Island, begging his father for any words of advice. “But that feeling didn’t last long. I was able to reopen my aura around a year later.”

When the knit of Killua’s eyebrows doesn’t release, Gon licks his lips. “Does that not make sense?”

“It doesn’t. Because—” Killua clamps his lips shut. “Well, whatever. Clearly you have it now.”

“No,” Gon is sick and tired of the continuous game they’re playing where he’s chasing any ounce of information from Killua’s quick, cautious mouth like a cat on a laser, “you don’t get to do that again. Explain, please.”

There’s a hint of annoyance on Killua’s face. Somehow, it puts Gon at ease. It’s a cattish expression that is entirely familiar—one that he sported frequently as a kid. And it’s all the same even years later. The same slight purse of his lips, the narrow of his eyes, the scrunch of his nose. It plucks at Gon’s heart. “I guess you don’t know,” Killua sighs. “You’re the only documented case of someone regaining their aura after losing it all.”

There’s a pause of silence. Gon mulls it over in his head. He’s the only one to regain Nen? Ever? That can’t possibly be right. “Huh. But there’s exorcists,” he argues.

“Those are for contracts set by others.” Killua’s face seems to cinch a bit as if recalling a sour memory. “And only sometimes do they work. Ones set by yourself are much more powerful. And the contract you made was an exchange of all your life energy. It’s unheard of to come back from that.”

“How do you know all this?”

Killua stares, unwavering. “I just do.”

They enter a dim, murky grove of winding roots and swampish puddles, the last flecks of direct sunlight dissipating before being absorbed by the foggy, humid air. Gon grimaces at the sudden wetness and swings through vines with the machete. He glances at Killua's exposed skin with a tight jaw. It doesn’t matter how immune he is to poisons. Gon will continue to worry about it.

Killua retreats back into his comfortable station of silence. Beads of condensation begin to accumulate on his skin as the weight of the air clings to his body. Gon realizes the strategy he’ll have to play to get any more information out of him. It’s a tactic Killua has been employing all too easily, and Gon needs to start his offense.

“Can I ask you a question now?” says Gon.

“You can, but I might not give you an answer.”

“Hm.” Gon shields Killua’s forehead from an egregiously overgrown branch with his arm and swats it clean to the ground with his machete. Killua tenses in the action, fingers wringing the bottom of his turtleneck. It’s all too characteristic, and at the very least, Gon takes solace in knowing he hasn’t changed enough to be entirely unrecognizable. Killua has always found discomfort in being protected. “But I think you owe one to me. I answered yours, didn’t I?”

Killua stops walking. Gon’s heart accelerates as he halts his pace too. He can hardly contain the edges of his mouth as they creep upwards in the faintest smile. “You didn’t have to answer,” Killua says coldly.

Gon takes a few steps closer to Killua. The latter isn’t prepared to close the distance between them and steps backwards, but he’s ultimately headed to be cornered by the breadth of a large tree trunk behind him. “But I did,” notes Gon. “Besides, doesn’t this feel weird? We’re too close to act like we can’t share things with each other.”

Killua doesn’t have the fortitude to respond to that. He just swallows and grips the rough bark of the tree as a method of grounding himself. “Fine. Ask.”

Gon stares for a few moments. He can’t understand what possibly compels the other to be so closed off, so hesitant to expose the slightest piece of information. After Killua squirms impatiently under his gaze, Gon speaks. “Did you miss me?”

Killua’s lips part in shock. Gon doesn’t ask it in self-absorbance. It’s a vulnerable hand reaching out of the dark, desperate to find a set of fingers that pulls him into the light. “Wh-why are you asking me that?”

“I just want to know.”

“Gon, you have to know we have so many more pressing things to worry about right now — ”

“Killua,” he cuts off, voice low and rough with some edge of urgency, “don’t deflect. This is important.”

Luckily, Killua is the sharpest person he knows. The desperation in Gon’s eyes is objectively hard to notice, but Killua’s face softens in knowing, a sheen of moisture now sitting on his fair skin. A faint hint of pink spreads across his neck, ears, and face. They’re close enough where he could lean forward and graze the skin of Gon’s nose with his cheek. Gon’s body hums in longing. “Okay.”

Killua settles his breathing, then fixes his gaze to the front of Gon’s shirt. “I did,” he mumbles.

The tension in every muscle of Gon’s body lifts, as if the revelation took the weight of the world off his shoulders. “How much?”

It’s clearly painful for Killua to speak about this. His teeth clench together, gears turning in his mind to find the proper words to articulate his feelings. “That’s another question. I didn’t agree to answer that one.”

Gon is taken aback. “What —that wasn’t a proper answer, Killua!”

“Why are the specifics relevant?” snaps Killua. The timidness of his demeanor is gone, replaced by a glowering stare and heated eyes. “Why are you even asking me this? Did Ging tell you anything?”

Gon’s brain is racing a hundred miles an hour. “What the—what does this have to do with Ging?”

Killua doesn’t respond. The flames in his irises are unbridled. It seems like he’s seen those blue eyes when they’re angriest more so than anything else, and Gon hates it. He wants to see them look at him like he’s a best friend, like he’s a partner in crime. Like he’s the whole world. “For my sake, I just want to know,” Gon pleads. “Mine, and no one else’s. I want to know how much you missed me.”

“ Why? Is it really so important for you to know the level of it?”

Gon stares back, challenging the glare with a resolute stance of stubbornness. “Yes. It’s very important to me.”

Gon’s hair is damp by now. Droplets hang from a few stray strands over his forehead, falling between their faces. He moves a little closer. 

“Okay,” seethes Killua. “You can know. You can know that I missed you, Gon. I missed you a lot . I thought about you every single day. Thought about us . And no matter how many times I can delete your contact, I can never un-memorize your phone number, and it took every bone in my body to not ring you and beg you to come be with me again. But none of this matters. I don’t regret what I did.” Killua’s voice becomes a hiss. “I did what I had to do to keep you safe.”

There’s a lapse of silence as Gon just stares at Killua. He’s so poignantly distraught, so viciously attached.

“When you tell me this, Killua,” says Gon, so quiet that the sound comes from his chest, “it makes me so sad. We could have been together so much earlier.”

“We couldn’t. This is just how it is.”

“I missed you too,” Gon continues softly. “And I’m sorry I caused you pain. But I’m really glad you missed me as much as I missed you. You’re,” he ponders at the sight of Killua, his smile expanding just from witnessing his sapphire eyes widen and flush intensify, “so important to my life. You’re my best friend. My Killua. I feel like it makes sense when we’re together. Right? Doesn’t it?”

Gon’s smile quickly wipes itself from his face. Unlike for him, Killua’s response to his admission is a much more potent, suffocating grief, poking thorns into his heart and winding tight around his diaphragm. He can’t possibly understand it. He’s never seen a sadness so persistent in Killua’s features before.

“Killua,” he says, alarmed. “What happened?”

“Why, ” Killua’s words are just a whisper, “are you making this so hard for me?”

Gon frowns. “I don’t know what you mean. Doesn’t this bring us closer?”

Killua looks like he’s about to say something, but then his eyes widen. It’s just a fraction of a second later that the hair on the back of Gon’s neck stands up, as if in the wake of a blizzard, goosebumps littering the skin of his arms. There’s a new wind that rattles the leaves of the trees, sunlight dimming in the thick, wet atmosphere of the jungle with every passing second.

“Gon,” there’s a tremor in Killua’s voice that has the name cracking in his throat,” get dow—”

He’s a second too late to finish the sentence. A force of power all but shreds the tree behind them as they duck, missing the annihilating blow by just a hairsbreadth. Immediately, there’s chaos. Trees all around them are splintering and exploding, sending rains of debris over them, and Gon forces a Ko out of his body large enough to shield himself and Killua.

Gon frantically scans the exterior of Killua’s body, ensuring he hasn’t sustained any injuries from the sudden attack. But even though he finds no physical damage, there’s something in Killua’s darting eyes, his tired demeanor, his existing cuts and bruises, his trembling limbs that pulls the heart from Gon’s chest and slams it to his feet. It’s the same emotion he’s seen far too frequently in the past few weeks—an emotion that shakes him to the core.

Terror.

Gon’s anger flares. He quickly switches his aura to En , enveloping the surrounding area and scanning for signs of movement. And he finds it. Around thirty meters away, sprinting in an animalistic frenzy right to their location. The rage in his gut simmers, soon to boil over. His aura fizzles back into the core of his fists, illuminating the grove with an intense golden light.  After seeing the flash of fear on Killua’s kind, worn face, he’s resolute on what he needs to do.

I am going to kill you , he promises to the approaching monster. 

Chapter Text

Gon is fifty meters in the air.

Below him, the jungle is ravaged with dominating, oppressive tongues of fire, ripping apart the treetops to reveal thick clouds of smoke underneath. Between every blink of his eyes, another twenty or so meters of ground is engulfed in flames. It’s a sea of chaos and destruction. Gon desperately tries to identify the enemy’s whereabouts in the ravaged foliage as gravity accelerates his hard descent.

The soles of his boots tingle with residual aura. There wasn’t any time to react methodically when the monster approached the clearing where he and Killua were located. There wasn’t even time to examine its appearance. All he knows is that suddenly, quick as a snap of fingers, a gigantic surge of fire came bursting its way through the trees and at them, and Gon’s instincts propelled his body with an aura blast to the jungle ground and up into the clouds.

Now he’s in the sky and away from Killua, and it’s aggravating enough to pull a loud curse from his lips. Squinting hastily through the treetops, Gon finds a telltale cloud of smoke and debris explode in the distance. The thunderous slam of trees crashing into the ground follows shortly after. He sends a blast of Nen in the direction opposite to send him crashing through the atmosphere and into the commotion.

Gon falls (more like slams) rather ungracefully into the treetops, quickly adopting the splintered trunk’s momentum as it falters into the split ground. Small cuts and bruises almost immediately litter his body. The force of the impact rakes a wince out of him. The blanket of smoke in his vision renders discerning any of the neighboring commotion impossible. Gon coughs, the edges of his eyes welling up from the new thickness of the area. He sheds the heavy jacket from his shoulders to avoid the sudden heat; all the foliage is dead now, anyway.

There’s a flash of fire a couple dozen meters in front of him. Gon quickly scrambles to his feet and all but sprints his way to the powerful attack. A coat of thick, intense aura covers his forearms as he slices through the weight of smoke, clearing his vision temporarily as gray tendrils dissipate with each movement. He sees the slightest hint of a shaggy, black leg, large enough to resemble a gorilla and equipped with claws like an alligator. 

Then, after enough swatting through the smog and lingering flames, Killua finally comes into view. He’s covered head to toe in rough marks of char and ash, breathing heavily and holding his arms up defensively. There’s a primal sense of urgency in his wild, bright eyes, but it’s not the kind Gon is used to seeing on his expression. It’s almost akin to the flighty, frightful energy you see in the face of a cornered animal.

But something is deeply wrong.

Killua is bloodied and bruised beyond comprehension. Sure, the attacks from their monstrous enemy are powerful, dangerous and unrestrained to a level that could very well wipe out the entire forest into flames and smoke. But with a decent fortification of Ko , damage on their bodies would— should —be limited. Their enemy seems to be some sort of Transmuter, bending its aural energy into deadly tongues of fire, but the intent of each impact more so prioritizes breadth versus sheer power. A shield of Nen should be more than enough to protect him against the most dangerous of attacks.

Instead, a large burn is settled painfully onto Killua’s side, just a few inches above his hip, that has scorched the fabric of his shirt here into a mess of loose, charred strands. His arms, raised above to protect his face, tremble in exhaustion. There’s a trail of blood escaping his pant leg that unabashedly flows like a river. 

In the second or two Gon has to observe this sight, none of this goes unnoticed. He is perturbed. To confirm his suspicions, he funnels aura into his eyes and employs Gyo .

His heart drops to his feet. 

Killua isn’t using any Nen.

There isn’t any time to recognize or understand the sheer trouble of this revelation. The monster—some terrifying combination of apex predators in a ten-foot-tall, muscular build of black fur and red eyes ablaze with fury—is rubbing its large, sharp claws together, kindling a new fire within its palms. Gon has just a few moments to react before it will send another blow right to Killua’s head.

Power collects in ripples of light and into Gon’s fist. His fingers are clenched so forcefully that his nails rip the skin of his palm. Fury courses through his bloodstream and adrenalizes the developing blow at his hands. 

Just as the monster parts his blazen hands, Gon lunges. His arm curls behind him, stretching so far that he feels the exertion in his shoulder, as the Jajanken in his fist comes to completion in a blinding, scarlet ring of light. Gon’s teeth grind together. His temples ache from the sheer pressure between his eyebrows, so intensely furrowed with rage. When he’s just a few feet from the monster’s body, Gon jumps and sends his fist flying into the monster’s head.

The momentum is more than enough to halt the brewing fire. The monster slams forcefully across the faltering ground, dark trails of blood escaping its mouth at every impact. But Gon doesn’t care enough to see where it lands—he only has a few moments before it inevitably rises to its feet to attack again.

“ Killua!” Gon shouts. He’s tripping over himself as he frantically runs to Killua and grabs his ashen shoulders harshly in his hands. “What the hell are you doing? Put on your Ren !”

“I can’t,” Killua forces out, hissing at the pressure on his burned skin. Gon stammers a quick apology and brings his hands to hover and shake aimlessly over Killua’s figure, desperate to find some way to alleviate the injuries on his body. “But don’t focus on that now. This monster—”

“Are you joking? How am I supposed to just—”

“Gon!” snaps Killua. “Shut up for a second! This one’s a henchman. There are no real thoughts in its head, only commands. It’s only going to attack—”

Killua isn’t able to finish before a new blast of fire comes hurdling their way. Gon lunges left, Killua right, as the blow slams into the ground between them. Dirt sprays into the air in suffocating bouts. By the time Gon is back on his feet, he’s watching a deadly exchange of blows between the monster and Killua. Except it’s not so much of an exchange as it is an assault . Killua hardly has time to breathe, constantly on the defense, as each contact of the monster’s arms and legs against his limbs blooms into a bruise on the pale, bloodied skin. And Gon knows. Without Nen, this fight is resolutely lethal.

Gon’s lungs burn with newly invigorated fury. The edges of his vision bleed black and red, and he can’t help the near primal growl that erupts from his throat as he lands another heavy, aura-soaked punch on the monster. It falters, feet tripping slightly over the broken ground. Gon digs his heels in the dirt and prepares himself for the monster to turn and face him instead.

Except it doesn’t. When it regains its balance, the monster doesn’t even spare the smallest glance in Gon’s direction. It simply affixes its animalistic glare back onto Killua, as if glued to the sight of him. 

A wave of confusion washes over Gon. There’s no way the monster didn’t just see him. Gon lands another kick on the monster, this time swinging it to the front of its shins so it falls on its knees in a rapid, thunderous motion. It simply climbs back to its feet and begins rubbing its palms together, refusing to part with the position he has directly in front of Killua.

Gon doesn’t get it. His heart is pounding viciously in his chest, and shock tenses his body. But he has plenty of time to worry about the developments of this situation later, when Killua is safe. “Killua, get into hiding,” he yells, and his companion startles at the sound. “It’s only targeting you!”

“I can’t outrun this guy, Gon!”

Shit. Can Killua even use Godspeed right now? “I’ll slow it down,” Gon says, worry laying roots in his chest. “But you need to run. You’re getting hurt!”

“I—” The monster makes the decision for him. Another relentless wave of fire goes tumbling in Killua’s direction. It’s undeniably impressive, the speed and eloquence at which Killua is able to react to these intense aura attacks despite employing no Nen. Even the most skilled of fighters Gon has come to know would be dead by now. If Gon wasn’t scared shitless for the man, he’d be showering him in praise. Killua ducks, eyes meeting Gon’s for a brief, tense second.

“I’ll be its distraction,” says Killua. His eyes are pleading, begging Gon to understand the unfolding plan in his mind. 

And then he’s on the run.

Luckily, half of Gon’s brain is dedicated exclusively to Killua, and he’d be a shit best friend if he couldn’t understand such a simple, yet ingenious, scheme. The manner in which the monster lumbers senselessly after Killua through the torched, ashen landscape is so strangely robotic. As Gon tails closely behind its huge, brutish body, he thinks back to Killua’s quick words—it’s being commanded by something, or rather someone . Gon swallows a growing pit of anxiety back into his gut.

That command, for some reason, involves single-mindedly pursuing Killua.

Killua, despite the horrific injuries across his body, is as agile as ever. He tumbles over the emptied forest with leaps and lunges, impossible to catch. Despite its overbearing strength and surprising speed, the monster is facing great difficulty in getting close enough to land a solid attack. It roars in frustration, a deep and rumbling sound that reverberates in Gon’s throbbing head, and clasps its claws together to friction up a new flame.

But the good thing about this mindless soldier of a creature is it’s entirely impossible to distract it. No matter how close Gon gets to its body, close enough to feel the heat of its inky black fur seep into his Ren , the monster does not care enough to turn the slightest inch. More specifically, it probably doesn’t have the capacity to. Gon, he realizes with a determined scowl, has all the time in the world to nurture a series of devastating, lethal Jajanken blows.

The first punch is meant to target the monster’s leg. Gon is hungry to make the creature suffer, pay back the injuries it dealt to Killua in a hundred fold. But when it shoots a loud, fiery explosion so close to Killua’s body that he yelps, cheek red with a new burn, the sanity in Gon snaps a bit. A lot . His sights shift to focus on the monster’s chest instead, watching its rib cage expand in deep heaves.

It’s devastating on impact. Gon forces his fist into the monster’s heart. In moments, the layers of its body rip into shreds—the skin first, then the folds of muscle, and finally its organs. A splatter of dark blood sprays across the ground from the newly created hole in its body. The excision is deep enough to create an opening in the creature’s back.

It howls in pain, but the fury in its eyes does not leave. The damage, despite its intensity, is not enough to bring it to its knees in defeat. The soles of its palms spark and shine with a new kindling of fire. Gon turns to look at Killua, warning him to stay back as he delivers the final lethal blow. 

But he’s nowhere to be found. The speed of Gon’s heart increases, frantically pounding in his chest. His eyes flicker rapidly over the landscape in desperation. He had kept his eyes on Killua the entire fight, careful to not lose his position or miss any more damage dealt to his body. So where—

The monster’s obnoxious screaming ceases abruptly. Gon snaps his gaze back to find its head sliding slowly off of the hold on its neck, dropping with a wet thud to the ground and rolling over the dry, ashen dirt. When the beheaded corpse falls heavily over itself, he sees Killua behind it, fingers sharpened to claws and drenched in murky, thick blood. Killua’s chest rises and falls with haggard breaths. Exhausted, he takes his other hand to wipe the sheen of sweat off his forehead, shoulders sagging after finally accepting relief. 

“What the hell is his problem?” Killua mutters bitterly to himself. His tired blue eyes look up to lock with Gon’s own that are ablaze with lingering adrenaline and shock. “Gon, are you okay—”

His words falter in a sharp crack when Gon rushes towards him. There’s no time for him to react before Gon roughly takes his arms in his shaking, heated hands. Surprise paints Killua’s face, lips parting slightly as a sharp inhale sucks smoky oxygen between them.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

Killua swallows. “What?”

“Don’t ever ,” Gon’s voice shudders just the slightest in intensity, “use yourself as bait again. Please. You are so roughed up, Killua.” He releases a hand to hold the ripped edge of Killua’s turtleneck back over the burn on his torso, afraid of exposing it further to the crackling, hot air. Frustration claws at the middle of his brow bone, and his teeth grind together furiously. Gon is terribly, awfully stupid. He was adamant that he’d never see Killua bruised and beaten up again—the sight of his fatigued body just the previous night was infuriating enough. Yet here he was, strong enough to shield him from damage. And he still failed. “I’m so sorry I let you get so hurt.”

A small, nervous laugh escapes Killua. “I don’t think you need to take it that seriously, Gon. A bait move is a pretty normal thing in combat—”

“I don’t care!” Gon is staring at his bloodied skin, facing cinching in emotion. His thumb grazes carefully, softly over the bruises. “You…it just isn’t worth it!”

Killua knits his brows, irritated. He lightly tries to pull his arm away, but Gon just tightens his grasp. “Gon, I’ve been at the edge of death plenty before.” He can’t help the sharp intake of his breath at the words. “And we killed it, didn’t we? I was just trying to protect you.”

Something in Gon snaps at those words. It tugs at the bitter taste in his mouth that’s residual after he thinks about the ultimatum, or Killua’s distance, or years ago in the thick of a forest fighting enemies worlds stronger than them. It rustles uncomfortably at the picture of Killua, beaten and exhausted with his own blood pooling in droplets at his feet, refusing Gon’s desperate pleas so that he has the opportunity to preserve Gon’s life, first and foremost. It forces Gon to confront the stupidity in his own actions, his own words, his indifference to a characteristic of his best friend that he knows all too well.

“Protect me? ” Gon’s jaw trembles. He’s so angry, so distressed, so completely dumbfounded at the idea that Killua, in all of his own troubles, has said those words. “Are you kidding me right now? You can’t use Nen for some crazy reason mid battle and you’re beaten to hell, and you have the mind to think about protecting me?”

“Why do you care so much now?” Killua says accusingly. The last word hits in a certain lethal way to Gon’s heart. It’s so easy to wallow in the guilt of ignoring Killua’s self-sacrifice of years. “That has always been my priority.”

“I can’t let you do that when it comes at the cost of your life ,” and he doesn’t miss the way Killua tenses at the words. It’s like he can watch the way his lungs drop to his knees in discomfort. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t see this before. I can’t revert the stupid way I acted as a kid, but please just—let me be there for you now.”

Killua stares at him like he’s grown a second head. It’s almost funny, the sheer disbelief in his wide eyes, as if he can’t possibly comprehend the idea that someone can protect him, too. “I appreciate that, Gon. But that’s just not—”

“I want to, Killua!” Gon snaps loudly. “I want to protect you! I didn’t travel the entire world to find you and—and just watch you get tossed around! When you’re so hurt and bloody I just—” There’s a hot flash of emotion welling behind Gon’s tense expression, and he just doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know why this feels so frustrating and desperate to him, why the sight of Killua in any degree of pain surges fury deep in his gut and despair in his vision. Killua is still as a stone in his grasp. “Is it so hard for you to comprehend that I care about you? That you mean so much more to me than a potential cut or bruise I might get from fighting an enemy?”

Killua doesn’t speak. When Gon looks up, he’s staring at him with glossy, stunned eyes, breath caught in his chest. And he’s fascinating like this, when he’s staring at Gon with so much wonder and incredulity in his gaze, but it’s so devastating to see. Gon can’t believe it took him so long. Took him so many years to let Killua know he was deserving of the same unconditional, irrefutable care and protection he showed to him.

“You’re impossible,” says Killua very, very quietly. There’s some quick release of an unidentifiable emotion on his face—a certain happiness, so faint in its degree, but Gon sees it. It’s enough to cause a flutter in his chest.

Gon unwraps his grasp on Killua’s arm. He bites the inside of his cheek and settles his breathing. There’s a more pressing matter to handle right now than Gon’s volatile, stupid emotions. He needs to focus.

“We’ll find a stream and wash your burns,” says Gon, narrowing his eyes. “And then you are going to explain everything.” 

“He’s a calamity.”

They’re back in the jungle. For once, Gon is grateful for the thick treetops shielding them from the beating sun—grateful for the humidity settling wetly over their dry, burned bodies. It took a significant amount of time to retreat from the burned landscape of their fight and back into the jungle. The explosions of fire from the monster’s palms reached much further than Gon originally thought.

They’ve set up camp a few dozen meters from a gushing river in case Killua’s wounds need more attending to. Gon wishes he had more to offer to his injuries—ointments, ice packs, anything—but all he can do is throw more timber into their campfire and wrap gauze around Killua’s trembling arms. His jaw clenches tighter with every new cut and bruise he finds on the pale, worn skin, fingers careful and slow as they bandage every inch of his limbs. Before anger can overtake his senses again, he calms his mind by moving his gaze up to Killua. The latter chews on a piece of cooked meat distractedly, eyes hazy as they stare listlessly into the fire. With his turtleneck burned and ripped to oblivion, he wears Gon’s tunic, fingers absentmindedly tugging at its hem. He would’ve loved to keep his thoughts on this vulnerable, affectionate image of Killua, on the warmth flooding Gon’s chest despite wearing just his undershirt below his jacket, but Killua’s words are far too heavy to ignore.

“You probably know about the five threats,” continues Killua steadily, detached as if it’s just a simple tale he’s weaving. “Those are the calamities the Association knew about heading into the Continent. We weren’t ever tasked with exterminating them. They’re incredibly dangerous, but they stick to their territory—minus sending over remnants of themselves in humans back to our world. Like Nanika. Our orders were to just avoid their main forms as much as possible.”

He takes a deep breath. “Two years ago, the Association called me for backup on the Continent. It was maybe a month or so before they were going to conclude. But the expedition team had already lost a good chunk of its members, and they needed someone to exterminate an A-level threat there before they could leave. So I came.” His eyes are dim. “The monster put up a pretty good fight, but I ended up killing them. I gave Ging their head and left. And that…was that. Everyone left the Continent, and most important enemies had been killed, save for a couple stragglers.

“Then six months ago, I ran into him .” The word trails off into a croak when Killua says it, as if afraid to hint the existence of his presence into the air. “I can’t even remember where I was. Probably in Padokea with my sister. But he showed up out of thin air and suddenly put his hand to my forehead. And I immediately felt this—this wave of doom , like I’d just been cursed. Like a needle from Illumi, but so, so much worse.”

“Is he the calamity?” Gon quietly asks.

Killua nods. He can’t bear to keep his eyes on any part of Gon’s face, so he keeps a steady flickering gaze between the campfire and his own arms, mid-bandage. “No one on the team knew he existed. There was some documentation on him from a couple centuries ago from past explorers, and we came to find out he’s called Agnor. But no one…knew he was a calamity. A sixth one, unknown from the five threats. No one until he found me.”

There’s a pause of silence. Gon’s mind is reeling, stumbling over itself in hypotheticals and assumptions and yet, simultaneously, he can’t think at all. All he’s doing is hoping, wishing, praying that whatever Killua says, it’s not impossible to overcome. Eventually, Killua musters enough strength to continue.

“Agnor told me,” he says stiffly, “that the monster I killed was his partner. I don’t know what that means in a human context, but I just know that they were extremely important to Agnor. So important that he was enraged when he found me.” Killua swallows. “It was an aura I’ve never felt before, directed right to me. No—it was just so emotionally charged . I felt like I was going to die right there. I didn’t even know these creatures were…capable of stuff like this. Of caring to such a degree. They’re so cruel and dangerous, and yet…”

Killua clears his throat. It’s such a whirlwind to watch him speak. Even when he spoke about the dangers of his family, of the Ants, he had such an air of composition and resolve to him. But the tone he holds now sounds like a recognition of defeat. “And then he was gone,” he mutters.

Gon clenches his teeth behind tight, closed lips. “What did he do to you?” he grits out, uncertainty in his wide eyes. “When he put his hand to your head?”

The silence, though brief, is agonizing. Gon can hardly hear the crackle of the campfire over the blood roaring in his ears. Killua has an unreadable expression, pulling his lip between his teeth and turning his eyes to the floor.

“I saw an exorcist,” says Killua. “After it happened. He told me it was a Nen contract. I guess Agnor has the ability to bestow Nen contracts on others. Anything he wants. And because he’s not human, most of the time they don’t have to come with a personal cost for him. A similar thing happened…to what you went through, after your contract. No exorcist is able to get rid of it. It’s too powerful.”

“Wh-what about Nanika?” Gon blurts. He tightens his grip on Killua’s arms as a method of grounding himself. There’s sweat running down his forehead, entirely independent of the sparking campfire. “Surely she can get rid of it? The same as she did for me?”

“Calamities can’t undo contracts set by other calamities. Especially not ones set by main forms. And that means they can’t set contracts on other calamities, either. Nanika is just a remnant of another being. And—even if she could, the cost would be too great. She wouldn’t be healing me. It would just be another wish.”

Gon knows. He knows from the way Killua is avoiding the most pressing question, the most evident problem in this entire story. He knows it is utterly devastating and there’s not much time to prepare himself for the damage sure to come when Killua parts his lips again. His blue eyes have never looked more stunning, more alive than they do now, more distressed. All his movement ceases, hands suspended in air with the roll of gauze, fingers shaking over the skin of Killua’s arms.

“What was the contract?” Gon breathes.

Killua stares at him like he’s just set off a bomb. Like he’s just opened Pandora’s box, like the world is now about to come crashing down.

And in a way, it does. “I can’t use Nen against him or any of his monster soldiers,” Killua says loosely, voice unsteady. “Otherwise, just like for him, the person I love dies.”

Immediately, Gon’s brain flickers to an image of Alluka—an older, stronger, yet still boundlessly happy version of the girl he’d once known. He imagines the tender smile on her flushed cheeks, her blue eyes sparkling with a special hue shared with her older brother. His heart drops. It takes every bone in his body to keep a steady upright position on the jungle ground. “Does she know?” Gon asks shakily.

“Wh-what?”

“Alluka, does she—”

“Oh,” manages Killua. His lips tremble as sadness flashes across his face. “Kind of. I left out the fact that I can’t use Nen. I-I couldn’t make her worry. It’s why…I’m away right now. To keep her safe. I haven’t seen anyone this entire time.”

Gon is stunned into silence. He wasn’t expecting this. When he encountered Killua weeks ago, battered and adrenalized in his tattered cloak, he’d always assumed some anonymous, manageable entity for the two of them to tackle. A tough fight, but possible. Something to defeat. And Gon still does not disbelieve that. But the look on Killua’s face—the sheer and utter succumbent—has a dark storm brewing in his gut, potent enough to catch the breath in his lungs. And he just can’t understand why he’s so consistently naive every, single, damn, time . Because he knows this is Killua’s kryptonite. He wouldn’t be so careful, so exhausted, so terrified if it was his own life at stake. But Alluka is so important to him, and Gon knows it. The same compassionate nature Gon fell for is now the cause of Killua’s undoing.

“You know some of the best Hunters in the world,” Gon says, determined. “There’s no way, with all of us, we can’t kill this guy.”

Killua grimaces weakly. “Agnor is a calamity for a reason. When he sets a contract, there’s a layer of protection on him until it is fulfilled, so that no matter what, an outcome will occur. He can't hurt anyone else. But in turn, no one else can hurt him.”

“What the—there’s no way that’s allowed! That’s too limitless of power!”

“Yeah, it’s what I told all those idiots before the expedition. These monsters are powerful enough to wipe us out. I can’t understand what pulls us back there every damn time—”

“ Listen,” Gon moves his hands to grab his shoulders, face hot with anger, “there has to be a way to kill him. Or at least, to lift the contract. He didn’t make the condition that you would die. It wasn’t even your fault, you just—you just had orders to kill the monster! He has to know that!” Gon is just speaking mindlessly. He’s hoping that anything he says might stick a landing, might penetrate Killua’s set mind. “There definitely is a way where we can save you and Alluka, and I know if we just contact the other Hunters we can figure out a—”

“Gon,” Killua’s voice is far too meek and far too soft, “I’ve had six months to think through all the possibilities. I don’t see a way out. The contract has to be fulfilled, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting the person I love die.”

“But I’m here now! Yeah, maybe I can’t hurt this guy but maybe, I don’t know, I can set a trap, or trick him into—”

“There’s no point to this discussion. I’ve thought about it all already.”

“There is!” yells Gon stubbornly. “This isn’t fair for you!” His throat closes in frustration, staring at Killua’s worn, calm face with urgency. He knows there’s a way out. No matter what Killua says, no matter what the outcome of the next few days is, Gon will find it.

He doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to confirm it. He doesn’t want to think about—

“What,” it’s hardly audible in the cold air, “is going to happen to you? If Agnor finally catches you?”

Killua doesn’t have the heart to respond.

Chapter Text

They have two days.

On the first, Gon is desperate to take Killua to a nearby village where reception is present. He’s still adamant on informing the starred Hunters in their network in case they might have any leads on how to address the situation. The heat is relentless on this day, sending bullets of hot light on their exposed skin. 

But Killua is stubborn. Despite Gon’s increasingly agitated pleas, he refuses to do so much as to travel within a fifty mile radius of any civilization. And Gon could have understood the hesitance at some point, when there was still the basic rationale in his mind that innocent people are not disposable for the safety of Killua, but he doesn’t care anymore. He’s livid. Angered beyond comprehension at the thought of Killua all but throwing his chances of survival away so brashly, as if already committed to the idea that this a battle he cannot win.

They encounter another monster this day, though it is hardly a threat—the power it wields is just enough to match a Nen-less Killua. There’s no difficulty in exterminating it, though Gon lets himself feel a bit more satisfaction in pounding its head into the jungle ground with nauseating, wet thuds. An uncertainty grows uninhibited in the back of his mind, one that has stuck since the moment he set foot in the Kankin continent. Gon still has no idea where this potential Continent outpost is. Despite monsters funneling in from every direction, all they encounter on their endless, aimless walks through the environment is more foliage and more undisturbed land. And it worries him. Because this means that, if and when Agnor arrives, they have no choice but to be taken by surprise.

And Killua. The expression glued to his face is agonizing, a soft and weary look that drips in defeat. The bandages on his arms bloom red in areas where particularly harsh wounds have reopened. He walks with a slight limp to his gait, and if it were up to him, Gon would just take him in his arms and sprint all the way back to Swardani City, away from this godforsaken jungle, where he could be professionally treated by Leorio and his team and never worry about Continent monsters ever again. Yeah, that’s what Gon wants. It’s so terrifying to see Killua so reserved and lacking in confidence. He has always been the strongest person Gon knows.

At one point in the evening, Gon asks a question that has been tickling his mind ever since their initial conversation about Agnor. It doesn’t make sense why Agnor would set such a specific contract, why he would disappear immediately after and not show up for six months. If he was after revenge, wouldn’t he take the first opportunity to eliminate Killua?

Killua’s response is not reassuring nor untrue in the slightest. “To make me suffer,” he says simply.

The second day is truncated. They barely have the morning and afternoon together, collecting water by the stream and finding new hunting game to cook and eat. Gon is unsure how long this game of chase will last. He doesn’t mind this life—just wandering the forest with Killua at his side, fighting a monster here and there, protecting him with every bone in Gon’s body. And if this was their life forever, Gon wouldn’t find it in him to protest it. They would need to exterminate the looming threat of Agnor holding their necks at a guillotine, but if Gon tries his best to ignore it, he’s able to focus on better things. Like Killua’s soft white hair in the sunlight, pulled into a tie. Like the faint smile he unfolds when Gon teases him or says a stupid joke. Like the crinkle of his eyes that almost seem to forget their sense of despair.

At sunset, Gon is using his machete to slice some dry wood from the nearby trees. It’s easy to hyperfocus on the task, to forget the turmoil of their situation and the fleetingness of Killua’s position next to him, safe, secure. He’s collected plenty by now. Enough to start dozens of campfires. But he continues shredding the tree bark in some diligent and distracted manner.

He’s about to swing the blade down an umpteenth time when he hears a quiet voice speak behind him. “Gon.”

Gon turns around. Sweat plasters his undershirt to his back, chest heaving in exertion. Killua is standing, still as a statue, with an unreadable expression on his face. He’s holding the hem of Gon’s tunic in his calm, steady hands, staring at the article of clothing on his body with a strange expression of forlornness. 

“You okay, Killua?”

He nods. “Can you come here?”

Of course he will. Killua never needs to assume an alternative answer when his wish is to have Gon closer. It’s all Gon wants to do. So he drops the logs held under his armpit and rushes over to Killua, stopping only when he’s just a few footsteps away from the other.

“Want me closer?” Gon jokes, eyebrows raising teasingly. Killua smiles, but it’s brief. Any hint of lightheartedness immediately dissipates from the conversation. 

Killua’s voice is quiet, so hushed that Gon has to lean a bit to hear the extent of his words. “I just…don’t know how much time I have. So I wanted to—”

“What do you mean? Don’t say that. I’m not leaving your side.”

“Gon.” He’s so afraid of this look on Killua’s face. So tired, so uninterested in fighting anymore, as if he’s already decided that this is a battle between Agnor and him, and no one else. “Just let me speak, please?”

Gon can’t retaliate. Not when Killua looks so heartbreaking. So he just stiffly nods and tries not to focus on the haunting glossiness of his blue eyes.

“Can I ask you a question again?” 

“Of course you can.”

Something is different in the tone of Killua’s voice. It’s so hesitant, accompanied by a cautious expression and a reserved curve of his body. It might have made sense when they were talking about Agnor. But Gon can’t understand why this emotion is singly fixated on him. He thought there is no world in which Killua is possibly afraid of his actions, his words. Yet apparently there is, and it is this one.

“What did you mean,” Killua swallows, “when you called me beautiful back then?”

Gon stares. He is taken back to that night on the rooftop in Yorknew city, inches from Killua’s cold face, captivated by new years in his features. He is reminded of the effortless grace of his punches and kicks, of the growing shroud of electricity on his earrings. Killua looks at him now with such deafening uncertainty. The effort to keep eye contact seems impossibly difficult for him.

And Gon feels the air seep out of his lungs. Because maybe, possibly, definitely, he is taken back to nights before then, too. He remembers when they were sixteen, when Killua looked all too heart wrenchingly brilliant in the moonlight. He reminisces about when they were children, when he didn’t even know what beautiful meant, but he knew that with Killua, he was the happiest he’d ever been.

Gon wants to say all of this. But somehow, the words don’t come out. He doesn’t know how to articulate the depth of these emotions. He doesn’t even know how to confront them.

Killua is growing worried with his silence. He parts his lips to speak, but not before Gon finally does.

“Exactly what I said,” he breathes. “I’m sure you know it, but you’re beautiful, Killua. You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever seen.”

Killua waits. He waits with an unmoving expression, staring up at Gon with the most overflowing concoction of emotions that Gon can hardly pinpoint any specific one. And Gon knows. Killua is waiting for him to continue. Say what he really meant. And usually he can. Usually he’s so quick with speaking his mind, completely unperturbed by shame or uncertainty or worry. It’s easy to tell Killua how much he cares about him: how all he wants to do is protect him, stay by his side, be his best friend for every year he lives.

But this. This is different. This is—

“Okay,” Killua whispers. His gaze breaks, and something terrible and intense flickers in his eyes. Gon watches, paralyzed, as he widens the space between them. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.”

“Killua,” Gon’s voice is pained. It’s desperate. It feels like Gon’s just lodged a blade into his own chest.  “Killua, wait—”

Gon knows this sudden feeling. The needles on his skin, the freeze of his body, the ringing in his ears. His words are cut off as abruptly as they began. Killua widens his eyes, and his fingers roll into tense fists at his side. Sweat rolls down his back as his eyesight grows hazy, the edges bleeding black.

He knows this feeling all too well. The sudden suffocating fog of an incredibly malicious, heinous aura, washing over them like a tidal wave. It appears as if the world has lost its sunlight. Gon can only vaguely make out the trembling figure of Killua in front of him, staring at him with such horror that a shudder runs down his spine. Trees begin to whip and lash in a sudden force of wind, and forest creatures scurry back into their homes in the soil or behind the bushes to hide from the incoming threat. The ground tremors as if it is breaking in half. An undeniable pressure threatens to crush him into dust. Any heat he’d felt from the treetops before is quickly erased by a thick, sharp iciness overtaking his senses. It takes every ounce of strength he can muster to just keep his head up and affixed on Killua.

A part of him thinks back to Pitou. The sheer force of this aura trumps their blanket of malice by magnitudes, but this feels different. It is terrifying, it is dangerous, it is lethal.

And, for some reason, it is familiar .

Gon can’t put his finger on it. Something about this forthcoming Nen…no, this angry, primal emotion coating it,  is something he has felt before. But Gon doesn’t have the time to dwell on this. Regardless of how he feels, one thing is for certain: Killua is in danger. 

“Killua,” he manages to grunt into the wind, “stay next to me.”

But Killua is not listening. His head whips around, breath stuttering frightfully in his chest. When Gon squints into the distance, he sees it. Sees him .

Agnor is just a small flash in the distance. He almost seems to be walking, but the speed at which his figure grows in size in their vision easily disproves this. Gon can just barely make out a tall, lankly build, a long black suit, a hollow face with bright, hypnotizing lights for eyes. With every stride he takes closer to them, the pervasive sheet of aura seems to intensify exponentially.

Gon feels fury build in his gut. It’s somehow winning the battle against the suffocating strength of Agnor’s Nen that threatens to crush his lungs. Aura swirls into his fists, and his teeth grind together.

“Killua,” he seethes, “I’m going to kill this—”

“Gon.”

Killua looks back at him with icy, sapphire eyes. Thick tears spill onto his flushed cheeks. His lips tremble, and his body has never looked so vulnerable in the thick of this horrible, deadly aura. Gon can only stare in shock as Killua raises an electrified, sparkling hand to his chest, fingers shaking harder with every movement closer to his skin. Time seems to decelerate. The speed of lightning is somehow so impossibly slow in Gon’s vision.

“ Get out of here.”

Killua’s palm lands onto his ribcage. Electricity crackles all over Gon’s body, paralyzing his movement. He can do nothing but watch the tendrils of sparks spread over his body. And then he’s propelled through the trees. Bounding with the fastest momentum he’s experienced in his life, into the branches and across the jungle. Away from the clearing, away from Agnor.

Away from Killua.

East. He’ll head east.

There’s no time to think about anything else. Gon sprints through the jungle with the speed and animosity of a wild, rabid animal. Branches and ferns cut through his jacket and graze the skin of his arms. Heat and fatigue climb like thorns over his legs. Sweat is persistent even through the cool, dark night.

His En is a larger radius than it’s ever been before. Eighty meters, probably. The sheer force of its breadth is a product of the intense, hot panic kindling deep within Gon’s body. The radar hasn’t detected anything in hours. Agnor seems to have vanished into thin air, and he took Killua with him.

Gon skids to a stop. He pants heavily, crazed eyes focusing on the roaring stream of water rapids in front of him. He’s already seen this.

North. He’ll head north.

There’s nothing breaching his senses. The only thing he hears is the thick sound of his own exhales. The only thing he sees is the flash of trees as he soars past them. Blisters erupt and burst over the soles of his feet as the terrain grows bumpy and jagged. His throat burns from the strain of screaming Killua’s name into the endless forest and the lack of water. He’s probably covered a couple hundred kilometers by now. But none of this is digested. None of this registers the slightest in Gon’s single-scoped brain. All that matters is Killua is facing Agnor, and Gon needs to find him.

By the time the sun begins to rise, he’s covered every cardinal direction twice. The jungle is as mysterious and hidden as ever. Gon tries bounding the treetops for an aerial scan, wading through the water and digging through caves, covering every inch of the forest by foot. But every outcome is the same.

Killua is gone.

Quiet, faint sunlight begins to seep through the treetops. Gon finally stalls his endless pursuit, knees buckling from the sheer exertion. He leans over the ground, elbows digging into the soil, and absentmindedly pulls small weeds in his fingers to distract himself from the overwhelming flood of emotion in his bloodstream. Sweat falls from his forehead and finds refuge in the thick jungle floor.

This can’t be happening.

Killua can’t use Nen. Killua, who is already bruised and beaten to hell, is now in the hands of Agnor, the most dangerous and heinous creature Gon has ever had the misfortune to encounter—despite just existing in its presence for a few meager seconds. Why the hell did he force Gon away? Push Gon hundreds of meters through the trees to never get the chance to protect him when he’s so vulnerable and defenseless? Gon wrenches his eyes shut. He can’t even think about it. It makes bile rise in his stomach, just imagining the kinds of terrible, sickening things Agnor is capable of, now with Killua at his mercy. 

The scariest part is Gon doesn’t doubt Agnor’s capability to enact them. Because, in some horrifying and insidious way, he almost understands it. The rage. The despair. The sheer need to get their due revenge on the loss of a loved one. 

Because this is exactly what he feels right now.

Gon gets five seconds. He’ll only allot himself this amount of time to wallow and catch his breath before he’s back to his trembling feet again. He swallows the heavy lump in his throat and squints beyond the curtain of sunlight and through the trees. There is a village around fifty kilometers from where he stands. Gon will go there. He will phone every Zodiac and starred Hunter who was present in the expedition to the Continent, including his father. He will demand they come and offer support for their comrade, taken by an unknown and threatening force of evil. And he will find Agnor and rip him to shreds.

The Kankin continent isn’t known colloquially for its industrialization. Most of its citizens are subsistence farmers in the deep jungle or part of sparse, isolated villages. Its capital, around four hundred kilometers from the west coast to the inland, is a town at best. The capital city has one Association outpost for Hunters to access and congregate at. It is barely a two story building, with boarded up windows and concrete battered with moss and vines through the years. 

Every hour Gon has sat in its lobby, staring at the moldy red carpet while the tired receptionist answers phone calls in a bored, monotone fashion, is agonizing. Kankin is so isolated that even the nearest city hub would need several hours by blimp to reach here. But every minute Gon is apart from Killua, fingers twitching in restlessness and eyes bloodshot from lack of rest, is more fuel to the growing pit of fury in his gut. He doesn’t even care to keep his aura contained. It festers around his body in a sinister, fiery shield of Ren . 

Ging and a few of the Zodiacs reach Kankin by evening, with the rest who agreed to come arriving a few hours later. Normally, Gon would be appreciative of the speed and diligence at which they came at his desperate, panicked call. But he’s too frustrated. And honestly, some immature and simmering part of Gon blames them for putting Killua in this terrible, awful expedition to begin with.

But most of him blames himself. And the familiar is nothing short of dissimilar.

“Hey,” calls a gruff voice from the entrance. Gon rises to his feet at the sound. Nothing is different about Ging. He’s characteristically tired, bundled in fabrics upon fabrics and holding a cigarette between his fingers. A couple of Zodiacs maintain a comfortable distance away from him, illuminated very softly by the harsh streetlights near the road. Even Ging does not walk closer to his son. He isn’t scared or cautious; rather, he’s using this time to judge Gon’s state of mind. He knows all too well what occurred in his battle against the Chimera Ants, and even if he was just a confused child at the time, the nature of his character isn’t overridable.

“I’m sorry…to hear about Killua.” Ging looks uncomfortable. The right words aren’t coming easily to him.

Gon doesn’t say anything. He just walks outside to find the rest of the Zodiacs, feeling the presence of his father following close behind him in confusion. Gon’s back ripples in tension as emotion clouds up his vision.

“He was taken by a Continent monster.” Gon’s voice is so low and icy that he can hardly recognize its own tone. “A really powerful one. I have no idea where they went. So I need us to find him.”

There’s silence over the town square. Cicadas buzz loudly in the distance as wind howls through the trees. The Zodiacs shuffle tensely on their feet, looking at Gon with such reserved pity in their eyes. Gon doesn’t get it. He feels like a spectacle on display, so removed from the plan that everyone around him seems to know. Finally, Mizaistom speaks. “Of course we’ll look for Killua,” he reassures. Gon’s skin only prickles in response. “He was a great help on the Continent.”

Gon nods. “I’ve already traced probably a five hundred kilometer radius from here. If the Continent outpost is here, the monster probably has some ability to hide it from the plain eye. He—”

“Gon,” Cluck interrupts, her sharp eyes narrowed with hesitation and condolence, “don’t take this the wrong way. We have no intention of abandoning this pursuit of your friend.” She swallows. “But I think you should just come into this prepared.”

Gon’s expression tightens. “Prepared? Prepared for what?”

“For anything. Including the worst case scenario.”

“Which is?”

Cluck’s lips purse at the thick, heated stare on Gon’s face. His skin feels hot, temples pounding and ears ringing. Fists shake against the sides of his pants. “Why does it feel like,” he says slowly, “you guys are hiding something from me?”

“Gon,” a new voice calls. It’s familiar, the tone comforting and the level stable. Gon turns to see Leorio walking closer to him, an expression of sadness etched into his features. It’s fascinating, the way Gon becomes so tunnel-visioned, so oblivious when he’s knee deep in anger. He hadn’t even noticed his long-time friend was there, watching him with sudden caution. There’s not much of a difference to Leorio’s appearance, and Gon is grateful that his new position on the Zodiacs didn’t change his caliber. The suit on his figure is crisp and dark, briefcase replaced with a messenger back stretched over his chest. 

Leorio is just a few footsteps away from him when he stops. The difference in their height is now staggeringly slight, and Leorio seems to recognize this with a quiet inhale and slightly widening eyes. “Believe me. I practically beat up the entire airport to get here as quickly as possible.”

Finally, Gon lets himself smile. If he can’t trust any of these elusive, tight-lipped Zodiacs, at the very least he knows he can rely on Leorio. He’s one of the few figures in his network who Gon is actually able to meet up with on a regular basis, mainly because his recent endeavors with the new hospital have confined him to Swardani City. Leorio hasn’t changed, but there is a certain new air to him: a new strength to his aura, a reservation to his face. Gon knows, without a doubt, it is a result of the Dark Continent expedition. The thought only tightens the grip of his fists.

Leorio’s eyes dim. “But—”

Gon’s smile drops. 

“—Cluck is right. The Continent was… is a lot more dangerous than anything the Association has probably faced before. We barely got out with ten percent of our team left.”

“What does this have to do with finding Killua?”

“It means,” Ging adds in, sighing, “you can’t rush in expecting to kill this monster.”

“Okay, whatever,” that means nothing to Gon, he has a goal to kill Agnor no matter what, “but we still need to find Killua.”

There it is again. That suffocating, tense silence. Gon’s nails are chalked with blood as the intensity of his fists break half-healed tears in his palms again. He glances at Leorio, gaze desperate and in search of an explanation. The elder won’t meet his eye. “Leorio. What the hell is going on?”

When Leorio doesn’t answer, Mizaistom responds in his place. “The monster that took Killua…he’s an S tier, Gon. He’s more powerful than any Hunter we know.”

The breath is knocked out of Gon’s chest. He stares, gaze hazy and eyes wide, as his lips part in the slightest exhale. Every person surrounding him is highly regarded as one of the strongest, most capable Nen users in the world. They were tasked with eliminating the biggest threats on the Dark Continent, and they succeeded. Yet now, they fixate him with such strong pity, so sickening and powerful that Gon feels fourteen years old and is hugging a tortured, dead Kite in his arms. The expression is familiar. Gon can’t put his tongue on it—until he stares at Ging. His father shares a similar hint of anger, but there’s a sense of despair, of hopelessness between his golden, dull eyes.

It’s the look Killua had before he was taken.

Gon’s breath stutters on his tongue. Nothing makes sense. “How,” he asks numbly, “do you know about Agnor?”

Mizaistom doesn’t respond. He just stares wistfully back at Gon as anger channels into a simmering, dark coat of aura around his body again. Gon’s mind is turning in somersaults as the words finally catch up to him, registering uncomfortably in his brain. 

Ging seems to notice the turmoil racking his disposition. He clears his throat and waves a hand at Cluck and Mizaistom. “You guys go ahead. We’ll convene later tonight to begin a search. Leorio and I will talk with Gon alone for a bit.”

The Zodiacs nod tightly and mutter a small farewell before retreating into the cold night. Gon doesn’t even register their leave, eyebrows furrowing in sudden horror, in anguish—in betrayal . Leorio’s eyes are full of concern as he sees the muscles tense across Gon’s body, searing with white-hot aura. The plaza is empty. Street lamps flicker from sudden competition with his power. Gon can be as angry as he wants without inhibition.

He turns to Ging, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “You knew, ” he seethes.

Leorio’s tone sharpens. “Gon!”

“You knew about Agnor. You knew he was after Killua. That he couldn’t use Nen against him.” Cobblestone breaks like glass underneath his boots. The sudden wind in the plaza has Leorio gripping his glasses to his nose bridge. Ging does nothing but stare resolutely back at his son, the fabrics of his clothes whipping senselessly in the air. “Didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I did,” Ging deadpans.

Fire pools into Gon’s lungs, the char of sheer fury building smokily on his tongue. He’s never felt so disgusted in his life. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me this at the bar? Why did you tell me that Killua’s expedition ended, that he didn’t want to see me?” His voice rises, edges bleeding with despair. “What the hell, Ging! Why did you lie to me?! Killua is—he could be so hurt right now! I could’ve been here so much earlier for him, I could have—I could have protected him—”

“Gon!” yells Leorio. His eyebrows furrow over steely brown eyes. “You have every right to be upset at him. At us. But it was in your best interest. We didn’t want to lie to you, but we had no choice!”

Gon’s eyes burn in horror. “You knew too, Leorio,” he whispers, but it’s less of a question and more of a confirmation. Leorio’s teeth grit. “When? How long have you guys known about this and refused to tell me about it?”

“You’re smarter than this, Gon,” scoffs Ging. His demeanor isn’t malicious. It’s throwing Gon’s keen senses in a loop. His teeming anger feels so misdirected. “I didn’t have it out for that kid. That’s why I let you go eventually.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful for that?”

“I didn’t hide the truth because I wanted to. Killua asked me to.”

Gon almost laughs in incredulity. A noise of frustration escapes his clenched teeth. “That makes no sense, Ging. Killua has no reason to hide this from me. He’d want every person involved to protect Alluka from the contract, including me. Don’t try to act like he’d ever actually ask you that—”

“He’s not lying, Gon,” Leorio says softly. Gon’s words die at his lips, staring back at Leorio with shock in his irises. “Killua asked the same of me. Of everyone. Including Alluka.”

Gon is confused. He’s so confused, so betrayed, so lost in the dark. It feels like every person in the Association knew about Killua’s plight except for Gon—his best friend, the person who was supposed to protect him. Even Alluka, who was the subject of the Nen contract to begin with, knew. Maybe it made the slightest amount of sense when Killua relentlessly pushed him away, explained to Gon that it wasn’t safe to be with him, that Killua was just trying to protect everyone by staying away. If Gon tried his very best, he would find rationality in this. But everything is crumbling at his feet upon the realization that everyone knows about it. Everyone except him.

“Why…” Gon’s voice is faint. “Why would Killua hide it from me? Even—even if in some wild world I couldn’t protect him, I could definitely protect Alluka. It doesn’t make sense.” The anger funnels back into his chest. “You guys are wrong! Killua would never—”

“ Think for a second, Gon!” Ging snaps harshly. His own aura climbs tamely, yet furiously, over his body. “Use that damn brain of yours! Why would he tell the Zodiacs and I, tell his sister, tell everyone except for you about this contract? Why would it matter that you shouldn’t know about it?”

Gon stares, distraught down to his bones. Nothing is registering properly in his brain. “I can’t, it—” Gon swallows. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You misunderstood the contract, Gon. Agnor didn’t mean any kind of love. Not the kind for family, for Alluka.”

“What does that—”

“It’s you , idiot,” Ging says in a devastating, stomach-churning way: the type that pushes the words into your heart, twists, and pulls out your veins. Gon’s breath catches in his throat. The segmented fractures of his mind finally piece together, and the picture they produce is worse than anything he could have imagined. Because it now leads to a horrifying conclusion. 

“You are the person Killua is in love with. You are the one that can die in this contract.”

Chapter Text

The first week passes.

The search team is relentless. Entire days are spent teeming the jungle for any indications of Agnor or Killua. Villages are plastered with flyers, the Association sends in reinforcements, and every piece of equipment from thermal detectors to spatial predictors to Nen perceptors is employed. Each person receives a satellite phone to communicate even within the desolate pockets of the jungle. When every Hunter is exhausted at night, sleeping blissfully on their straw cots in small hostels, Gon continues his search through the moonlight and into the morning. There’s no sign of Killua.

The second week passes.

Gon is exhausted. He hasn’t slept in days, and on a particularly hot and humid day scouring the jungle with Leorio, he passes out. He is banned from continuing his search for at least five days. Gon lasts just one. He’s back to his feet and slicing through weeds and branches before Ging is able to give the slightest reprimand. The search team dwindles by half. Some Zodiacs have new missions to take on. Others see the search as a lost cause. 

Gon overhears a few Hunters snarking to each other outside the capital’s Association outpost. They discuss him with exasperation. It’s futile, they say. This monster’s S ranked. We’ve never even seen one of those before. This kid is probably dead by now and we’re chasing after his corpse. Leorio is just barely able to reign Gon back so that he doesn’t send iron-hard punches into their faces. Killua is not dead. Killua cannot be dead.

There’s no sign of Killua.

On the second day of the third week, Gon is well aware that Leorio is growing increasingly disappointed and hopeless with every unyielding day. He can sense the heavier tread of his footsteps, the steeper sag of his shoulders. The jungle terrain feels so oppressive and vast, and Gon swears he knows the environment like the back of his hand at this point. From now on, finding Killua will be a mechanism of chance. There’s no way to predict where he or Agnor might show up.

“Gon,” says Leorio at one point. They’ve trekked in silence for well over an hour, sweat covering their faces and breaths hot with exertion. Not that Gon has talked much over the past few weeks to begin with. His mind is occupied with much heavier things to worry about.

He looks up. The bags under Leorio’s eyes are immense. He’s probably wracked with worry and guilt at night, just as Gon is. “Did he ever tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“How he felt about you.”

All Gon can do is bite his lip to stop the shudder of despair deep in his chest. Every evening he spends lying in his cot and staring at the low, water-stained ceiling, a gut-wrenching replay of his last interaction with Killua plays. If he had just mustered the courage to tell Killua how he felt, how he is mesmerized by the beauty in his features but dually the compassion and strength and pureness of his heart, what would have happened? Would Killua have let him stay and protect him? No, it’s unlikely. But why did Killua ask him, then? Why did he stare into Gon’s eyes with such a desperate, hopeful gaze, as if the right words would give him permission to take his hand and run away from the world, leaving everything they know behind?

Gon feels so, so stupid. He feels like the biggest idiot in the world because despite his best efforts against it, he has let Killua slip through his fingers a second time. He never knew. He never had the slightest idea that Killua cares for him so much—that he wished for a different response to leave Gon’s lips. That he loves him. How long had he borne the brunt of this feeling? How much time did Gon waste being clueless and lost in the mesmerization of Killua’s presence, so willfully ignorant that the universe is far too fickle and unfair to keep him close a second time?

How many times did Gon look into his gorgeous sapphire eyes and want nothing more than to kiss him senseless, and how many times did Killua want the same?

It’s cruel. He’s discovered the prospect of something euphoric and delightful after it has been snatched from possibility. But maybe it’s fate teaching him a lesson. Maybe, Gon rues, the universe has had enough of his callous ignorance towards the leaps of pure selflessness Killua takes in protecting him, in holding him deep within his heart. And now, Killua is somewhere deep in the hands of Agnor, plagued with the misconception that Gon doesn’t feel the same way. God, what he would give to just have Killua back in his arms so he can shower him with every word that should have been said, hold him tight, and never let him go.

  “No,” whispers Gon after his mental turmoil. The hold on his machete tightens. “I was stupid. I never even knew.”

“You’re not stupid,” says Leorio softly. He puts a reassuring hand on Gon’s shoulder. “You can’t beat yourself up about this. Knowing Killua, he probably wanted it that way. Honestly, I feel bad. He definitely wanted to tell you on his own terms, but Ging spilled the beans. I bet real Jenny that when he comes back, he’ll beat the shit out of your father.”

Gon forces a laugh. He appreciates Leorio for trying to elevate his spirits, but it’s a lost cause. “God, I don’t care what he does. I just want to find him again. I can’t believe I…” A telltale wetness stings at his eyes, and he forces it back into his throat before he speaks again. “He deserves so much more than this. He’s so good at protecting everyone else, yet—when it comes to him, we’re so…”

He trails off. Leorio’s gaze is so potently pitiful, and Gon just feels so pathetic. “I thought I was done taking him for granted. It’s all I did when I was a kid. I swore I’d be better now. But I’m here, completely safe, and Killua is with an S ranked monster who we hardly know anything about.” Gon’s jaw trembles. “He’s picking up my pieces again.”

“Do you love him?”

Gon keeps his eyes on the ground. He counts every rock they pass, keeping a tally in his brain. If he does this, he might be able to distract himself from white hair, freckled pale skin, and endless blue eyes. Quietly, he nods.

Leorio stares at him, eyes dim. “That’s what happens, Gon. When you love someone. You’d cut off your own limbs to keep them safe.”

On the last day of the third week, Gon’s satellite phone chimes with an urgent message.

“Th-this is Mizaistom speaking. Everyone, come to the capital outpost immediately. We…Cluck and I have found Killua.”

Ging is tense.

The engines of their blimp to Swardani City roar in the still air, whipping dry dirt over the clearing. The night is clear, and the stars have never looked so clear in the limitless sky with the undisturbed environment protecting the view. Each step closer to the entrance of the aircraft feels heavier than the last. Mizaistom, Cluck, and the few other Zodiacs trail quietly ten or so meters behind him. They share a similar look of wariness on their faces. Leorio is stiff and silent at Ging’s left. His chest is tight, as if holding his breath in anticipation—or more clearly, anxiety. They hold a considerable amount of distance from the man in front of them. But it’s visible.

The pitch-black, festering, and dooming aura around him.

The bright, blinding lights of the blimp hit the trees to their right. Underneath the beams, a faint cast of fluorescence illuminates Gon’s back, muscles taut and arms tense as he walks. The age in his figure has never looked so damning. He misses not a single stride, hyperfocused on the task at hand: entering the blimp and leaving the continent. Gon doesn’t say a single word. He hasn’t, ever since convening in the capital city earlier that day. Ging isn’t able to see his face. But he can just imagine the picture that paints it.

Leorio’s gulp of worry is so palpable that Ging hears it. “It’s what I think it is, isn’t it?” he whispers, trepidation gripping his words.

Ging’s eyes do not leave the turned figure of his son. His eyes follow the trace of his arms to the frail, pale, barefoot legs curved over Gon’s elbow. He’d seen it earlier today, gathering in the Association outpost as Cluck frantically bandaged the abdomen of a collapsed person on the table: the sheer brutality of it all, the complete wreckage of Killua’s entire body. But even just seeing the deep lacerations across his legs now—the cuts, the bruises, the burns, the welts, every horrifying thing Ging can imagine—causes his stomach to curl unsettlingly. A crown of white hair is barely visible over Gon’s left arm. It is stained with a nauseating bloom of crimson. 

Gon’s hold of Killua’s unconscious, debilitated body in his arms is strong and so very gentle. His head turns the slightest, seemingly to get another look of Killua’s face. He angles his shoulder forward painstakingly softly to loll Killua’s head comfortably against his bicep. Gon’s fingers curl tighter under Killua’s back.

The sinister aura around Gon ignites in power.

Ging’s expression hardens. His jaw clenches, acutely aware of the newfound breeze that follows Gon’s every footstep, the haunting agony that paints every muscle underneath the folds of his undershirt. There’s an awoken misery to Gon’s being now. It was born from the shock and despair of his gaze on Killua’s broken body: the tremble of his fists, the devastation of his eyes, the gape of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Ging responds quietly, voice pained. “Killua was tortured.”

“Move. Get out of my way!”

The doctors can only blink in surprise as Alluka shoves them aside and runs through the hospital corridor. Her skirt is a flash of navy behind her, and her dark hair is sliding through its clip from the urgency and desperation in her sprint. Hot tears well at the edges of her wide, tired eyes. The hallway has never felt longer, the fluorescent lights harsher, the building more sterile and unwelcoming. She swallows down the lump in her throat. Her heart pounds senselessly against her ribcage. The soles of her feet throb in pain from the exertion of pounding up the countless flights of stairs, too impatient and horrified to wait for the elevator.

The nurse at Killua’s room stands calmly by the entrance. Alluka doesn’t have the energy to speak, her breath coming out in fatigued pants, but luckily she doesn’t have to. The nurse simply gives a grim, knowing nod and slides the door open. 

Alluka straightens her back and gingerly steps into the dim, cold room. The heels of her boots reveal each footstep with a quiet, echoed click against the waxy, tiled floor. A lamp across the hospital bed is the only source of illumination; the curtains are drawn to block any bleeding sunlight. A few vases of flower bouquets sit on the table, their floral scent almost prevailing in the battle against the sterile, harsh chemicals. Her breath is caught within her chest. Alluka pads her way to the bed, keeping her eyes downcast. Every beep of the heart monitor is loud enough to shake her to her core. Eventually, she musters the courage to look at the figure lying in the bed.

She almost breaks in two. 

“Brother,” she weakly croaks.

Alluka collapses to her knees. She stretches her arms over the starchy white bedsheet, and her trembling fingers move to enclose a still, bandaged hand laying flat against the mattress. Tears spill down her pale cheeks as the air is sucked from her lungs. She can do nothing but stare in horror at her older brother’s unconscious body, covered head to toe in gauze and attached to various machines and fluids at his veins. Whatever skin that is visible on his face is bruised. Even each breath he takes seems forceful and painful against the fragile skin of his abdomen, carefully wrapped in layers of cloth from a surgical operation a few hours prior.

Alluka runs her soft thumbs carefully over the jagged, papery gauze over Killua’s hands. Her vision is blurry. A growing wetness spreads over the bedsheet under her chin as she weeps. She presses a quiet, gentle kiss to her brother’s knuckles, holding his hand close to her cheek.

For several minutes, Alluka does nothing but sob at the bedside. Words do not come out of her lips. Her fingers do not remove themselves from Killua’s. The only sounds escaping into the room are her soft, heartbroken wails and the steady beat of the heart monitor.

Eventually, she brings a finger up to wipe her tear line and registers the presence of someone occupying the room with her. Alluka turns to the chair at the corner of the room, a few feet from the foot of the bed. The lamp light is barely enough to illuminate the figure sitting in it. In a daze, she rises to her feet and shakily inhales.

“Gon,” she whispers.

Alluka hasn’t seen him in years. He’s noticeably changed—stronger, matured in the face, tall enough that the chair looks awkward for him. But the most startling difference is not the new breadth of his body. It is the complete deprivation of the usual gleeful caliber to his bright, golden eyes. The stretch of an almost permanent smile. The confidence in a poised, straight back. Now, Gon keeps a blank gaze to the floor, strands of grimy black hair falling over his forehead. Blood stains the white cotton of his undershirt. His arms hang limply against the stretch of his knees.

Gon slowly manages a glance up. His eyes soften when they meet Alluka’s. Then, they contort under furrowed brows, lips clamping into a thin, straight line.

“We both got tricked,” he says absently, “real bad, didn’t we?”

Alluka’s eyes grow moist again. She stumbles to Gon and throws her arms around him, sinking her face into the crook of his neck. He’s initially surprised by the action, every cell in his body tensing upon the interaction. But when Alluka does nothing but pull the embrace tighter, he relaxes and slowly brings his hands to securely hold her against him.

“I had…no idea,” she sobs, fingers wrenching the fabric of his shirt. “I didn’t—he never told me he could…he could get so hurt .” Her eyelids scrunch tighter. “I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark. I-I should’ve never listened to him. I didn’t know everything, but at—at least I knew about you. This feels so horrible.”

“It’s not your fault,” murmurs Gon, patting a soothing palm against her back. “Not Killua’s, either. I get it.” 

Alluka separates from the embrace slowly, skin puffy and red. Gon’s gaze slowly climbs to Killua. With a quiet squeak of the chair, he rises to his feet and makes his way over to the edge of the bed. He keeps a hesitant distance away from Killua’s body, as if worried the slightest feathertouch will cause him damage. No—it’s not that. It’s as if Gon feels unworthy of being near him in the first place.

“I’m sorry I didn’t protect your brother,” he says hoarsely. Alluka feels her heart pang at the complete dejection painting Gon’s face.

She shakes her head, managing a faint smile. “He’s hard to protect. I know.” She can’t bring herself to look at the stains of blood growing wider across the gauze on Killua’s arms. Her lungs feel tight. “Is the contract…still in place?” she asks, afraid of the answer.

Gon tenses. A noise involuntarily leaves his throat, some type of muffled whimper, that reveals everything to Alluka. She brings a shaky hand to her mouth as her eyes widen. Is this how it will be: indefinitely, terribly until the end of time? Will they have to keep shuffling Killua every two or so days to a new city, hiding from this wicked force of evil that wants nothing more than to continue torturing her brother? What happens when Agnor grows faster? When they can’t keep up with the speed, and she’s lost the person dearest in her life a second time?

“I will kill him,” comes a low voice, as if addressing the concerns in her mind. Alluka’s skin prickles at the haunting tone of Gon’s words. “I promise. Whatever it takes, I’m breaking this contract and setting Killua free.”

The room is quiet for a moment. Gon turns to face the younger woman. Resolve is evident in his features, but Alluka knows. She and the girl sharing her mind are perceptive enough to see the emotion for what it is: senseless, immeasurable despair.

“Okay,” she says, clenching her teeth. “I know you will. But I don’t want whatever it takes.”

Gon’s lips part in surprise. “Alluka—?”

“My brother doesn’t want that either. It means nothing if you don’t come back to him.”

Gon doesn’t have the words to respond. He stares at her in shock, watching her disposition switch to something more heavy—more tumultuous, filled with grief and anger and frustration and ache .

“You can’t throw your life away again,” Alluka demands, teary-eyed. “Because he is here, and he survived torture for you. He put himself through hell to make sure you came out alive.”

The air is heavy, thick with some layer of devastation that feels like a weight on Alluka’s shoulders. She feels the trail running down her cheek grow wet again. “You have to promise,” she whispers hotly through glossy, narrowed eyes.

A flash of recognition passes over Gon’s worn face. His chest is tight as he holds his breath. And maybe the words were harsh, but Alluka knows. She knows this is what Killua would want. If the contract is a testament of anything, it is this.

Eventually, Gon nods. He takes her shaking, pale hand in his own and lowers his gaze.

“I promise.”

It’s hard to describe the feelings brewing in Gon’s chest. When he’s sitting in heated, chaotic meetings with the Zodiacs and other Double or Triple Starred Hunters, watching as they desperately mull over strategies and solutions to the evergoing problem that is Agnor, Gon is empty. He’s removed, distanced far from the present moment. It’s even easier to disassociate when they’re on the move, heralding in a dozen blimps and shuttling every piece of medical equipment attached to Killua’s body through their entrances. Leorio gratefully does most of the talking during these days. But using his voice is a bit unavoidable when there’s a call from a figure in Killua’s network, demanding to know what has happened, how he was taken. And there’s only one person who witnessed Agnor snipe Killua into the thin air.

When he’s alone at night, laying in the hotel bed within some new town or city, the feelings are excavated. He doesn’t sleep. Some hours it’s overwhelming guilt, the image of Killua’s frightened blue eyes shrouded in electricity pushing him away from the incoming monster. Others contain grief. His memory flashes with terrible, agonizing pictures of bruises and burns on Killua’s beautiful skin, welts on his perfect face. 

Most often, he is angry.

Furious. So livid and riddled with rage that it manifests differently this time. It is not overt. It is a quiet, contained force of rich, dark aura over his body. A slight clench of his jaw as he imagines his hands closing in on Agnor’s thin, gangly throat. A ripple of tension over his back, through his arms, within his bloodstream. This emotion is easy to identify. It’s even easier to keep close.

There is an unbreakable resolution sworn deep in his heart. One that, somehow, in either stupidity or gut feeling, Gon is unshakably certain he will fulfill.

Agnor will die by his hands.

After a week of shuttling around the continent, Killua is transported to the best hospital in Yorknew. When Gon steps foot on the concrete path of the city’s downtown, he almost laughs. He’s reminded almost painfully of when he was chasing Killua over the rooftops of this bustling, loud, lively place. If only he had known. If only he had taken more careful attention to the cuts already littering Killua’s face. 

The night air is chilly as Gon walks down the street and back to his hotel. Ging and Leorio are still in another tense meeting, and Gon should probably still be too, but it’s well past midnight and honestly , the conferences have felt nothing short of wasteful and shamefully useless. Gon doesn’t need to hear these people convince the crowd of another self-proclaimed ingenious plan to take down Agnor. If their schemes really were unshakeable, Agnor would have never taken a step off the Continent to begin with: never cursed Killua in the first place. He doesn’t need to hear any of it when he’s already committed to killing Agnor himself.

It’s a nice, mind-numbing walk. The street takes him past the hospital, a hunkering tower of concrete. Gon is tempted to sneak through the windows and bypass visitor hours to spend another night at Killua’s bedside. But he should rest. Gon has been selfish enough. People watching is an easy activity here, too. Usually Gon has the energy to strike up a conversation with particularly friendly passersby. Right now, all he wants is to climb into the sheets of his bed and pray to the sky that his best friend—his love —will wake up.

His hotel room is on the fourteenth floor. It’s a few doors down from Leorio. Maybe when he’s back, Gon will catch up on a debrief of the rest of the meeting’s events. Judging by the intensity of the conversation earlier, he probably has a few hours before then. He has time to recover in silence.

Gon exits the elevator and is in the process of fishing out his room key when he sees Killua. 

He first notices the crutches. The tools are wedged under Killua’s armpits, his bandaged fingers gripping the metal clasps as he leans against the wall. There’s a clear imbalance of his gait; the right leg is broken. He’s swathed in loose sweats and a long, baggy shirt. The lacerations on his skin are still too fresh and fragile to adorn clothes that would friction against them. The gauze on his arms disappears under the sleeves of his shirt, but the bandages are clean—at the very least, his injuries have stopped fitfully bleeding. 

And his face. 

Killua has never looked more like everything Gon has ever wanted, like every single star in the universe combined into the spectacular galaxy that stands before him, like the image of the fire that kindles Gon’s heart, the fuel that keeps him moving. Pools of blue brighten as they land on Gon, and despite the cut that stretches from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth, Killua smiles. He looks at Gon as if he isn’t the very reason Killua’s limbs are broken, his body is searing in pain, and his eyes are bordered in dark, tired bags. He smiles and suddenly, it’s like everything leaves from Gon’s mind. He almost forgot it. How utterly and devastatingly incredible the sight is.

“Why aren’t you in the hospital?” is all Gon can breathe out. His mind is frozen, but of their own volition, his legs slowly bring him closer to Killua, as if hypnotized. 

Killua chuckles softly at the words. The slight wince on his face doesn’t go unnoticed by Gon. “I’m supposed to be. But I got bored. So I asked around and found out you’re staying here, and I wanted to check that you hadn’t kicked the bucket yet.”

The exertion is clearly strenuous, but Killua pushes himself up from his stabilization against the wall. Gon swallows when he suddenly realizes he’s just a few footsteps away from the other. Up close, he’s reminded of the sheer amount of destruction across his pale skin. Despite it all—despite the heavy torture that should render any sane man unrecognizable and inconsolable—Killua is so effortlessly magical. Concern pools in his blue eyes as if, in some crazy and incomprehensible world outside of their own, Gon is the one to worry about.

“I’m sorry about your tunic,” Killua says tentatively. “It, uh…it’s definitely not wearable anymore.”

The hallway light flickers. Gon presses his key against the lock of his room, kicks the door open, and all but hauls Killua inside. The crutches fall to the floor of the hallway with a muffled thump. 

Gon doesn’t even make it past the doorway. His arms wrap around Killua in an embrace with an unleashed, maddened desperation that has remained dormant for days. Killua can only widen his stunned eyes as his shoulder blades press against the inner side of the door, chest flush against the other’s, as Gon’s hand cushions his head from the hardness of the wood. Gon is careful not to hurt him, but there’s only so much he can restrain when he’s seeing Killua, awake and safe and sound, eyes flashing with mirth and kindness, after so long. 

Killua is all he’s wanted for days. For years .

It takes every ounce of strength in Gon’s body to not break down in tears in front of him. Gon’s arms curl tighter around his back, hands trembling. He finds the surprised gaze plastered on Killua’s face, illuminated just faintly in the dark, quiet hotel room by the flashing city lights outside the window. The sight is breathtaking.

There’s so much to say. Gon has mulled over the countless thoughts in his brain, and during each day that passed, he begged for the chance to speak just once more to Killua again. Now that he’s here, all he wants to do is stare at Killua until the world crumbles. 

The pounding rate of his heart slows just enough for Gon to recognize the quivering bandaged hands gripping the bottom of his shirt. “Gon,” Killua stammers through gritted teeth, “I can’t—I can’t stand—”

“Sorry,” Gon hoists his legs up, “I just got so excited. You don’t even know how much I’ve missed you. Is this okay?”

Killua just stares. The breath leaving his lips is hot and truncated. A steady, dark flush climbs from his neck to his cheeks. His hands hover hesitantly near Gon’s collar, too cautious to place them down. “You…don’t need to carry me,” he manages lamely.

Gon swallows, eyes softening. “I don’t want to let you go again,” he quietly says. And Killua understands it. He finally lets his hands fall gently on Gon’s shirt.

There’s a pause of silence. All they can do is stare at each other, absorbing the newfound stories and turmoil etched into their features. Gon watches the silver locks around Killua’s ears blow the slightest from the air conditioning vent above them. The tension in his bandaged body lessens, shoulders finally relaxing as he finds comfort in Gon’s arms.

“How did you escape?” Gon whispers. His eyes linger on the spiny shadows on Killua’s cheeks, cast by his eyelashes. 

Killua gives an impish smile. “Agnor uses portals. He got lazy and forgot to close one. And I’m obviously trained from birth to escape chains.”

“Portals?”

“From the Dark Continent to our world. That’s how he’s been able to vanish into thin air all the time.”

Gon feels like a sack of bricks has just dropped on his chest. Why didn’t he think about that instead of foolishly scouring Kankin for three weeks straight? He knows getting to the Continent in the first place is an ordeal, but he would have done it. He would have done anything for Killua. “You’re always going and saving yourself,” says Gon absently. The words are a culmination of everything that Gon has failed at. Killua shuffles a bit under his attentive gaze. He’s raising an eyebrow, lips curling into another smirk, but it’s all a facade. Gon sees right through it as if it’s glass. 

“Because Agnor is a dumbass,” Killua forces a laugh, “are you kidding? Torturing a Zoldyck? It’s not like—”

“You don’t have to be strong for me, Killua,” Gon murmurs, and the words on Killua’s lips die before they can leave. “You can be angry. After everything he put you through. You can be anything you want with me.”

Something minute shifts in Killua’s face. He swallows, lips wet as he licks them anxiously. The fingers on Gon’s chest climb to his shoulders subconsciously, pinching the fabric restlessly. “I’m not angry,” he mumbles. “I never was. I’m just happy that you’re okay.”

The feeling returns. That ultimate sense of desperation, of despair, of complete disbelief that someone of such pure and gentle and compassionate caliber has chosen him , of all people, to love so much. The world tells Gon every day that he’s the kindest, sunniest person they’ve ever met, and at one point he would have believed it. But he thinks the world is wrong. There’s someone so much more tender than him who gazes into him right now with unmatchable loyalty and consideration. Someone who quite literally walked through hell for him.

“Then right now, be whatever you need to be,” Gon says quietly, lips close enough to promise the words inches from Killua’s own. “I’m going to protect you until I’m a sack of bones. I swear it. He won’t lay another hand on you.”

Killua doesn’t speak for a moment. Then, as slight as the shift of a blade of grass in a meadow, his blue eyes glisten. A certain anguish rolls over his lips and across his cheeks, up his jaw and down his temples. The fingers at Gon’s shoulders tighten the slightest. 

“You know now, don’t you?” he croaks.

Slowly, gently, Gon lowers them to the ground. He steadies Killua’s legs within the grasp of his hands so he sits neatly between them on the carpeted floor, unrelenting the proximity that grows closer between their faces by the minute. The expression on Killua’s face is heartbreakingly nervous. His eyes are wide and glossy, lip tucked between his teeth as if trying to brace himself for a response he has already deemed as hopeless.

Gon’s face softens. He releases a hand to brush a piece of hair from Killua’s cheek. “Back then, you asked me,” he says slowly, “what I meant. When I called you beautiful.”

“Gon, it’s okay,” Killua’s voice trembles in desperation, and he pulls his hands away from Gon’s shoulders as if they burn, “just forget it. I don’t even know why I asked you that. I didn’t mean to get you so involved in everything.”

Gon ignores his frightened ramble. He tilts his head in wonder as a white lock of hair spins delicately in his index finger. It’s such a stark contrast from his tanned, worn hand. The hue almost glows in the low light of the room. The sounds of Yorknew city outside the hotel—a concoction of blaring ship horns and pounding music and squeaking cars—are all but drowned out by the pounding heart in Gon’s chest, so relieved and euphoric to have Killua so close to him again.

“I’m sorry,” he continues. “I didn’t give you the full answer. You deserve the complete truth, and I was too idiotic and selfish to give it to you. But I’ve had a lot of time to think this past week, and almost every second of it was spent on you. So I think I have the right words now.”

“Gon, lying will only make me feel worse,” mutters Killua.

“You’re so stupid.” Killua glares hotly in embarrassment, and Gon chuckles through his nose. “You know that I would never lie to you. Are you going to let me finish?”

Killua can’t answer and simply nods instead. A small noise escapes his clamped lips—something worried, something curious, something hopeful . Gon’s hand finds its way to Killua’s own that lays hesitantly in his lap. 

“I did mean it,” Gon breathes. “That you’re beautiful. I think that word doesn’t even do you justice. You’ve always been so…unreal.” He drags a thumb down Killua’s cheek, across his neck, over the line of his collarbone. “I could look at you for hours at a time and never get tired.”

Killua is too shocked to even blush. He stares at Gon with wide, perplexed, wet eyes. “But it’s so much more than that. It’s always been. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Contract or not, I’m involved, Killua. I am just as in love with you—”

“Don’t say that,” Killua hisses. Hot tears sting at the edges of his endless blue eyes. Gon tightens the grip on his quivering hand before he can pull it away. “Don’t fucking say that. I can’t handle it if you don’t mean it.”

“—as you are with me,” Gon finishes gently. He places a soft palm against the door so Killua can do nothing but look right back at him. “I love you, Killua.”

“Shut up .” Killua is pushing his hand into Gon’s chest, but it’s so weak , and Gon can’t help but feel his heart grow tight at the faintness. The tears fall over his waterline in furious, thick streams down his moonkissed cheeks. “What the hell is your problem? The burns and stabs on my body weren’t enough damage for you? You had to add some in?”

“I love you,” Gon repeats.

“ Fuck you,” Killua tries to growl, but it releases as more of a sob.

Gon just stares. He runs a hand carefully up the side of Killua’s arm and up to his neck, cupping the back of it softly. The man under his touch swallows. His brows knit furiously over glassy blue eyes, swirling with so much suffering and disbelief. Even in the dim, cold atmosphere of the hotel room, every scar and bruise on his pale face is too overwhelmingly visible. 

When Gon leans closer for the umpteenth time, there’s just a centimeter left between their lips. “Can I make you believe me?” he whispers, so quiet that the question is barely audible.

But Killua hears it. He takes in a sharp breath, body shaking under Gon’s touch. His bandaged fingers grip the short strands of the carpet desperately in an effort to ground himself from the onslaught of revelations. From the sheer, vulnerable truth that seems too good to be true. Finally, Killua releases a small noise from the back of his throat and nods his head. 

That’s all he needs.

Gon closes the distance and presses his lips to Killua’s.

Chapter Text

Gon’s touch has aimed to kill, to destroy, to pummel through flesh and dirt and rock before. It is aggressive and forward even when the intent is good: pulling Mito into a bone-crushing hug or throwing a heavy arm around a companion’s neck.

Right now, it is as light as a feather.

The pressure Gon keeps against Killua’s ever-soft, ever-cold lips is minimal. This kiss is all but the slightest brush of skin—a hesitant, first step into uncharted, enigmatic territory. His hands are gentle and faint at the base of Killua’s neck, at the top of his wrist. It’s an invigorating taste of something Gon has only ever dreamed of, and even this slight connection of their lips has the timber of his stomach burning in sudden flames. Heat traces each vein of his bloodstream. Every cell in his body drums with excitement, with passion, with some unlocked emotion in his body that is finally set free.

If Gon wasn’t so mesmerized by the feeling, he would laugh at the stunned expression painting Killua’s wide, teary eyes. His body is frozen in place, and his trembling fingers curl into the carpet even tighter than they had before. When Gon pulls apart, ending the kiss as quickly as it began, Killua’s lips are still parted in utter shock. The butterflies in Gon’s chest are released at the sight of the deep, red flush that slowly climbs its way over Killua’s nose and cheeks. 

Gon brings back his hands to press his thumbs gently into the edges of Killua’s eyes, wiping away lingering tears. Dark, wet eyelashes tickle his skin as they flutter at the touch. The hand at Gon’s chest falls slowly, as if in a trance, too ridden with shock to remember the effort needed to keep it up. 

“Did you want to do that?” Killua asks, dazed. His eyebrows furrow the slightest in some strange disbelief. Gon can’t bite down the grin that stretches over his face.

“Yeah. I did, Killua. I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

“You’re bullshit,” says Killua weakly, but there’s no malice. In fact, the words are said with a hint of awe, and the curl of his body against the door reveals he’s starting the process of believing Gon’s words. Of accepting his very evident, very real love. His fallen hand takes the fabric of his sweatpants in a fist and fidgets with it absentmindedly.

“You don’t believe me yet, then,” Gon says, tongue between his teeth.

Killua swallows. The worry on his face is gone, now replaced with a reserved, yet intense fire in his cerulean eyes. The flame is curious, and it’s reaching out to take Gon’s outstretched hand. “If I don’t?”

Gon pushes further into his space. He’s close enough to feel the heat of Killua’s flushed skin emanate off his own, to hear the shaky breaths that try to hold themselves in. “I’ll convince you.”

The second kiss is more desperate. Gon has barely finished his last word when he’s rushing back in to meet Killua’s welcoming lips, pushing deeper with a newfound fervor. His hands roam of their own accord across the folds and dips of Killua’s thick shirt. He savors the taste of mint on the other’s tongue, the sweet scent of soap in his white locks, the way his body seems to slot perfectly in line with his own as if it was made for this—as if they are only complete when with each other.

For once, for the first time in what feels like forever, Killua is pliant. His body is relaxed, completely at ease within the cage of Gon’s arms. Slowly, cautious cold hands snake their way around Gon’s back, and stray fingers find habitat onto the back of Gon’s head, enveloping themselves in dark, thick hair.

Gon kisses Killua like he’s afraid—afraid that he might slip through his fingers again, fly away into the wind before he gets the chance to love him properly. He kisses him like there’s something insatiable in his chest, and the only thing that can satisfy his painful hunger is the knowledge that Killua is right in front of him. He kisses him like he’ll never get the chance to again. And Gon can’t read the other’s mind, but the vigor with which Killua’s fingers dig into his shoulder blades and his chin lifts to persist Gon’s lips against his own convinces him that Killua is feeling a similar way.

Not a word is exchanged. They embrace each other like there’s no time left in the world to do so: like no second can be wasted to speak the smallest syllable. And in a way, there isn’t. Though he is very much preoccupied with the beautiful man he’s showering in affection right now, there is an acutely terrible recognition in the back of his mind. Gon knows how fickle time can be. He could very well have seconds left with Killua before they’re on the run again. He wants to spend every last one of them doing what he won’t regret.

Doing this .

Gon pulls away from Killua’s lips after the umpteenth kiss. Killua’s hair is a sea of silver, bright as the moon against the dark panel of wood behind him. The sight of his sparkling, tender blue eyes has his heart doing flips. Killua breathes heavily through his nose, staring at Gon with so much wonder and incredulity, as if he’s too good to be true.

“You feeling alright?” murmurs Gon, brushing a thumb over the corner of his reddened mouth. Killua swallows, gently holding Gon’s wrist in long, shaking fingers.

“Yeah, I’m…” Killua’s voice is just a whisper. He licks his lips as a complex, powerful emotion overtakes his irises. “I just…I don’t know what to do now. I didn’t think this would ever happen.”

“You don’t have to do anything. You just have to be here with me.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Is it not?” Gon tilts his head. Killua’s other hand curls tighter into the cloth of his shirt. “Isn’t this the most natural thing in the world to do? To be here, together?”

The quiver of Killua’s lip in yearning is a clearer answer to his questions than anything else. But Gon doesn’t lean down again to capture him in another kiss. Instead, he waits, watching some thundering rose of anguish bloom into Killua’s pale face once again.

“ Shit, ” Killua says quietly, voice cracking and expression wrenching. “Now we’ve really gone and done it.”

Gon leans back on his heels just as Killua drops his hand in a swift, decisive manner. The tension in Killua’s spine returns once again, poised like a tempered cat, and he pushes his shoulder blades as far as they possibly can into the wood of the door. Gon sees the rope tethering them together begin to splinter, but he won’t let it break another time. It is much too fragile to mend. “Can I bring you to the bed?” he asks softly. “Your leg is at a worrisome angle.”

“I need to leave,” Killua demands, though his tone is unrefined—almost as if he would falter if Gon tried to convince him to stay. He uses the force of his left leg to bring himself to a stand, though it trembles under the exertion of his entire body, equally as lacerated as the limb is. Gon is at his feet in a second. His hands fly to Killua’s middle in efforts to stabilize him, but they are angrily swatted away.

“You’re going to fall, Killua,” Gon protests. There’s a clear wince of pain on his pale, still-flushed face, but Killua pushes his palms against the door to support himself in an adamant display of stubbornness. 

“I’ll be fine. I need to go. This isn’t…this isn’t good for you. Sorry.”

“What are you talking about? Didn’t you want that kiss as much as I did?”

“Of course I did!” snaps Killua. “That’s the problem!” When Gon’s stare only hardens, he sighs in exasperation and wraps his fingers around the door handle. “It’s not your fault, Gon. It’s the circumstance. If things were different, I’d…” Killua trails off.

“You’d what ?” Gon interrogates. His eyebrows furrow in heated frustration. 

“I’d still be fucking kissing you, Gon ,” he hisses, enunciating his name spitefully. It’s strange, the new manner of Killua’s anger. It seems self-directed, as if endlessly maddened by his own love and affection. “Isn’t that extremely evident? You know, given the whole contract thing?”

“You know, you’re weirdly angry for someone who was just biting my lips off,” Gon notes with a scowl.

Killua’s cheeks are flamed with a mixture of embarrassment, indignance, and fury. His fingers curl tighter around the handle, and the glare he presses into Gon’s vision is so vehement that any other person would buckle in fear. But all Gon wants to do is push his lips back onto the other’s skin. 

“You’re weirdly aloof for kissing a man one foot from death,” Killua fires back. 

His leg buckles, depleted of its energy. Gon digs his hands onto his waist to keep him upright. At this proximity, he’s finally able to force eye contact with an intense, inquisitive gaze. “Ah, that’s what it is,” he says thoughtfully, as if discovering a silly secret. “You think you’re going to die, Killua?”

“Are you stupid? What else is gonna happen?” Killua laughs mockingly, almost maddingly, almost as if he’s at the brink of breaking into a sob again. “What, you think Agnor had his share of fun chopping my skin up and decided to give me grace? Give me a fucking break , Gon!”

“You’re not going to die, Killua,” Gon states resolutely. Killua grabs the collar of his shirt in pure scorn, but the expression on Gon’s face is unwavering. “You’re not going to die, and I’m going to kill Agnor. I already told you. He’s never laying another finger on you ever again.”

“You really are sick in the head. You think this is a fantasy? He’s S-ranked. No one in the world can kill him.”

“You haven’t seen me try yet.”

“And I never will ,” says Killua through gritted teeth. Even when Gon shifts his hands lower to lift his body and walks to the edge of the bed, the fire in Killua’s eyes is relentless. “Just shut up already. I’ve sacrificed too much for you to just die on me.”

“Who said I’d die?” scoffs Gon, settling Killua to sit comfortably in the center of the mattress. He places a pillow under the foot of the broken leg and sits inches away from him. “You really have that little faith in me?”

Killua blinks. “Yes. I do,” he says, temper simmering. “If you recall your rather diabolical résumé of solving catastrophes, I have every reason not to put my faith in you.”

Gon runs a hand lightly over Killua’s pant leg. He’s ever aware of the hitch of the other’s breath at the touch. “Right,” he says slowly, “I get that. But this is different.”

“Really. Enlighten me on how this possibly is any different, on how you so valiantly plan to kill this—”

“Because it’s you,” says Gon simply, and Killua stops talking. His lips clamp shut, still scarlet from their earlier use. 

Killua glowers, though the intensity is disturbed by a perturbed, yet curious, knit of his brows. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s a gut feeling,” Gon says quietly, though his eyes are undisturbed and fixated on Killua’s. He rakes his glance from the top of Killua’s crown of wild white hair to the tip of his bandaged foot, slow and deliberate in his process. Killua swallows under the scrutiny of his gaze. “But I’m pretty sure I can destroy anyone who ever so much as touches you the wrong way.”

Killua looks so unbelievably pretty like this—kiss-ridden and flushed and shocked. The infinite shades of blue in his irises bounce like kaleidoscopes from the flash of city lights outside the window. His stare pierces into Gon’s skin like ice on fire. “Cute, Gon. I’m feeling very flattered right now,” he mutters dismissively.

It’s easy. Gon just pulls the collar of Killua’s shirt to the side to reveal the burn across his neck. Like a match on dry wood, the flames of anger in his gut erupt into a deepening, dark aura over every inch of his skin. It’s just an ounce of the true fury Gon feels; he’s holding back significantly. But it’s enough for Killua. He inhales sharply, eyes swirling with a new mystification and disbelief. 

“It’s different,” Gon repeats, eyes steely with a simmering, palpable rage. “When it comes to you, Killua. All I want to do is rip apart the world with my bare hands.”

The courtyard of the hotel is quiet. Reasonably so, considering it’s around three in the morning and its perimeter is bordered in thick vegetation. Gon stands calmly at its center with his hands neatly tucked into the pocket of his jacket. The cold wind nips at his skin with a new velocity, signaling a forthcoming change of the seasons.

It didn’t take long for Killua to fall asleep. He’s always a firecracker of energy and anger, but the strain on his body won the battle against his desire to keep arguing with Gon. Squinting through the light pollution clouding the hotel’s exterior, Gon searches for the window of his room. He doesn’t anticipate Killua will wake until the morning—not with the diligence Gon put into carefully covering his fatigued body in a thick, woolen quilt. It’s important to keep an eye on that window in case a certain monster decides to show its face.

Of course, Killua has no idea Gon has snuck out here. And he has no idea that the reason he stands in the nippy cold is none other than his younger sister.

Alluka enters the courtyard with a quiet yawn and bleary, tired eyes. She’s swathed in a large, fleece sweatshirt, hood pulled over her dark head of hair to protect her ears. Gon’s heart pangs in guilt to disturb her from sleep so brashly, but the both of them are ever too aware of the countdown hovering over this city before Agnor undoubtedly tails them again. Unfortunately, Gon just doesn’t have time to waste. 

He needs to verify that his plan will work.

“Sorry, Alluka,” Gon says sheepishly. “I know it’s late. I was busy tucking your brother in for bed.”

“Mm, don’t worry.” She runs a hand over her face in an attempt to jog her energy back. “It’s all worth it if it’s for him. He’s doing okay? I was worried when he insisted on hobbling all the way to the hotel himself.”

Gon thinks back to Killua’s defiant, idiotic one-legged stance against the doorway, the pressure undoubtedly slicing fresh wounds back open. He decides to keep that information to himself. “He’s doing great.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” Alluka bites her lip, a flash of nervousness suddenly crossing the gentle flush of her cold-bitten face. “Listen, Gon, don’t get mad, but—um, we kinda got tailed.”

Gon tenses. His jaw sets resolutely as the aura subconsciously begins to pool into his fists. Is someone targeting Alluka? Did a monster from the Continent somehow slither its way into the city? The Nen around his body intensifies slowly. He’s been sitting on some volatile anger for a while. Might be nice to expend it in a quick—

“Not anyone evil!” Alluka exclaims quickly, palms rising in a panic. “It’s just, I ran into them and, well, I’m not the best at lying so—”

“So we followed her to you,” comes a deadpan voice. The insidious aura enveloping Gon’s immediately dissipates at the familiarity of the tone. He turns his head to see Ging enter the courtyard several meters behind Alluka. Leorio is close next to him. “Because I don’t trust whatever stupid shit you have going on in that brain of yours, Gon.”

“This brain is half yours,” Gon points out. Ging’s eye twitches in irritation. “Why are you guys awake?”

“Did you forget that meeting we had tonight already?” Leorio huffs indignantly. “It just ended. Well, I guess you might have. You left, like, thirty minutes into it.”

Gon just stares at the two of them. He’s a little annoyed, since this is a pretty unnecessary distraction given their constrained timeline. Ideally, he would’ve just been able to verify his hypothesis with Alluka individually, and he’d have all the time until Agnor showed up again to cut, polish, and perfect his strategy. There would be no footprints for any Hunters or Zodiacs to follow— especially none that Killua would be able to trace. Now, this plan is faltering a bit with the addition of the two men, each of whom currently step closer to stand stubbornly next to Alluka.

“Yeah,” Gon says cautiously. “Because it was stupid. By the time they come up with a plan, it’ll be too late.”

“So is that what you’re doing right now?” Ging flatly asks. He’s no less polished and presentable than he ever is—which isn’t much. The bags under his father’s eyes are thick enough to rival his own. “Making a plan?”

“I already have one. I just need to verify it with Alluka.”

“Oh yeah? And what is this plan of yours?”

“What’s the sudden interest?” Gon quips. “You didn’t seem to care this much when Killua was walking alone all over Kankin just waiting to be sniped by Agnor.” A low blow. He knows it is. But Ging can handle it.

And he does. “Jesus, Gon,” he sighs, eyes half-lidded as if he’s utterly bored by the content of their conversation. “I don’t know why you keep painting this out to make it seem like I want this kid to get killed. That would imply I care enough about either of you for that. I’m just really trying to limit the amount of enemies Agnor makes over here.” He pauses briefly, and his eyebrows knit just the slightest. “I’m also not terrible enough to let you walk into your own murder.”

  “Why are you suddenly acting like a father?” Gon asks in wonder. Leorio winces a bit at the sheer confusion in his tone, but Ging just snickers quietly.

“If that’s what you call this, sure.” Ging’s arms cross over his chest. “Go ahead and explain the plan, then.”

Gon scowls. He closes his eyes briefly to slow the rising temper in his lungs, and he draws out a few long exhales from his nose. It’s not that he’s offended that Ging—and probably Leorio too, if he’s being honest—have little to no faith in his kindling proposition. It’s more so that this is such a blatant waste of time . Gon doesn’t have the option nor the desire to convince them of anything. He doesn’t need their permission to kill Agnor; that is a resolution he has already sworn to complete in his own heart.

At this point, he can’t really care. If they are here for what’s about to happen, so be it.

Gon shifts his body to face Alluka. She tilts her head curiously at the gaze. “Alluka, is Nanika able to come out right now?”

She taps a finger to her chin in thought. “I’m honestly not sure. I think since my brother loves you, she’ll probably trust you enough to come out.” Gon can’t control the flutter in his chest at the words. “Should I ask her?”

“If you can,” Gon smiles, “that would be great.”

Alluka nods, returning Gon’s appreciation with a beam on her face. “Sure.” She closes her eyes, but after a few seconds of hesitation, she peeks one back open. “Just so I know what to tell her…why do you want her to come out?” she asks curiously.

“I want to see if she’ll grant me a command.”

“Gon,” Leorio’s voice is tense and sounds a bit like a warning, “I really don’t like the sound of that.”

“You guys aren’t in danger, don’t worry,” Gon assures distractedly, as if that was even remotely the element Leorio was concerned about. “I just wanna try something.”

“This isn’t the time for some experimental nonsense, Gon—”

“ Hi. ” This new voice is timid and cut with a nasally, flat edge, and its presence halts the rest of Leorio’s words at his tongue. Gon’s heart picks up its pace at the change in Alluka’s face—at the dark, endless holes replacing her bright blue eyes, the gaping cavity replacing her toothy, bright smile. Nanika ushers a newfound paleness to her and Alluka’s body, the color alabaster in the moonlight. She brings shaky, interlocked hands to the base of her chin, staring up at Gon with a small curve to the divot of her mouth, indicating some semblance of a smile. A quiet, festering cloud of dark aura persists over her figure. “ Hi, Gon. ”

“What the fuck,” mutters Ging, a disgruntled expression on his face.

But Gon is ecstatic. “Nanika!” he brightly exclaims, pulling her into a bear hug. “I haven’t seen you in so long!”

“ Gon. ” Nanika brings her arms to softly clasp the fabric of Gon’s shirt. Her mouth grows wider in a deep, curved grin. “ Hi-i-i-i-i, Gon. ”

“You should come out more to say hi to me. I’ve missed you!”

“ Go-o-o-n. ” Nanika’s eyes are wide as saucers when Gon finally puts her down and gently smoothes the ridges of her skirt. “ Killu-a. Danger! ”

Gon’s eyes soften. He takes her pale hands in his own, cold as ice in the heat of his palms, and stares resolutely back at her. “I know, Nanika. I’m trying to save your brother right now. That’s why I asked Alluka if you would be okay to come out. Do you think you can help me?”

Nanika nods, a small hint of determination in the bottomless, dark pools of her eyes. Gon smiles affectionately at her immediate resolve. The biggest link between Alluka and Nanika doesn’t even seem to be the body that they share; it’s moreseo the sheer devotion they commit to their older brother. “Great. I know Killua is the only one who can ask you commands. But I don’t want him to know that I’m trying to save him—otherwise, he’ll try and stop me so I don’t get hurt. But then he’ll get hurt. And I can’t have that happen again.”

“ Mm, ” Nanika agrees solemnly.

“So,” Gon takes a deep breath, “I wanted to see if you would let me make a command. I need to make it because it will help me save Killua from the monster that’s chasing him.” His gaze turns a bit pleading. “Would that be alright, Nanika?”

For a moment, Nanika doesn’t move. She stares at Gon with an unreadable expression. Her mouth presses into a thin black line. Her pale hands in Gon’s own are limp and hang loosely in his hold. As each second passes, agonizing and slow, he grows more and more worried that Nanika will refuse the proposition—that she devotes commands exclusively to Killua, and Gon would be a fool to ever think he could possibly match the level of trust she has with her brother. And he wouldn’t even be able to be mad about it. Killua refuses to use commands with Nanika in the first place, unless the situation desperately requires it. If he knew that Gon was asking to bend the rules of Nanika’s power, especially to protect him, he would tear him to pieces.

But then Nanika smiles. Her eyes turn into upturned crescents in reserved happiness. The charms of her headpiece jingle as she slowly nods her head. “ Ay .”

Gon, shell shocked in half delirium and half ecstasy, throws his arms around her in a squeezing hug again. “Thank you, Nanika. Can I go ahead and ask the command now?”

Nanika tilts her head back and forth in contentment. She takes her hand up and uses it to display a beckoning motion, allowing Gon to continue.

Gon clears his throat and pulls from the embrace. His jaw clenches as he settles his pounding heart, fingers pulsating within fists. He’s going out on a limb here. If this doesn’t work, he will have just eternally screwed himself over. But the inclination in his body is strong and somehow uncontrollable. 

And he’s typically been one to stick to his gut.

Slowly, carefully, Gon lets his mind wander to Killua. But not the tender, affectionate sight of a beautiful smile, of flushed cheeks and reddened lips. Not the reserved laugh on his tongue or the brilliance of sunlight against his wild, white hair. No, he visualizes things much more sinister. The lacerations across his limbs. The welts and bruises over his skin. The fear and uncertainty and despair in his haunting blue eyes. With every new image that conjures in his mind, the festering, dark, and sinister aura around Gon’s body begins to climb. A new wind picks up in the courtyard that swirls around his feet. The edges of his vision turn red. His fists grow hot with a searing, golden aura.

Leorio and Ging tense at the new change in his disposition. “Gon! What are you doing?” Leorio shouts over the howling wind.

“Nanika,” he grunts through clenched teeth, the trees of the courtyard brushing together in the breeze, “curse me with a Nen contract. I can’t use Nen against anyone ever again. Otherwise, I will die.”

As soon as the last word leaves his mouth, Leorio is stumbling to him, anger in his crazed eyes and forehead creased with incredulity. “Are you crazy, Gon?” he screams. He takes Gon by his shoulders and shakes him vigorously. “What the hell was that for?” Gon narrows an eye at the sheer volume of Leorio’s voice, craning his neck backwards to avoid the onslaught of shouting penetrating his ears. Ging’s face is equally painted with surprise, but he stays frozen at his spot a few meters away from the unfolding scene. 

When Nanika mutters a quiet “ ay ” in response, Leorio’s eyes grow impossibly wider at the sight of the aura thickening into large tendrils of black around her body. “Nanika, he was joking!” he yells, pointing an accusatory finger at Gon. “He’s an idiot! He didn’t mean it!” But Nanika’s face is just a sheet of three black lines. She’s already started processing this command. No matter what Leorio says, no matter if Gon truly did regret the action, he can’t revert the words that came out of his mouth. Gon purses his lips. He made his bed. He’ll have to lie in it.

Eventually, the aura simmers down around Nanika into a quiet, steady pulse. She opens her black eyes. They curve into downturned lines. 

Nanika is sad.

“ Can’t, ” she says guiltily. “ Can’t do it. ”

Leorio pauses. The hands gripping Gon’s shoulders finally relax and fall. He straightens his back and fixes Nanika with a dumbfounded expression. Gon, too, lets the insidious aura around his body quiet down and pool back into the contained bottle of fury at his core. “What do you mean? Nanika? The command…didn’t go through?”

“ Mm, ” Nanika mumbles affirmatively. “ Not possible. Can’t curse Go-o-o-n. ”

Leorio blinks. The information isn’t settling comfortably into his brain. He backs away from Gon, who has finally released the breath he was holding, to bounce his confused gaze back and forth between Nanika and Gon. The former wrings the front of her skirt nervously in her hands.

But Ging is stepping forward with a sheet of complete and utter astonishment on his face. He seems to have registered the gravity of the event that just unfolded. A low, awed curse escapes his parted lips. 

“When’d you figure it out, Gon?” Ging asks in marvel.

The relief in Gon’s body is slowly replaced with a curdling anticipation. The corners of his mouth widen in an involuntary grin as recognition sinks it. It makes sense now. Everything. The overflowing pot of rage in his being that seems to generate an infinite supply of power and strength within his body. The ease at which fury seeps into his emotions in the first place. This feeling is one that feels innate to his core—something he was born with, something that was passed down to him through generations, awoken from a foreign and obscure place.

Gon lets out a shaky breath, a quiet chuckle releasing through his teeth. “Just a few days ago. I had all the pieces of information, but it didn’t hit me until recently. Killua had explained to me a while back that Nanika can’t set or release contracts with other calamities. Or rather, no calamity can. So this was just what I had to do to prove it.” He hums thoughtfully as Leorio’s jaw drops in shock. “I guess I could’ve tested with a less dangerous contract. But there’s no security in that.”

Nanika tilts her head in confusion. Gon smiles, giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nanika. I’m very happy that the command failed.”

Ging stands just a few strides away from his son, eyes wide. “What made you realize it?” he asks hollowly.

Gon thinks back to all of those days ago, at the first interaction he had ever had with Agnor—the terrible, gut-wrenching memory of Killua escaping the protection of his hold another time. But it isn’t the terror of the suffocating, lethal aura that he remembers so distinctly. It isn’t the sight of Agnor, tall and lanky and terrifying, bounding through the jungle to resolutely shred them to pieces. It isn’t even the heartbreaking expression of fear that was plastered to Killua’s pale face.

It is the simple reinforcement of the fact that this was the first time Gon had ever been in the presence of Agnor. Yet, the overwhelming emotion he felt when Agnor’s aura enveloped him was a deep sense of familiarity. Gon remembers being frozen in surprise, so close to putting his tongue to the presence captivating his nerves but ultimately unable to. But now he can. Now he knows why Agnor’s presence felt as natural, as intimate as the oxygen that funnels through his lungs.

“When I felt Agnor’s aura,” Gon murmurs, licking his lips. “Nanika was able to heal me in the past, which didn’t make sense. But the reason she could is the very reason why Agnor felt so familiar, even though I’d never seen him before.” Ging’s breath tenses, as if anticipating his next words. “Back then, I was sensing myself. That presence…it was so potent with rage. I should’ve been crushed in fear. But it almost felt like a blanket of my own aura was over me. And I think it has something to do with when I get angry.”

“When you’re angry,” Ging finishes, “it comes out. Just like now. That’s why Nanika couldn’t curse you.”

“Yeah. I think that’s why I was able to regain my Nen, too. And I also think that’s where Agnor’s power comes from. It’s his rage, just like mine.”

“You’re being weird, both of you,” Leorio snaps. He takes a stride forward to glare at Gon with an accusatory expression. “What are you talking about? Can you explain what the hell just happened?”

“I mean,” Gon turns to him, shrugging with too much nonchalance to preface his all but damning words, “it’s pretty obvious now. There’s a calamity in me. And it’s probably the same power that feeds Agnor.”

Chapter Text

The beginning of the plan starts with lying to Killua. It isn’t something Gon is exactly fond of doing, and neither is it something that Killua doesn’t pick up on almost immediately. The logic of his idea isn’t entirely foolproof to begin with. Gon only had the rest of the night hours in the courtyard to devise up the intricacies of his scheme—which (Ging had no qualms of repeatedly reminding his son of) has to work or (Ging doesn’t forget this part either) this world might truly enter the realm of hell—and it’s half-baked at best. But it’s all anyone can provide given the timeline Agnor has imposed on them. And if Gon is in charge, at the top of their list of priorities is undoubtedly keeping Killua safe and away from the altercation when it happens.

Gon thinks he will be able to shake off Killua’s suspicion for at least a few hours. He gets past six minutes.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” says Killua flatly, sitting at the edge of the bed. Gon is turned towards his duffle bag, packing his belongings haphazardly. He’s acutely grateful for the position. If Killua saw his face, he’d know Gon was lying through his teeth. He estimates about fifty personnel would be needed to sedate a furious Killua, and that’s with a broken leg and bruised body. “I understand getting away from civilians, but there’s nothing to hide you in a desert. There’s literally no way to get cover.”

“That’s the point,” Gon replies rigidly, wincing at the heightened pitch of his voice. It’s just a couple minutes past noon. In a few hours, two days would have passed since the Zodiacs detected Agnor’s presence nearby. Naturally, it’s now time to move on from Yorknew and shuffle Killua to a new location. “We’ll be able to see Agnor coming from miles away. Plus Ginta’s En is, like, three hundred meters wide.”

“This is a lot of unnecessary risk for you guys,” Killua says. His voice is a bit strained, and when Gon turns around to face him, he notices the restless, hesitant disposition Killua occupies. “You all still know nothing about Agnor. I don’t think there’s been enough time for the Zodiacs to coordinate an attack on him. You just need to leave me—”

“Shut up with that,” Gon abandons his packing to crouch by the bedside, “no one is leaving you behind. Contrary to what you think, a lot of people really want you to stay alive, Killua.”

Killua rolls his eyes. “Yeah, people say that until an S-class monster is in front of them.”

“Then what about me?”

“What?”

“I mean,” a light smile stretches over his face, “Agnor’s been in front of me. But I’m not leaving you behind. I wouldn’t even imagine it.”

Killua’s lips curl. Gon is close, close enough to almost see the flicker of security in his tired, sapphire eyes. “I can’t even walk, Gon.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“That wasn’t the point I was trying to make,” Killua quips hotly. He rises to his feet, pushing the crutches under his arms again, as if in defiance. Gon slowly finds his way back to a stance as well, amused at the fire of irritation lighting Killua’s cat-like gaze.

“Yeah,” Gon trails his eyes down to Killua’s lips, “I wouldn’t mind it, though. Carrying you again. I liked how close it kept you to me last night.”

There’s a flush creeping onto Killua’s pale, cut cheeks. It betrays his irritation for the lilt of Gon’s low, teasing voice. His teeth grit, and he pushes a finger lightly under Gon’s chin to force his gaze away from him. “You’re really delusional, flirting with me right now. What, is my imminent death not serious enough for you?”

“No, because—and I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this—you’re not going to die. And I’m not flirting.” Gon shrugs, but he can’t bite down his grin. It’s so nice, riling up Killua and pretending like the world outside of them doesn’t exist. If he focuses on the brilliant blue eyes and paper-white hair in front of him, he’s almost able to forget the boiling pot of rage in his gut that grows larger by the minute. “I’m just making a statement.”

Killua’s eyebrows are knitted, and his lips close to form a tight scowl. Even like this, he’s still so effortlessly beautiful. All Gon wants to do is kiss him until he’s breathless. “Forget it,” Killua says under his breath. He shoulders past Gon with a crutch and makes his way to the door. “Let’s just go.”

His back is tense as he limps through the room, and Gon feels his heart tighten. He wishes that Killua would forgo the emotional blockade in his mind: stop refusing the slightest bit of affection unless he’s unraveled enough to not oppose it. But Gon doesn’t mind waiting. He’ll rip Agnor’s heart out of his chest and put this contract to an end. And then, finally , Killua won’t have to hide from the love that he’s desperate to give him. 

The sun is relentless in Gordeau Desert. By midday, Gon has shed his shirt for the airy black tank underneath. Sweat seeps down his back in currents. The Zodiacs and Ging flank him, Killua, and Alluka in a neat protective ring, all traveling by camel. Everyone operates on the assumption of the fake plan, doing their best to soften Killua’s razor-sharp instincts into a sense of safety. 

The desert is silent enough to hear a pin-drop. Not even the slightest hint of wind disturbs the air, and the sand is much too fine-grained to hide any creatures. The pure anticipation has Gon on edge, eyes darting carefully over the mundane expanse of sand dunes as far as his eyes can stretch. But if Gon is nervous about the prospect of Agnor’s arrival at any moment, Killua is petrified . The sight of his wide, disconcerted eyes and gnawed lips has a dangerous mixture of guilt and anger welling deep in Gon’s body. Despite his outbursts here and there, Gon has done a pretty good job keeping it in. But he knows. He’s sitting on a bomb, waiting to light the fuse.

It hasn’t been easy digesting the fact that Killua was tortured. Gon has done his very best to avoid the topic with Killua, careful not to broach painful memories when the wounds are, quite literally, so fresh. He keeps a grin and focuses on the beauty and compassion of his best friend. When he’s alone, he’ll let just a bit of rage out to just keep the lid on the overflowing container. And it does help ground him. But now, immersed in the heat waves with everyone—with Agnor anywhere from fifty hours to one minute away from them—Gon is much too riddled with tension to push these feelings down again. 

Gon has spent far too long suppressing the urge to burn the world every time Killua’s wounds are in sight.

“How far are we into the desert?” Alluka asks, breaking the long stretch of silence. Her face is flushed a light pink from the heat of the day, and she keeps a reassuring, subconscious hand on the head of her camel. 

Gon pauses. “Maybe fifty kilometers from the city. Or sixty.” We’re far enough is the essence of the statement. Alluka nods in understanding. 

“Alluka, I don’t know why the hell you’re here,” Killua mutters in frustration. “This is really dangerous for you and Nanika.”

“Stop pushing me away,” Alluka snaps back, and her older brother raises an eyebrow in indignance. “I’m capable of making my own decisions. Just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t mean you get to stop me from making them.”

“Uh, yes it does , especially when it’s concerning a sadistic monster who tortures people! God, why does it feel like I’m the only one who’s taking this guy seriously—”

“I’m picking up something!” Ginta shouts suddenly, and Gon’s back on alert. He feels the blanket of the Zodiac’s En flicker a bit in surprise. Killua somehow tenses up even further, sitting on his camel with the stiffness of a statue. In front of them, the squadron of Zodiacs halts in place. “From the east! Heading—he’s heading to us fast !”

“You need to get out of here,” Killua is speaking so fast that Gon almost misses the words, “it’s definitely Agnor. This isn’t safe—”

Gon drowns the words out. He isn’t letting a repeat of the past few weeks happen again. No—a repeat of the past years . Killua, finally and far too overdue, has a group of skilled Hunters who want nothing more than to keep him safe and secure. So no, Gon doesn’t care to hear about how Killua wants him to run away, to leave him behind and face a monster’s wrath he never really deserved in the first place. Instead, Gon focuses on how pretty Killua looks in the sunlight, flecks of gold painting his silver locks and casting a nice gleam over his heartbreaking eyes. 

Just as he breaks out of his trance, the Zodiacs are rushing towards the three of them and helping Killua off of his camel. He thrashes defiantly in the hold of Mizaistom and Leorio, spouting some nonsense about how Agnor is going to kill them all if they don’t get out now, that the plan just isn’t going to work. “We need to do it now,” Ginta says thickly, turning to Gon. “He’s just over a hundred meters away.”

“Nanika?” The name leaves Killua’s lips in a quiet, horrified whisper. Gon turns to Alluka to, indeed, find her demeanor changed—skin as white as porcelain, eyes dark enough to suck the sunlight in and never return it. Her mouth is pressed into a thin, tight line. “Why…why are you out—?”

And of course, Killua—endlessly brilliant, frightfully intelligent Killua—understands the situation in just a few seconds. His lips clamp shut, and his pupils contract in the sunlight. As the Zodiacs wrestle his arms behind him, confining his brash and adrenalized movement, his wide, bottomless eyes meet Gon’s own. 

“Gon,” he seethes, “don’t you fucking dare —”

Just as Agnor comes into view in the distance, Gon speaks. “Nanika,” he says, tone loud and commanding,  “take everyone else to a place far, far away from here.”

Killua doesn’t even have the chance to speak a word in retaliation. Nanika is fast in her understanding, and she whispers a quiet “ ay ” into the thick, hot air. He quivers in the new wake of the dark, teeming aura that spreads around everyone, now affected by the impending command Nanika is soon to enact.

Everyone except Gon.  

In moments, all except him are gone, swept away to some obscure corner of the world. Gon has just the fleeting remembrance of Killua’s impossibly wide eyes, glassing over in newfound horror over the recognition of what Gon has just done. But there isn’t much time to dwell on the simultaneous pang of guilt and relief in his chest. There is a far more pressing issue to deal with now.

That issue now stands just a dozen meters away from him.

With Killua gone, Agnor is forced to pause in quiet contemplation at the change of events. He stands stoically in his tall, lanky gait, rippled by the waves of heat in Gon’s vision. Gon takes this as an opportunity to soak in his appearance.

Agnor is objectively human-like. Too much so. If Gon keeps his gaze on the pressed suit of his body for too long, he finds himself growing uncomfortable. But one look at his face is enough to retain Agnor’s position as a creature of the Dark Continent. The hollowness of his gray, ashen cheeks resembles that of a punctured ball, wrinkles and folds running longitudinally down to his long chin from the hairless cap of his head. Nanika shares a similar void of nothingness for eyes, but Agnor’s are inflamed with blazing, white light. In his gaping mouth is a row of razor-sharp teeth, bared and desperate to sink into anything that moves. 

The skin of his long, spiny hands matches the lifeless hue of his face. At the tips of his fingers are misfigured black nails, sharp enough to rival a needle’s point. Agnor is creepy, if anything, but at first glance he doesn’t look dangerous. But that’s what’s unsettling. Because the dark, untameable, and angered aura clouding around his body has a single focus, clear as day to Gon’s senses.

Agnor is out for blood.

The part of the plan that did have a semblance of truth to it was the idea to lure Agnor into the desert and away from densely populated areas. But the larger truth is that it was imperative to get everyone out of the battlefield except for Gon, since they aren’t immune to Agnor’s contracts like he is. And Gon doesn’t care if the world hasn’t seen a Hunter defeat an S-class monster yet. The rating means nothing to him. But if he’s making history by tearing Agnor apart, limb by limb, so be it.

“ You ,” comes a grating, dry voice—as deep as thunder, as painful as nails on a chalkboard, as foreboding as the aura that consumes him. There’s a hint of wonder to the words, as if Gon is a colloquial mystery to Agnor’s world that has just been solved.  “ You are the lover.”

Gon stares. 

He doesn’t even realize it happens. The almost funny part is that he isn’t even thinking of Killua. It’s just the sheer presence of Agnor that explodes his Ren into a deep, fiery, dark cloud, animalistic and depraved enough to rival Agnor’s own.

Sand is spiraled into thick bouts around them. If Agnor’s presence swept them into blankets of grain dispersing in the air, Gon’s awakened fury turns them into a twirling, rapid tornado. The feeling of finally unleashing his pent-up rage is akin to releasing a breath held for years. Fire consumes every cell in his body as his fists clench in newfound power. There’s a dull pang of tension at his temples from the steep angle of his eyebrows, pinched in pure fury, and the grit of his teeth. He doesn’t realize his tongue is bleeding from the exertion before blood leaves the edge of his lip and falls down his chin.

Amidst the sudden howl of wind, Agnor speaks again. He doesn’t raise the volume of his voice, yet Gon is able to hear him clear as day. The corners of his gaping mouth tip in an unnerving smile. “Oh, I see. I see what is happening. You are noble like that. That is why contracts work so well. This is what humans do.”

“I truly don’t,” Gon’s voice is just a growl, so devoid of a tone that it’s just a collection of timbre against bass, “give a fuck about what you’re saying. I’m only here to kill you. So just shut up and fight me.”

“I do not care to fight you, ” Agnor says the word like it’s venomous, “why do you value yourself high enough to believe this?”

“I can tell you do.” 

Gon’s expression is hardened, golden eyes resolute and brimming with an edge of darkness. Agnor tilts his head in surprise. “I know you want to,” Gon continues. He’s spitting every word out with such vehemence that the tone is a rumble in his chest. “It would devastate Killua. Going through weeks of torture to save me, just for you to kill me. You’d do anything to make him suffer. ”

“I agree,” Agnor says, a fire in his eyes. “I want nothing more than for Killua to be in excruciating pain until he dies.”

Gon swallows. Agnor has a challenging tone in his words, a blazing flame of fury in the light of his glare. It’s doing everything he wants it to. The words are stabbing their way under Gon’s skin, prickling at his heart and sucking the oxygen out of his lungs. Gon is easily letting the maddening anger overtake his senses and bleed him dry. There’s something so uncanny about this forthcoming battle with Agnor. He’s unlike anyone Gon has faced before, and it has nothing to do with the sheer strength to his body and capabilities. No, this is different. This feels like the ground has flipped into the sky, like Gon isn’t where he should be.

Because Agnor is just as angry as he is. Except his subject of rage is Killua, the man who killed his partner, and Gon’s is Agnor, the monster that tortured his lover.

Gon could stop to think about the irony of this situation. He could find the common ground between the two of them and exploit it. But right now, Gon is unfortunately sticking very truly to his nature. The nature of the calamity that pumps newfound rage and power into his bloodstream with every word that escapes Agnor’s grueling, dangerous mouth.

“So,” Gon’s body erupts in newfound force of Nen, “break the contract you have on Killua, and start fucking fighting. ”

But Agnor’s aura continues its reserved, furious ebb. “I am surprised,” he says. “That you have not asked.”

Gon stays silent. Jajanken is slowly simmering in his fist.

“How do I know you are the lover? It is an exciting question.” Agnor drums the edges of his nails against his pant leg. The maddened grin on his face extends. “Would you like to know?”

Gon’s snarl tightens in irritation. “Don’t care.”

For a moment, Agnor seems to ponder something. They’re at a standstill, neither able to inflict any damage on another. Gon needs to convince this monster to release the contract on Killua. He needs to convince him that fighting Gon is worth more than keeping this guillotine over Killua’s head. He grounds his feet into the sand and tries to read the complex mind of the monster in front of him, who currently stares at him like he’s a new toy to play with.

Then, the ground opens up underneath him, and Gon is falling.

It first feels like Gon is submerged in a deep, endless pit of water, sinking to the very bottom. The light of the desert’s blazing sun quickly fades into a speck of white in the far distance. Gon’s limbs desperately flail in the foreign sensation. His vision is a sheet of black, and there isn’t anything for Gon to ground his sense of touch with. The only option he has is to continue this freefall until he reaches whatever plate of ground that will meet his body.

But the ground never comes. Instead, Gon’s descent slows to a stop, and then switches direction. He is roughly pushed upwards by an unknown force, and the darkness around him begins to wane at a small, evergrowing dome at the top of his vision. As Gon gets closer to the exit of this endless ravine, he is washed in a foreboding, dim red light.

Gon’s boots finally step onto a rocky, level surface. He wavers a bit, still stunned by the sudden experience. The breaths coming out of his mouth are haggard. Sweat drips down his temples in heightened nerves.

For a moment, things are quiet. Gon takes a shaky glance at his surroundings, new and completely changed from the Gordeau Desert. He stands in an environment he has never seen before. The air is muggy and thick with some yellow, sulfur-like fog. A red, clayish substance has been used to mold the room Gon currently stands in. It’s a large, open space, one that has every drop of liquid falling from dripstone echoing over the expanse, every howl of wind shaking him to his core. A quiet exhale escapes his chapped lips as goosebumps well over the skin of his arms.

“Do you know where we are?” Agnor says distantly. Gon looks around. He’s somewhere in the room, but Gon can’t see him.

Gon thinks back to Killua’s words. Portals . It’s more than likely that Agnor’s ability of teleportation is what he just experienced. This place looks very different from Gordeau because it very much is . He swallows, caution accompanying the anger in his gut. 

“I want you to look to your left.” Gon wants to do everything but what Agnor wants. Even just the sound of his voice cradles rage deep in his heart. But curiosity gets the better of him, and he turns to the side with a slow, careful gaze.

It’s the worst mistake of his life.

Gon sees a chair. It is old and rickety, and it is stained with a deep crimson liquid that Gon cannot avoid naming. The hard dirt surrounding the wood piece is chalky and darkened, as if islanded by a perpetual sea of blood. Rusty, broken chains emerge from the side walls and lead into cuffs that lay dormant at the seat of the chair. Scattered tears of worn clothing litter the nearby ground. Gyo isn’t needed to see the aura of pure torment punctuating the air around it—to feel the sheer agony that emanates off of every plank of rotting, battered wood.

Emerging. Blooming. Tightening around his chest, piercing into his veins, wringing the blood out of his heart. Vines of despair threaten to suck the life out of Gon’s soul. The oxygen in his throat comes out strained and hot, eyes wide and unblinking to the point of raw wetness, so utterly nauseated yet transfixed with a certain level of responsibility, of the need to know that keeps his eyes painfully glued to the scene. One inhale in, three exhales out, each more choppy and abbreviated than the last. Each coaxing out more and more rage from the limitless pot in his core.

“This is how I know,” Agnor says, almost in anticipation. The edge in his voice leads Gon to a diverging path, where the monster in front of him will either rip his throat out in rage or gleefully clap his hands at the sight of Gon’s complete devastation. “He was very strong-willed. I could do anything that I desired to his body, but he refused to give you up. To give me your name.”

Gon’s mind flashes to an image of Killua, beaten and chained to this chair, soiled head of pink hair hanging in defeat as a pool of blood grows at his feet. A whip across the cheek. A yank of his fingernails. A punch to his gut. A swipe of an iron-sharp knife across his ribcage. It’s all too much. It’s too much and it’s so very real and so very unavoidable and so very present , here in Gon’s eyesight at the aftermath of a period of torture so intense that even Killua, in all his strength and fortitude, trembles at the mere thought of this monster. 

Most of all, it is a painful reminder that this happened because of him .

Blood roars in his ears, almost drowning out the suffocating voice of Agnor when he speaks again. “Even when I asked for descriptions. No, even if he screamed the whole day, he did not speak a word! So I had to learn how to be creative. I started understanding his reactions.”

Gon doesn’t know how Agnor does it. He doesn’t know if it’s something as simple as a recording or as sadistic as a Nen ability, but out of the silent air, like a knife through paper, there’s screaming. The voice is all too familiar, the tone all too known. Cracking at the edges in high fearful wails, midtoned by hopeless sobs. When they grow louder, more desperate and panicked, Gon cannot stop his mind from conjuring the image of a certain monster interrogating a stream of questions that are frustratingly unanswerable. 

Gon didn’t know Killua could scream like this.

He’s collapsed to his knees in moments, the fabric of his pants a deep burgundy from staining dirt. Gon doesn’t have the willpower to bring his hands to his ears and drown the maddening sounds of Killua’s agony out. He can’t. He should listen to this. It is his responsibility, the absolute least he can do—to comprehend the sheer level of Killua’s pain and suffering, endured solely for the chance to keep him safe. But it’s agonizing. Tears well at the edges of his wide, panicked eyes. He doesn’t think his heart has ever beaten so fast before.

Agnor speaks again, unperturbed by the sounds. “I started to say things to him. Brown hair. No response. Angry eyes. Black hair. Oh! Something is different now. He is frightened. Green eyes? No, brown eyes. Tall? Short? Broad? Thin?” Agnor hisses, something akin to a heated laugh. “This is the issue with humans. Their own bodies betray them!”

“Stop,” Gon breathes, voice gritty. He wants to throw up. “Turn this off. Stop.”

“I am truthful, you see,” Agnor says in an unabashed way. Gon can hear his moral superiority from the bottom of the mental cliff Agnor has placed him on. “I do not want to fight you. Merely, I want to kill you. That is the difference. All I simply seek is justice for my fallen partner. An eye for an eye.”

“You fucking tortured him,” Gon seethes, directing his anger to every spot of the room he can, every place he hears the tone of Agnor’s excruciating, infuriating voice. “Not even just here. The contract. You had him in fear, in pain for months . That isn’t justice. That’s pure evil.” His fists bleed at the force of the nails in his palms. “Your partner killed hundreds of humans simply because they wanted to. Killua had a job to do. That isn’t his fault.”

“You are like me,” Agnor says stiffly, and Gon swallows. “You have a twisted sense of morality. One that is very selfish. Killua was an assassin. Yes? Do you not imagine he has killed equally as much, perhaps more? Is there not someone in the world who mourns a life he once took?”

Gon quakes in anger. The aura around his body intensifies, broad enough to lap against the muddied walls of the dim room in tongues of fire. The screaming stops. Ground falters underneath his feet again, and he is falling, falling, returning back to the heat of Gordeau Desert. The sand against his boots reassures the frantic pounding of his heart as sunlight graces his fish-eyed, frightful vision. Silence soothes his throbbing ears. But he can still hear it. Those are screams that will never escape the recesses of his mind.

Agnor is in the same position where Gon had left him. His own dome of angered, searing hot aura scorches the dune they stand on. 

“I am nothing like you,” Gon spits in vehemence. “Killua didn’t have a choice. That’s what makes him different from you monsters. When he does, he chooses to be kind. To be protective. To use his power for good. ”

“Good for who?” Agnor replies scorchingly. “For the corpse of my partner that I found beheaded and electrified? Do not act like we are not productions of the same seed. I feel your anger. You would torture me too if given the chance. Would you not?”

The pot of simmering rage in Gon’s gut tips over. So Agnor knows, then. He knows that they share the unmistakable, volatile bomb of pure energy that feeds off of their rage like a parasite—the calamity that threatens to swallow him whole. His Ren expands, roaring with such a ferocity that the crackle of aura sounds like thunder. There’s no point holding back now, then.

“I’m not repeating myself,” Gon says, low with the sheer desire to rampage Agnor’s body into the ground. “Don’t compare us. I would sooner die than sink to your level of evil.”

Agnor’s aura crackles in response. It’s a face-off not of power but of pure emotion—a decision of whose anger is ultimately strong enough to overcome the other’s. Something switches in his presence. The sockets of his face contort in newfound rage, in an energy that funnels back into his body like a whirlpool. Agnor doesn’t say a word, but this complete change in his caliber is all Gon needs to know.

The contract is broken. 

Nen flows into his fists as a dark power envelops Agnor’s predatory stance. Gon’s teeth bare in a manner that is not far from animalistic. The itch of bloodlust threatening to cave his lungs in is begging to be scratched. And now, he will satisfy it.

Agnor hisses in contempt. “Let us discover if your resolve will still stand.”

At hour six of fighting, Gon does a mental check on his body.

Three broken fingers. A few cracked ribs. Slices across his torso, clawed gashes over his cheekbone. Still alive. Still swathed in fury.

They currently battle in some corner of the Dark Continent. Gon doesn’t care enough to note the surrounding environment. Agnor does this every so often—teleports them to a new corner of the globe in efforts to throw Gon’s keen senses off, to disrupt him into a sense of panic for Agnor to close in on and slice his jugular away. Agnor comments all too frequently that he is surprised Gon is still alive. That he still kicks and thrashes and punches with the same ferocity he did in the desert hours ago. The repetition is revealing of something very evident and very exciting. Agnor is expending more effort than he thought he’d have to.

In the same brief moment, Gon examines the state of Agnor. A large chunk of his torso has been sizzled off, courtesy of Jajanken . The injury does not inhibit him. He fights with the prowess of a monster who has spent years incubating for this very moment, innately programmed to rip every cell out of Gon’s body.

Perhaps it is the storm of anger that teems threateningly inside each of them, each too engrossed in fury to surpass the other. 

Gon channels aura into his fist, loose from the strength of just two bendable fingers, and charges forward.

At twelve hours, Gon sees dots of black.

Clearly the strategy of teleportation failed after the first dozen times, so Agnor conserves this energy to be utilized in the heat of battle. As a result, they are back in Gordeau. A full moon illuminates the dunes to appear as still, crystalized waves of an endless ocean. Every fatigued, heavy step Gon takes sends a cloud of sand into the chilly air. 

In any normal fight, in any normal circumstance, Gon would be dead by now. His body has been pushed well past its limits. Lactic acid burns like fire in his legs. Bruises and cuts cover every inch of his body. Blood rushes down his temple in a sheet of crimson. It is now that he truly marvels at the unnatural and fantastical properties of the calamity nested deep in his soul: the ability it has to take the broken shell of his body and puppeteer him into an endlessly powerful machine of destruction. It is like the power inside Gon was dormant until this. Until he was faced with Agnor, resolute with the single intention to destroy him.

Is Gon going to die? No, his mind firmly opposes, he can’t. He’s so close to victory that he can almost taste the sweet pulse of relief through the grainy metallic blur on his tongue. Agnor wobbles when he walks: grits his rows of sharp, monstrous teeth in pain when he raises his arms to fight again. Maybe this is the balance. Maybe he is so powerful for everyone because of his ability to enact contracts, and Gon is so very luckily immune. But he knows better. Knows enough from his endless battles with enemies twice his size, with battle prowess that trumps him even at his best. Agnor is unlike no other. He is, very understandably, the most powerful entity in the world.

And yet. Agnor limps.

Yes, Gon cannot die now. There are only two things occupying his mind, insulated with a heated quarantine of thickened rage. They come in the form of a to-do list. One. Kill Agnor. Two. Come back to Killua.

But the order matters.

At hour fourteen, Agnor sends a claw through his chest.

Gon chokes. Blood flows out of his mouth like a stream of vomit, seeping into the soft ground below him. Quivering hands desperately clutch at the excision in his pectoral. He doubles over as his beaten, bloodied arms curl around the wettening skin of his abdomen. Eyes bulge in pain. Temples clench in the force of restraining his groans of agony.

But the blow was double-sided.

Agnor falls to the dune with a thundering, heavy burst of sand collecting in the air. Light wheezes escape the brutalized skin of his neck, butchered deep enough to reveal muscle. An arm gone here, a foot gone there. What remains of his suit is thick with a green, mucus-like blood that taints the grains of sand below his debilitated body. Every exhale is a gurgle of liquid in the quieted night.

Gon takes in a deep breath, wincing fitfully at the horrible pressure of the action against his fractured rib cage. Slowly, he limps his way over to the fallen, near-corpse of Agnor, dragging his broken left shin behind him. The stretch of ten feet takes nearly a minute to cross. He grunts in pain with every step.

Finally, Gon is able to fall to his aching knees at the edge of Agnor’s torso. The fabric of his pant legs has been all but seared off below his thighs, so grains of sand forcefully implant in every open wound over the skin of his legs. The pain is numbed. In Gon’s weary, diluted mind, there is only the recognition of the flickering, dying light in Agnor’s wide white eyes, the splatter of red blood over his fangs. He inhales deeply through his nose, watching the tremble of Agnor’s stomach—a nauseating mess of organs and blood—rise and fall fitfully with every broken breath.

“Get your revenge,” Agnor all but whispers. The sound is akin to metal grinding. “Torture me.”

Gon stares, fury simmering undisturbed in his irises. The pot still overflows. Pools out of his pores and antagonizes his brain. Dangles images of a bright, beautiful, healthy Killua in front of his face and turns them into visions of his torture when he gets too close. Envelops him in a near-primal desperation to get his claws on something, someone , rip them apart layer by layer and sink his teeth into a still-beating heart. Gon has fed this monstrous anger in his body like the dutiful caretaker of a parasite. He succumbs to its greedy desires to punch through the flesh of his enemies and lap up the fear and agony that flashes over their faces. He lets it lead him down a volatile path because it manufactures him with a profound power that seems limitless upon its unleashment. Profound enough to subdue the monster in front of him. Rapacious enough to send waves of animalistic desire down Gon’s bloodstream to cut, burn, lacerate his pliant, helpless body. To enact revenge. To soothe the burning flame in his heart.

He swallows. This calamity tethers him to Agnor. It capitalizes on their similarities and grows on them when they are most vulnerable, angry and distraught and afraid. They manifest in different ways. At least, Gon likes to think so. Agnor is evil. Agnor is terrible, awful, and sadistic. He is asking Gon to torture him. To make him suffer.

Gon licks his lips. 

Wrings the fingers that aren’t yet broken.

Rip him apart limb by limp. Enact everything he did to Killua on him, and then some. Do it. Feed that energy. Feed that rage . Let it grow.

 Gon stares at Agnor’s damaged abdomen, and then at his lost leg, and then to the tight line of his mouth, and finally to the blinding white lights consuming the ashen hue of his face.

His rage quiets. It simmers back into the pot. He closes the lid, then closes his eyes. His mind brings him back to an image of Killua. Soft, gentle, kind. A faint smile with the most beautiful blue eyes he has ever seen. A compassion that surpasses the need for barbarism. Gon feels the steady course of oxygen flow back through his bloodstream like a calm river. 

This power—no, this unabashed anger, this pure rage—is shared between them. But where Agnor chooses to be evil, Gon will not follow. The knit of his brows is gone. The scowl at his lips has dissipated. 

“I,” he whispers in a quiet repetition, “will never be like you.”

Gon funnels aura into his hand again, weak but blazen with golden light. He mutters a quiet stream of words. And he sends the fist down onto Agnor’s skull, crushing the lingering life in his body with a final blow, implanted in the new mesh of blood until his long, battered body has finally stopped twitching.

Leaning back on his heels, Gon closes his eyes. His breathing slows.

Then, he collapses.

Chapter Text

“Oh my god. Oh my god . I see him.”

“Huh? What are you talking about, I don’t see— woah !”

“Shit. Oh my god. This is horrible. No, no, no, no, no. Gon! Gon !”

“Woah, wait, you can’t run, are you daft? Slow down—”

“Shut up, shut up right now , I can’t even believe this, Gon you’re—you’re such a fucking idiot —”

Loud. The voices are much too loud in his foggy, dull brain. Temples throb. Eyes wrench in an effort to drown them out. Gon groans, throwing a heavy arm over his temple. Rising daylight starts to prickle over his weary skin. He wants to sleep. Must they be so loud, so near, so—

Gon’s eyes fly open. So Killua .

His pupils immediately contract at the sudden dull, pink morning light swamping the desert. When his lips part, they are dry and cracked with blood. The headache pounding in his skull is intense enough to send waves across his vision. Many parts of his body are needled with excruciating, white-hot pain. Other parts he can’t feel at all.

But none of this matters. The only thing Gon focuses on is the man that bounds closer to him, drops to his knees, and puts two shaky pale hands over the wound on his chest.

Killua looks beautiful, as always. Gon is a bit delirious, but this much he can understand as fact. A few soft, white locks of hair fall across his forehead and over his ears that have escaped the tie at the back of his head. His lips part in silent, panicked streams of words. Dark eyelashes flutter over glassy sapphire eyes, tearline red and edges rimmed with saturated bruises, revealing the sleep he’s missed. Cheeks are dusted pink with a potent expression of horror and worry. Killua’s body leans over his own, close enough to hear his quiet, punctuated exhales, close enough to reach up and touch his moonkissed skin.

Gon’s body hums, absorbing the coolness of Killua’s quivering fingers against his tunic, so shredded and drenched in a collection of Agnor’s blood and his own. One hand releases to wipe away the blood from his cheekbone, then to gently cup his jaw. It is so soft, so affectionate. The fingers treat him like he is made of glass. Like he is the most precious thing anyone could touch.

“You’re alive,” whispers Killua, brows wrenching in sudden relief. “Oh, thank god. We need to get you to a hospital. Ging! Call the Association! We need a helicopter, or—or something —”

“Killua,” murmurs Gon, taking his own battered, broken hand up. He moves a thumb to pad against the wetness of Killua’s long, flitting eyelashes. “Wow, Killua. You’re so pretty.”

“You’re the absolute worst ,” Killua cries through gritted teeth. His body curves steeper, face close enough so that the tears fall gracefully onto Gon’s cheekbone. “I can’t—I can’t believe you. You’re a maniac. How could you ever think this was okay to do?”

“Killua.” Gon’s voice is laced with wonder. He loves the feeling of the name as it rolls over his tongue. It’s his favorite word in the world. “Why are you crying? I killed him. Agnor. He’ll never touch you again.”

Killua sniffles, fixating Gon with such a heartbroken glare, one that easily reveals the much more intense feeling of relief, of love , as he stares at him with bright blue eyes like all he could ever need in the world is right in front of him. The fingers cupping his face quiver a little more. Gon takes his other hand to envelop them under it, calming the tremors against his cheek.

“You’re so hurt,” whispers Killua. “And it’s all my fault.”

Gon could laugh. The words are so absurd that he actually does. It’s more of a wheeze than anything, the pressure of his cracked ribs much too heavy against his lungs, but Killua still stiffens at the sound of it. Killua, whose screams of pain and torment are still wedged brutishly in Gon’s mind, whose blood still soils the ground in an unknown corner in the Continent, who spent three weeks in absolute agony just to protect him, says that Gon’s battle injuries are his fault. He wonders if Killua will ever learn—learn just how ludicrous the words sound. Gon will spend every second of the rest of his life convincing him that they really are.

Killua takes his lip between his teeth, forcing down a sob.

“I’d do it again,” Gon says gently. “Over and over again. I’d do anything it takes to keep you safe.”

“No, shut up,” Killua’s words are so frustrated and seething, “I will never let this happen again. You’re stupid. You’re careless, and idiotic, and stupid . You could have died . Did you think about that? What could have happened to you?” The spark of pure fear flashes cerulean across his eyes. His voice grows small. “What…what would I have done?”

Gon doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just stares in silence, absorbing every inch of Killua’s worried face. Pale skin reddens under the sheer intensity of his gaze. “Yeah, you get it now, don’t you?” he says, a lazy grin stretching over his cheeks. The cut across his lip breaks again.

“Get what?”

“How I felt. When I saw you, all beaten and cut up.”

Killua swallows. “That’s—”

“It’s not different,” Gon interrupts, voice soft but firm. The hold he has on Killua’s cold hand tightens. “I’ve let you protect me for years and watched you ruin yourself in the process. I shattered your hands for a stupid game of dodgeball. I dragged you into a war and made you pick up my pieces. I twiddled my thumbs while you ran across the globe for six months.” Killua’s breath is caught in his chest. “That’s not happening again. The only thing I want anymore is to keep you safe.”

It’s a bit funny, when Gon thinks about it. His fingers, splintered and broken in the effort to protect Killua, lay a comforting pressure over Killua’s own, lacerated and burned in the effort to protect Gon. For once, his heart steadies at the thought that finally , he’s showing Killua the equal affection that he has deserved ever since they were twelve years old, when they were bright eyed and mesmerized by each other. One day, they’ll be able to express this love without having to pull their bodies apart. Things are different now. He has the rest of his life to hold onto Killua and never let him go.

A noise leaves Killua’s throat, some type of pained whimper, that he just doesn’t have the strength to muffle anymore. He leans down to press his lips against the corner of Gon’s mouth. The touch is a blossom of coolness over Gon’s entire aching, heated body, some supernatural power that calms the tremor in his bones.

“Okay,” he whispers, lashes fluttering against Gon’s cheek. For once, Gon knows that he truly believes it.

Three months later

The issue with making history is this: the paperwork is endless .

Cheadle makes far too frequent appearances in the call history on Gon’s phone. An interview is needed here. A press conference is needed there. Even the Zodiacs and Ging have found themselves caught in the crossfire of knowledge-hungry Hunters, or indignant civilians who demand to know about the golden-eyed hero that saved them from a mysterious threat—a monster that the Association so ignorantly failed to alarm them of. Gon’s face is plastered over screens and digital billboards in Swardani City. He’s gained the moniker “S-class hero”, which frankly seems a little silly and has Gon wrinkling his nose in distaste. Magazine representatives flank his hotel, and Gon has unfortunately relied on Jajanken paper far too many times to escape a heated, frenzied crowd of paparazzi.

Truthfully, the publicity makes sense. Gon is officially the only living human known to defeat an S-ranked enemy. If Gon wasn’t Gon, he’d be flocking news outlets for any semblance of information on the man who bested such a villain, too. But he is Gon. So it sucks.

However, the more pressing issue involves handling the very sensitive, very volatile information of the calamity that sits dormant in Gon’s body. Gon doesn’t care. He shrugs at the conference table as the Zodiacs embark in yet another loud and hectic argument. Gon has no intentions of releasing its power any time soon. Its only use is to protect Killua, and he’d sooner rip off his own arm than let Killua enter a situation that puts him in danger again. So let the public know. What’s the difference?

Every time he says this, Ging looks at him like he’s simultaneously the stupidest and craziest person he’s ever seen, and the Zodiacs shake their heads in frustration. We are not doing that, Gon. The Association would be ripped to pieces. We need to think of a better plan.

Gon isn’t that great at thinking, so he just zones out for the rest of the meeting every time.

Mito calls him—not to praise him for the automatic Triple-Star ranking Gon has obtained, but to scream in the enraged violence only a mother can conjure at his reckless, dangerous actions. Then, she flies out to Swardani. Reprimanding over the phone wasn’t enough. Every Zodiac watches her shout in a fiery tone at Gon, guilty and looking like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs, a wagging finger heavy in his face. Killua has the misfortune of walking into the room when this happens. Zetsu isn’t enough to hide from Mito’s wrath. In no time, Killua too bows his head as Mito admonishes both Gon and him in a line.

(She’s teary-eyed, of course. In no world could she stay angry. Not when Gon and Killua are safe and sound and alive in front of her.)

Eventually, someone has the bright and big and annoying idea to capitalize on the sudden fame that Gon’s name and image has, and that someone is Leorio. It’s a betrayal unlike any other. When he discusses this plan with a gleam in his eyes and palms slammed against the table, Gon clutches his chest like the scheme is a stab in his heart. 

“The Association needs money!” Leorio yells, sweat running down his temple. The conference room is much too stuffy, and it’s already been six hours. Ging is bored in the corner and does single-armed push-ups, upside down. Cluck is arguing with Cheadle and Kanzai about the flock of civilians that crowds at the base of the Association headquarters building, chanting a flurry of demands to see Gon. Ginta is playing cards with Mizaistom and Gel. “We’re still broke from the Continent expedition! Think about it, Gon. Bobblehead Jajanken action figures. T-shirts with your face on them. Merchandise . We’d be millionaires in days!”

“This is stupid!” Gon shouts back, exasperated. “Why am I even here? I don’t care what you guys do!”

“We can’t legally brand you with the Association without your explicit consent on all parts, Gon,” Gel says flatly. She sets down a card. “So, by law, you have to be here.”

Gon’s eye twitches. His arms tense as they grip the edge of the conference table. “Fine. Can I just agree with everything you guys want and leave now?”

“I don’t know if you want to do that,” huffs Ging, still upside down.

Leorio, though, has a much too mischievous gleam to his Cheshire grin. Gon can almost visualize him rubbing his hands together in a devious manner. “Of course!” he exclaims gleefully. He slides a stack of papers across the table, and Gon just barely catches the pen that is tossed to him. “Just sign these, and we’ll let you be on your merry way.”

After Gon flurries through the signing with a speed so diligent that it’s almost as if his life depends on it, he all but trips his way out of the door and into the hallway. If Ging squints, he can almost see the trail of smoke that leaves him like a speeding car down a tar track. He’s all too understanding of the urgency in his son’s stride, though he would much prefer to not think about it.

“I wonder what’s got him in such a hurry,” Ginta remarks, intrigued. Ging’s eyes close in irritation as the intrusive image floats into his mind, despite his best efforts.  

Characteristically, it is this: three minutes later, Gon is halfway across the city and kissing Killua hungrily in a hotel kitchen.

“How much time do I have?” Gon breathes, mouth pressed to a pale jaw. Killua’s breath trembles, fingers digging into the skin of his sun-spotted arms.

“Like, um, an hour. Alluka’s at the mall with Mito.”

“Mm,” Gon is rubbing circles into the divot of Killua’s back, “can you tell ‘em to slow down?”

“It’s not my fault you’re always in a goddamn meeting,” Killua quips, but there’s no malice. He swallows when Gon’s lips climb back to the corner of his mouth. “You know, this shit is pissing me off. Even when I want a break from you, all I see when I go out is your stupid face blown up on a billboard.”

“You never want a break from me,” murmurs Gon, grinning. He feels the edges of Killua’s cheeks, hot with a scarlet blush, stretch as an involuntary smile occupies his face, and he knows he’s right.

“Maybe. But this is getting out of hand. Action figures? Really ? They’re blowing up your ego too much.”

Gon’s grin takes a certain edge. “What, are you jealous?”

“That my face isn’t on a six-inch-tall plastic doll? Get serious, Gon.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I was talking about the attention. On me. You don’t seem to be real happy whenever there’s a crowd of people holding signs that have hearts around my face.”

Gon expects to see Killua’s flush intensify, to watch a snarl form on his reddened lips or his eyebrows knit in indignant embarrassment. Gon sees none of this. Instead, surprise flutters in his lungs at the vulnerable sight of Killua shifting a shy gaze to the floor and looking incredibly reserved, like he cradles something far too delicate and exposed in the core of his heart. “No,” says Killua, voice soft. “I’m not jealous. I think you deserve it. All this praise. I’m glad people are telling you how important you are.”

Gon’s grin softens into an affectionate smile. He leans down to meet the decline of Killua’s gaze, watching blue eyes tentatively look through long eyelashes. “For the record, I don’t care about what they say,” he says quietly, like the words are a secret just for the two of them to hear. “I don’t care to be important to them. I only need to be important to you.”

Eventually, things fall back into rhythm, including the steady, adventurous pulse of their relationship. They race over rooftops with the city’s ice cream parlor as their finish line. They bicker over mindless things and butt heads like stubborn oxen. They press into each other’s skin when no one is looking.

And they spar.

Gon’s body tumbles over the field, raising dirt out of the grass from the force of his toss. He barely manages to shove a hand into the dirt to stabilize himself before another flash of lightning comes tumbling in his direction. The spark is fast: fast enough to scorch the tips of Gon’s hair just before he’s able to release a fiery Ko in a last-minute defense. As Gon rises to his feet, a blur of silver hair appears from the air above him, with outstretched palms illuminated in a brilliant, cerulean light.

Gon is barely able to crouch his body before the electrified hands can lay refuge on his skin. But Killua is, knowingly, much too smart and detects this move from a mile away​​—likely even before Gon thought to make it. The electricity fizzles out from his nimble body. Killua’s palms turn inwards, and his body curls. Seamlessly, he wraps his arms around Gon’s waist and tackles him to the grassy floor.

The exertion pushes a grunt from Gon’s throat. He winces, feeling the pressure of Killua’s body as it straddles him to the ground, so numbly familiar in so many different ways. His chest heaves in haggard breaths, and lingering adrenaline pulsates in his bloodstream. Sweat bleeds down his temple and into the dark hair behind his ears. 

The sun is just a few minutes away from setting below the horizon, swathing Killua in a brilliant scarlet light. His pigtail of white hair is still in the process of losing its static from Godspeed , and each drawn exhale billows a cloud of fog from his lips and into the cool, dusken air. As he leans back to sit up, arms untangling from Gon’s middle, his fingers crawl forward to place flattened palms over the top of his shirt—too deliberately, too specifically over the healed scar on his chest. They pause here, comforted by the steady beating of Gon’s heart.

“Will I ever beat you in a spar?” Gon pants, grinning wildly. His hands press loosely along the billowing fabric over Killua’s knees. 

Killua’s returned smile is equally as devious. “Don’t know. You’d probably have to release your calamity for that. But that would mean having to put me in danger again—”

“Fuck no.”

“Then,” Killua leans to the side and climbs away from Gon’s body, laying on the soft grass next to him and containing a small chuckle, “no. I don’t think you will.”

Gon swallows, his smile slowly fading. It’s been a whirlwind, the past few months. The sheer ecstasy of having Killua by his side again sometimes feels too good to be true. Often his jittering nerves wake him in the middle of the night, petrified that Killua has been taken again, or is running away to never return. Even when he eyes the sleeping, pliant figure beside him, Gon needs to press a hand to Killua’s cold cheek, littered with scars old and new, and verify the touch. Sometimes his mind flashes to a bloodstained chair, or his ears recall the faint echo of a gut-wrenching scream. Sometimes he thinks about the mindless, hopeless feeling of wandering through an endless jungle. All of it is enough to freeze his movement for a solid few seconds.

“But I’m strong enough,” whispers Gon, speaking before his mind registers the words, “for you to stay now. Right?”

Killua is silent beside him. Gon flinches at the lack of response, and his blood turns to ice. He ventures out a hand to find a colder, paler one. Desperate, it wraps itself around pliant fingers. It waits for them to curl. For them to reassure him. 

Finally, Killua speaks. “You always were,” he responds softly. The hand squeezes back, and the warmth floods back into Gon’s body. “But I know things are different now. You’re different now. I’m not leaving you again. I couldn’t bear to.” His pinky brushes Gon’s own. “I promise.”

Gon thinks back to the ultimatum: the stormy, dark night four years ago, the heart-shattering words escaping Killua’s mouth, the dull pulse of pain across the breadth of his body. He remembers the ache of training for four years, desperate and enthusiastic to grow as strong as his best friend without fully understanding the extent of the statement. He remembers the devastating feeling of reuniting with Killua for just a few precious moments on the top of a building in Yorknew before watching him slip through his fingers again.

Most of all, Gon recounts the heavy burden of realizing that the cause of Killua’s distance was him . 

“Gon?” Killua’s voice is still quiet. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing, just…” Gon’s jaw grows tight, forcing the wetness to recede from his eyes. But his willpower isn’t enough this time. His cheeks are damp in seconds, and a hiccup fights to leave the back of his throat. Shit , he hadn’t meant for it all to come out. Gon had done so well. Kept it in, stayed composed, because Killua was the one who truly deserved to cry—who had suffered weeks of torture, months of panic and running, years of neglect and callousness most regretfully at the hands of Gon himself. What is he even weeping for? That he’s sad Killua feels pain when he most obviously should? He clamps his lips shut, trying desperately to stuff the emotion back into his gut. 

Eventually, Gon finds the strength to stabilize his shuddered breathing enough to speak again. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice trembling, “that I made you feel like you had to run away. I don’t ever want you to feel that way again.”

Gon swallows again, trying desperately to eliminate the lump in his throat. When his admittance is met with silence, he turns his head to look at the man beside him. Killua is already staring back with wide, stunned, beautiful eyes.

“Don’t do that,” Killua says, brows wrenching in concern. “Don’t put this all on yourself. I had a lot to learn before I could lean into you.”

There it is. That traitorous gasp of a sob, breaking free from the restraint of Gon’s quivering lips, blurring his vision and seeping wetness into the blades of grass underneath him. Before Killua’s face can buckle more in worry, Gon frantically sits up and scrubs the tears away from his eyes. Skin grows raw and red as the rough, calloused edge of his knuckles presses fearfully against his tearline. He’s doing his best to turn away from Killua, hide his anguish the very best because it feels wrong , feels stupid and insecure and privileged to cry so hard when Killua still limps from a horrific injury dealt nearly four months ago, still wakes up in panic from nightmares, still tiptoes on edge when he’s in an open city. But he can’t stop. The tears run and they run and eventually Gon doesn’t have it in himself to contain the wretched sadness erupting from deep within his gut.

But Killua is much too quick. He shuffles to sit in front of Gon, alarmed and close enough to brush his knees against the scraped, tan skin of Gon’s own but far enough to let Gon unveil his emotion on his own terms.

“Gon,” he softly says, nudging him to speak. It doesn’t take long for Gon to cave at the accepting expression Killua wears.

“I want you to believe that you can be safe with me,” blurts Gon, the words all wet and muddied with vulnerability. “That you can let your guard down and not have to worry about picking up my pieces or running from danger. I want to be that person for you.” Gon’s voice cracks. “I—I tried so hard to overwrite the stupid shit I did when I was a kid, but even then, even with all of the effort I put in, you—” Truncated breath, shaky lungs. “You have scars on your body now that are my fault. I don’t—I don’t even know how to ask you to trust me again because those are scars I should have protected you from. And I failed. So badly. So fucking badly.”

“Gon,” Killua reaches out a gentle, slow hand, “these scars aren’t your fault—”

“They are !” chokes Gon. He takes the outstretched, pale fingers in a firm, desperate gasp that paints Killua’s face in sudden surprise. Gon can’t take his eyes off of them. The rifts of healed skin over burns and welts on moonkissed wrists, burying hundreds of hours of sheer agony that blossomed into his nerves every time Agnor brought up the colossal, cataclysmic subject of Gon, the best friend, the lover, the complete and utter root of Killua’s pain, of his undoing. They extend like mountains over his arms, a daily reminder of Gon’s inability to protect what matters the most .

“Agnor told me, Killua,” he breathes, teeth clenched in a self-directed fury that begs him to fold in over himself. He should stop talking. He should shut up now, recognize the sudden stiffness of Killua’s body and put this discussion in the past, lay it to rest. But Gon can’t. It’s all too much, to pretend like he wasn’t at the forefront of Killua’s suffering. “He told me what he would ask you. To reveal me. To give him my name. And of course you didn’t, because you are the most selfless, most compassionate, most perfect person this terrible and sickening world has ever seen. And you got hurt. So bad . I didn’t even fucking help you escape. I whined on my ass and watched you save yourself again.”

Gon can’t do it. He can’t look at the widening edges of Killua’s eyes, staring at him with such a potent fragility like he’s about to be punished, like Gon discovering the extent of Killua’s pain is the worst thing to ever happen. “I’m never letting you get hurt again,” he says, a bit quieter but still just as fervent. “I’m going to protect you for all the times I wasn’t able to. But I know that’s not enough. I want you to trust that I will. And I…I don’t know how I can gain that back.” Wetness is coating Killua’s outstretched wrist. Shit, he’s crying too much. “And here I am, being selfish again. But I just…I really want you to feel like you can put your faith in me again.”

Killua doesn’t speak for a moment. Gon takes the silence as a chance to suck back the sniffles in his nose, dry the edges of his damp eyes. Eventually, Killua takes his other hand to enclose the hold Gon keeps on his fingers. “I’m sorry he told you,” he says, regretfully. “I can imagine that wasn’t—”

“ Fuck , Killua, don’t keep doing that!” Gon shouts. God, why is he so angry? Killua did nothing wrong. But he knows the frustration is directed far from the man in front of him, so brilliantly illuminated in the dusking light. “This isn’t about me, and—and how I felt! The tragedy here is that you got hurt. Nothing else. Nothing else matters as much.”

Killua stares at him—a little nervous, a little uncomfortable. Yeah, that’s classic. Gon did it again. Pushed away the man he loves enough to destroy the universe for.

But Killua’s eyes flicker. He tightens the pressure of his hand over Gon’s knuckles and furrows his brows, swallowing a certain emotion down into his gut. “Okay. You’re right, Gon. I got tortured. That was fucked up. You know what’s also fucked up? You, on the verge of death, killing an S-ranked monster for me. You training for four years straight to meet an ultimatum I had no intention of overriding. Maybe I have a problem with recognizing how bad things get for me. But with everything you do, you convince me that I’m worth enough to not have to endure them.”

“Is that really how you feel, Killua?” Gon says, eyes narrowing. He squeezes the grip over Killua’s cold fingers. Killua responds with equal fervor in his blanketing palm. “Or are you doing it again? Protecting me from the truth?”

“It’s how I feel.”

“I want you to mean it, Killua. I want you to really believe it before you let me back in. I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“Shut up, ” Killua hisses, a limitless passion in his eyes. “You’re really pissing me off. You’re acting as if I’m some shell of a person without free will. Did you forget? The reason why I flock to you like a moth to light? You taught me how to be good , Gon. How to appreciate things that don’t involve ripping out a person’s fucking heart.”

“You always had that in you,” Gon argues right back. Heat flows into his bloodstream. “You’re the best person I know by nature. I had nothing to do with that—”

“Yes you did !” cries Killua. The grip they have on each other is starting to hurt now, each using the other’s hand as an anchor, some volatile reason to keep being so close. “You taught me how to love someone, how to—how to love you ! Are you stupid? That’s the whole point of this! I didn’t know what that felt like until I met you!”

Gon stares. Killua quivers in contained passion, like a spark that flickers against an unlatched lighter. “So yes,” Killua whispers hotly. “I trust you. With every bone in my body. I trust you because you love me enough to prove that I can.”

His heart flutters. “Did I?” Gon breathes, a smile creeping onto his lips. His hand relaxes—drops the trembling, pale fingers in his grip, finds its way to a folded thigh, up over a ribcage, across a shoulder and around a neck, finally settling on the cusp of a cheek. “Did I prove it? That I want nothing more in the world to keep you safe, to keep you close to me and never let you go?”

Killua closes his eyes, eyebrows scrunched. Every exhale is short and heavy. “I shouldn’t even be alive right now, Gon,” he murmurs, and a deep pang of affection breaks through the chains of his exterior. He takes a lip between his teeth. “Doesn’t that prove it for yourself, too?”

Gon supposes that he’s right. There’s an acute layer of logic and reasoning to Killua’s words, but Gon doesn’t care to open it. Somehow, it isn’t enough to defeat an unstoppable monster. Somehow, it isn’t enough to do the impossible. Gon thinks he’ll only be satisfied when Killua’s happiness stays for years, for decades. Even then, he’ll do everything in his power to make him feel safe. Protected. Secure. Loved .

Gon takes a thumb up to run against the edge of Killua’s eye. Brilliant blue irises finally reveal through a curtain of glossiness, staring into him with so much desperation, so much yearning that Gon can’t ever believe he let him go. But there’s no point in thinking about the fragility of something in the past, when everything he’s ever wanted sits before him like a beacon of heaven, like the mark of an immeasurable treasure, like a light so blinding and captivating Gon can’t look away. There’s no point in regretting lived experiences when Killua is giving him the opportunity to share the future. To find a new adventure. To touch every inch of moonkissed skin. To stay .

And Gon will never stop thinking this, never stop believing this to be an unshakeable pillar of truth, as irrefutable as the law of gravity, but Killua is too beautiful. He’s a collection of scattered constellations in fiery blue eyes, a splash of pearl coloring over the alabaster of his skin, a shine of silver hair that lends itself to Gon’s aching fingers. He’s a flurry of danger in the curve of his limbs, in the angle of his stance, that protects the gentleness of his heart. He’s the epitome of everything Gon dreams about, lives for, breathes with , rewriting the definition of affection in his pounding heart and invigorating his veins everytime there’s a soft, gentle smile over the stretch of pale cheeks.

If Gon has to kiss every scar over Killua’s body and promise a vow of protection into his skin each time, he will. He’ll do it as many times as it takes. 

Gon leans forward, and he starts with Killua’s lips.