Chapter Text
In the caves behind my house I found the ruins of a softer world. Kindness couldn’t save them.
(Kindness won’t save anyone.)
-
“A Softer World,” Joey Comeau.
.
.
.
I’m going to die here.
The thought should scare him. Instead all he feels is a cold acceptance, as the truth of it sinks into his bones just as surely as the ship is sinking slowly into the dark water.
He’s going to die here, his body buried at the bottom of the ocean floor.
His brethren’s eyes will be buried with him.
Forgive me, he thinks. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. I have failed you. I couldn’t bring you home.
At least their final resting place will be together. There is some consolation in that. There is solace. And perhaps, even, a shade of shameful relief — relief that he has finally reached an end.
Kurapika is oh so very tired.
The Black Whale is sinking, people are yelling, and Kurapika is going to die here, but his hands are steady as he pushes Queen Oito into a lifeboat. They are steady as he pushes Prince Woble into her arms.
“No!” Oito cries, her beautiful face twisted in distress. “What about you?!”
Woble is screaming and trying to fight him, grabbing his hair in tiny fists and yanking on it. Pain shoots through his scalp. The prince’s chubby face is screwed up, tears pouring down her cheeks, and Kurapika feels a constricting sensation like his own Judgement Chain wrapped around his heart.
He swallows past the feeling. “Your Majesty —”
“You’re coming with us! I won’t abandon you here!”
“You must.” There is a twisting pain in him as he says the words. Not for himself, but for Oito, who is looking at him with such care and fear. For Woble, who cannot understand what is happening but seems to sense it, grabbing onto any part of Kurapika she can reach to hold him there — his clothes, his hair, even the earring hooked in his left earlobe.
In her wailing desperation, she nearly rips the jewel free.
And it isn’t right, that they should look upon him in such a way. It shouldn’t be possible. Because Kurapika isn’t alive, not really. He hasn’t been for years, his chest as hollow and empty and abandoned as the once-green fields of Lukso. He is a ghost, a shade, bound to this earth until the moment he may bring his people home.
He never meant to make anyone care for him.
But he has, whether he intended it or not. He is only footprints, but those footprints have touched the ground and sunk into the mud to leave their mark.
Leorio. Gon. Killua. Melody.
I’m sorry.
“You must,” Kurapika repeats. “You have to get the prince back to Kakin. She is the empire’s future now — you are its future. My duty is to protect the both of you and ensure her safety above all else.”
“You already have! Kurapika, just come with us!”
He thinks of Leorio. Melody, Bill, Izunavi. He can’t leave — not while there’s a chance any of them are still on board, trapped as the ship slowly takes on water and is dragged down to a watery grave. The only reason Melody and Izunavi are even here is because he offered them the job.
“I can’t. There are people on board who I —” He chokes on the words who I care about, like they’re chunks of jagged glass he’s trying to force up his throat. “I can’t go with you. I have to stay.”
“You’ll die.”
“I know.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. Woble screams in the space between them, and she reaches for Kurapika again, but the blond has stepped just out of reach of her short, desperately stretching arms. Her fingers clench around air.
“No,” Oito says. Her jaw clenches, her expression fierce. “No. I will not leave you behind.”
And for a startling, unsettling moment, with her dark hair and eyes, the steel in her voice and her gaze locked on him — she reminds him of Chrollo.
Tserriednich’s nen beast looming over them. Chrollo standing defensively next to him, conjured book open in one hand. Kurapika losing blood and fighting to stay standing.
Brandishing his chains at the beast. Go. Get out of here.
No, Chrollo said, eyes intent on his face and more serious than Kurapika had ever seen them. I won’t leave you behind.
Kurapika’s mouth tightens, fingers curling around the chains on his hand.
Chrollo.
Where is he right now?
Kurapika hasn’t seen him since yesterday evening, after Tserriednich’s blood spilled across the white marble floor. Since the eyes were in Kurapika’s hands, Hisoka’s location in Chrollo’s, and their temporary truce ended with an agreement to never cross paths with the other again.
His words ring in Kurapika’s ears, oddly melancholy. You are free of me, Kurapika Kurta. And I am free of you.
He shakes them off, as well as the memory of their hands brushing as he handed over the last canister of Scarlet Eyes. Just a split second of contact, but Kurapika still feels the phantom smear of blood on his hands from it — as if the blood of his clan, which Lucilfer’s hands are forever drenched in, now stains him just from a single accidental touch.
“Oito,” Kurapika says, formality gone now in his urgency. “Listen to me —”
“Kurapika!”
Kurapika blinks, turning his head toward the voice. Bill is pushing through the panicking crowd to reach the three of them, relief on his face. Kurapika feels the same relief when he lays eyes on the man.
“Bill. You’re alright.”
Bill nods. “Yes. As are you and the prince. Thank goodness!”
“Have you seen any of the others?”
To Kurapika’s dismay, he shakes his head. “No. Sorry.”
Kurapika bites the inside of his mouth. “Go with Queen Oito and Prince Woble. Their safety is your number one priority, understand?”
Oito attempts to protest again. “No! I refuse to —”
“Your Majesty.” He faces her, looking her dead in the eyes. “You and Woble will both get off this ship. Bill will escort the both of you back to Kakin safely.”
Bill’s eyes widen. “You’re not coming with us?”
“I have to find Leorio and Melody.”
“They might already be off the ship!”
He doesn’t respond, instead turning one last time to Oito and her daughter. “It’s been an honor to serve you, my lady.”
The finality in his words is impossible to miss. There are tears clinging to Oito’s lashes, her lips trembling. “Kurapika…”
Woble lets out an ear-splitting wail, reaching for him once more.
Kurapika steps forward and leans down. He presses a kiss to the top of the child’s head. The threat of tears pressing at his own eyes, he mutters a Kurtan prayer against her hair.
Be safe. Be blessed. Be loved.
He steps back, barely avoiding grasping hands that once again almost catch his earring. He turns to look at Bill. “I’m trusting them to you.”
The other bodyguard’s face is pale. “Kurapika… are you sure —”
“Yes. Keep them safe for me.”
Bill’s mouth becomes a thin line. But his expression hardens, decisive. “I will.”
Without another word, Kurapika spins around. He can hear Oito shouting after him. He can hear Woble’s wailing. He doesn’t stop or look behind him.
The flood hasn’t reached the top floors yet. Everyone above is rushing and shoving each other, desperate to reach the limited lifeboats. Upper society first, of course — the passengers aboard the lower tiers have been left to drown like their lives are nothing more than trash.
It makes Kurapika sick. This world is ruled by such scum.
Kurapika pulls his cell phone from his pocket. His hands, still steady as ever despite the whirlwind in his chest, dial the familiar number. It’s been so long since he’s used it.
The call picks up on the first ring. “Kurapika! Where are you?!”
The voice is sharp with worry as it cuts through the receiver.
“Leorio,” Kurapika says, voice steady and unbetraying how the man’s voice slips into the crevices in his chest. “I’m on the first tier. Everyone is being loaded into boats.”
“I know. I just got on one.”
“What about Melody? Have you seen her?”
“Melody’s with me,” Leorio says. Kurapika feels a swoop of relief in his gut. “What about Queen Oito and the kid?”
“Safe.”
Leorio exhales. “Good. Then get off the ship. We’ll meet up with you.”
Kurapika bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough that he tastes blood. “Yeah. I’ll see you both soon.”
He ends the call before Leorio can say anything else, flipping the cell phone shut and slipping it back into his jacket pocket. He hopes that, if Melody was really right there, she couldn’t overhear his lying heartbeat through the receiver.
Guilt chokes him. I’m sorry.
They deserve so much better than him.
Somehow, he manages to make it through the chaotic crowd to reach his quarters — slipping through the corridors filled with panicking people. He slams the door open and makes an immediate beeline for the small table near his bedside. He yanks the drawer open and pulls out the large, folded sheet on top.
A map of the ship. He lays it out on the mattress, holding his arm out over it and letting the ball on his Dowsing Chain drop down.
Leorio and Melody are safely off the ship, along with Oito and Woble. There’s only one person left Kurapika needs to be concerned about. He closes his eyes, the chain circling over the map as he thinks of his nen teacher. He thinks of those months spent in the forest with him, mastering his abilities and becoming stronger. He thinks of the next time he saw the man, six months after Yorknew — the way Izunavi looked at him for a moment, the dark circles painted under his eyes and the brittleness encasing his shoulder blades, and pulled Kurapika forward to lean against his chest. The hand that settled on Kurapika’s head, reminding him of his father’s. You did good, kid.
The Dowsing Chain pulls taut. It locks on a single spot on the map. The opposite end of the first tier.
Kurapika feels something in his chest loosen. Izunavi is still aboard the vessel, but he’s safe for now. Kurapika trusts in his abilities — he’ll be alright. Kurapika has to believe that.
They’re all okay. They’ll all be okay. All of them are safe, everyone except —
Except Chrollo.
Kurapika hesitates. He stares down at the blueprints of the Black Whale, a conflicted feeling warring in his heart. The last time he saw the Phantom Troupe leader, when he handed over the last of his clan’s eyes, he was planning on going after Hisoka.
So what if he dies, Kurapika thinks to himself. He should die. Kurapika owes him nothing. Nothing except allowing him to drown in this place, slowly and miserably like he deserves.
He still sees them when he closes his eyes — the bodies of his tribe, torn brutally apart. Lukso’s green fields repainted the brown of dried blood.
But —
Chrollo saved him yesterday, when they faced off against Tserriednich. He refused to leave Kurapika behind. Kurapika doesn’t understand why, but —
Dammit, Kurapika thinks. He clenches his jaw so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t break a tooth. Dammit, dammit, dammit!
He can’t believe he’s doing this. He can’t believe he’s fucking doing this.
Once again, he holds his Dowsing Chain over the map in front of him. He closes his eyes, taking a shaky breath.
And this time, he thinks about Chrollo.
He thinks of Yorknew, Chrollo bound in chains in the backseat of that car. He thinks of Chrollo standing on the landing bay, utterly alone and bereft of everything he once called his, as the airship rose into the sky and his diminished figure slowly disappeared from Kurapika’s sight.
Two years later on the Black Whale. Spotting him across the banquet room, elegant black suit and a charming conman’s smile. But something weighted on his shoulders, something sharp in his eyes, that wasn’t there before.
Something Kurapika recognized from the mirror.
Kurapika thinks of Chrollo Lucilfer and everything the man represents to him — green fields colored with blood, headless bodies and hollow eye sockets. Sunlight and blue skies turned to storms and fire and bones and ash.
Childhood innocence, forever lost.
He thinks of yesterday, Chrollo fighting beside him, refusing to leave him. His chest burns. Why did you help me, why did you save me, why didn’t you leave me to die —
I hate you, I hate you, I want you to die — I wish you would die —
The chain locks on the location like a magnet. Kurapika opens his eyes and looks down.
Tier 3.
Kurapika stares down at the indicated spot. The third level. The lower two tiers have already been breached by water, the hundred thousand passengers left to suffocate and drown. If Chrollo is still within the third —
Seized by an urgency he doesn’t wish to examine, Kurapika snaps the Dowsing Chain back up and allows the weapon to dematerialize. He spins around, out the door and into the hall.
Has the water already reached the third floor? Why the hell is Chrollo still so deep inside the ship?
Kurapika should let that asshole drown. Why, why, why, why —
He makes it down to Tier 2, then rushes across the ship to reach the entrance down to the third. Everyone is running and pushing, desperately trying to reach the top tier — in sharp contrast to Kurapika, who is rushing in the opposite direction and plunging deeper down instead.
The marble floor beneath his feet is tilting. The entire vessel is tilting. Kurapika’s eyes widen, grabbing frantically to the wall as he almost tumbles. The other passengers are yelling, and Kurapika’s heart pounds frantically behind his ribcage.
After a moment to calm that heartbeat down, he reorients himself and keeps moving.
When he reaches the third tier door, he throws it open. The floor is tilting, tilting, tilting, and he almost falls face-first down the staircase and breaks his neck. He grips the railing, descending each step slowly. It seems to take an eternity.
He steps off onto the third level. He wastes no time, keeping to the wall to steady himself against the slanting floor. This tier appears to be vacant, and Kurapika is unhindered as he makes his way through the corridor and turns a corner —
He stops dead. The air is punched from his lungs.
The sight before him can be described in one word: a slaughter.
The beige walls are smeared red. It gleams, thick and wet, against the floor and the ceiling and the small glass windows. Limbs — severed arms and legs and other misshapen pieces — are scattered throughout the hall. Innards, and fragments of bone poking out from beneath skin.
Kurapika breathes a quiet exhale, speechless and eyes wide.
The bodies are too shredded and torn apart to be completely recognizable to him, but flickers of color stand out among the violence. Pink hair — a face wrapped in bandages — a flowery kimono —
A twelve-legged spider tattoo.
Kurapika’s breath stutters in his chest. For a moment the bodies are overlaid with ones dressed in Kurtan reds and blues and golds, eye sockets empty and congealed with thick, dark blood.
He blinks and the image is gone. The lifeless faces of his loved ones shift back to the lifeless faces of his enemies.
Counting up all the limbs and severed body parts — there’s at least four of them there, scattered down the corridor. Possibly more. Kurapika waits for the satisfaction to come, but it doesn’t.
It feels like Uvogin. Like Pakunoda. Their deaths, like his vengeance, feel hollow.
Senseless brutality. Meaningless bloodshed.
Kurapika was never built for violence, despite how he attempted to turn his skin inside out and dress himself in it.
He takes a steadying breath. The overwhelming metallic scent clogs his nose and his throat, and he has to fight down his nausea.
Chrollo is not among them. Kurapika continues down the corridor, stepping carefully over the corpses. He attempts not to look at them, blood soaking into the soles of his shoes as he follows the path of destruction.
Deeper, deeper into the ship he goes. The light fixtures on the walls are flickering. Kurapika follows the blood trail, crimson footprints dragging against the floor. It’s smeared heavily against the wall to his right — as if a body slumped against it for support, unable to fully hold itself up as it stumbled away from the crime scene.
He finds Chrollo on the floor, slumped against the wall. He’s drenched in blood — his own and others's.
The fur of that stupid coat is stained red. The same color is splattered against his neck, a sharp contrast against white skin, and his dark bangs are sticky with it, plastered to his forehead. There’s a deep gash in his side, and one of his hands is pressed against it, attempting uselessly to stem the blood flow.
There are tears on his face.
Kurapika fails to stifle his sharp indrawn breath. Chrollo’s head moves, the slight widening of his eyes the only indication of his surprise. It quickly smoothes over into blankness.
“What are you still doing on board?” he asks. “The ship is sinking, you know.”
Kurapika means to say something sarcastic in response, such as yes, I’ve noticed. But his eyes are wide, locked on Chrollo; on the way blood is slipping heavily through the man’s fingers. “You’re dying,” he says instead, dumbly.
Chrollo laughs, but there’s no humor in it. It’s a hollow, broken sound. “What gave it away? Here to finish me off, or just to watch?”
Kurapika swallows. It takes him a moment to remember how his vocal cords work. “I came to save you.”
Getting the words out is like speaking around hardened cement. Chrollo looks at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Those dark eyes make Kurapika feel like he’s being x-rayed, like the man is seeing down to his soul.
“No,” Chrollo says.
Kurapika draws back. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t come down here to save me. You came down here to die.”
The words hit straight to his core. Kurapika opens his mouth and attempts to deny it — wants to deny it — but he can’t make his voice work. There’s something tight behind his ribcage, something lodged in his throat.
He’s right. He’s right.
Chrollo turns his face away. “I suppose we’ll die together then. How Shakespearean.”
Kurapika’s jaw clenches. He steps farther down the hall until he’s standing next to Chrollo’s slumped form. He’s never seen the man like this — stripped of all composure, so diminished and exhausted and shattered. Kurapika stares at those incriminating tears drying on his cheeks.
“What happened?” he asks.
Chrollo doesn’t look at him. “Hisoka. And Illumi.”
Kurapika’s eyebrows furrow at the second name. He remembers the flowery kimono he glimpsed back with the mess of bodies. “But back there, I saw — Illumi wouldn’t —”
“They both teamed up to kill me,” Chrollo says. “Then… Kalluto got in the way.” His voice sounds like pieces of broken glass as he speaks the young boy’s name. “Hisoka killed him. Illumi grew enraged and turned on Hisoka. They started to fight each other — I don’t know where they are now.”
His next exhale is shaky, a grimace of pain crossing his face as his bloody fingers tighten over the wound in his stomach.
“They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
His voice is empty. Devoid and hollow, like an empty grave. Kurapika stares at the desolation carved into him, like the abandoned, ruined remains of a fallen kingdom —
And Kurapika is angry. So, so angry, embers smoldering in his chest. His hands clench into fists.
“I hope,” he says harshly, “you don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”
In his anger, in his agony, his accent has slipped. He can hear the curl of Lukso around each syllable, usually so flawlessly pronounced. He stares at the tears on the man’s face, tasting the blood that overwhelmed his senses that day he fell to his knees next to his mother’s cold body.
How dare you, Kurapika thinks. How dare you have feelings. How dare you be human.
How dare you grieve in front of me.
Chrollo looks up at him from the floor, silent as he observes the younger man’s fury. Kurapika can feel his eyes threatening to turn red behind his contacts, that familiar primal sensation sparking in his blood.
“You took everything from me. You ripped everyone away. You killed them all, you slaughtered them, so don’t you dare sit there and — don’t you dare —”
He’s so angry, he can’t speak. The common tongue gets scrambled in his head, and each furious, grief-ridden word threatens to be spat out in his mother tongue instead. He clamps his jaw shut and swallows them. He will not give this man a single word of his people’s language.
He’s taken everything else. These hoarded fragments of a dead, buried heritage are all that’s left.
Chrollo stares, his gaze going from Kurapika’s face to his shaking clenched fists. He looks, for a moment, actually startled by the outburst, the hatred in Kurapika’s expression. Not because it’s unexpected to see it there — because he knows how much Kurapika despises him, he must, the last couple weeks working together have changed nothing in regards to that. They never could.
But there’s something shifting behind Chrollo’s eyes, something that vaguely resembles realization or perhaps revelation —
Comprehension.
As if, for the first time, he’s truly comprehending the fracture lines spread across Kurapika’s skin. Looking, and actually seeing.
“Oh,” Chrollo breathes, and his expression is terrible.
Kurapika doesn’t know what that expression means — doesn’t know what to say in the face of it. His emotions roar in his ears, amplified by the distant sound of the waves crashing against the ship.
Chrollo’s eyes slip closed. His head tilts back against the wall, exposing the pale column of his throat — also stained with dried blood. “You know,” he says softly, barely audible, “I think I finally get it now.”
Kurapika tears his gaze away, back up to his face. “Get what?”
“You.”
Kurapika’s heart stutters. His fury turns instantly ice cold. “Don’t.”
Chrollo can’t understand him. He could never. And Kurapika refuses to acknowledge the familiarity of him now — refuses to acknowledge the terrible, striking likeness to the shadows the man is currently painted in.
He refuses to acknowledge he can see his own broken pieces in the dark of Chrollo’s eyes.
The charred ash, left behind when the rage burns out.
And suddenly, just like that, his anger is gone. Like the flame of a candle sputtering out. He’s too tired for it, for a single spark. His bones weigh him down, and his ribcage presses down on his chest.
He wants to laugh. He wants to sob. He wants to lay down and finally stop.
Kurapika slides to the floor next to his tribesmen’s killer, dropping like a marionette whose strings have been cut. He pulls his knees up to his chest, as his head falls back against the wall. Tears sting at his eyes.
“I hate you.”
“Old song,” Chrollo mutters. “Sing something new.”
There’s no bite to the words. Just exhaustion.
Silence settles between them — heavy, the opposite of comfortable. Kurapika digs his nails into his folded-up legs, listening to Chrollo’s shallow, hitching breaths next to him. They sound painful, and Kurapika wishes he could find some vindictive satisfaction in it, but he can’t.
The man’s body is listing slightly, their shoulders almost brushing. Kurapika can feel the heat of him — can feel the eyes watching him.
“You hear that?” Chrollo asks. The sound of crashing water has grown louder, nearer.
“Yeah,” Kurapika says. “I hear it.”
He makes no motion to move. It’s far too late now. He recalls, vaguely, that Chrollo has a teleportation ability. Could he get them out of here? It seems pointless to ask.
Everything feels so, so pointless.
“Are you afraid?” Kurapika asks.
A pause. The water grows closer.
“Yes,” Chrollo says.
It’s not the answer Kurapika was expecting. Again, he remembers Yorknew — the man bound in chains, his heart steady all the while. No fear, no nervousness. Just acceptance.
What changed, Kurapika wonders. Why is it different now?
Chrollo’s body slips slightly. His shoulder falls against Kurapika’s. “Are you?”
“No.”
He can hear the water rushing through the walls. It’ll be minutes now, perhaps less. There’s nothing to do, nothing left to say, and Kurapika lets his eyes slip closed. He wasn’t lying — he feels no fear.
He’s never feared death. Only the hollowness left behind by the dying embers of his rage.
Death is preferable now.
Kurapika begins to pray. The words are a plea for forgiveness, not salvation. The sun upon my face. The grass beneath my feet…
Chrollo’s body slips further. His head falls, bloody strands of hair brushing Kurapika’s cheek. Kurapika can feel the puff of his breath against his jaw — can feel the way it rattles in his chest and scrapes up his throat as it escapes.
Kurapika should push him away, but he doesn’t.
There is something comforting in the reassurance he will not die alone.
I honor my ancestors for bringing me to this place, and defend my brethren until my dying breath…
The corridor floods. Water rushes down the hall, waves crashing through like a tsunami. It roars in his ears, and Kurapika can taste the saltwater. He can feel the mist of it against his skin, ice-cold —
“I’m sorry,” Chrollo rasps next to him. The waves nearly swallow his words. “My promise… I didn’t keep it.”
Kurapika blinks. He turns, opening his mouth to demand what the hell are you talking about —
The water crashes over them both. Everything goes black.
)●(
Kurapika wakes up choking on water.
He remembers being submerged in ice — the water flooding his mouth and his nose, stinging at his eyes and tearing at his body. It overwhelmed every part of his senses, threw his mind into utter panic, and he remembers his hands latching desperately onto the only solid thing they could find to anchor himself.
He thinks it might have been Chrollo. It took mere seconds for the water to wrench him away.
Now he gasps awake to sun bearing down on him, blinding his eyes. Still choking on the water surrounding his lungs, he coughs and gasps as he tries to expel it. On his hands and knees, saliva drips past his lips as he sucks in desperate breaths.
His entire body is weak and trembling. Tears sting at his eyes, his contacts burning. He fumbles desperately to get them out, stabbing himself in the eyes about half a dozen times before he manages. He stares down at his shaking hands against the dirt ground.
Wait.
Dirt ground?
Kurapika stares down. He can feel his mind trying to make sense of it, like rusted gears on an old machine.
The last thing he remembers is drowning.
The last thing he remembers is dying.
His limbs still trembling, he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and pushes himself into a crouch. He takes a steadying breath — and has to immediately fight against succumbing to another coughing fit. His lungs contract around the air, just like the water.
The air smells rancid. Polluted and rotting and dead, and he can feel the noxious fumes coiling in his lungs. It makes Kurapika want to throw up. His throat constricts, and he gags, placing a hand over his mouth and nose.
He stumbles to his feet. His clothes are soaked, as well as his hair, dripping water into his face; so at least he has proof the memory of drowning was real, and not a product of some bizarre fever dream. Garbage and filth stick to his hands, and he wrinkles his nose as he wipes them on his pants.
Hot, scorching sunlight bears down on him from a gray, smoky sky. He shields his eyes, looking out. Where the hell am I?
Mountains of trash and waste surround him — stretching as far as his eyes can see, blocking out the horizon. Rusted metal, old debris, decaying bones; they litter the hard ground, along with dozens of other useless, broken trinkets. Discarded, worthless objects, abandoned among weeds and rot and broken glass.
A beaten, flattened soccer ball. Stripped pieces of what looks like an old car door. A rusted, dirty stroller with missing wheels and a bent frame.
It seems to go on for miles. A giant dumping ground. Realization dawns on Kurapika slowly.
He’s in Meteor City.
Somehow. Impossibly.
Kurapika has never been to the city himself. But he’s researched it extensively, has learned every little detail about it that he could. The world’s different cultures and geographies have always been a deep curiosity of his, growing up as stifled and isolated as he was — and after learning of the Phantom Troupe’s origins, Meteor City became a place of particular interest.
Know your enemy, after all.
And he’s certain he can’t be anywhere else. It looks just like the pictures he’s seen, looks just like he’s read it described.
Kurapika doesn’t understand it. It makes no sense. He was on the opposite side of the world a mere moment ago, aboard a sinking ship sailing towards the Dark Continent. He was being forcefully dragged beneath the waves of the sea. So how the hell —
Chrollo has a teleportation ability within that book of his. Could he have done this somehow?
But he isn’t here. Just Kurapika.
Kurapika coughs again. The filthy air tastes like ash in his throat. He lifts his hands, looking down at the dirt streaked on his palms — the wet sleeves of his suit, clinging to his skin.
“Hey! The hell you think you doin’ here, huh?!”
The booming voice startles him so much, he jumps and trips over a twisted piece of metal. He manages to twist himself as he falls to avoid landing on it. He hits the ground next to it instead, the hard impact rattling up his tailbone.
Footsteps approach. A shadow falls over him, blocking out the sun. Kurapika looks up.
And freezes, his breath catching.
There is a dark-skinned boy standing over him. Kurapika almost mistakes him for a man, with his towering height and strong build, but the signs of his youth are present in the structure of his face. He’s around fourteen or fifteen, if Kurapika was to wager a guess — dressed in dirty, ripped clothing, his hair twisted into messily-done dreadlocks.
And Kurapika stares, because the expression on his face — he’s seen it before. He’s seen that exact bloodlust, aimed in his direction.
And for a moment he can’t breathe, the memory of his nen-dagger sinking into a beating heart.
The boy’s lips curl back from his teeth. “This is my territory,” he says, domineering and threatening as he looms over him. He cracks his knuckles. “Anyone who trespasses — I kill them.”
He looks like a warmonger standing over his newly-conquered kingdom. He begins stepping forward, and Kurapika tenses, his chains materializing —
“Hey! Uvo, you big jerk!”
Only half-formed, he vanishes his chains. His head snaps in the direction of the voice.
A young boy has emerged from one of the tall trash heaps a few feet behind Kurapika. He’s pale and skinny, dressed in clothes that seem slightly too big. Dark hair, matted with knots, brushes his shoulders.
And those eyes — those eyes freeze Kurapika in place.
The dark-skinned boy looks at the new arrival, his mouth becoming a scowl. “You! What do think you’re doing sneakin’ ‘round my —" His eyes fall down, then narrow in renewed fury. “Hey, the hell is that?! You stealin’ from me again, you brat?!”
The younger boy is holding a paperback book in his hand. It’s filthy, its pages torn and stained, but when the other fixes his accusing eyes on it, the boy clutches it to his chest like a precious treasure.
“I found it,” he says, voice surprisingly strong. Only his clenched fingers at the book’s spine give away his nerves. “It’s mine now.”
“Not if you found it in my lot!”
“I don’t see your name on it. Besides, what do you need with a book, Uvo? It’s not like you can read it.”
“Are you callin’ me stupid?!”
A flash of fear goes through dark eyes — so familiar, but that emotion in them so very not — and the boy takes a half-step back. “No! I just meant that —”
“You little shit, I’ll fuckin’ pulverize you! Is that what you want, do you want me to pulverize you —”
The boy looks past the bigger one’s shoulder. “Franklin!” he yells at empty air, cutting the other’s threat off. “Now!”
The trick works. Golden eyes widen, the teenager spinning around. The younger boy lunges forward, his hand reaching down and pulling on Kurapika’s soaking jacket. “Get up! Hurry!”
Kurapika, mind whirling, can do nothing but obey, scrambling quickly back to his feet. The boy with the familiar gray eyes is now gripping his hand, pulling him as he runs. Kurapika grips his hand back without thought, his feet following as if on autopilot.
He can hear angry yelling coming from behind them. Kurapika’s heart hammers against his ribs. The young boy’s hand is hot and sweaty and small in his own.
Eventually, they come to a stop. Kurapika’s hand is dropped, and the young boy drops to the ground by his feet.
“Phew! That was so close! We almost got pounded!”
The child is laying sprawled out in the dirt as he catches his breath, eyes staring up at the gray sky. Kurapika is also breathing heavily, attempting to regain his breath; but he does it quietly, remaining on his two feet, without all the melodrama the other is putting on.
After a few moments, the boy pushes himself up into a sitting position. “And I even got away with the book!”
He’s still clutching it to his chest like a rare gem. The yearning in those eyes as he flips it open and eagerly drinks it in — it’s so familiar, in the most terrible way, but it’s also different. Not quite right.
Kurapika’s seen that expression before. But it’s softer here, filled with pure, child-like wonder — missing the sharp edges of greed it possesses in the future.
Kurapika swallows. Breathe, he reminds himself.
It gets trapped somewhere in his chest.
It can’t be possible. It doesn’t make sense. But the young teenager back there — the child had called him Uvo. And despite the differences, the resemblance was still uncanny. The dark skin and large build, the booming voice — the aura —
The Phantom Troupe may have no regard for the lives that they take. But Kurapika?
Kurapika remembers each and every person he’s killed.
“Aw, it’s in Rakaia! I don’t read Rakaia!”
The young boy is pouting down at the paperback he scavenged. The smudged pages are covered in foreign words and symbols, incomprehensible, and he closes the book with a disappointed, frustrated exhale.
“No fair,” he mutters. “Who even speaks Rakaia anymore…”
Kurapika swallows, staring down at him. It takes him several tries before he’s able to speak.
“Hey. Uh — kid. What’s your name?”
The child looks up, blinking as if he’s just remembering Kurapika is there. “Me?” he asks, tilting his head. He straightens up, his face brightening, and his cracked, dehydrated lips form a smile —
And Kurapika thinks it can’t be, it can’t be, because when this boy smiles it’s like the sun emerging as the clouds part.
No trace of blood or cruelty or deception.
“My name’s Chrollo!”
Kurapika swears out loud in Kurtan.