Chapter Text
All these problems, all the time
What’s it take to get a little piece of mind?
Swing at sorrow ‘till I got no fight
It’s hard to keep believing
But I’ve gotta try
“Breathe” - Lø Spirit
I can’t breathe.
It hurts.
I’m gonna die here.
If he thinks back hard enough, that’s the first memory he has.
There’s not much more to it, really - just poorly defined shapes, colours, distorted sounds - but woven through his hazy memory is the all-consuming, suffocating feeling of gasping for air.
He asked Gotoh once, and perhaps the butler was feeling particularly amenable that day because he humoured him rather than telling him to focus on his lesson.
“It could have been any number of your early trainings,” Gotoh said delicately. “You were exposed to drowning, smothering, choking, low-oxygen, obstruction… all of these before your memories would be well-formed enough to manifest clearly later.”
“I see,” Killua had replied.
Gotoh’s gaze swept over him, an unusual mix of thoughtfulness with the very slightest hint of concern.
“Why do you ask, Master Killua?”
“Oh, I was trying to figure out when my earliest memory was.”
A flicker of something crossed Gotoh’s face, but it was gone before Killua could even begin to process what it might have been.
After a slight pause, he spoke.
“Well, those were all before your first birthday.”
It’s not often, and it always passes quickly, but there are times when he thinks that Gotoh feels some strange sense of regret and guilt for the things that have happened in Killua’s childhood.
But that’s dumb.
Everything he goes through, it’s for a reason. It’s for the sake of his family, because he has a legacy to live up to, and he’s part of something important.
Something bigger than him.
It means something. It’s worth it for what he’ll become one day, and what he’ll be able to do.
That’s what Illu-nii always says, anyway.
And over time, it’s become easier to ignore the ways in which his body protests the trainings he is forced to endure, even though it’s not like it hurts less. He used to cry out and be punished excessively for it, but now it’s only the very extremes of torture that get close to breaking him in any perceptible way.
So he kind of resents the pitying look he catches very occasionally on his butler’s face, hates the way there’s a slight hesitation in his eyes even though Gotoh is ever the professional and suppresses it quickly.
Don’t pity me, Killua thinks. This is all gonna be worth it one day, it’ll all make sense and these questions in my head will go away.
Don’t pity me, because you make me worry I should be pitying myself.
He doesn’t confess it out loud though, that he sees any trace of this in Gotoh’s demeanour. And he’s not stupid enough to tell anyone in his family about it, because he knows what they’ll do.
He learnt not to be honest about his feelings a long time ago. Maybe that was one of the earliest lessons he was taught, to go along with his earliest memory being one of suffocating.
For all of the trainings his family lines up for him, and all the days and nights in the dungeons, the ones which involve his ability to breathe have always remained the worst - they’re the times he gets the closest to slipping up and giving away how much he’s suffering, how much he wants to be away from all of this, the weight of their expectations and plans for him.
But he’ll never give in and let them know that.
And he holds on to the hope that one day, at some point, all of this will just seem like the necessary means to an end. His brother will be right, like he always is, and it’ll all be clearly for the best.
Killua will become what they keep telling him he was born to be, and he won’t feel like he’s trapped here in this house, in this family, in this life.
Right?
Maybe he’s not supposed to have favourites amongst his family, but he does.
He knows who he likes the least. And perhaps it’s not entirely fair, because he also knows that the reason he is forced to spend so much time with his older brother in the dungeons is because his father has ordered it.
But he can’t help it.
Over time he has come to associate Illumi directly with pain and fear, and even if he’s being aggressively trained to hide those feelings on the outside, it doesn’t make the association go away.
He wonders what Illu-nii might have been like when he was younger. The age gap between them feels immense, and it scares Killua to think that one day, if he spends enough time being a Zoldyck, he might simply give up on questioning things the way Illumi has. Not because it finally makes any kind of sense, but because the ability to think for himself will be beaten out of him.
He wants to believe that he’ll come to understand his family on his terms, rather than just having no fight left. Some days it’s harder to hold on to that than others.
And Illu-nii says anything is okay if it’s for the family, but Killua doesn’t agree.
There should be limits, he thinks. He never wants to become someone who does something just because he’s told. But Illumi says that’s what he has to learn to do, if he’s going to take over everything one day.
“I don’t want to be the heir,” he always says, knowing he sounds as childish as he ever does the more he insists on it.
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Illumi says every time without hesitation, undistracted by Killua’s protests whether he’s slicing, carving, burning or electrocuting him.
Sometimes though, it feels like maybe what he wants might count for something one day. Grandpa Zeno always hears him out patiently as he complains about the latest torture or how he’s being treated, and never says that his feelings don’t matter.
“You’re special, Killua,” his grandfather tells him one day as they sit on the railing of the balcony, looking out over the garden with their legs dangling. “It’s not an easy path when you’re exceptional, and you’ve been that from the moment you were born.”
“Being special sucks,” he grumbles, flicking at the aged stone wall supporting them.
“Don’t be so sure about that,” chastises Zeno. “The majority of people spend their entire lives being nothing more than average, wishing they could do something to stand out, to make a difference - to matter. They wish for power, for influence, for money, for the ability to change their situation… all things you never have to worry about, Killua. You were born into great privilege.”
And yet I don’t think I can change literally anything about my situation, Killua thinks.
But he doesn’t say that out loud.
Still, he likes Zeno’s calming presence and the fact that he never just outright tells Killua that what he thinks and feels is wrong, the way Illumi does. Or treats him like he’s something confusing and broken, the way his father sometimes looks at him as if he can’t understand why he is the way he is. Or tries to drown him in some misplaced and annoying form of love, whatever it is his mother thinks she feels for him.
He doesn’t really know what love is, but he’s pretty sure no one in the Zoldyck family knows either.
Except perhaps for one person.
And maybe that’s the closest he’s gotten to truly loving someone, in the way he feels the overwhelming desire to protect and care for his little sister.
Like him, she was born different, but their family has always treated her like a problem.
“It’s not okay that he’s pretending to be something he’s not,” says his mother tersely one time when Killua dares to ask why she is so cold to Alluka.
“She isn't," he says stubbornly. “You just don’t get it, and you won’t listen to her.”
Kikyo sighs as if the conversation exhausts her, while Kalluto watches with wide eyes from where he clings to her dress.
“Killua, you can’t change what you’re born as.”
“You did,” he accuses, and a flash of anger crosses her face. The sting of her slap leaves his ears ringing and his cheek flushed a burning red.
“Illumi is probably ready for you in the dungeon now,” she says icily. “Why don’t you head down there already?”
He knows there’s no point in arguing even though he’s not expected for another half an hour.
“Whatever.”
But Alluka isn’t like the rest of them. She’s not dismissive like Silva, or manipulative like his mother, not oppressive like Illumi, spiteful like Milluki or sullen like Kalluto. There’s such a softness and light within her, and it terrifies him to think that one day his family might snuff that out.
He knows he’s young and still has a lot to learn, but he’s also old enough to know that he’s already lost something inside him that Alluka still has.
And he wants desperately to preserve it, to protect her from becoming anything like the rest of their family.
But Illu-nii keeps telling him that one day he’ll understand, as if it’s just a matter of time and everything will click into place.
More and more, he starts to worry that eventually, after everything hits some limit he hasn’t got to yet, you just… give up. And in doing so, maybe he’ll lose a part of who he is, an important part of what makes him Killua.
He tries not to think about that too often though, because when he does there’s a tightness that rises up in his chest and he can’t breathe, and it starts to overwhelm him.
As if he’s back there in the depths of the earliest despairs he can recall, futilely gasping for air and feeling everything slipping away for him, maybe this time for good.
And yet at times, there’s this quiet dissonant part of him that starts to yearn for what Illumi always promises him, for the simplicity it would bring.
Because it would all be so much easier if it just made sense already. Maybe it would feel less like he is resisting the pull of a riptide he ultimately won’t win against in the end.
Maybe Killua’s wrong about who he thinks he is, and his family is right about who he’s meant to be.
And whatever it is that’s running through Gotoh’s mind when he looks at Killua in that thoughtful, uncertain way…
Well, he must be wrong, too.