Chapter Text
Whale Island
A Tuesday, End of May
1
It was stupid. Everything that his math teacher assigned was as stupid as the man was himself (or so he assumed, never having met him in person.) Gon had shattered so many pencils in frustration at so many homework assignments that Aunt Mito had taken to charging him for them. But he couldn’t help his frustration, or his strength. And now, in the spring of his last year of school – one year late, and five years since he’d put away his Hunter license in the back of a dresser drawer – he was at the limit of his self-control. Maybe it was a good thing, he’d thought more than once, that he’d lost his nen. If he hadn’t, the broken pencils would likely have turned into tiny, splintered, flying wooden missiles, and who knew where that would have gotten him.
No place better than this, he sighed, erasing an answer that was definitely not the right one.
Gon wasn’t usually one to dwell on anything unpleasant for long, but more and more often he found himself lying awake in his drafty room when Mito and his great-grandmother were long since asleep, the old stone house on the sea cliff silent except for the creaking of beams and the keening of the wind around the eaves and the distant wash of waves. He would think about the past, those two years that he’d spent exploring the world with his friends (or friend, because there had never been any doubt that it was Killua who had inspired him the most.)
He would wonder what he was going to do when the final exams were behind him. He was no scholar; in fact he had no desire to spend a second more on studying than was absolutely necessary. But his desire to travel as a Hunter had fled with Killua, in one long, final look before Gon turned to the World Tree, and Killua walked with his sister into the unknown. When he’d set foot back on Whale Island months later, he’d pushed all remaining memories of the friends and adventures he’d had to the back of the drawer with his license.
Since then, he’d taken the odd trip with Kite, but he’d lost the desire to wander endlessly. If he wasn’t going to traverse the world as a Hunter, then Whale Island was the only place he wanted to be. But what would he do here? Work at the bar with Mito? Go on dates with the girls from the summertime cruise ships who always seemed to find him and cluster to him like flies to fruit? He shook his head, just as his pencil crumbled to sawdust on the page of equations he’d forgotten about in his worry.
He regarded the ravaged pencil for a moment, wondering whether it was worth fetching another. And then there was a sound, and he jumped. He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t really registered where it had come from. But Mito had taken Abe out for some fresh air in the warm springtime afternoon, and so it couldn’t have come from inside the house. He was looking at the wreckage of his pencil, trying to decide whether he’d imagined the sound, when it came again.
This time, it was clear: it was a knock on the door. But it was so faint; it was more like the stutter of rain during a sea-storm. Gon shoved his chair back from the kitchen table, thrilled for the distraction, and practically ran for the door. He threw it open, expecting one of Abe’s friends, given the weak knock – and then it was his turn to go weak. It wasn’t an old woman standing on the worn sandstone doorstep, but a figure Gon would have known anywhere, in any place, no matter how many years had passed.
“Killua?” he asked, his tone hushed, disbelieving.
Gon had imagined this moment more times than he could count. Through all of the long, dull years he’d passed since leaving his friend, thousands of scenes had formed in his mind, usually unbidden. But he had never imagined it like this. He had never imagined Killua broken. Yet here he was, lean and taller than Gon now by several inches, though his head was hanging and his shoulders hunched. His cheeks bordered on hollow, his skin was waxy, and the blue eyes he raised to meet Gon’s seemed dusted in a layer of ash. Killua blinked once, and then they were brimming with tears.
“Oh, Killua…” Gon said, and he wrapped his arms around him, laying a gentle, sun-brown hand on his white hair as Killua dropped his head onto Gon’s shoulder, and wept.
*
It was a long time before Killua stopped crying. By then, Gon had moved them both to a comfortable couch by one of the windows, and the sun had traveled far enough to slant across them, holding them in a warm hand. Even when Killua’s sobs finally stilled, he stayed for a long time with his head in the crease between Gon’s neck and shoulder, letting Gon rub his back, allowing himself to be soothed.
At last, he lifted himself up off of Gon, pushed back against the arm of the couch. He looked at Gon for a long moment, eyes swept clear by tears, like the sky after a storm. “Gon,” Killua said, his voice still hitching, “I know it’s been so long. So many years since I last wrote – ”
“Two,” Gon said with abject certainty. “Two years and five months and three days since your last email.”
Killua choked on a laugh, although he still looked miserable. “You’re still blunt as all hell, I see.”
“I tell the truth,” Gon answered resolutely, his eyes steady on his friend’s. Salt crystals had formed in Killua’s white eyelashes where his tears had dried, clumping them together, and they glittered like glass dust in the sinking light. Though he tried, Gon couldn’t take his eyes off of them.
Killua sighed. “I know that. It’s one of the things I – ” He stopped, shook his head. “Look, Gon, I’m sorry about this. I mean, I disappear for years, and then I show up on your doorstep and cry all over you – ”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re here.”
Killua looked as though he might cry again, so Gon reached for him. But this time, Killua blocked his hand. “No. I’m not going to break down again – there’s no time to waste on that. And I know that you have questions, but there’s no time for them, either. So I guess I’ll be blunt, too. I’m here because I need you.”
Gon smiled, a small warmth kindling in his core. “You need me?”
But Killua didn’t smile. He only drew a deep breath. “It’s Alluka, Gon,” he said in that broken voice. “She’s disappeared.”
Gon blinked, suddenly serious. “Disappeared from where?”
“Lukso Province.”
“Isn’t that where Kurapika’s from?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty much the ass end of nowhere, which is why it was perfect. We had a little house in the hills, not too far from this village where people were friendly, but didn’t ask too many questions. It was pretty. Peaceful after all the time we spent in Yorkshin, getting Alluka’s surgeries. She needed a place like that afterward. She never liked the city. In Lukso she could stop and breathe. Get used to the changes at her own pace…”
He looked up at Gon, clearly expecting questions, but Gon just waited patiently for him to continue. “I really thought we were safe,” Killua said at last. “I mean, if our family was going to come looking for us, Yorkshin would have been the obvious place, but it never happened. And then, a few weeks ago, I left to buy food, and when I came back Alluka was gone. Everything in her room was the same. She hadn’t taken anything with her, but she was gone.”
Gon watched Killua carefully, afraid of saying the wrong thing. “Do you think that maybe she left on her own?” he ventured at last. “I mean she’s sixteen now, right? Maybe she got tired of living far away from everything.”
Blue eyes clouding, Killua shook his head again, and when he answered his voice was low and anxious. “She didn’t leave by choice.” Killua reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a crumpled bit of newsprint and something small and shiny. He placed them into Gon’s upturned palm.
The shiny object was a long, gold-hued pin, thickening toward the top where it was capped with a sphere. Gon went cold. “Isn’t this one of Illumi’s needles? Like the kind he had when he was disguised during the Hunter exam?”
“Yes,” Killua said. “Read the clipping.”
Gon set down the needle and unfolded the worn bit of paper. It appeared to have been torn quickly from a newspaper. It was only a headline and a sliver of story, but the headline was all he needed: “Silva Zoldyk, Head of Padokia’s Most Prominent Family, Killed In Airship Disaster.” Gon looked up at Killua in shock.
“It’s true,” Killua said, his voice oddly flat. “My father is really dead, according to every source I could locate. I guess that’s why Illumi came looking for us again, and this time, he found us. He took Alluka. And Gon – ” He drew another deep breath, let it out, his eyes rising once more to Gon’s. “I think that you’re the only one who can find her.”
2
Gon looked at Killua for a long moment, trying to digest it all while he took in the changes in his friend. Killua had grown tall and willowy, like his mother. His voice was lower, a musical tenor. But his pearl-pale skin and blue eyes, his long, delicate fingers weren’t any different than Gon remembered. It didn’t seem real, that the boy he’d missed and longed for for so many years was now sitting inches from him, no longer a boy but a young man. And he was asking him for something requiring so much trust that Gon could barely make himself believe it.
“Why?” Gon asked after another moment. “Killua…why would you ask me?”
“Because I couldn’t find her. Either of them. Believe me, I tried. They weren’t at the family house, or anywhere else that I could imagine him taking her.”
“There are better Hunters than me out there, Killua,” Gon persisted.
Killua leaned forward, his eyes darkening. “Only you could possibly understand what this means to me.”
Gon’s head spun. In his own estimation, he was nothing since he’d lost his nen. It was one of the reasons why he’d never tried to seek out Killua in all of those years since they parted: he knew that he would only drag him down, make him and Alluka more likely to be caught by Illumi.
They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Outside, clouds had blown in to cover the sun, and shadows cloaked the normally cheerful room. Killua shivered, and so Gon reached clumsily for his hands. Once, years ago, their hands had been the same size. Now Gon’s were bigger, red-brown and scarred and callused around Killua’s moon-white ones. Killua had always pulled away when Gon had tried to hold his hand before, but now he seemed more than grateful for the enveloping warmth. His fingers tightened ever so slightly around Gon’s.
In return, Gon felt something he hadn’t felt in years: a faint tingle that signaled the wakening of his aura, not unlike what he’d felt when he and Killua first began to train with Wing and Zushi. Yet at the same time it was utterly different. There was no easy hook to this tug, no clear way to catch it. So he made himself be calm, in the way of the meditations he had practiced every day since he left his father, hoping one day to regain the power he’d thrown away. He let himself simply feel it.
“Killua,” Gon said softly, strengthening his grip when Killua didn’t pull away, and feeling the tingle strengthen with it, “you know that I would do anything for you and Alluka. But my nen is still gone. I’ve tried, but it’s never come back.”
Killua shrugged. “I didn’t expect that it would have. But,” he looked up at Gon, and for a moment Gon stopped breathing under the intensity of Killua’s gaze, “that doesn’t change anything. Neither of us could use nen when we first met, and you were still so strong. Do you remember how you broke Illumi’s arm during the Hunter Exam?” They both smiled at the memory. “And you can track, Gon. You could do that before you ever knew about nen. You can find her. I know you can.”
Gon was troubled by the determined look in Killua’s eyes. Clearly Killua had settled on this; he had no other plan. “You know that I’ve done nothing with my Hunter license since…since the World Tree.”
Killua retrieved his hands at last and crossed them behind his head. Gon felt a jolt of cold at the loss of them, the tingling dissipating, but he tried not to show it. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
Gon looked at Killua for another long moment. The gray light was fading now from the window, and Mito and Abe would be back soon. “Killua – of course I’ll go with you,” he blurted. “I’d do anything for you!”
Killua dropped his hands as a blush crawled up his face, finishing in a bright-pink tipping to his ears. “It’s only this one thing I’m asking, Gon,” he said, not quite meeting Gon’s eye. “But I know it’s a lot, even so.”
“No!” Gon cried. “It’s nothing compared to what you and Alluka did for me.” Killua still wouldn’t meet his eyes, but Gon continued, “The only thing is, Aunt Mito will be very unhappy if I leave high school before I graduate. And with my math grades, I’m not sure I will graduate. I didn’t last year.”
Killua glanced up then, gave Gon an incisive look. “Math? What are you doing? And when are your exams?”
Gon looked away, flushing himself, now. “I…really don’t know what I’m doing. That’s the problem. And the exams are the end of this week.”
Killua’s eyes narrowed. “But you do school by correspondence, right? Can’t you take them early?”
Gon shrugged helplessly. “No. The government sets the dates, and emails the exams to everyone at the same time, so you can’t cheat. But even if I could, it wouldn’t help you. The next ferry doesn’t leave till Friday evening.”
“Shit,” Killua said, his forehead sinking into his palm. “Four days? In four days, they could be anywhere! He could be doing anything to her!”
“They could be anywhere now,” Gon pointed out, “and if things are like they were when you first ran away, Illumi’s not going to hurt Alluka, because he needs her to get whatever it is he wants from you this time.”
For a moment, Killua looked furious. And then the expression slackened again, melted into that terrible, hollow laughter. “I’m glad to see that five years of civilian life haven’t made you pull punches.”
“Killua, I’m sorry – ” Gon began earnestly, but Killua interrupted.
“Don’t. That wasn’t sarcasm. I was really afraid that you would be…” He trailed off, leaving Gon to wonder what it was that he had feared, how he could have changed that would upset Killua. “Okay, so I’ll make you a deal,” Killua continued. “I’ll help you pass your exams, and then you help me find my sister.”
Amber and blue eyes met in a long, unblinking stare. Then Gon said, “Anything, Killua. I already told you that. And you should have known that without me saying.”
Killua’s eyes flickered away again from the stark intensity of Gon’s. “All right, then,” he said, “show me the math that you’re whining about.”
“Whining!” Gon whined loudly. “I was not – ” Killua leveled him with a glower softened by a half-smile. Gon sighed. “Fine,” he said, going to retrieve the paper and a new pencil from the table. “I hope you know all about sines and cosines, because it all makes my head spin.”
Killua shrugged. “I’ve learned one or two things since the last time I saw you.” Gon proceeded to watch glumly as Killua finished all of his homework in ten minutes.
*
Mito cried out when she saw Killua in her kitchen, sautéing vegetables with one hand tucked in his shorts pocket. She pulled him into a warm embrace while Abe laughed a toothless laugh, muttering, “I knew he’d come back. No one ever visits Whale Island and doesn’t come back!”
Killua accepted their warm welcome graciously, even if he did blush up to his ears again at the open affection. But when Mito asked to what they owed the pleasure, Killua looked hopelessly at Gon, who was trying to make a salad without mangling the ingredients too much. At Killua’s look, he almost sliced into his thumb, only barely avoiding it when Mito pulled the knife from his hand at the last minute.
“Never mind!” Mito said brightly, continuing to chop the vegetables, nudging Gon out of the way while Abe laughed soundlessly behind her hand. “We’re just so glad to see you!”
Gon, meanwhile, had taken a fish from the many in the fridge, and begun slicing it carefully into fillets. But when he glanced up to see Killua’s dubious look, he stopped. “Oh, Killua – you hate fish, don’t you?”
“I, um, no, it’s fine – ” Killua began, but Gon ignored him, and poked around the freezer until he found a massive steak, which he handed to Killua triumphantly.
“You like steak, right?” he demanded.
“Ah, yes, but – ” Killua began, looking at the hunk of frozen meat in distress.
Mito took it from him gracefully. “Sit down, Killua. You’re a guest.” She filled a bowl with hot water and put the meat in it to thaw, and Killua sat.
“Thank you,” he said to Gon’s relatives. “Sorry to drop in like this.”
Mito studied him for a moment. “So, will you be taking Gon away before he finishes school?” she asked in a carefully neutral tone.
Once again, Killua blushed to the roots of his hair. “Ah…no, Mito-san. I’ve told Gon that I’ll help him with his exams.”
Mito raised her eyebrows. “And then?”
Killua met her eyes squarely. “Well, then it’s up to Gon, isn’t it?”
For a moment, all of the eyes in the room were fixed on Gon. He looked away, his jaw working, and then he looked up at them all, his amber eyes blazing. “I’ll finish school, Mito-san. But then I’m going to go with Killua. He needs me.”
Mito gave both young men a hard look as she drained the bowl of water, and then she began to rub seasoning into the meat. “Do I want to know what for?”
Gon and Killua exchanged glances. It was Killua who answered, “It’s maybe better if you didn’t.”
Mito sighed and nodded, and then put the steak aside and washed her hands. “Well, boys, I bought this to celebrate Gon’s graduation. I think, though, having Killua back is occasion enough.”
She dried her hands and then reached into a cupboard, and brought out a bottle of a rare and expensive liquor, made from the nectar of a flower that grew only on Whale Island. She cut the wires over the cork with a sharp knife, and then took out four glasses that had lived at the top of the cupboard for as long as Gon could remember. They were beautiful, each one a different, deep jewel color, with facets that flashed light. Mito wiped each one carefully and then filled them with a measure of the pale liquid.
She handed them around, and then said, “To Killua’s return. And Gon’s future.” There was a hitch in her voice as she said the last words, but then she tossed back the glass with the nonchalance of the sailors at the port bars. Abe cackled, and swallowed hers almost as quickly, and then Gon and Killua downed theirs. Gon managed not to choke on the burning liquid, but Killua, to Gon’s secret delight, coughed heartily after he swallowed, his eyes watering.
“I thought you were immune to all poisons, Killua,” Gon said with a laugh.
Killua, with cheeks flushed crimson, glared at him. “That doesn’t mean they’re any easier to swallow,” he croaked out. “Not,” he said quickly to Mito, “that I consider this poison.” Gon and his family laughed as Mito refilled their glasses, and Killua went to slide the steak into a frying pan.
*
For hours after dinner, Killua regaled Mito and Abe with stories of his travels around the world while they drank. Gon looked on, sipping from his ruby-red glass, now on its third refill, a question in his eyes. Killua thought that he knew what it meant: how could he carry on with small talk and alcohol when his heart was clearly smarting, longing for his sister? Killua didn’t know; he only knew that he couldn’t turn Gon’s family against him, if he hoped for Gon’s help.
At last, Mito saw Abe drowsing in her chair and took her off to bed, bidding goodnight to the boys at the same time. They sat up for a while, listening to the wind as it rose around the house, promising a sea-storm. Mito had left the bottle of liquor on the coffee table, and without either of them speaking it, it had become a competition for Gon and Killua to finish it.
Both of them tried to pretend that they weren’t tipsy, as they drank more and more. Even Killua had to admit to himself that he was feeling the effects, though not, apparently, as much as Gon, who was flushed crimson, his eyes glassy.
At last, Gon asked, “What do you want, Killua? For me to throw up first?”
Immediately, Killua’s smirk leveled. “You’re going to throw up?”
Gon sighed, put his glass aside. “I don’t know. I’ve never drunk this much before.”
Killua rolled his eyes, and set his own glass on the table. “Come on, Gon. We’re done.”
“But if you don’t want to stop – ”
“Gon! I am not going to let you make yourself sick trying to keep up with me! Because you can’t.”
Gon frowned, his lower lip slipping into a pout that Killua thought he would have long since outgrown. It was silly, had been childish even when they were twelve, but it also made his stomach do a small flip that had nothing to do with the potent liquor. It wasn’t the first time that evening that it had happened, either, and it was entirely disconcerting.
Despite knowing that he was now nineteen, all the way to Whale Island Killua had been picturing Gon as a child. When the door opened on a handsome man – more than handsome, if he was honest with himself – he’d been stunned. Gon’s face had lengthened and narrowed, his body grown powerful as his early strength had promised, but his eyes were still warm, honey-brown, and oddly innocent. Something in Killua had melted at the sight of him – that, as much as Alluka, had been the reason for his tears – and it still hadn’t re-formed.
“I can keep up with you, Killua!” Gon was complaining when Killua reined in his thoughts.
Killua went to the kitchen, filled two glasses with water and brought them back to the sitting room. Gon grudgingly took the one Killua offered him, and only began to sip it when Killua did the same. After Gon swallowed half of the water, Killua said, “Go to bed, Gon. In the morning you better be ready to learn trigonometry, or else get your ass kicked.”
“Only if you come too.”
“No. I’ll sleep here.”
Gon clattered his glass onto the coffee table. “What? No! You are not going to sleep in the living room!”
Killua ran a hand over his face, and when he looked back at Gon, his exhaustion caught up with him all at once. “Yes, I am. I’m not going to intrude on your family any more than I already have.”
But now Gon was riled. “No, Killua! I can guess what you went through to get here. You’re sleeping in my bed, and that’s it.”
“What?” Killua asked, suddenly uncertain, and blushing (to his fury).
“Don’t be an idiot!” Gon snapped, shocking Killua so much that he stepped back. “You can have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the futon. If we’re going to find your sister, then we both need to be rested.”
Killua wanted to argue, but all at once, the fight left him. He thought of Alluka’s blue, blue eyes. He thought of all the times she had urged him to go back to Gon, and how cruel it was that she should get her wish like this. Sighing, he said, “All right. But only for tonight.”
Gon gave a quick nod, and then grabbed Killua’s hand, dragging him off the couch. Killua rolled his eyes but allowed himself to be pulled upstairs to Gon’s bedroom, where Gon left him to search out a spare toothbrush.
Though it had been many years since Killua had been there, very little had changed. There was the desk with a few framed pictures (including the picture that Gon and Killua and Alluka had taken by the World Tree before they parted), a chair piled with shucked clothing, and the futon that Mito must have made up for him on the floor. The only thing that was different was the bed: the narrow child’s bed was gone, replaced by one that suited the man’s frame Gon had grown into. But the timeworn quilts were the same. Killua sat down on the edge of the bed, stroking his hand across the soft, sun-faded fabric.
“Here,” Gon said as he came back from the bathroom, holding a towel and a new toothbrush for his friend.
“Thank you,” Killua said, accepting them.
“You can take a bath if you want to.”
“No. I’d wake up your family. I’ll do it in the morning.“
“You didn’t bring anything, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Killua admitted, his voice dismal. “When I found Alluka gone, I only stopped long enough to grab some money and my license.”
Gon nodded and moved to the dresser, opening drawers and pulling out clothing, which he handed to Killua. Killua took the pile and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth and change. When he returned to the room it was dark, except for the scatters of moonlight that slipped through the wind-driven clouds. He laid his dirty clothes on the chair along with Gon’s, and then made his way to the bed. Gon’s eyes were wide open where he lay on his pillow on the floor, watching Killua approach.
There it was again – that awareness that something had changed profoundly in his feelings for his old friend. Killua tried to drive it downward, to bury it, but it nipped at his consciousness like a terrier at a child’s heels. Killua sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed again, facing Gon, who was still watching him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I…I just can’t believe that you’re really here.”
Killua lifted the blankets on the bed and crawled under them, pulling them up to his chin against the draft from the window. “Well I’m here,” he said. “And I apologize.”
Without pause, Gon said, “What for?”
Killua considered this, and then he said, “Are you even worried about going after Illumi?”
“No,” Gon said without hesitation. “Why would I be worried? We’ve always beat everyone. This won’t be any different.”
Killua realized he should have expected this unquestioning optimism. He sighed again, laying an arm over his eyes. “It will be different, Gon. With my father gone…well, who knows what Illumi’s planning?”
Gon curled his legs up to his chest. “Who cares? He’s always planning something, and you’ve gotten Alluka away from him before.”
It was a long time before Killua answered. Finally, softly, he said, “I know. But that was before she knew nen.” And then Killua turned over, his back to Gon, indicating that the conversation was finished.
3
Gon didn’t know how long he blinked into the darkness. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or hours. Yet when he looked up at Killua again, the drift of flickering, cloudridden moonlight across his quilted back hadn’t much changed. And everything had changed. Alluka knew nen? That could only mean that Killua had taught her.
At last, unbearably restless, he sat up on the futon. A moment later, Killua sat up too. They faced each other across the few feet of darkness that separated them. “You taught your sister to use nen?” Gon asked at last, his voice sounding strange in his own ears.
“Of course I did!” Killua snapped. “How else was I supposed to keep her safe from Illumi…or the world safe from the two of them if he caught us?”
Gon considered his answer carefully, given Killua’s response. “Well…then I guess that was a good thing. But if she knows nen, then why are you so worried about what Illumi might do to her?” As soon as he’d said the words, he wished he hadn’t. It was hardly surprising when Killua’s face set and his fists clenched.
“Because Illumi is stronger than Alluka is,” Killua grated out. “And because my father is dead! Don’t you understand? The chain of command is broken, and I was meant to be the next link. Now Illumi has a chance to take that place instead.”
“But you didn’t want it, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t! That’s not the point. If Illumi took it on his own, I’d be throwing a party right now. But he means to take it up with Alluka under his control…shit, Gon, you know what Alluka and Nanika could do as children. Well, now it’s different. Stronger. And potentially so much worse.”
Gon leaned his chin on his arm, resting on his bent knee. But when he saw how Killua looked at him then – his face a bitter twist – he remembered what this pose must mean to him, and quickly shifted. It was too late, though. He could see the wetness in Killua’s eyes, bright in the broken moonlight, and Gon’s heart broke too – not for the first time or, he suspected, the last. But right now he could at least try to make it better.
“Killua,” he said, his voice low, almost a whisper. At first, his friend didn’t seem to hear him, only pressed his face into his raised knees. Once again, Gon said, “Killua.”
This time, Killua looked up. His eyes were black in the dark room, but the moisture hovering in them gleamed silver. Gon thought of the words Palm had spoken to him two years ago, when Killua had finally stopped writing altogether after months of emails that had grown ever more distant, and he’d called her in despair.
“I don’t know, Gon,” she’d said. “Sometimes friends grow apart. And he has so much on his plate, with his sister and her treatments.”
“I know,” Gon had said, “but I can’t help being afraid that it’s because of what happened.”
Palm had sighed. “I can’t promise you that it isn’t,” she’d told him, trying to be gentle, but there really was no gentle way to speak that truth.
“How bad was it?” Gon had asked - something he’d never been able to bring himself to ask her before. “For him, I mean?”
“It was bad, Gon. You were his best friend and he couldn’t help you. I’ve never seen anyone cry like he did when he realized that. He thought he’d failed you. He blamed himself, and I’m not sure he’s ever forgiven himself.”
Now Killua was blaming himself again, for whatever had happened to his sister – Killua, who had never done anything but try to save the people he loved the most. Killua, who had dragged his sister out of a dungeon and his best friend back from the edge of death.
Gon drew a deep breath, and then he said, “Come here.”
Killua looked up at him for a few long moments, and then he looked away, pressing his face back into his updrawn knees.
“Killua,” Gon said, drawing the name out into a plea.
Still, Killua didn’t look up. And so Gon threw back his covers, and settled himself on the bed beside his friend. “It isn’t your fault,” he said, at which Killua uttered a choked denial. “Killua,” he said, reaching a tentative hand towards him, and after a gut-wrenching moment of indecision, using a finger to lift his chin.
Gon had thought that Killua would pull away, but he didn’t, and in some ways the result was worse. Wide, wet, hopeless eyes met his own, and Gon said the only thing he could: “We’ll find her. We will find her.”
Killua’s eyes gripped his. Gon couldn’t look away, and if Killua wanted to, he didn’t show it. “Gon,” he said at last, his voice a broken whisper. “I’m afraid.”
“I know you are,” Gon said, his warm hand creeping into Killua’s cold one. Once again, he expected Killua to pull back; once again, Killua held on instead, as if he were drowning and Gon was salvation. “But Killua, there’s nothing we can do about it right now.” He looked into his friend’s face. “How long is it since you’ve slept?”
“I don’t know,” Killua answered miserably. “Mostly, I just ran.”
“Lie down,” he said softly, reaching into his friend’s silvery hair to stroke it as Killua obeyed. “It will be okay. I promise, it will be okay…” And although he didn’t know that it would be, when Gon got under the covers and curled himself around Killua’s slender body, and Killua let him, both of them believed it. They believed it enough, anyway, to finally fall asleep.