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Who are you? What do you want from me? Spare me, please, spare me. I’m important. I have money. I can get you anything. Anything, anything, anything. Tell me what you want.
Kurapika wants—
—the long white stretch of a shore that Gon spoke of once, eyes bright as he promised to take them all to his home someday. The four of them lying with their backs to burning sand, hands raised to shade their eyes from a high and burning sun.
He wants to wade through the sea he’d described. Wants to taste its blue salt, water cool over his skin. He will watch Gon reel in fish from the water, scales glinting silver, mouths pursed, eyes glossy. Gon will teach Killua how to do the same, hands delicate over the rod, over the string, over the bait. Leorio will run barefoot through the sand and later shape it into castles, lopsided but true, ugly but unhurried.
Kurapika has only ever passed through water on a dark boat, mind someplace else. Next auction, next target, next pair of scarlet eyes.
what do you want
Lilies for the departed. Chrysanthemums for mourning. Forget-me-nots for remembrance. Hyacinths for sorrow.
More than this dark cathedral. More than its pale stone statues, half-winged angels, one-armed saints. More than unruly vines spiralling its marble arches, more than shattered light shot through dust, dirty stone, glass debris.
More. Less. More rage. Anything but those rows of eyes suspended in plasma, scarlet and unseeing. No candlelight vigil, no silent requiem. A better funeral. A better ending. To not be the only one here.
what do you want what do you want what do you want
To be desired differently. The whole of him. Not just for his eyes. To seduce in a way that leaves no room for violence.
A sharp knife. A new suit. For all of his kindness to fall away, each forgiving word a bead, pale blue, glinting, slipping down the blade-cut rosary of his chains.
I beg of you
To harm. To kill. To play god. To be godless. To walk into a room and watch everyone inside of it fall to their knees in white, trembling fear. To pluck the legs off every spider and draw a stark river of black, black blood.
An apology. An admission of regret. To know they are just as haunted as he is. To turn translucent and haunt them himself in case the past ever fails to.
For his pain to pour from him for everyone to see. For blood to be enough. Proof of his rage. Proof of his aliveness. To say, look at me, look at all this red that’s kept me alive! My eyes are red my heart is red my lungs are red. My mouth. My hands.
For everyone who looks at him to take for themselves a portion of his grief, the whole of it too large to fit inside his body. For all of this to be easier.
tell me what you want
To reverse time. To return home.
For home to exist as more than just an emerald shard of memory, chipping away a little more every day. For home to exist as more than just an absence.
Lukso province and its soft, jade moss. Mouth full of fresh air, skin warmed by a sun that always drew near. Wildflowers, spiral vines. Bare feet dancing to the quick song of wind instruments. To speak and be spoken to in his mother tongue.
One hundred and twenty-eight heartbeats that will never stop, because this time he will be there to protect them.
To mount the back of a Piko again, those grand, winged beasts, Pairo warm and close behind him, gentle hands tugging at the cotton back of his shirt. The smooth of Pairo’s small palm against his small palm. He hardly remembers the exact, silk texture of the bird beneath his hands. Maybe the fur wasn’t soft at all. Maybe it burned like rope to touch.
To heal Pairo’s legs. To heal Pairo’s eyes.
To catch all pieces of this place and keep them near his chest. Polish them every day so they never fade or shrink or disappear.
please please please please please please please please please please please please please
To discipline his body to sift away his history like a flush of lodged gravel from the mazes of his nervous system. To go a minute, an hour, a day without thinking its name.
To diagnose the centre of his grief. A week, a month, a season. For all of the words he'd said as a child, small and defiant and reckless, to swim out like sour medicine from his past, from his body.
But still the ghost of this place comes back to tug on his shoulder. The phantom of a hillslope, or river, or endless green bordered by mountains might map, sudden, onto a useless landscape. And so the past returns to him, again, and again, and again.
To lose all pieces of this place. To fill in the dark of the chasm it has left in him.
Look into my eyes, he’d taunted, once, hand sprawled over the throat of a man with slicked back hair and sour breath. Look at their red. Are they not beautiful? Do you desire them? Want to rip them out, too? Preserve them in a glass jar? Make them into earrings? Lock them away behind layers of steel for auction just as you’d done with all of the others, all of my others?
I’ll tell you a secret. Sometimes I want to carve them out myself. I dream of it in detail. Fingers curled around a pearl hilt, the dip of the blade, the soundless white burst. Red, red blood.
To suture the wound of himself.
Have mercy on me, please, I’m sorry, have mercy, spare me, spare me, have mercy on me, have mercy, please, please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, have mercy on me, have mercy