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Illumi knew he should run.
The impulse lanced his spine, commanding his legs to turn his body, to carry him down the narrow hallway, away from the room which had been his home for the past nine days. His heart pounded against his ribcage. His damp skin rippled with gooseflesh. Why couldn’t he move? He’d gone over the plan a thousand times.
Hisoka was too strong to take head on; in their frequent sparring sessions, his success rate had been less than fifty percent. Unacceptable odds, especially with lives on the line (and they always were, in his line of work). Taking him out from a distance was the only option—a single well-placed pin would do the trick. But Hisoka knew him well, and had so far been smart enough to avoid open spaces undisguised. If he slipped up during the voyage, Illumi would kill him. If he didn’t, another member of the Phantom Troupe would. Either way, he’d get his money, so what did it matter?
That Hisoka would hunt him down crossed his mind, of course. Illumi was prideful, but he would not endanger himself for pride. There was no shame in running from an enemy like Hisoka Morow, and running was exactly what he had planned to do, should the magician pay him an unexpected visit. But now that Hisoka was sitting at the edge of his bed, yellow eyes shining like a cat’s in the dark, he found that he could not run, after all. Not for pride—no, whatever it was that rooted his feet to the threshold was more primal than pride, something felt in the body before the mind could perceive it. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in nearly twenty years, only recognized from the dimmest recollections of childhood.
For the first time in his adult life, Illumi Zoldyck was paralyzed with fear.
“Illu.” Hisoka spoke slowly, as if savoring the name. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Illumi wondered vaguely what it was he could be afraid of. Surely not death? Though he took every precaution to avoid dying, as a Zoldyck he had been prepared to sacrifice himself for his family from a young age. Dying at the hands of Hisoka would not serve the Zoldyck name; therefore, it was to be avoided. But he wasn’t afraid of such a death.
His eyes darted to the second, empty bed on the far side of the room. “Where’s Kalluto?” he said.
The magician examined his manicure, a smile touching his lips. “Alive.”
He hadn’t really expected Hisoka to kill his brother (he probably considered the boy ‘unripe’), so the assurance did little to quell the venom which had settled like lead in his veins. But if he wasn’t afraid for Kalluto’s safety, and he wasn’t afraid for his own, what was left to fear?
Hisoka produced a little black box in his left hand. “I found this in your nightstand,” he said, flicking it open with the pointed tip of his fingernail. A golden ring gleamed in the low light. His wedding band. They’d picked it out together in Yorknew, on the return trip to Heavens Arena. Hisoka had insisted on the purchase of an identical pair; a glint from the third finger of the magician’s left hand announced the presence of its twin. “Why don’t you wear it?”
“I elected to avoid mentioning our marriage to the Troupe.”
“Ah.” He plucked the ring out of its box, turning it between his fingers. “So they don’t know you’re sleeping with the enemy?”
“I alluded to our arrangement, but I did not divulge that particular detail.”
“Why not just avoid mentioning our contract altogether?”
Illumi swallowed, unable to take his eyes from Hisoka’s hands. The tendons shifted beneath the skin as he toyed with the ring. “A half truth is easier than a lie.”
“So it is.” Hisoka stood. Light from the hall played strangely across his features; for a moment he looked almost transparent. It occurred to him that the magician’s voice sounded off, as well, with certain consonants muted or absent.
“What’s happened to you?” he said softly.
Hisoka grinned. He touched his own face, digging his nails into the crumpling flesh, peeling back his disguise.
The white skin melted into a mass of pink scar tissue. A jagged black cavity replaced the pointed nose. In the absence of an upper lip, the white teeth were bared in a perpetual snarl.
“Courtesy of your leader,” he explained.
Illumi examined the ruined face. It was certainly ugly, but it was not beauty that had driven him to Hisoka’s bed.
“It suits you,” he decided.
The magician laughed. “You think so?”
“Yes.”
With a sort of detached curiosity, Illumi realized his legs were finally moving, albeit in the wrong direction. He could feel the motion of the ship beneath his feet, slowly rocking with the impact of waves on the Black Whale’s rounded prow. When he was in touching distance of his visitor, he held out his left hand, bent slightly at the wrist.
Hisoka slipped the ring onto Illumi’s finger. “I’m going to miss you,” he said.
“You don’t have to,” countered Illumi. He stood frozen in the shadow of the inevitable, feeling like a hare bargaining with a fox. “We can leave this place together.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Illumi’s gaze shifted from the ring on his hand to the yellow eyes above him. The face had changed but there was no mistaking those eyes, which at times seemed sharp and deadly enough to kill with a glance. “No,” he said.
For a long moment, they were silent. There was something final in the air; a mutual recognition that this was the culmination of the past four years, that their time spent hurtling toward a violent end was at last drawing to a close.
When he heard a card slide between the magician’s fingers—a soft rasp in the silence—Illumi found he could move again.
He stepped sideways, feeling the card zip past his shoulder. His mind was still occupied with the fear; without knowing its cause, he could do nothing to assuage it. His body, however, was capable of independent action; years of training had equipped him with a sort of martial autopilot. He ducked. Another card shot by his head and embedded itself in the wall. Plucking a pin from his breast pocket, he threw it with practiced precision.
“Come now.” Hisoka cocked his head, the pin sailing past his temple. “You can do better than that.”
Illumi wordlessly dispatched four more pins. The first three missed. The fourth hit its target, sinking into the meat of the right shoulder. For a normal person, that would have been the end; for Hisoka, it merely rendered the affected limb useless.
Scar tissue wrinkled the corners of the mouth, baring a grin which was all the more ghastly for its lack of an upper lip. “Maybe when I’m through with the Phantom Troupe I’ll pay Killua a visit, hm? Without you there to protect him—”
Illumi’s aura erupted with an audible hiss. His Ren flickered in the darkness, flooding the room with a rage so potent that it startled Nen users in the upper decks. It seemed to galvanize its host, whose next move was so quick that the magician had no time to react, much less finish his sentence, before a hand seized him by the throat. Illumi's free hand held only a single pin; its point rested just above the nape of the neck, perfectly poised to pierce the brainstem.
He could end it right there. The threat to Killua’s life, and to his own life, would be eliminated forever. But his hand would not complete its task, no matter how hard he willed it. Rage had eclipsed fear for a moment, but fear reasserted itself with renewed vigor. That its source could be killing, not dying, had never even crossed his mind. Why should it? For a Zoldyck, killing was second nature; he would just as soon fear breathing. Yet the evidence was undeniable: the thought of plunging the needle into the magician’s—his husband’s—brain, was nauseating. The more he tried, the more he began to tremble, until his hand was shaking too badly for a clean kill.
Why couldn’t he do it? Thousands of targets in his twenty four years and he had never once failed to finish an assignment.
“Illu?” Hisoka’s voice was light and curious. “Is something wrong?”
Illumi’s fist closed around the head of the pin. His palms had begun to sweat. He wasn’t some second rate assassin—he was a Zoldyck, and Zoldycks completed their contracts, regardless of circumstance. His father’s face surfaced in the roiling waters of his mind, saturnine as ever. He could almost hear the disappointed scoff, could almost feel the impact of the man’s fist on his jaw. He did not resent the strike; he had deserved it then, and he surely deserved it now. Years had passed since the man had raised a hand to him—a testament to the effectiveness of his training—but now something had gone wrong inside him, and his father was not there to beat it straight. There was a terrible weight on his chest, a weight he felt certain would crush him if he remained still any longer.
Illumi staggered backwards. He took short, gasping breaths, clutching at the base of his throat. Hisoka’s brow furrowed as he watched this display, whether from concern or confusion Illumi could not tell.
Light from the hallway impinged on the little black room, cutting a yellow rectangle from the hardwood floor. The hall itself was silent, save for the low mechanical rumbling of the ship; its passengers were evidently smart enough to keep to themselves.
Illumi stumbled through the path of the hall light to the far side of the room. Two red-backed cards adorned the formerly empty wall: the queen of spades and the ace of hearts. At the sight of these remnants he groaned, reversed his direction, and nearly collided with Hisoka. A warm hand grasped his shoulder.
“No,” he choked out. “Please.”
Hisoka’s expression softened. “Oh, Illu.”
The strength seemed to leave Illumi’s legs. Hisoka dropped to a crouch as he crumpled to the floor, hand still bracing his shoulder.
“I can’t,” Illumi cried, “I’m sorry.” He began repeating this mantra, his body racked with sobs. If he had ever cried like this, he could not recall when; the strange lurching in his chest felt utterly foreign. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Shh.” Hisoka’s one functioning hand cupped his cheek, which was hot and wet with tears. “It’s okay, baby. I’m here.”
Illumi leaned into the touch, still gasping beneath the weight of his impossible task. “I can’t,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Hisoka brushed a tear aside with the pad of his thumb. “You don’t have to kill me. Just let it go.”
Let it go. Let himself die. Was that the only option left? He hadn’t given much thought to how he wanted to die, but he had always assumed it would be in the service of his family. The alternative—dying of old age—seemed terribly banal. But was dying at the hands of a stranger, defending his family’s interests, defending Killua, what he wanted? Once he would have considered his own desires irrelevant, but the past two years had effected a gradual shift inside him. Before Hisoka, he hadn’t even known he’d possessed desires of his own. Now, as his husband’s hand slipped down the side of his face, halting at the neck, he was able to ponder the question: how did he want to die?
“Relax,” said Hisoka. The sharpened edge of his thumbnail dipped into the skin above Illumi’s jugular. “Look at me.”
Raising his eyes, Illumi was met with an expression of rapture so complete that it transformed the ruined face, lending it a beauty which was almost divine. His heart swelled. For the first time, the fate of his family seemed inconsequential. He had dedicated himself to them wholly in life; forsaking them in death was not such a terrible thing. And perhaps his father was right. Killua would find his way home eventually. He was a Zoldyck, after all.
Hisoka’s finger pierced his neck, drawing his mind away from the affairs of the living. The magician was kneeling now, his face close enough that Illumi could feel the air rushing out of his empty nasal cavity. Leaning forward, Illumi kissed the diminished lower lip, then the white surface of the teeth. Blood was soaking his green blouse, turning it an ugly shade of brown. It was seeping through his pants, now, too, pooling on the hardwood floor. Hisoka groaned into the kiss, tongue darting out from between his teeth. Compared to the subtle motions of that tongue, the pain in his neck seemed distant and vague.
There was no doubt any longer. Reaching blindly, Illumi found the pin in Hisoka’s shoulder; the peculiar heaviness of his arm made removal difficult, but he managed the task. Having restored the limb, he let his hand slide down its length, lingering at the wrist.
“Both.” His voice was hoarse and breathless. “Both hands.”
The left hand snapped up to join the right, wrapping around the side of his neck. Illumi could feel the ring on the third finger, just to the side of his spine, and was glad for its presence.
The pressure on his throat was increasing. Hisoka broke the kiss, bringing that enraptured expression to the center of Illumi’s vision, the edges of which were rapidly darkening. Somewhere in the distance there was a snap, like a branch breaking underfoot, and Illumi realized he could no longer feel anything from the neck down. That was all right; he could still feel Hisoka’s hands, grasping with their full strength, no longer restrained for fear of permanent harm, and that was more than enough.
He wondered: was this how Killua felt for Gon? Perhaps he had been wrong to question his brother’s devotion. But that didn’t matter now. Either Killua would find his way, or he wouldn’t. Such minutiae were no longer his concern.
Hisoka licked his lower lip. Beneath that slack-jawed look of mounting ecstasy, his expression held a touch of something tender, something soft and sorrowful and strange.
“I love you, Illumi,” he said. “More than you know.”
Illumi opened his mouth to reply—to say that he did know, because he felt it too, that sometimes he felt it so much he thought he would burst apart—but his airway was crushed, and he could not make a sound.
When the hands finally released him, he only dimly perceived the forward motion of his fall. The world had gone dark; he could no longer see. He felt no pain, only the solid warmth of Hisoka’s chest against his cheek.
It felt like home.