Chapter Text
Killua escaped his family by the skin of his teeth.
There was a sort of shame in calling it that. An escape. A shame in needing it. It made him feel small and weak and powerless. He liked to think that he had the strength to simply walk away, without worrying about returning to their clutches. But there would be no walking away from his family. They wouldn’t let him. If he was to escape it would be bruised and beaten and ragged.
So that was what he did.
The weeks that passed afterward felt like a blur. The moment he stepped foot off Kukuroo mountain, he was constantly on the move, the presence of someone - his family, one of the butlers, or possibly someone or something worse - always on his tail, never far behind.
It was exhausting, but as long as he never let down his guard, he could do it. Or at least he hoped that he could. He used every skill he’d acquired through years of grueling training and torture against them. Because he knew every trick in the book when it came to tracking down a target and eliminating them, he was able to use that in the inverse, to become the most difficult target instead. Even if it were by the skin of his teeth, he wouldn’t let them grab a hold of him again.
And so, there was never a moment to rest. Sometimes the only thing that kept him going was the voice inside his head, telling him to press forward, no matter what. It sounded vaguely like Alluka. Throughout it all, he supposed he should’ve felt something like fear or anxiety. But he didn’t. He wasn’t capable of it. It had all but been beaten out of him.
His decision to leave wasn’t instantaneous. Even after Alluka, it had taken months. But honing in on it, gathering the reckless courage and the stupidity to actually do it required him to lose all feeling. Any feeling. Even joy. Because if he didn’t, the fear would paralyse him, and he would rot in the estate under his family’s thumb until the day he died. The single-mindedness reverted him to what he did best, to what his family had decided him to be: an emotionless, deadly, robot.
But one with a different purpose; to run.
And so he ran and ran and ran.
It wasn’t until one day passed, then two, then a week, then two weeks without their breath hot on the nape of his neck, without their presence behind him, that he realised that they’d stopped the chase. For now, at least.
He allowed his guard to drop, just a little, and it all crashed down on him.
Setting aside the fact that he had incited the wrath of his very capable and very deadly family who definitely won’t have given up entirely, there was another issue.
He had no one.
He had nothing.
He only had himself, and he wasn’t even sure of that. He had never truly acted on his own until now. Without his family, and without what they expected and raised him to be, he had no idea who he was. What he was capable of. What he wanted. Nothing.
It was a grim thought.
And then there was Alluka.
A vague unnatural feeling bubbled up his throat, making it hard to breathe. Confused, he tried to let it pass, but it only seemed to worsen. His vision narrowed along with his throat, his head felt dizzy, and he couldn’t hear anything besides the rush of blood in his head.
He forced himself to take a few breaths but they didn’t work as they should. It hurt in his chest and it felt like he wasn’t taking in any oxygen. For several blood churning moments, he had the thought that he was about to die.
He collapsed onto the ground and pressed his forehead into the grass below him. It felt cool to the touch. He continued to drag in rough pained breaths, struggling to comprehend what was happening. But the grass felt calming, and he forced himself to focus on it. On its coolness, the slight dampness, the earthy smell of it.
Eventually, his breath came back to him, and he was grateful for it. If he couldn’t rely on his breathing, he couldn’t rely on anything at all. Feeling slightly more stable, he decided to take stock of the rest of his physical state. In the weeks since he’d left, he hadn’t had a chance to do so. He’d been so out of his mind and body, that he wouldn’t be surprised if he found himself with a broken leg. He hoped that wasn’t the case though.
He was in the middle of some forest. It didn’t make for the best of recovery spots, but at least he had water. He trudged over to the river, knelt beside it and analysed himself in the reflection.
His skin was coated in a thick layer of grime and sweat. His hair was so dirty, it was no longer white but a gritty grey. Even his eyes looked hazy. Maybe it was due to the water not making for a very good mirror, but they barely looked blue. They looked like Illumi’s.
He swallowed, looked away, and assessed the rest of his body. He was covered in scrapes and bruises from head to toe, but thankfully, they all seemed very surface level and would heal within a matter of days. He methodically tested every limb and joint for breaks or sprains, and saw no issue.
It was only his head, fuzzy and aching with a throbbing growing pain that caused him any reason to worry. He vaguely remembered knocking it at some point, but it hadn’t seemed severe at the time. Then again, even if it had, he would’ve ignored it anyway. And perhaps he had.
He bit his lip as his head pulsed once again, but pushed through it. He had experienced much worse, and besides he had a more pressing matter at hand.
He was exhausted. Killua could survive for a long time without sleep. Weeks, maybe even a month. But it came at a cost, and it had been his most stressful wakefulness yet. In the past month, he’d tried to get what little rest he could when possible, but micro-sleeps and the odd two minute nap could only get him so far. He felt the exhaustion, bone deep. The adrenaline had faded, and the danger had briefly appeased—his body would only hold out for so much longer.
He quickly scanned the environment around him. There was a town not but a fifteen minute walk away, though he wouldn’t make it that far. His eyes felt stone heavy, as did his legs, and so when he caught sight of a soft-looking swath of moss beneath a tree, he didn’t bother to look any farther. Even if he wanted to, his throbbing head and exhausted body wouldn’t allow it.
He dropped so hard onto the moss, it was almost a fall. The pain in his knee barely registered. And then he curled up into a ball, his cheek pressed against the cool spongey texture of it, letting out a relieved sigh.
The last thought before he succumbed to sleep was a happy one.
The moss is as soft as it looks.
The morning light of the sun pressed through Killua’s eyelids, and he groaned into the pillow, turning away from it. He just needed a little more sleep, he thought, tugging the blankets higher up his body, curling once again into a comfortable ball on the bed. Sleep edged the sides of his mind, until a thought came to him, then his body stiffened, immediately alert: where was he?
His eyes blew open and he ripped the blanket off, settling into a fighting stance. His head rushed and throbbed from how suddenly he’d become vertical. He staggered as he took in the area around him, his mind not functioning as quickly as it should, to an almost worrying degree. But luckily there didn’t seem to be any immediately danger.
He was alone in a small room. The bed he’d just been sleeping in messy behind him, and beside it an open window letting in a faint breeze that fluttered the gauze curtains. Besides that, there was only a small bedside table and the door, left ajar. It was completely inconspicuous. But he didn’t allow himself to relax, ears preened for the slightest hush of noise, eyes narrowed in for the most minute bit of movement. Confusion swam his head.
The last thing that he remembered was the feeling of the soft moss against his cheek and the heaviness in his eyes. He had no recollection of waking up or moving on his own accord. Which meant that someone else must have moved him. While he was sleeping. And he somehow hadn’t woken. His skin prickled and his eyes darted to his left. If he had to escape, a route was there, right through the window. Although he seemed to be on the third story, he knew how to take a fall uninjured. He didn’t trust the door. Who knew what could be awaiting him through there.
He took a step forward, trying to get some more sense of where he was, when he noticed what he was wearing. Gone were his torn up bloody clothes that had assisted him in the weeks since his escape, and instead was the thin breezy material of a hospital gown. He froze. Not only had someone taken him and transported him to this place, they had also stripped him too. He felt strangely vulnerable. He knew that weeks without sleep would significantly impact his body, but had he really been so exhausted that he hadn’t woken at all? Through someone moving him? Through someone changing his clothes?
So far there were no signs of anyone trying to harm him in anyway, and if the person had really wanted to kill him they would’ve done it while he was asleep, surely. But it all made his head spin. And more than that, he was furious at himself. Now that he was on the run, he needed to be extra vigilant, not pass out and sleep through someone manoeuvring him around. He shouldn’t, couldn’t put himself into such a vulnerable position again. What if this person had been one of his family members? It still very much could be.
He had to get out of here.
He looked out the window. It faced an empty-looking street. If he jumped out right now he could easily do so without anyone noticing or causing a ruckus. He’d just about decided to take the leap, when he heard someone approaching, their steps squeaking on the wooden floorboards. With his head feeling fuzzy and full of cotton balls, the door opened before he could get his body to move. That was seriously worrying. He had to find some way to heal whatever was wrong with his head. But he had to deal with this person first.
The person turned out to be a middle aged man with glasses and a suit. “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked sternly. His eyebrows were scrunched up as his eyes flickered over Killua’s form. “You have a serious concussion. You need to keep resting.”
Killua froze for a moment, contemplating what to do. He could kill the man, it would be the fastest and easiest solution. He considered it deeply for a quick second, but before he could come to a decision, the man began to step forward, and Killua did what his family had ingrained in him to do when an opponent and their abilities were unknown: run. Whoever this man was, no matter how concerned for Killua’s wellbeing he seemed to be, Killua wasn’t going to stick around.
Ignoring the man as well as the throbbing in his head, Killua spun on his heel, pushed open the window pane fully, and jumped. Only it didn’t quite go as planned.
Body halfway through the window, a set of hands appeared out of nowhere mid-air in front of him, and pushed him back by the shoulders. The sudden stop in momentum slammed his stomach down onto the window frame, punching air from his lungs. Drawing in a ragged breath, he glared up at the floating hands that each appeared to be coming from a green portal. A Nen ability. The man’s ability.
Whoever this man was, he was dangerous. And he was trying to make Killua stay.
Killua’s heart raced in his throat. I have to get out of here, he thought, and went to jump again.
“Stop!” came the man’s voice. “You’re going to hurt yourself!”
Killua ignored it, already halfway out the window again, but this time he was thwarted not by the floating hands, but from his own body. He head spun so violently that he staggered, falling back into the building, and landing on his side. A wave of nausea flooded through him. He heard a concerned intake of breath, and saw from the corner of his spinning vision the man crouching beside him.
“Please stop, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
Killua looked up. Through the man’s glasses, his eyes were kind, but that could be faked.
Killua couldn’t trust anyone. He couldn’t afford to. Especially when, even if it seemed out of his good will, this man wasn’t letting him leave. Nothing good could come from that.
Even if this man wasn’t one of his family’s many accomplices, this could be some kind of scheme—treating some unwilling participant and charging them for millions of jenny after.
There were a myriad of reasons not to trust this person.
Killua’s mind cleared despite the previous pain and he focussed yet again on escaping.
Before the man could even blink, Killua knocked him down, and his long limbs sprawled everywhere. His glasses clattered to the ground beside his head, lenses shattered. Killua had put enough force into the chop of his hand to knock the man out, but not kill. Something had held him back from dealing the lethal blow. He instantly regretted it. He could’ve made sure he eliminated one of his family’s accomplices, if that were the case. And if he were innocent... well, it wouldn’t be the first time Killua had done such a horrible thing.
Killua shot the man’s unconscious body one last glance, felt a single twist to his gut and headed for the window.
Even if there were genuinely kind people in this world, they weren’t for Killua.