A/N: I was determined to "write my heart out", and whether for good or bad, here is the result of my efforts. Admittedly there is not exactly a plot here... it's more along the lines of thoughtful rambling. You have been warned.

Behind the face of every human, regardless of their degree of supposed humanity, was once the blank, fresh slate of infancy. There was a time when the past did not yet exist, the present existed only to exist, and the future was an inconceivable concept.

Illumi Zoldyck was no exception to this inevitable dawn of being. Nearly two and a half decades prior he was incapable of any title, however vile or endearing, and simply absorbed the sights and sounds around him with all the permeability of a carefully placed sponge. He stared in a trance-like stupor while attempting with all his lack of experience to analyze the objects, animate and inanimate alike, which surrounded him. He wept from discomfort or hunger, and smiled at things which sought to awaken some sense of unrealized amusement within.

Of course, these naïve simplicities were unacceptable unless carefully controlled. It was a vulnerable time in the development of the then most recent generation of Zoldyck's first born son. As such, there were grave responsibilities which were fated to fall upon his shoulders. He was the role-model, the precedented extension of their honor, and of course the heir to the family name.

The initial handful of years were especially unkind, as there were no others with which to divide the attention of two particularly insistent guardians. There were no moments of leisure, and the closest thing to such could be considered mealtimes. Still, these periods often left him with a scorched, raw throat and painfully ill of health, as the food was always prepared with the intention of increasing his poison tolerance levels. His mother was new at this invented task, which she had proudly created in honor of her firstborn, and still made constant mistakes as far as degree of toxicity versus actual resilience.

Regardless, Illumi was forbidden to acknowledge these mistakes. Instead he was expected to endure them, to treat them as a fortunate continuation of his harsh physical and mental training. The theme of these sessions were to be applied to every situation he was able. In fact, life was a constant training session and he began to slowly understand the importance of embracing this mindset.

His greatest failure, which continued on even after the birth of his first sibling (and did not cease for another good handful of years), was his inability to successfully endure the bed of spikes and the application of needles in his practice of pain and torture resistance. He had learned the folly of outwardly shedding tears long ago, before he had even established a working memory, but on occasion slipped from his practiced presentation during this particular element. Thus, he was naturally forced to repeat the process frequently, sometimes as often as twice per day if time allowed it.

It seemed that a growing Milluki proved as an insufficient distraction since the priority was building an ideal carrier of the family line, and with that Illumi's nature was defined as promising. The saving grace, if so he even considered needing such a thing, was the actual execution of the jobs. He found some sense of pride in the knowledge that he was now considered capable enough to receive his own string of targets as opposed to the supervised ones which were carefully picked out for him prior.

His purpose was always to support these ideals, to become dependently independent, and he had been molded with the utmost care to fit into the skin of a passionless boy with an undeniable inclination toward killing. At times he was almost too perfect, surrendering entirely any freedom of thought or will in order to wholly obey his commands. The more he evolved into such a robotic, disciplined shell of a human, the more his kin operated to utilize his celebrated potential.

The world began anew for Illumi once the Zoldyck's third son was born. In what seemed like an instant, the elders were fawning over the youngest sibling's inherited tolerance to poison; having been entirely unaffected by dosages that Illumi was still struggling with at age five. Over night Killua had risen onto a pedestal, deemed an inarguable prodigy by his predecessors.

Then Illumi was given the shared task of training the family's new heir; the one who had intercepted his original position.

He was not resistant to the decision however, having never questioned the boundaries of his world before. He had absorbed and accepted the reality he was always presented with, and it had shaped him as naturally as any environment would have influenced him had he perhaps been granted a start to life and subsequent nurturing in another.

…But his world was altering, changing shape. He was allowed something now that he hadn't been before; control. Elements he had been forbidden to explore within his own existence he now had full reign to exercise over someone else's. Absolute power….

As is often the case, the absolute power he was permitted to possess over Killua corrupted his once uncreative and mechanic responses to his parents' orders. He had opened his eyes to find that the atmosphere was no longer closed in by a defined perimeter; he was now the one with the power to set and guard those limits for Killua.

Now Illumi had reached a point where his own goals could match that of his family… for now he had managed to create his own goals. With all the confused and selfish demanding of a teenager, he would mold Killua to become the ideal specimen. After all, as a prodigy Killua could not meet his own level of skill. He had to be better. He had to be the best. He could only produce the best…

He would nurture his brother's darkness in the manner it ought to be done, and in the end his nature could only relish in it. There was something addictive about the power that (especially as an adolescent amidst fighting the pesky swelling of hormonal transformations and chemical imbalances), Illumi could not dispel. Instead it formed a comfortable and unapologetic habit of which he had no desire to break. Soon its influence was no longer even the slightest bit conscious, and had seeped formidably into his subconscious; ruling his motivations without the need to actively reference it.

Perhaps that is the price of true apathy, formed at birth at the expense of a human life...

...or perhaps not exactly.