A/N: Now that I've broken Killua into thousands of tiny, brittle fragments I should probably put him back together again, huh?

Whispers by Dave Baxter is a nice fit for this chapter. Very bittersweet.

In the morning in the winter shade

On the first of March, on the holiday

I thought I saw you breathing

.

One year later

.

Shivering, Killua crouched in front of the gravestone and pulled his jacket tighter around himself. This winter had been even more bitter than the last, and it was still hanging heavy around the city despite the promise of Spring in the green grass and the blooming flowers.

The wind cut straight through Killua and he shivered again, but he didn't hesitate to reach one pale hand out and lay it on the stone. It was freezing beneath his fingertips, familiar, traced countless times with hands steady and not, while crying, while apologizing, while angry. He was none of those things now.

"I'm leaving in the fall," he told it, pulling his scarf down so that his words became solid in the air. "Not forever, of course. But there's this school, the one I told you about, in France. They're giving me a scholarship."

The stone did not answer, but Killua wasn't expecting it to. He sat back on his heels, drawing his touch away, and stared at the flowers he'd brought with him, a bouquet of bursting goldenrods tied together with a single crimson ribbon. There were others as well, from past visits, old and withering and waiting to be picked up by the groundskeeper. They sat off to the side, discarded and forgotten.

He crossed his arms over his knees and sighed up at the cold blue sky. "I'll be back, eventually. I think I want to study photography. Spent so long with that album you made that I can't seem to leave the idea alone."

The plot Killua and Mito had chosen for Gon was next to an old oak tree. It grew more outwards, with wide, sweeping branches, than it did up, and at the moment it was mostly bare. Spring had left her mark in the form of buds and tiny, green leaves that shivered in the wind though, hope for the future. In the summer the tree was thick with life and provided shade over Gon's final resting place, a quiet retrieve Killua could escape to during his visits.

"I wonder what you would have studied," he asked aimlessly, still staring up at the clattering branches and the sky above. He already knew what he'd see if he looked down; a cold, lifeless rock with equally cold lifeless words carved into it.

Gon Freeces

May 5th, 1994 – March 2nd 2013

And over the mountains and over the seas, under the starry night skies and breathing nature in his lungs, he sleeps.

The quote had come from the fairytale book Killua had bought Gon a year and a half ago. He'd found it tucked away in a corner of their apartment, the page bookmarked and the sentence underlined like Gon had read it and simply fallen in love with the prose. Mito had thought it poetic to put it on his grave. Killua had thought it painful.

Standing slowly he sighed, brushing one last touch against the top of the gravestone before he turned to leave. He visited often enough, once a week if he could manage it, and typically he stayed longer, simply speaking to the weeds and the tree and those words on rock. But today it felt wrong to be here, despite the anniversary. Like out of all the days of the year this was the one Gon would have pushed him the most to get out, to laugh, the leave the past behind and move on.

Killua stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders. He glanced back over his shoulder, at the big oak tree and the small headstone, and for just a moment he thought he saw something, a gleaming, shimmering person, sitting cross legged in the grass, smiling brightly and waving goodbye as if he hadn't already done that a year ago. It was gone in a blink, borne away on the wind and the frigid air that promised heat to come.

"Ready?"

"Never."

A faint smile cracked Killua's lips, small and painful, and he waved in return before exiting the cemetery and starting the trek home.