I was so happy to read the responses to chapter 1, especially the reviews saying that I've improved. Stagnation as a writer is something I'm always worried about, so it means a lot to me to see these reassurances. Please, let me know your thoughts; feedback is the best fuel for motivation. I'm sorry that I can't reciprocate and answer reviews as I used to do before (because I want there to be more story for readers and less of my rambling)—I'll say, though, that I loved reading each and every one of them, and would be absolutely delighted to see more. :)

Some of the scenes in this chapter were inspired by art drawn by Pixiv user 4316900. Unfortunately, I think the artist has taken down the manga sequence I based these scenes on. I still highly encourage those of you who have Pixiv access to check out this artist's works; they draw an amazing Kurapika, lithe and muscled while still retaining the delicate features we all love. Gorgeous lines and great dynamic poses, too; I keep checking back to see if they'd draw more overtly Kuroro/Kurapika pieces, but alas, I think the artist ships Kurapika with Pairo more, and seems to be focusing on Kill La Kill at the moment, so you'll have to click back to their earlier works to see the HxH artwork.

Standard disclaimers apply; I do not own Hunter X Hunter and its characters. If I did we'd be seeing more of Kurapika in suits come the manga's resumption this June.

Chapter 2
Solicitude Not Welcome

1

It wasn't that rare for Kurapika to disappear without warning and come back a few days after, face set in dark granite and temper as indiscriminate as a winter blizzard. They'd learned not to ask, or bring him to task for his unexplained absences. Even Nostrad tended to look the other way, but that was more out of fear than any true consideration; the blond had saved his reputation, his wealth, possibly even his life, so what were a few instances of truancy compared to the greater threat of losing the one thing keeping his empire together?

Senritsu, on the other hand, couldn't afford to be as complaisant. One didn't need to have hearing keen enough to read emotions out of heartbeats to know that there was something very wrong going on—or at the very least, they were all doing her friend a disservice by turning a blind eye to his odd habits. She'd tried to ask, of course: where he'd been, what he'd been doing, why he always came back looking like he'd buried someone dear to him, and if there was anything she could do to help ease the pain ringing loud and clear in his heartbeat.

And Kurapika would lie to her. He'd look at her, eyes flat and dead, and tell her that it was nothing she needed to concern herself over, despite being fully aware that she could tell lies from truth as easily as someone telling black from white. She'd hold his gaze, and wait—and hope that something would give, while her ears held an unspoken, one-sided conversation with his heart.

She'd always yielded first. It was impossible to hold her ground when she remembered that Kurapika had been prepared to kill her, on that rooftop so long ago, if she'd so much as allowed the slightest possibility of her betraying his identity to their colleagues. But Senritsu had decided: she wasn't going to yield anymore. She knew part of, if not all of what was haunting him now, and she wasn't about to let him go haring off unannounced with Kuroro Lucifer loose and at large in the area. Her decision had come too late, though; the stupid, stupid boy had done it again, leaving without telling anyone where he was going, just days after recovering from his last beating. Nostrad and her co-workers were all dismissing it as another of his moods, but she knew better: Kurapika had gone out to look for the Geneiryodan leader. An evening had come and gone with no word from him, and she had no idea what to do, or even if she should do anything. This fight was beyond her, and she'd probably just be a burden if she tried to join it, and yet she couldn't just wait like all the previous times.

So she'd sent off a text message, pleading for Kurapika to respond and let her know he was safe. Senritsu wasn't expecting a reply, not really. The blond was either dead, or alive but stubbornly refusing to get anyone involved in his problems. That was just how he worked, and as much as she believed that she deserved better for all the anxiety he was causing her, it would take a miracle, or something really dire to compel him to cooperate, and while she could hope for the former, she didn't want the latter.

She was understandably surprised when her phone rang, the ringtone she'd assigned to Kurapika deafeningly loud in the relative quiet of her quarters. Senritsu was grabbing the phone even before it could finish the first ring and answering it without any semblance of the calm she normally displayed, but her greeting froze in her throat before she could get it out. The breathing on the other end of the line, the heartbeat—it was wrong.

Didn't something like this happen before? A plan hatched in desperation, a capture executed in total darkness—and then Kurapika had used Kuroro Lucifer's phone to demand for the ransom from his subordinates.

Her earlier relief rapidly congealed into dread in the pit of her stomach. The silence stretched as she strained her ears in vain for any other heartbeat in the vicinity of the caller.

"Hello? This is Senritsu, isn't it?"

Hearing the Geneiryodan leader addressing her so casually was terrifying, and yet—his voice was easygoing, quizzical, even. The pulse she could pick up past the ambient noise on the phone line was calm, quite pleasing to the ear, and worlds apart from the terrible steady drumbeat of someone who'd been fully prepared to die even while under duress. In spite of all the scenarios her paranoia was forcing her to consider, some knot inside of her began to loosen.

"Hey, you're there, right?"

Senritsu exhaled. She'd been holding her breath, anticipating hearing the worst. "Where is he? What have you done with him?" She was relieved to note that her own voice didn't waver.

"He's right here. He's fine." Kuroro paused, and Senritsu listened incredulously as his heartbeat shifted into a lighter tempo, something highly amused, the tune almost impish. "Well, a bit beaten-up. He's asleep."

It would be sheer folly, to reveal her ability now; if he wasn't yet aware of the exact nature of her hearing, he'd surely realize the moment she stated her request. But she needed to know, and something about Kuroro's heartbeat was making her think of the oddest possibilities. "I need proof. Put his phone up against his chest."

Senritsu could almost imagine the man looking intrigued. There was a shuffling sound, normally imperceptible but magnified to her senses, and a loud whoosh as the receiver end of the phone brushed up against fabric, and then finally, finally—there was the heartbeat she'd been waiting to hear from. It was slow, but steady, characteristic of someone deeply asleep. She was used to it being stronger, though; Kurapika possessed one of the strongest heartbeats she knew, very clear, very distinct, like the sound produced after striking a single piano key in the silence of an empty concert hall, and now there was a weak, thready note to it that worried her. He was certainly injured, but was comfortable and at rest, for the moment; Kuroro Lucifer was telling the truth.

The shuffling sound again—Kuroro was retrieving the phone. Senritsu almost protested. She wanted to keep listening to Kurapika's heartbeat, but Kuroro was apparently giving her just enough time to hear all she needed to hear.

"Satisfied?"

"Did you have to beat him up so badly?" she asked, tone more indignant than what was probably appropriate, given who she was talking to, but for Kurapika to have passed out—and remained passed out in Kuroro's presence—his exhaustion, or the pain must have been too much for even his rage to hold at bay.

"It was the most effective way to get him to stop attacking me." At least he's still alive, was the unspoken reply. "And hey, I did tell him that I preferred to talk."

Senritsu pursed her lips in displeasure. "That would have goaded him into attacking you."

"I know."

The impertinence in his responses was almost offensive. She was starting to understand why Kurapika was having so much trouble controlling himself.

"You sound entertained by all this."

"I am," Kuroro answered happily, and against all odds Senritsu began to hope. It was very difficult, if not impossible, to lie to her, and Kuroro's heartbeat and answers were forming a picture she could read quite easily. Of course, it begged the question of if he had any ulterior motives in being honest with her—if he was trying to gain her trust now to make it easier to gut her from behind later on—but for the moment, at least, Kuroro Lucifer meant Kurapika no direct harm.

Now she just needed to figure out why.

2

He wasn't just entertained, he was having fun. The fearless way this Senritsu was interrogating him, the defiance in bright red Kuruta eyes, despite knowing the futility of his efforts—Kuroro would count himself damned if he ever felt the kind of bloodlust his fake number four loved to project at him, but even he wasn't immune to the thrill offered by the rare routine-breaking challenge.

Routine was boring. Mind-numbing monotony was almost lethal to him. And this—this was hardly routine. Kuroro had to stop himself from humming as Senritsu asked him another question.

What was he doing? It wasn't that simple, of course. What was he planning, what was he scheming; that was the real question couched within the innocuous-sounding query.

"Proving a point," Kuroro answered readily, and honestly; he had no intentions of lying, at least not yet. "He's too stubborn to accept it easily, so I imagine that I'm going to have to beat him up a few more times before he gets it."

He could sense her outrage even though he didn't have her hearing—now that was a skill he'd love to get his hands on. Maybe later, though; he was far too engrossed with dealing with the Kuruta at the moment. He ran a critical eye over his handiwork: Kurapika lay fast asleep, just as he'd said, and covered under blankets to ward against the chill of a brisk spring morning. The boy's face was slightly flushed—a fever, maybe, not surprising considering his injuries.

"His hatred isn't something to be taken so lightly," Senritsu was saying. He was bemused to realize that she was trying to admonish him.

"Of course not. He's already killed two of us." Could have killed him, if things hadn't turned out the way they did. Ubogin and Pakunoda—Kuroro missed them, sometimes. But this was something people like Senritsu and Kurapika wouldn't be able to understand: he could feel fondness and yearning for them, but nothing else; no anger towards their killer, the way the chain assassin apparently loathed them, and no regret over the past. Their attack on the Kuruta all those years ago, carried out because of a passing fancy for their eyes, was just that, a footnote in history, and the only thing that mattered now was that he had the last surviving member of that extinct race with him.

Kurapika drew a long, deep breath—deeper than the steady unconscious breathing of before—which hitched in the middle, and as Kuroro looked on, the boy's brow furrowed and the closed eyelids twitched and fluttered. Awareness of pain returning. Kurapika was waking up.

"Don't worry, I don't plan on killing him," Kuroro added.

The blond's feeble shifting stopped. His eyes remained closed, but he'd grown unnaturally still under the covers. Kuroro smiled as he waited for Senritsu's reply. Surprisingly, it wasn't to call him a liar, but then again, she couldn't really accuse him of anything more than excessive self-defense, not with that lie-detecting ability of hers.

"What are you planning, then? Why have you called me?"

"You wanted to know if he's safe, right? It's really ill-mannered of him to keep worrying you like this."

The direct attack on his character was too much, apparently, and brown eyes snapped open to glare at him as Kurapika abandoned all pretense of trying to look like he was still out cold. On the other hand, Senritsu wasn't replying immediately, and Kuroro imagined her getting torn between agreeing and defending her friend's honor. As amusing as it would be to bear witness to the outcome of that decision, though, he wasn't a sadist—and he was feeling rather benevolent at the moment. Kuroro continued talking before she could be compelled to respond.

"And I'm filing a leave of absence on his behalf. He'll be staying here for a few more days."

"What? Are you keeping him against his will?"

Oh, how he loved dealing with people who had trouble keeping a lid on their emotions. The play of mistrust and anger in stiff shoulders and all-too-expressive eyes was fascinating to see. They remained a baleful brown, however; the boy's control over his bloodline was better than their prior encounters had led him to believe.

"Not exactly. I know that he can heal himself completely if he has to," Kuroro explained, but more for Kurapika's benefit than Senritsu's, at this point. "His regenerative ability is astounding, really, but doing it in one go isn't wise. You've seen what happens when he pushes himself beyond his limits. It won't be as bad if he heals himself slowly, by stages, taking time to rest between each expenditure of his aura."

The ensuing silence—both at the other end of the phone line and in front of him—almost made him laugh out aloud. Kurapika was confused. And Senritsu—he'd successfully shocked all her suspicions away, it seemed. Now she was just dumbfounded.

"You're planning on nursing him back to health?"

"More or less." Kurapika was watching him, and simultaneously trying to take stock of his surroundings from the bed. Kuroro grinned at him rakishly, and the kid scowled in response. "Is there anything else?"

"As long as he's all right..." Senritsu began, but her voice over the phone line was low and uncertain.

"He'll be back on his feet within the week," Kuroro promised. "As long as he doesn't do anything stupid, anyway."

Again the glare: loathing and suspicion mixed into a potent brew in those precious, priceless eyes. He spared a moment to consider the anger radiating from the blond as he pulled the phone away from his ear and moved to end the call—no goodbyes or parting shots, just a tacit understanding that they were done. He liked this Senritsu. Maybe he could acknowledge her communicativeness with a gift.

"Good morning!" he said to Kurapika cheerfully, and as clearly as he could without it being too obvious that he was deliberately pitching his voice to reach the phone's receiver. Only then did he finally end the phone call with a firm swipe of his thumb.

The boy didn't answer. His gaze slid over to his phone in Kuroro's hand, noting everything, missing nothing, probably dissecting and analyzing his movements and coming up with seven different reasons and motives for each. Kuroro chuckled and returned the phone—placed it on the unoccupied chair beside his, anyway, within sight and within easy reach.

Then he crossed his legs and settled back to wait for Kurapika's move.

3

Kuroro Lucifer was staring at him. He was holding the same book Kurapika had seen him reading, appeared to be reading it now, and seemed not to be paying attention to him, but the blond was all-too-aware that he was being watched, like some exhibit at a zoo. Waiting for him to launch another of his attacks, maybe, and as much as he wanted to get up and oblige, and then get far away from the man, he refused to give Kuroro the satisfaction of seeing him do anything expected, so he responded by glaring stonily up at the ceiling, at the peeling, cracking off-white paint, the empty light sockets, and the rusted fire extinguisher. The rest of the room was in a similar state of abandonment and disrepair, as far as he could tell from his preliminary scan, but it was surprisingly clean, and felt airy—airy enough that he couldn't have been as comfortable as he was now without the blanket and the bedcovers.

"Do you like the bedsheets?" Kuroro's voice intruded into his thoughts, and Kurapika realized that he'd been unconsciously rubbing a fold of the heavy blanket between his fingers. He immediately stopped and unclenched his hands, and his fingertips slid over the smooth fabric, once again evoking the odd sensations he'd been trying to figure out since earlier—the sheets felt clean and smelled freshly-laundered, not at all what one would expect to find himself swaddled in upon waking up in what appeared to be an abandoned apartment building.

"I stole them from the Mandarin," Kuroro added after a pause, incidentally answering his unspoken question.

One of the Nostrad group's hotels in the area, if he remembered correctly. He didn't care, not really, but outrage was the only acceptable reaction to finding out that he'd been maneuvered into using stolen property. "Did you steal the bandages, too?" Kurapika asked frigidly—or tried to ask, anyway; his voice broke in an embarrassing croak. His throat was parched, and his mouth felt disgustingly gummy.

Kuroro didn't reply, but stooped down and grabbed something off the floor. It was a glass, of the unbranded kind one usually found at hotel room minibars, and it was filled with water. There was a straw, even, indicating that Kuroro had meant for him to drink from it without needing to sit up. His mouth went even drier at the sight, and he didn't know if it was from anger or simple thirst.

The bed, the chairs, the glass of water, all stolen from a hotel room; his injuries, all dressed and treated, and his torso and left arm bound in bandages to support against the worst of the damage he'd taken. The one person he wished he didn't have to worry with his absence had been informed. Kuroro had prepared everything, and there was nothing stopping him from staying here and resting as the man had dictated.

"What do you mean by doing all of this?" he asked lowly, voice calmer than it had any right to be.

Kuroro didn't answer, and instead blinked large gray eyes at him. He was acting like he didn't understand, but the expression on his face was expectant and knowing, like he knew exactly what was being asked but wanted to hear it said out aloud anyway. Kurapika ground his teeth against the first prickings of reactionary anger.

"That's twice now. Why haven't you killed me yet?"

Kuroro hummed in reply this time, a wordless sound of acknowledgment and encouragement for him to go on, and Kurapika had to fight against the urge to throw himself off the bed and lunge for the man's throat.

"I'm going to attack you again the moment I recover. Isn't it better to kill me while you still can?" While he was weaker, but not for long; there was nothing his anger couldn't overcome eventually, not even the impossible task of bringing each and every one of the Geneiryodan to heel.

Kuroro could read the unspoken parts of his threat well enough, that much was obvious. The man tilted his head—challenge accepted—and leaned over to place the glass on the chair, right beside Kurapika's phone. "Like I said before, I have no plans of killing you."

"Bullshit." The oath, crisp and crass and so very unlike him rolled off his tongue like the crack of something fragile breaking. Kuroro actually looked surprised, and Kurapika caught himself mirroring his expression, but only for a moment.

"Are you trying to atone for what you've done?" The question, even as he asked it, made him feel ill with disgust; it was impossible that someone like Kuroro would feel any regret for his crimes. It was obvious in the way the man was staring at him now, expression alight with open curiosity and amusement. Kurapika found that he couldn't meet that intense regard for too long, not without losing himself. He broke eye contact and turned away, vaguely heard Kuroro murmuring a negative—truth, or a lie? He was too caught up in his anger to care. His eyes had triggered moments ago.

"Yes, this changes nothing," Kurapika agreed savagely, as he looked back at the older man. "Just because you're keeping me alive now doesn't make what you did to my kin any less forgivable—"

The words froze in his throat as something abruptly loomed large in his field of vision: Kuroro's hand, fingers reaching for his left eye. He didn't have time to blink, much less do anything to protect himself against the intrusion, couldn't have moved against the suddenly very real danger of the Geneiryodan leader deciding that his eyeballs were worth more outside their sockets, after all.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have stunning eyes?" Kuroro asked. "Probably not, if you only ever show them to people you hate." His tone was admiring, and in another world, in a different life, Kurapika would have felt flattered at the compliment. Right now it was all he could do not to bolt. The fingers on his eyelid, on his brow, pressed down and up. It was more gently firm than painful, almost like someone giving him a poke to catch his attention, but—he couldn't help it; he flinched.

Kuroro stopped and considered his reaction for a moment. And then finally, to Kurapika's immense relief, the man drew his fingers away. To his consternation, however, he only moved to plant his hand beside Kurapika's head, and the blond found himself hemmed in, looking up at Kuroro leaning over him.

Cold gray eyes unafraid of death, he thought again, only they were looking into his own red eyes with an intensity that made him want to sink into the bed, out of sight. When Kuroro spoke again, his voice was mild, the words uncomplicated and unaffected, and god help him, he couldn't detect any hint of falsehood even though the tendency to want to think the worst of the Geneiryodan had already been ingrained into his very being.

"Contrary to what you may believe, I don't hate you, despite what you tried to do to me, and what you've done to Ubogin and Pakunoda. Your vendetta is entirely one-sided, at least as far as I'm concerned. I think you're an interesting, strangely alluring individual, and I would like to get to know you better. I'm hardly going to jeopardize my chances of succeeding by killing you, or grabbing your eyes for myself. I'm not going to kill you—I will say it as many times as you need me to say it, and the sooner you understand and accept that, the better."

It was a pretty speech. Too bad he didn't like the speaker enough to appreciate it. Kuroro moved away, breaking the spell, and outrage, dear, familiar outrage flooded back into his senses and reminded him that he wasn't even restrained, and wasn't supposed to keep still and let Kuroro have his way with him.

"Bastard—!"

Kurapika tried to rise, pushing himself up on his elbows, but he'd failed, or forgotten to account for two things in his fury: one was that his left shoulder and half of his ribs along that side were still fractured, and two was that he'd unconsciously held his breath in reaction to having Kuroro hovering over him. Huge black spots bloomed over his vision, his arm seized, sending pain lancing up and down his side, the room spun, adding nausea to the already-sizable list of things ailing him at the moment—and the oath on his lips ended in a choked gasp.

He heard Kuroro make a sound of disapproval, felt hands easing him down to lie on his back. He was, once again, having trouble breathing, a sensation he'd been experiencing far too often for his liking lately, and he fought against his injured ribs, against his roiling stomach, trying to take in as much air as he could to stop from passing out, to no avail.

"It's like you have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever," Kuroro was saying, a disembodied voice in the rapidly-darkening room. "You really should learn when and when not to mount a murder attempt. You're going to aggravate your injuries if you keep going at me with that bum arm."

Kurapika wasn't going to let that pass without comment, even if cost him the last of his strength.

"I'm... going to kill you... I swear..."

4

Kuroro sat watching Kurapika long after the boy fell unconscious, and after his stress-lined face had smoothed out, leaving the blond looking impossibly young and quite incapable of murder. True to his expectations, staying with the kid (or on the kid, rather) was turning out to be really entertaining; he didn't think that there existed anyone who could persist with his death threats even while perfectly aware of the reality, of the differences in their strength. One would call it foolhardiness in lesser men. Kuroro thought it was rather endearing.

It really was too bad. If things were just the slightest bit different, he'd have marked the boy down as a candidate for induction into the Ryodan. He'd certainly earned the right to it after defeating Ubogin. Of course, "defeat" was too mild a term to describe Ubo's ill-fated encounter with the Kuruta survivor, and no amount of reasoning could turn this into the kind of clean succession he'd envisioned when he ruled that Ryodan members could be replaced by the very people who could kill them. There was too much bad blood all around. Nobunaga would never agree to it. Phinx and Feitan would deem Kurapika too dangerous to allow into the group. And Pakunoda was too well-liked for the others to avoid harboring any ill-will against the chain assassin, however capable they were of maintaining a professional front.

And then there was Kurapika's hatred for them. It was the kind of anger that consumed all and left nothing in its wake, and he had to wonder if the boy had any notion of his destination when he decided to set his foot down this path of vengeance. Failure would add fuel to the fire, and he'd continue to rage until he completely burned himself out. Success would mean bloodying his hands eleven more times, and Kuroro didn't believe the kid's sanity would survive even halfway through.

Either way made for a wasteful end, and Kuroro found himself frowning as he considered the rather bleak picture he was painting. He snorted and shook his head, and looked ruefully at the glass of water he'd painstakingly prepared for the blond. He was well aware of Kurapika's unflattering opinion of him—probably suspected him of poisoning it. It was understandable, maybe, and yet it occurred to him that he should be indignant at being suspected so. He could kill the boy easily enough without having to resort to such underhanded methods.

Kuroro reached for the glass and drank the contents in a single gulp, and then got up and ambled out of the room. Bottled water and sealed, packed meals would be received more easily, he decided. That he was giving the matter this much consideration was almost ridiculous, but he was enjoying himself—enjoying messing with the boy's perceptions, and watching Kurapika react and flail while he tried to reconcile what he was seeing with what he believed.

Kurapika was awake when he got back, and already attempting to heal himself. Kuroro paused by the doorway, bag of food in one hand and a box containing his other acquisitions tucked under the other arm, and took a moment to savor the satisfaction of coming back to find that the Kuruta hadn't tried to escape in his absence.

The boy glared back, giving him the blackest look possible under the circumstances, which was difficult in his incapacitated state. He'd somehow managed to prop himself up against the wall behind the bed, and the position was probably very uncomfortable; white face and thinly-pressed lips very clearly showed that he was in a fair amount of pain. He'd wrapped his healing chain around his upper torso, and seemed to be in the middle of calling on his nen to start the self-regeneration.

"Don't mind me," Kuroro called out as he walked into the room and set his purchases down by the foot of the bed. "Only remember what I said about doing it in stages."

Kurapika's eyes narrowed and took on an even more militant gleam on top of his ever-present anger, leaving no doubt as to what he thought of being told what to do. His mouth opened as if to protest, and Kuroro interrupted him before he could say anything stupid.

"You know I'm right. If you overexert yourself here, you're going to be incapacitated for another week, instead of the three to four days it'll take you to slowly heal yourself up to a state where you can walk without falling flat on your face."

Of course, the last time he'd fully healed himself, Kurapika had still managed to drag himself back to the Nostrad estate before passing out, but Kuroro was quite certain that the risk of exhausting himself to the point of helplessness while under the custody of someone he hated would be enough to persuade the boy to choose the more reasonable option.

Seconds passed, with Kurapika scowling at him and Kuroro watching and waiting to see what the boy would do, before Kurapika jerkily broke eye contact. Kuroro discretely activated gyou, and was pleased to see that the nen that now flared up around the blond's clenched fist and the looped chain wasn't quite as massive or as dense as the last time he'd witnessed this particular skill being used. There were no dramatic fast-forwarded effects, either, only Kurapika looking marginally less ill than he'd been moments ago, as the ability presumably healed the worst of the internal damage and alleviated some of the discomfort he was feeling.

Kuroro waited until the chains had been put away, and the blond slumping against the wall at his back in barely-hidden relief before unpacking his loot. He moved briskly, cheerfully, not bothering to keep quiet as one would around an invalid and drawing Kurapika's gaze once again, who now watched with palpable disapproval as he rummaged rather noisily through the plastic bag.

"Here," he said without preamble, and stepped forward to drop something solidly heavy, square, and uncomfortably warm on Kurapika's lap. The boy flinched and reflexively grasped at the object.

"It's a packed lunch," Kuroro added before Kurapika could fling the food away and waste all his goodwill. "Sealed, I might add, so there's no chance of me going out of my way to poison it when I could have more easilly killed you in your sleep."

The blond glared at him harder. Kuroro ignored him and took out his next offering: a liter of water, stolen straight from a chiller and shockingly cold to the touch, which he tossed almost carelessly to the bed, on top of the blanket and beside where Kurapika's right thigh would be under the covers.

"Bottled water, also sealed. I got the same for myself, so stop being stupid and eat your food before it gets cold."

"I don't ne—"

"Yes, you do," Kuroro interrupted smoothly, probably cutting off Kurapika saying that he didn't need or want the food. "I'll go ahead and assume that you're the kind of person who won't eat or rest while obsessing over something, so you probably haven't had anything substantial in the last day at the very least. You can't survive on nen and hatred alone. You need to eat and keep your strength up if you want to recover."

People like them could survive for a while on nen and emotion alone, however, and Kurapika could argue it if he wanted to be contrary, but the boy didn't say or do anything, other than to shoot him another dirty look. Perhaps the fact that it's his enemy lecturing him about taking better care of himself now that was giving him pause—or so Kuroro assumed. The expression on the blond's face was a study in mortified outrage.

He didn't wait to see if Kurapika would listen to him again and start eating, with just censure and shame—it wouldn't be enough. So he took out the rest of the items from the plastic bag and a camping stove from the box, and laid them out on the floor: the stove, a bag of coal and tinder, a lighter, steel tongs, a small barbecue grill, a sheet of cardboard, salt and pepper, a stick of butter, a bag of sweet potatoes, half a dozen ears of corn, and a pack of fresh, raw, whole fish, gutted and cleaned according to his instructions.

The food he'd paid for with legal tender, the rest he'd lifted shamelessly from the shelves of a hardware store, but he didn't think Kurapika was going to ask, not with the odd assortment of objects on display. Kuroro smiled inwardly when he caught the kid's baffled stare out of the corner of his eye. Still not eating, but that would be rectified in another moment.

Within minutes he had tinder burning under a mound of coal in the portable stove, the corn shucked, and the fish rubbed with salt and seasoned with a bit of pepper.

"You're going to cook that here?" Kurapika asked, and for once his voice wasn't clipped, heated, or heavy with anger—Kuroro looked up just in time to see the blond's delicate features twisting with sudden consternation.

"Yes," he answered readily, without showing any sign of the amusement he felt at knowing that Kurapika was probably chagrined at his sudden outburst. "Salt-grilled fish," Kuroro continued. "It's good, I've had it before."

But why, and why here, the blond's expressive face seemed to ask. Kuroro shrugged and arranged the fish on the metal grill on top of the stove. He didn't have to reply if Kurapika wasn't going to speak—he wasn't going to play this game of charades with the angry Kuruta, but for that one moment the kid had been so surprised he'd simply forgotten to feel angry, and that was enough.

He'd never actually cooked fish in this manner before, so he had to pay close attention and take care that he didn't burn the things, but they were small and took only a few minutes to cook on each side. The delicious smell of grilled fish was soon wafting through the air, helped along by Kuroro fanning the coals to keep them lit. He worked quietly this time, waiting and listening for sounds of movement from Kurapika's side of the room, and so heard, embarrassingly clearly, the low and drawn-out growl of a stomach too hungry to care about propriety.

It was impossible to hide his amusement now, not when the embarrassed flush on Kurapika's face practically invited teasing, but Kuroro kept his head down and grinned at the fish, which were coming along nicely. A minute later there was the crackle of a plastic lid being peeled back: Kurapika surreptitiously opening the store-bought meal Kuroro had given him, apparently having realized that he wasn't going to do himself any favors by going on a hunger strike.

The moment he deemed them ready, Kuroro grabbed two of the cooked fish with his tongs and stood up. Kurapika had decided to completely ignore him for the moment, not acknowledging him and methodically bringing another spoonful of rice to his mouth, up until Kuroro approached him and unceremoniously dumped the fish into one of the emptier sections of his lunch box. Then he snapped his head up and glared.

The only thing lacking was hissing and a bristled tail, and the kid would look like a feral cat protecting its food. Kuroro was glad Kurapika couldn't read him as easily as the reverse, however funny it would be to see his reaction to being compared to a feline. He did nod approvingly at what he could see of the packed lunch: more than half was already gone. Kurapika had a healthy appetite, despite his injuries and his obstinate insistence in holding on to his vendetta even in his current vulnerable state.

"Try some of that. It's good."

The blond scowled and poked at the salt-encrusted skin of the fish, suspicion evident in every line of his body. "You haven't even tasted it yet."

Kuroro tried not to grin too widely; whether he was aware of it or not, Kurapika had just indirectly admitted to watching him even as he tried to appear unconcerned. These slips were a lot better than hostile silence, after all, and certainly a lot more interesting and amusing than if Kurapika decided to completely refuse to respond to him.

"Then try it and tell me. I'll stop bothering you for the rest of the day if it doesn't taste good."

He went back to prepare his own food before the blond could scoff at the insignificance of his bet. Kuroro wasn't worried about losing; he was a fairly good cook, and no matter how much Kurapika hated the Geneiryodan, he wasn't the type to resort to petty deceit just to get Kuroro out of his hair for a single day—and yet it was exactly the kind of low stake that would more easily tempt the morally uptight types like Kurapika into trying to lie just to see if the other party would uphold their end of the wager.

A two-fold test for the both of them. Would Kurapika decide that breaking character would be worth getting to spite his enemy, and lie, and if he did, would Kuroro call his bluff, or do as he'd promised?

The rest of their meal proceeded in relative silence. Kurapika didn't say anything as he finished everything in front of him—even the fish—and Kuroro congratulated himself by roasting sweet potatoes for dessert.

5

Kurapika let out the breath he'd been holding as he deliberately, gradually cut off the flow of his nen. This bothersome pacing of his aura was as different from the heady rush of healing everything with one massive surge of nen as punching normally and attacking with a fist blanketed with a full coating of ren could be, and yet he couldn't deny that there was some wisdom in taking care that he didn't overexert himself. The sharp ache of his injuries abated gradually, hour after hour, and he was only slightly tired and perhaps prone to napping and getting hungry more often. It wasn't like the near-total state of exhaustion he'd driven himself to last week, and no, he wasn't ever going to acknowledge out aloud that the only reason he wasn't a helpless convalescent now was because of Kuroro forcing him to do things his way. Not when the asshole was the one who'd given him these injuries in the first place.

He could feel his emotions churning into life, as they always did whenever he thought of the Geneiryodan leader these days, like water erupting to a boil under a sudden blast of flame. The anger, the rage, and even the grief were familiar things, and almost comforting in their constancy. The confusion now adding turbulence to his thoughts, on the other hand, was both unpleasant and unwelcome.

He'd tried to figure out where he was from within the confines of his room, and the only thing he could tell for certain was that they were several floors up, in an apartment or a hotel building that had either fallen into disuse and disrepair, or was only partially-constructed and abandoned even before tenants could move in. There was a toilet with no running water, a fact which would normally disgust him, but Kuroro had procured a basin with clean water from... somewhere, but as with everything odd that had struck him since first waking up to find Kuroro Lucifer playing nursemaid, Kurapika hadn't deigned to ask.

There was the question of how the man had managed to squeeze all this stolen hotel furniture through the door, and why he'd chosen to move to this place instead of camping back at the church, why bother to bring him packed meals on one hand but still insist on coal-roasting the most random selection of ingredients on the other. Where did Kuroro go whenever he disappeared for hours during the day? He could be killing hundreds of people and leveling a Nostrad hotel with each trip out, and Kurapika would never find out until after he managed to leave, hopefully after another couple of days. Did Kuroro ever sleep? Somehow Kurapika suspected that the man was using nen to get by on as little rest as possible so as not to get caught nodding off. Maybe he was actually going out to nap elsewhere, or maybe he was somehow timing it so that he'd sleep after Kurapika did and wake up first. Either way, Kuroro's disconcerting gaze was always the first thing that impinged on his senses whenever he struggled awake from sleep disturbed by nightmares.

And as always, why. Why go through all this trouble? Why defeat him without killing him, why beat him half to death and then display this concern for his well-being? The simplest, easiest explanation was the one Kuroro had given—that he wanted them to be friends, but of course, Kurapika would rather dig out his own eyes than take that reason at face value, much less allow it to happen.

Still, it was impossible not to get affected by Kuroro's aggravating presence, his bizarre cheer and dogged insistence that they could get along without trying to kill each other every five minutes. Impossible not to doubt and second-guess everything, and increasingly difficult not to succumb to the uneasy feeling that he was being too rude and ungracious, considering the circumstances. He wasn't dead despite being the aggressor in this case, after all, and if there was even the slightest chance that Kuroro was being completely honest with him—

No. It was ridiculous sentiment, and infuriating, besides—a weakness he couldn't afford to harbor. He had to stay angry, and remember that the Geneiryodan deserved every slight, insult, and violent act he could dish out and throw at them, remember that they'd murdered every last member of his family—

Something moved in his periphery—a shadow framed by the doorway, and he struck, moving in response to pure reflex, rage at himself and at his tormentor driving Judgment Chain forward. There was a second of exhilaration as the iron links screamed through the air, and the blade tip shot towards Kuroro's chest—an adrenaline spike that rose abruptly and was cut off just as suddenly, as Kuroro swept an arm in front of his body like a shield and tangled the delicate chain around his fist.

Kuroro stared at him, something darkly amused flitting through his eyes. Kurapika stared back, and fought against the urge to gag at the cold bile that tried to crawl up his throat—fear, he noted distantly, and was horrified to realize that his shoulders were trembling from shock and the strain of holding himself still against instincts yelling at him to fight, or flee. He was in no condition to make a good showing of either if Kuroro decided to retaliate.

He didn't, but what he did do was no less distressing: Kuroro pulled, a single, solid yank, and Judgment Chain broke. The chain links crumbled as Kurapika's strength fled, and faded from view like they were supposed to—and he didn't need his master's admonishments to figure out what just happened.

The blond curled his left hand over the fingers of his right fist, and deliberately tried not to think about the state of his resolve just then.

"... You need a few more days of rest before going back to chucking pointy objects at me," came Kuroro's remark, mild, and almost gentle, if he didn't know any better.

Great, now he was starting to attribute sensitivity where there was none, and Kurapika turned his head to the side and refused to look at where the older man had stopped by the foot of his bed.

"You know, I've always wondered about the weapon you chose to materialize," Kuroro continued, undeterred by his reticence, "Why chains?"

Kurapika swallowed, and allowed himself the slightest shift in position so he didn't feel like he was teetering precariously off-balance, caught off-guard by his instinctive reaction to Kuroro coming back. The Geneiryodan leader didn't sound like he was going to do anything about it, but the question about his abilities, however seemingly harmless, was slightly alarming.

Kuroro had to have noticed his unease, and of course didn't care enough to pull his punches. "I'll admit that you took us completely by surprise in York Shin. It's an impressive set of abilities, and well-suited to your goals, but not very sustainable in the long run. You've seen how it goes—your chains don't work half as well now that I know how they work."

The blond raised his eyes then, expression as blank as he could make it. Kuroro was looking at him curiously now, but not with any incomprehension, as if he was already certain of the answer but wanted it confirmed by the source.

"Every time you fight us, and lose, you risk revealing more about the way you fight, and in every successive attempt, your abilities get less and less effective. I don't believe you're the kind of person to neglect to consider the consequences if you fail the first time. Did you even think of what you'd do after, whether you won or lost?"

Or was it that you'd bet everything into succeeding in that first try in York Shin?

Silence stretched, as Kurapika tried in vain to think of a satisfactory retort. Kuroro had hit the nail on the head, up to a certain point. His greatest concern had been that his enemies would find out about the conditions he'd placed on his abilities, of course, but it was always a possibility he accepted and was convinced could deal with if it ever came to pass.

He just hadn't been expecting Kuroro Lucifer's dogged refusal to treat him as an enemy. Second encounters were supposed to end with the fool who'd given away his advantages early being dead, and not... this, whatever this was.

"... I don't want to hear that from you," Kurapika eventually managed to say.

He couldn't have given a more evasive answer, but his voice was at least cold enough to discourage any further questioning. Kuroro shrugged and turned away, apparently letting the matter drop. He didn't seem displeased at not getting a direct reply, but then again, all the cues and starts Kurapika had let slip were answer enough.

Kuroro turned back to him, and dropped something on the bed: another packed lunch, another bottle of water. "Supper," he indicated amiably, gesturing with the easy confidence of several meals gone with a difficult patient becoming more and more cooperative. Kurapika tiredly considered opening the seal and then throwing the entire thing at Kuroro's face, just to see how the man would react if he threw a tantrum, but then decided it wasn't worth it. He just wanted to be gone, and left alone to rebuild the tattered remnants of his dignity.

"I brought you something else," Kuroro added, and carefully placed another heavy object on the bed, by Kurapika's feet, and at first the blond thought it was more food, or something completely random and ridiculous meant to bait another amusing reaction out of him, but the man's tone of voice, measured and quieter than anything he'd said so far—

He stared at the glass cylinders, the pair of eyeballs suspended in the clear fluid, and suddenly found that he couldn't breathe, couldn't see past the wash of red, couldn't move, or stop his hands from clenching convulsively at the sheets. Confusion, fury, disbelief rose, and he heard something break, or maybe it was his heart, or his mind, overwhelmed by grief and a thousand other unnamed emotions.

"Why—" Kurapika choked out, and couldn't continue, not when he didn't even know what he wanted to ask. Kuroro met his eyes, cool gray to wide-opened red, and tilted his head as if puzzled by his question.

"Because I wanted to."

He finally drew in a gasping breath, and another, and had to squeeze his eyes shut as he recovered enough of his wits to realize that his exhalations were starting to sound suspiciously like sobs. There was nowhere to hide, however, and the blond doubted that Kuroro would listen if told to go away, so he drew his feet up and buried his face against his knees. Wrapped his arms around them and gave his shaking hands something to hold on to, before he completely fell apart, or did something irrevocable like try to wrap them around Kuroro's neck, and fail again and possibly use up the last of the man's patience.

The former was more likely, and he didn't want Kuroro to see. Agony pulled at his sides—curling up like this wasn't doing his injuries any good, but he ignored it, and used the pain to ground himself and claw back some semblance of control. He couldn't tell how long it took, with his lungs heaving for air and his nerves threatening to shake themselves apart, and everything gaining the panicky, muddled sense of an ongoing breakdown. Only a few minutes, maybe—already too long, with the deafening silence and Kuroro's gaze pricking at his awareness.

"... I am going to kill you," he mumbled once he thought he could speak without sounding as raw as he felt. His voice was thick with emotion, and muffled against the blanket, but he knew that Kuroro could hear him.

A few seconds passed, and it felt like an eternity of waiting for Kuroro's response. Somehow Kurapika wasn't surprised to feel the hand touch his head, the fingers ruffling his hair, oddly affectionate and indulgent.

He stayed hunched over, and didn't uncurl and raise his aching head until well after Kuroro had left the room.

Interlude

It took Kurapika a little over a week to make his way back to Rukuso Valley after reports of the massacre first reached him, thousands of miles away, an entire ocean between his hometown and where he'd run off to, nearly halfway around the known world. That was how far he'd gotten after passing the tests, after his entire village had turned out to see him off, after he'd been set free of the shackles binding him to tedium within his clan's tiny valley. He'd been thrilled, beside himself with thoughts of adventure and the unknown, and confident, as only twelve-year-olds could be, that he was adequately equipped to tackle anything the world might think to throw at him. It was almost as if he couldn't get away fast enough.

Now, seven weeks after, with the damned report nipping at his heels and the dreaded confirmation at his destination drawing inexorably closer, he felt like he couldn't get back fast enough.

What had gone wrong? How had the outside world managed to intrude on his clan's strict isolation? All it had taken was that single, authorized trip to the nearest human settlement big enough to be called a city for Pairo and him to understand that the stifling rules about secluding and hiding themselves had been necessary, and exasperatingly effective, if there was so little factual knowledge about the Kuruta that outsiders would immediately resort to superstition at the first sight of their eyes. Strangers who meant the Kuruta harm couldn't have gotten confirmation of their existence within six weeks after a hundred years of safety, much less found out about the location of their village, unless someone else had gone outside after he'd left, or...

Or unless his use of his eyes at that city hadn't gone unnoticed and unremarked upon as he'd first believed. It had been a sizable crowd. Their reactions had been extreme, and the fear and condemnation he'd attracted would have shocked and frightened him more if he hadn't been so ecstatic at Pairo's sleight of hand saving him from failing the test. And news of a red-eyed demon child beating up several adults could have drawn attention of the worst kind.

Kurapika felt sick to his stomach, but didn't stop to throw up. Couldn't stop, couldn't rest until he'd seen for himself... He was nearing the village's outskirts, and would be there in a few more leaps, over the small stream his father liked to fish in, past the wash of boulders offering prime locations for hide and seek, up the copse of evergreen trees sheltering the approach to the village—

He barely managed to keep himself from losing his footing, the sight of the first burnt-out hut blowing all thought and comprehension out of his mind.

There were people picking through the wreckage of the village. Five men and a woman. Outsiders. Looters, was Kurapika's first lucid, and enraged thought. Maybe even the culprits, coming back to cause even more mischief, and the blond would have leapt down to confront them if his hands hadn't locked on to the branches around him in a death-grip.

He was terrified, he realized after another moment, terrified of what he'd find in the destruction that lay before him, and his subconscious was telling him that he needed to stay hidden, because he had no idea what was going on, he was outnumbered six to one, and there were rows of cloth-wrapped objects in the middle of the village green, shaped like human bodies of varying age and size.

From this distance, Kurapika's keen eyes could see the red staining the white cloth maddeningly clearly.

"Do we have the final count?"

He froze, cursing his inattention. There were two people walking towards his tree—towards him. He had to fight against the urge to inch back into the leafier branches behind him, hide himself completely from view. The couple were only moving away from the village main, he realized after a moment of observation, and hadn't seen him, but they would hear leaves rustling overhead if he were to move right now.

"A hundred and twenty-eight," the woman replied in clipped tones, and Kurapika didn't have to struggle very hard not to move anymore.

That was the exact number of people living in Rukuso at the time he left.

"A hundred and twenty-eight. Men, women and children. Some of them have been mutilated, and most of them were tortured before they died. Who could have done this?"

The man wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand and sighed. "You saw the note pinned to the elder's chest."

"Yeah. 'We accept everything, so don't take anything back.' That's the message you get if you piss off someone from Ryuuseigai, but how could any of the Kuruta have done that if they've been living in isolation for the last hundred years, like you said?"

The man shook his head, reached up and pulled off a blue newsboy cap. Waist-long white hair cascaded around his shoulders, and he set to work tying it back. "They're not a completely closed-off race. We've always had rumors of sightings, legends, myths. A village like this can't sustain itself for that long, so they had to have people going out on regular supply runs. And I can't imagine all of them living in obscurity for a hundred years. They probably had outsiders coming in to live here, to maintain genetic diversity, and their youngsters would have found ways to get out."

The woman drew in a sharp breath. "So there are survivors?"

The man finished fiddling with his hair and placed the hat back on his head. He cracked his neck from side to side and rolled his eyes up at the trees as if weary of the woman's questions. Kurapika distantly noted the man's large hooked nose, and abruptly felt his breath catch, ice running down his back all the way to his toes.

The man's small black eyes were looking directly at him.

"... Who knows?" he murmured after a beat.

"That's vague, coming from you," the woman said with a displeased frown.

The man turned back to his companion, mercifully breaking eye contact before Kurapika could give himself away in his panic. "If you're asking if I think there are survivors, then yes, there's always the possibility that there are a handful of them scattered all over the world. Even if that's the case, though, there's nothing they can do from where they might be, and nothing more we can do here, except lay their dead to rest for them."

"Should we start burning the bodies, then?"

"Let's see if there's space for graves, first. I've read that the Kuruta gave great importance to living in harmony with nature, so burying them might be better..."

The pair moved, gingerly picking their way back into the village, and Kurapika sagged limply against the trunk behind his back, limbs robbed of all strength—it was a wonder the woman hadn't heard. The man had noticed him, though, and for whatever reason hadn't alerted the rest to his presence, despite how important his new status as a Kuruta survivor could be to them.

... Not a Kuruta survivor. The last Kuruta survivor now, as far as he was aware of, because his mother, his father, their insufferable old village head, Pairo, everyone—they were all gone. Dead. Tortured, mutilated, desecrated before being butchered. He'd later recall the conversation he'd overheard with startling clarity, and use those details to find depths in his anger he hadn't possessed before, but for now his mind had fled, shattered by despair and grief and a vast, all-encompassing loneliness.

The team of six—Hunters sent to investigate the massacre and check if there was anyone, anything that could be saved or preserved—left after three days, and Kurapika crept into the village to wander, silent as a ghost, amongst mounds of freshly-turned earth.

Three more days passed before he managed to tear himself away, and leave to begin his hunt for his clan's killers.

6

Kuroro hadn't been expecting Kurapika to remain docile after his breakdown, to be honest, and so wasn't surprised to come back after a food run to find the bed empty the next day. The sheets were made—an amusing detail, that the kid had taken the time to clean up after himself before leaving, and the only sign of his escape. Kuroro checked the other floors of the building, and all around the property for a few blocks out, just to be sure that the stupid boy hadn't pushed himself too far and collapsed in a heap somewhere, but there were no clues as to which direction he'd taken.

Not that he needed any to know that Kurapika had probably gone back to the Nostrads. It was a few hours shy of four days since their fight at the church. He had actually lasted pretty long in Kuroro's company, and he wondered if the blond would have let himself stay a bit longer if he hadn't brought those Eyes out.

And speaking of the Kuruta eyeballs—they were still on the bed, and there was a piece of cardboard wedged under the canisters. Kuroro contemplated them for a few minutes before pulling out the board. It was the same one he'd been using to fan his makeshift grill, with a note scrawled out in charcoal. Kurapika had done his best to keep his script neat despite the scavenged medium; the letters were well-formed, if smudged in some places, and the lines were straight. Another amusing detail, but not as interesting as the contents of the note.

I don't need your charity.
Put these back where you stole them from. I'll get them with my own strength.

Kuroro gave a quiet laugh. Back where he stole them from; did Kurapika mean the long-rotted remains of their original owner, or his personal vaults, where he'd been keeping them since he "acquired" them a month ago? He certainly wasn't going to return them to the collector he stole them from. Was Kurapika even aware that "getting them with his own strength" meant challenging Kuroro to another fight, to try to win them for himself?

It was too bad that the kid had rejected what was technically a sincere peace offering, by his standards—that damn stubborn streak speaking, probably, and pride he hadn't been able to suppress in the end. Either way, things were going to remain interesting, and that suited him just fine.

Kuroro shook his head and chuckled again. He had no use for this place anymore, and would have to get rid of all traces of their stay there. But first—lunch. Kurapika leaving without warning meant he had two portions to himself. He had enough room for all of it, but if not, he could always sneak into Kurapika's quarters at the Nostrad estate and leave the food on his bed.

I'm going to try to keep to an update rate of a chapter a month—from now on, anyway, seeing as I got nothing last February and March, and was too busy cavorting around in Japan last April. Well, February was an exception since I posted the WH synopsis then, and I might have a bit of trouble with the next chapter since I have nothing written for it yet. This non-linear style of writing I've adopted is fun; I had 60% of this chapter already written months before I added the rest in one go the past couple of days, and the same will probably be true of chapter 4, but yeah, nada for chapter 3 as of this moment.

Try is always going to be the operative word in these cases.

At least it looks like my chapters are going to get longer and longer, if this trend holds. :'3