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« Yorknew city? » Gon says. His eyes are saucers. Big and wide and glowing and hazel.
Gon’s eyes are always hazel and sometimes Kurapika finds themself jealous. Gon’s rage is contained within his body, his weakness hidden in his blood.Kurta blood is not so subtle and a great price must be paid for the pride of such manifest heritage. Blood – heritage, if you want – clambers up from the pit of Kurapika’s stomach and it surges in their eyes. Big and wide and scarlet, scarlet, scarlet.
They never tell of this jealousy to anyone. They never tell this to themself.
Rather, the plunge of their heart beats out a familiar rythm, a mantra for revenge, a song for a life sworn to the renewing of genocide :
You are the last Kurta.
You are the last Kurta.
You are the last Kurta.
-
When they agreed to meet on September first it was through whispers and harsh, biting smiles.
(Both of them whispered but only one of them was smiling)
Bated breath and closeness – uncalled for –, a predatory stance communicating a twin desire.
A forged connection between heated scarlet and twinkling gold.
-
The chosen emplacement doesn’t surprise Hisoka but it does stretch a smirk tight across his lips.
Well, if this doesn’t feel just like home, he muses. He perches himself atop the carousel. Oh, this one stopped moving years ago but it somehow feels like exactly the right place to start something new.
Among the rubble, he waits.
Not long. When he feels Kurapika coming, Hisoka knowns they have changed. Oh. They’ve become so much more. Swiftly, he jumps from his place among the carousel horses of glory past. They stay far enough from one another, yet the exchange isn’t unreminiscent of the one held during the Hunter exam – loaded, electric. Hisoka eyes Kurapika up and down. Licks his lips. Their eyes meet and it’s almost as if Hisoka can feel the blood boiling, making it’s way up inside the other’s body. Oh, to see that rage caged up in those irises. To see scarlet spill out over those ridiculous contact lenses…
He swallows. Yes, he knows what he must do.
-
« Join the troupe? » Kurapika spits and there it is, that red bleeding out over the edges of their irises.
That pressure in the air.
« Never. » Teeth gritted, knuckles white.
Hisoka smiles. Hums.
« Think about it. I’ll be here tomorrow, same time. »
He doesn’t disapear, doesn’t make haste.
Rather he walks out of Kurapika’s sight deliberately; slowly, with a certain swing to his hips.
He knows the other is watching.
He revels in the heavy silence.
-
When Hisoka comes back the following day he can sense Kurapika waiting for him.
« Our interests do overlap. » Today they speak without the red in their eyes or in their voice.
Calculated, but not quite managing to be cold.
Hisoka smiles, breathes in the night air of the abandoned amusement park.
He thinks about Chrollo.
Indeed, they do have overlapping interests…
-
It’s strange how Hisoka’s texture surprise feels on their skin, Kurapika thinks.
Because it doesn’t actually feel like anything.
They touch the covered skin on their back, fingers smoothing over what they know to be the symbol of what they hate the most, of what they are now pretending to be.
Kurapika knows that, really, they ought to feel nothing on their skin. And most of the time they don’t.
The skin on their back remains the same as it ever was.
Most of the time the spider lays still, quiet and unassuming, hidden under layers of clothing.
But sometimes Kurapika swears that they can feel the spider dislodging itself from their flesh. Crawling slowly, slowly, slowly up to their neck, legs flitting across the soft expanse of skin.
Most of the time, this happens when Kurapika is in the shower, trying to cleanse themself of the day’s sins, of this choice they have made and are continuing to make.
When the water hits the spider on their back it’s almost as if Kurapika feels they could boil it off, drown it.
Yet it stays, sticks, perseveres. Perseveres like they need to perserve.
Persevere. Kurapika thinks about Chrollo and steps out of the shower.
I need to cut off the head, they think, I need to destroy the spider.
Droplets drip down the line of their spine, pooling ever so slightly at the small of their back, just below the spider.
There, where the water pools in the slight cave of Kurapika’s back, the spider drinks, keeps itself alive.
And Kurapika smiles.
-
When Chrollo moves it is with grace and his eyes are always kind.
Kurapika ought to know better, seeing that light in the troupe leader’s eyes, but they can’t seem to look away.
There is a certain magnetism to him, his movements long limbed, laced with faux fragility.
And maybe that’s why he’s the ultimate thief.
-
After a while Kurapika doesn’t have to concentrate every fiber of their being to not killing Chrollo on the spot.
After a while Kurapika doesn’t even have to make sure that their eyes don’t turn scarlet when they see the troupe leader.
After a while Kurapika’s eyes stop turning scarlet and their blood doesn’t boil.
Sometimes, however, they can still feel the spider crawling up their back.
-
Kurapika’s eyes are brown all the time now until they aren’t.
-
Hisoka watches Chrollo and he knows that Kurapika’s eyes have turned red again. For the first time in a while, now, Hisoka can feel Kurapika’s aura radiating. Yet, it doesn’t feel as it did before. The blood coursing up to change the color of their eyes doesn’t carry the weight of heritage, or if it does, it’s not the same weight.
The load of it is different, encompassing and vast in a profound way, tinged with hatred still; but not. Or : a hatred directed at oneself. Again, Hisoka hums. He feels a certain kinship with the emotions translated by this exteriorisation of Kurapika’s aura. The way their eyes flash through their lenses betray a strong emotion - not unlike the one Hisoka hides from and feels for Chrollo himself.
-
Kurapika has blood in their hair when Chrollo looks at them and smiles.
From where he stands, Hisoka watches.
Chrollo feels him watching but he does not turn his way, focusing on the conjurer in front of him.
With blood in their hair and chains around their hand, Kurapika looks up into the troupe leader’s eyes; their own ringed with red, matching the blood in their hair and the splatters on Chrollo’s hands.
-
Chrollo is like a black hole, a force of unforgiving and relentless suction, thinks Kurapika.
Hisoka knows this too.
And maybe this is why, really, they both have fake spiders on their back.
And maybe this is why when Kurapika takes off their undershirt and trails fingers down to the small of their back, the spider almost feels alive.
And maybe this is why it doesn’t feel like scrubbing sin off of skin every time they shower now.
And maybe this is why they stay.
-
And maybe this is why when Kurapika is under the hot pressure of the shower and Hisoka joins them under that same liquid heat, Kurapika isn’t surprised.
When Hisoka peels the fake spider off of Kurapika’s back he lets his touch linger, feeling the conjurer’s aura envelopping the small space that holds them both.
« He knows. » Hisoka says, and his voice is the softest Kurapika has ever heard it.
« I know. » They reply, and they never thought that they could speak with such softness to this man.
-
When Kurapika and Hisoka kill Chrollo they do it together. For different reasons they laugh. For the same reasons, they cry.
-
Kurapika gathers their clothes from where they lay rumpled on Hisoka’s floor.
They close the door, exit the apartment.
« You are the last Kurta. »
Still, alone.