Lost Anemone
A/N: Hi! Thank you for picking this story. I'm pretty excited to share it and I hope you'll like reading it as much as I liked writing it. The story is supposed to be relatively light, besides the initial dark setup and theme, so I hope the summary wasn't too misleading.
A good thing to note is that this story is complete! I've finished writing it and it's around 84k words. I plan on updating once to twice a week depending on feedback, my free time, chapter length, and my schedule.
This is a KillugonOC polyam story, so the main focus will be on Killua, my OC Hana, and Gon. However, you'll also see quite a bit of Leorio, Cheadle, Kurapika, Senritsu, as well as some other OCs, Hisoka, and Illumi! If you're familiar with my other stories, you'll notice the same OCs, but you don't need to have read them to follow this one; it's completely independent and every OC is treated as a new character.
You might notice that I'll be using flowers' language a lot in this story; I encourage you to check out Little Knight Mik's stories as he inspired me a lot with flowers' language and how to incorporate it in a story! Thank you Ren, for inspiring me and for encouraging me!
I would also like to thank bugtongue for their precious help with polyam resources! Thank you Eddy, I learned a lot thanks to you.
Glittercracker and jyuanka, thank you for reading my summary and giving me pointers to adapt it and make it better! Jyu, thank you for helping me with the title!
The biggest thank-you to my good friend hxhhasmysoul who beta-read this fic from prologue to epilogue, who insulted Illumi many times, and whose suggestions and corrections made this story so much better! Thank you hon, I love you!
Of course, a big thank you to a certain someone who has read this fic five times and who casually makes me fangirl with her messages: you know who you are, and you are amazing!
One last note: there will be a glossary of flowers with flower meanings at the end of the prologue if you want to decrypt the future chapters' titles! You can refer yourself to it in the future. Unless you want to research them yourself :p Wikipedia is more than enough for that, but some flowers did need a little more sources! It shouldn't be a brake in the story though :)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this fic!
Happy reading!
Summary
When Killua is hired to kill a Tanalean princess, he doesn't question it — he doesn't need to. He is the heir of the Zoaldyeck family and he has blind trust in his family. After spending all his life training to take the lead of his family, he has no time for doubt or questions — no matter the dreams from another life that haunt his most painful days.
However, on the night of the assassination, the hunted becomes the hunter: the princess is a fake, the assassination is a trap, and he isn't who he thinks he is. The woman that emerges from the disguise — Hana — has set him up for reasons he can't comprehend… and she isn't alone.
One nen exorcism later, with the nen curse plucked from his mind, Killua realizes one thing: the past twelves years of his life are a lie — a web of forged memories planted into his mind by his brother to control him. He is then left with the gaping void of a past he can never recover, the bitter taste of his family's betrayal, a blurry sense of self, and more questions than he knows what to do with. All he can do is rebuild himself on the ruins of something he can't even remember, with the ghost of his stolen memories standing between him and those people who call themselves his friends.
As he starts anew, Killua seeks a new occupation and reaffirms his place in his own life at a slow but certain pace. He finds an unlikely friend in the woman who had faked her own assasination to exorcize him — Hana, with spring in her gaze and summer in her laugh — and he slowly puts words on the longing he feels when he looks at the man who had hired her to do that — Gon, with past and present affection balancing in the warmth of his brown eyes.
Now, Killua doesn't know much, but he does know he has a type. He just had never planned that two people would fit into it.
Rating: 17+ (T) at the start, 18+ (M) toward the end (rating will be adjusted accordingly!)
Characters: Killua Z. (main), OC (main), Gon F. (main), Leorio P., Cheadle Y., Alluka Z., Illumi Z., Hisoka M., Kurapika, Senritsu, various OCs
Ships: KilluGonOC (polyam, main), LeorioCheadle (supportive), HisoIllu (supportive), KurapikaSenritsu (supportive)
Tags: Set in the future, aged-up characters (24/25 years old), Original Characters, main female OC, killuaOC/killugon, polyamorous (m/m/f), romance, humor, fluff, hurt/comfort, memory loss, everyone is queer, implied sexual content, dirty jokes, pop culture references, cheese
Trigger warnings: violence, assassination attempt, torture (Zoaldyeck stuff), blood, abuse, manipulation, trauma, implied sexual content, drinking, possible suicide mention, homicide, death of a friend mentioned, depressive symptoms, PTSD mention/symptoms, Illumi, mentions of child abuse/human trafficking, mentions of dysphoria and misgendering
Length: 84k final
Prologue: Forget-Me-Not
"Kil, do you know what forget-me-nots symbolize?"
Sweat, blood. Beading on his forehead, trailing down his temples. They met and mixed and then parted away and burned and froze and then trickled away. Rusty, sticky, nasty.
"Eternal love," Illumi answered his own question. "That's one of their meanings."
Killua's hair stuck to his skin. It was everywhere, long white locks tangled and red with blood, stringy strands that stuck to his lips and his tongue. He had tried to spit it out; it hadn't worked.
"They also mean, 'don't forget me'," Illumi continued. He paced around the table, finger trailing the manacles that trapped Killua on the restraining device. "Did you forget us, Kil?"
"I wish I could," Killua hissed, the words slipping through his gritted teeth. Old wounds seethed as he wriggled on the device — black dots clouded his sight, the space of a breath.
Illumi stopped. His empty gaze settled on Killua's shivering figure, as though he examined the weather. "You're in your twenties, now. You should know better than to speak like that."
"Go fuck yourself."
Illumi sighed and resumed his pacing. "You're the heir. It's time you take your rightful place."
"I want none of it!"
Bottomless abysses stared back at him. Through them, Killua saw disappointment. "Do you know how long it took to develop this machine?" he changed the topic, his tone almost cheery, an eager creator proud of his new invention. "Father and I made it just for you. From the moment you left, ten years ago, to just a little a while ago. It's revolutionary, isn't it? A machine that induces a forced zetsu, and manacles that you can't break. Can you imagine, the challenge? Developing chains that not even you could break?"
Wrath boiled in Killua's veins. It seethed and sought a release it could never find. His aura was still, poised. Suppressed. His lightning didn't answer to him. In a fit of anger, he tried, again and again, to break the chains.
They didn't break.
Illumi shook his head in disapprobation. For a moment, Killua's winded, feverish breath was the only sound in the room. In comparison, his head was a mess — questions and regrets and fear and longing. Gon would be dead worried about him; he couldn't just give up. And yet, he had looked for an exit at least a hundred times, to no avail. He knew that room by heart for having spent endless nights there in his childhood; he should know he would find none.
The only way in or out was the same one door.
That door then opened — a metallic clatter, followed by the rhythmic sound of coiling chains and unwinding mechanisms.
A person clad in black that Killua had never seen entered the room, their face hidden under a mask. Their heavy boots left marks on the floor — the steps echoing in the solitary room, bouncing off its empty walls.
In their hands, there was a garland of forget-me-nots.
"You know, Kil, I never say things without a reason."
When the flowers touched Killua's skin, everything in him unraveled. Memories, love, identity. Years and years of life down the drain as the garland wrapped around his forehead.
And all he could do was scream.
"You can't imagine the trouble it took to bring you back home."
He opened one eye. Then the other. Peering through blurry slits; searching for something he didn't know. Pain pounded in his head, strikes of lightning skewering his brain, slashing through reason. Withered forget-me-nots tangled in his hair, tickling his skin like crawling insects.
When he tried to move his wrists, they were bound.
"You worried us sick, going on and about with that loud island kid. He was a bad influence on you. I'm so mad at myself for not protecting you more. I should have known he would corrupt you. I should have known better, as your older brother."
His ankles were bound, too. He turned his head, looking for an explanation, a sign, a light — anything that told him where he was and who he was and why his ghastly brother was caressing his hair. But it was dark — too dark. And his head hurt, hurt, hurt.
He was so tired.
"Mom cried every day, even years after you were gone. She was always so sad that you had abandoned us, and so worried for you. 'God knows what kind of lies this kid is feeding our Kil,' she would say all the time. I mean, she was right, wasn't she? She almost gave up hope because of him."
Illumi wouldn't stop talking, his apathetic voice gnawing through whatever little sanity Killua had left. He let out a weak moan as another headache sizzled in his skull before spreading through his neck. His ribcage weighed tons, as did each and every one of his limbs. Grounded and heavy. Sluggish. Lead in his bones and syrup in his veins. Each breath was laboured, shallow, as though water filled his lungs, a crushing wave pressing against his chest.
His lips wouldn't form words. His eyes wouldn't settle on anything. His body wouldn't respond to him.
He was too weak, too tired.
So, so tired.
"It's okay now, though. I forgive you for how much you've hurt us. You didn't know better. You were young and foolish, but you will learn. Father told us he too tried to run away when he was young; can you believe that? He defied Grandpa Zeno and ran off to see the world, and then he came back with mother."
Illumi's thumb lingered on Killua's forehead.
Killua snapped his eyes shut.
"Never forget, Kil, that family will always be there for you. Even when you fuck up, when you treat us like you did, we'll never abandon you. You can always count on us. You know that, right? We're here for you. Always."
The manacles on his wrist and ankles tightened. A familiar kind of pain fizzed through his body then — he reconciled with it, embraced it. It cracked and sparked and whipped with lightning that tore through the dark.
"It will take time to rehabilitate you, but it's okay. We'll make it work. You spent so much time messing around with that islander, you grew soft and fragile and emotional. That's no good, no good at all. But you shouldn't be too concerned — Father and I will take care of that. Isn't that amazing? It'll be like none of that ever happened."
The electricity stopped and Killua gasped, panting, spasms shaking in his body as bolts of static still crept upon his body.
A door opened. Its hinges wailed, rusty with the decades of dried blood and sweat that coated it. In a way, Killua felt like he had already heard that door open, not so long ago.
Through it, a person walked in, their silhouette a dark, uncertain shape against the bright light behind them.
When the door closed, all was dark again.
"Is it ready?" Illumi asked, his hand still resting on Killua's forehead.
The silhouette walked toward them, their steps clacking against the stone — the sounds barely reached Killua, muffled by his underwater breathing.
"Yes," the stranger answered. "Phase two can start."
What Killua saw next was a beast that would haunt his nightmares for long, long years. A flower with teeth and thorns, with claws and petals. Dark and discordant and hungry — for him.
When the beast's teeth sank into his skull, Killua screamed. He screamed as it burrowed through his mind, and he screamed as it burned through his past. He screamed, again and again, terror and agony rippling through his throat, and he cried, and he shook, and he bled.
Then, he stilled.
Light came through a small opening in the door, falling on Killua's feet.
His breathing was still, his body void of energy.
His hands were free, but he couldn't move.
Dried blood webbed on his neck, parts of it still wet, cold streams following the bumps and creases on his body.
He turned his head toward his brother by his side. With a groggy voice, Killua asked, "What happened, Aniki?"
Illumi cocked his head on the side, examining his little brother. His cold fingers passed through Killua's hair, graceful and cold as grave. "You were cursed during a mission. Father and I hired a nen exorcist to cure you. You had us so worried, Kil. We thought we had lost you. If we had known that assassination contract was a trap, we wouldn't have sent you."
"A trap?"
"Yes. A rival family, probably. Since you're the heir, they probably wanted to eliminate you — and the competition with it."
Killua's head hurt at those words — the heir. He had always referred to himself as the heir, yet it sounded wrong now. He wasn't sure why. "So I failed?"
"It doesn't matter. It wasn't even a real job. We got conned. But all that matters is that you're safe."
Killua mumbled something he himself wasn't sure of. He passed a hand on his forehead, where a prickling sensation still throbbed. There, he found a cluster of small dents. They were still bloody. "I'm sorry. Where am I now?"
Illumi paused for an instant — then he resumed stroking Killua's hair. For a moment, an unbelievable moment, Killua thought he saw him smile.
"You're home, Kil."
A/N: Here you go! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know in a review what you thought or just if you liked it :D
Next update should come fast since this chapter was short. I hope you look forward to it :3c
Until then, bye!
- Yui
Glossary
Amaranth: Immortality, immortal love
Amaryllis: Pride, immense beauty, success after a hard time
Anemone: Forsaken, sickness (negative), anticipation, undying love. Will close up on themselves during the rain and reopen afterwards
Arborvitae: Everlasting friendship
Aster: Symbol of love, daintiness, talisman of love, trusting
Camelia: Unpretending excellence. Love, passion, deep desire (red). Longing (pink). Adoration (white)
Carnation (pink): Motherhood, a woman's love, a mother's love
Cypress: Death, mourning, despair, sorrow
Dahlia: Elegance and dignity (any color). Dishonesty and betrayal (red)
Eglantine Rose: A wound to heal
Forget-me-not: True love, don't forget me.
Gladiolus: Strength of character, honor, conviction
Laurels: Ambition, success, renown
Lilac (purple): First emotion of love
Lily (pink): Admiration, infatuation, desire
Lily of the Valley: Sweetness, humility, returning happiness, trust
Lobelia: Malevolence
Love-lies-bleeding: Hopelessness
Marigold: Pain and grief
Moonflower: Dreaming of love
Pansy: Thoughts (according to Ophelia of Hamlet), sometimes referring to "lover's thoughts"
Plumeria: Perfection, springtime, new beginnings
Primrose: Eternal love
Rose : True love (red). Desire, passion, joy of life, youth, energy (light pink). Grace (pink)
Rosebud: New love
Snowdrops: Consolation, hope
Sunflower: Pure and lofty thoughts, adoration, longevity, loyalty
Thorn-apple: disguise
Thorns: "Thorns philosophically have always been associated [in dreams] with the stinging emotions like a sting to the consciousness." [1] Pain.
Thistle: Nobility, warning
Wisteria: Welcoming