Warnings: Spollers for ep. 131—148
Disclaimer: Hunter x Hunter belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi.
Killua realizes he leaves many things unsaid.
He's gotten too used to half—truths, sarcasm, little sweet lies like candy melting on his tongue. He's fickle and dishonest, rough around the edges and dirty under the fingernails. His whole life has been like that; as far back as he can remember, he's never been able to speak about what he feels inside. He's always said the opposite of what he really wants to say.
Because he doesn't want people to know the real him. He doesn't want to—doesn't know how to trust anyone. Not even himself.
People only find me interesting because they can't ever tell whether I'm serious or not.
When Killua thinks of his childhood, he remembers silver and blood and darkness, the smell of burnt hair and faint screams echoing in his ears and burning from his throat. The strong shocks of electricity, vomiting from all kinds of different poisons, whipping, cutting—he remembers only the stinging pain, the aching pain, the pain that wouldn't go away.
He remembers black eyes, hard and terrible, so black that they hardly seem like eyes—they are brittle stones cut into a pale face, stones that don't reflect any light, only swallow him up into inky gloom. Plain black. Pitch black.
He knows he cried for them to stop, when he was very young and naive and still hopeful that maybe he could still have a heart.
But Killua knows far more now, that he is older— he's turned himself cold, born himself again, so that he can say it doesn't hurt. So that he can bear it.
Even if he does still know the real Killua, the Killua who is childlike and innocent; deep in his heart, when he feels something other than cold satisfaction or bloodlust over a kill, he realizes he's never been able to describe those unfamiliar feelings. Because the boy in him, the boy that loves and laughs and smiles—is gone. He's gone and dead, and Killua has born himself again, an old soul whose heart is frozen ice.
xxxXxxxxXxxxx
He believes that until he meets Gon.
Gon is everything that he is not; straightforward and honest, his thoughts written plain as day on his face. Perhaps what Killua admires most about him is the way he isn't afraid to say what he feels, that he isn't afraid to tell others what he wants them to know. He doesn't lie. He's true to himself and others.
His eyes aren't black; they are warm honey depths shifting from amber to gold and every shade in between. His eyes aren't darkness; they are light. He isn't tall, he's short. His hair isn't pin—straight, it spikes up in the most absurd way imaginable. Killua knows this boy is an idiot sometimes—all the time—that he should in every way hate how clashing their personalities are. But he doesn't.
Every time he looks into Gon's eyes, he feels a frozen heart melting, little by little. He feels warm. Gon's smile is like the springtime; earnest and sunny and oh so relaxing. Somehow, he feels like a boy again, looking into a brilliantly blazing sun. Gon shines so bright that he must look away.
Killua leaves many things unsaid.
But Gon leaves nothing unsaid.
"In my next life, I want to be me, and meet you again."
"I'll introduce him to Killua, my best friend in the world!"
"You should stay by my side."
"I'm glad I met you."
Stupid. Idiot.
I'm the one who's glad...I got to know you.
He doesn't say the things he wants to; he brushes Gon's words off like they are irritating flies, feigning a mask of sarcasm and annoyance. He wants to reciprocate Gon's honesty somehow, he wants to tell Gon he feels the same way. But he doesn't. He can't. His throat closes up and the air feels too dry and his voice is gone—he leaves many things unsaid.
But Killua believes Gon makes up for his shortcoming—that Gon is his missing piece, the one who says the things that he would leave unsaid.
Gon's words are enough for the both of them.
He's happy, happier than he can ever remember being, happy he's found the one who completes him. The one that won't ever be like him. His light, when he is darkness.
He says these thoughts to himself, sometimes, looking at Gon's sleeping face in the dead of the night; he whispers these things over and over, out loud.
He even yells them out, a voice he never thought he had, later on, to Rammot and then to Palm. He never imagined he'd be able to.
He wishes for the day when he can yell it so Gon can hear.
He wishes he could say something, anything, to keep his sun with him forever.
xxxXxxxxXxxxx
"Let's go."
Killua watches Gon's retreating back, his shoulder blades sharp against the white top, tension written in every movement. It's the back of an adult, tired with the world but keeping himself alive through the sheer hatred and anger built up over years longer than what should be possible. His shoulders suddenly seem so much broader, arms much more muscular, frame much more wiry and tough, as if he alone had held the sky's weight without anyone noticing.
What do you ... Mean... By that?
Killua wants to ask, but there is a lump in his throat, and he can't say a word. He feels a heaviness that is both unexplainable and frightening, as a stone weighs on his heart. He expects—hopes Gon will turn around, those familiar amber coloured eyes sparkling with light, a carefree smile on his face as he grins at Killua, a message that he's glad to have him by his side. A message clear enough so that it doesn't matter that Killua can't speak.
But he doesn't.
He doesn't even look back.
And Killua is afraid, more afraid than he has ever been, because he doesn't see the light in Gon anymore—only darkness. He is afraid because he can't see the sun anymore.
He doesn't know which is worse—that he doesn't know who the person Gon has become is, or that he never knew Gon at all.
And yet, Killua leaves these things unsaid.
xxxXxxxxXxxxx
The first thing he thinks of is Bisky, when he sees the unbelievably muscular figure in the woods, surrounded by immense amounts of aura, amounts that don't seem possible.
But the figure is wearing green, that achingly familiar green, and Killua's heart stops.
Gon?
He feels a sense of undeniable, painstaking dread as he realizes what Gon has done—then, despair floods his heart, and it takes everything in him to not sink to his knees in weakness.
Wild strength and desperation fill him as he leaps with everything he has to push Gon away from Pitou's puppet; he gazes at Gon's eyes, empty and forlorn and wretched and merely a husk of pain and sorrow—he gazes at Gon's eyes and feels his heart breaking.
Gon's eyes are like the winter— frozen and desolate.
It's okay. It doesn't hurt. I'm not trying to be tough. I'm kind of happy… I finally …. Get to be the same as Kite was then.
Killua wants to say something, anything
He wants to say something
He wants to say something
But there are no words for it.
Instead, he screams Gon's name, in an anguished and dismal cry that seems to be ripped out of his very being, ripped out of his broken heart, his broken soul, his broken everything.
He screams Gon's name in an accumulation of everything he has left unsaid, and Gon looks back at him for a moment, a bleak gaze that reminds him of the end of the world, the end of the sun, the end of warmth and the end of earth and all living things and the end of everything except….
Darkness.
Killua doesn't know if Gon understands; later, as he walks slowly back with Gon's limp body, fragile and ravaged, on his back, he doesn't know how it was possible to have his heart shattered in such small pieces. He doesn't know how it was possible to have his sun taken from him in such a small instant.
xxxXxxxxXxxxx
I'm going to save you.
Watching Gon walk away from him to the World Tree, knowing that this may very well be the last time they are together, Killua feels an overwhelming sense of regret.
"Sorry Gon, you're second place."
Even now, he still says the opposite of what he really means; perhaps he will never be able to say the things he wants to say to the most important person of his life.
He watches Gon's back again, receding into the distance, and wonders if he never realized how important it was to say I love you
There are many things left unsaid, and Killua watches Gon, and the sun, disappear over the horizon.
A/N: I had to rewatch part of episode 131 to write this, and I had to step aboard the feels train all over again TT^TT seriously, that has got to be one of the most heartbreaking scenes in anime ever. I just had to write something based on Killua and Gon's relationship, and it is so complex, I feel like I could write so many things about it and not even scratch the surface... I'm just so sad that they had to split up, without feeling like Killua had ever gotten to express his feelings to Gon when he went through so much... that part was really unfulfilling for me. I really hope that they meet again, because I don't think I could live if that was the last time they were together. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, please leave a review because they make me happy :)