[AN] hey, so this is a short two-parter royalty au conspiring of an oc x canon pairing a friend and myself made. her oc is embedded into this, but it primarily follows Kurapika and his journey. this can also be found on my Ao3 account under a different name - Royalty burns a scar into my crown.

WARNING - graphic mentions of blood, death and violence. read at your own caution.


There's a piece of wild between your teeth, arching through the wide Savannah of your tongue and the only way you can tame it is to follow the butterfly home. Royalty au.


Suddenly, he awoke and was running - the world, his world, caving with the threshold of the night and the blue crackle of violence in the air. His sleeping robes clattered around his ankles, knocking beads and loose fabrics together like falling teeth as he unhooked the bokken he kept on his person and sped towards the hall.

He'd retreated to his quarters early, under the laughing bells of his mother's voice as she asked, hand smoothing away the errant locks that never found their way out of his face. The party dragged on into the night, and he could recall his father slipping a kiss into his hair as he sleepily descended into his bed, wishing him a good night's sleep. Those voices were humming at the point of his spine where it met his skull now, an itchy reminder, sending chills down his thrumming skeleton as he circled the labyrinth of the Kurtan home he'd grown in.

As the doors yawned open, he could feel the blast of the fire, of the world he'd grown up in go up in smoke and it felt like he'd been swallowed into the gullet of hell.

He doesn't stay. Hears the cackles of more bodies, doesn't want to watch the burn of Pairo - sweet Pairo, who stole wildflowers from Mairi's window this morning to thread through Kurapika's hair - disappear into ash, nor how his mother and father are slain behind the twin thrones who no longer have owners. He feels his feet scamper, his bokken clatter loosely, though they still dangle. He wants to fight but he is only a boy in borrowed robes.

And when he catches that face, the face of the allied Genei Ryodan empire's King, standing over his father's corpse, at the bloodied tendrils of his mother's hair with a bag dripping red between his fingers, he feels unimaginable rage. Lets it curl and fester as he catches his eyes, lets it work it's way to the sneer of his mouth like a wound working out the disease. But he is only a boy in borrowed robes, and he cannot stay and fight on this hallowed ground littered with his clansmen.

And the boy runs.

The forest that circles their - his land swallows him, accepts him into it's belly with thorns and shadows scratching into his skin. His robes are pulled and frayed, and blood and mud splatters him when he trips and breaks skin. The tears blind him, distort this forest he's played in, climbed it's trees in, until those same trees look like hands grasping for his throat, fingers itching for his ribs.

Kurapika remains in the forest for three days, finds shelter in hollowed trees and nests for Boar-Hawks, has trouble with finding water. He is still mourning, still reeling from the death of his fallen clan when the world tips sideways and his back digs into the rocks of the picked-apart forest path.

A scream catches on the walls of his teeth, but a hand closes over his mouth. The fingers are long, gaunt from lack of nourishment and reach over the bend of his jaw with little effort, and he turns his gaze skyward. For a moment, his heart jumps like a drum has been punched, because the blond stares at the face of a butterfly. Long wings spread out and white and purple circling the bends of it's fragile body. The blond tries to list in the back of his mind, due to his large knowledge, of what species this could be that has the face of an animal and the body of a human.

But, like coming out of a nap, he realizes it's a mask and the person behind it is human - he knows through the way the head moves, how the eyes beneath the butterfly's own narrow with an intensity he's only seen his hand-maid, Rejiki show when he'd tried to wriggle him into his schooling, from what life that feels like it's been eons since he's lived it. The clothes are loose, hanging by threads and forest grass to keep them on the slim waist of the person.

"Rajia no kyo?" the voice licks the words with it's uncertainty, high-pitched and instantly identified as a female to the Kurta. It takes him a moment to connect the unsure language to something he knows, and the boy gestures to the hand. They don't remove it right away, but only down his face until the hand can grip his throat.

He swallows, this boy of royal blood turned to mud. "Maiija...Maiija cano Kurapika. Torou plena te c'hal, menda."

The butterfly pauses, and slowly, the body unbends, legs that had been placed on both his sides uncurl like coiled springs, the hand leaves his throat and he lifts a hand to rub it. When the butterfly is only an arm's length away, he tries his hand at the language again.

"Tenma lechau?"

The butterfly's eyebrows furrow. "Tenma?"

"Common."

"Yes; I speak it." Relief floods through his chest like a tidal wave returning home, but the butterfly does not share this relief. Instead, their body language hardens, their shoulders tighten and the Bo staff in their hand shakes with how hard they grip it. Kurapika can feel the air crackle, spit fire between the two. "Are you a royal?"

The question catches around the middle, scores a scar into his chest where the empty space of his clan had taken refuge in, where the pain had not smoothed over just yet. The word 'royal' sets a wave for him, the lessons he learned with Pairo, the trouble they had thrown themselves into with laughter in their mouths. How they talked of leaving their home one day for an adventure, and to fix the pain behind Pairo's eyes.

With the sound of his best friend's laughter in his ears, he spreads his hands like wavering flags to the butterfly. "I was once."

He hadn't expected pain to explode within his jawline and the world to turn dark.

When he wakes, there's a face staring into his. The blond jumps, throws obscenities from his tongue like firecrackers have been bred from the wet of his mouth and doesn't realize that he's swung at a child (and thankfully missed) until there's laughter. And it is loud and booming and feels like sunlight in every direction. Kurapika stills, finds his eyes turn wide as the child folds his legs like a lotus, and ignores the way the Kurta stares at him until he quiets.

Red blooms on the child's browned cheeks, and he lifts a hand to scratch nervously through the blackthorns of his hair. "Ah, I should've known. You're probably scared, but you don't need to be. We won't hurt you."

From where he's laden down with Cabarrera leaves, Kurapika raises a brow. "W-We?" The scratch of his throat feels like nails in his voice, and the child stands to offer him water, which he gulps like a horse in the sun, eliciting another bout of laughter.

"Yeah, this is our home; we're Hunters." Kurapika knows of these people - they live in grasslands, in forests where they build homes from leaves and mud. They remind him of the simple-beginnings of his clan, how they turned corn-crumbs into meals for their children; but Hunters are frightful creatures. They are not fond of royals, no matter what branch of nobility they are from, and his clan had never turned to killing, but that matters little here. So Kurapika shuffles slightly in his seat, and knows not to talk of his origins. Thankfully, the child doesn't see to notice the sudden wariness, as he lifts a hand to the back of his neck to scratch idly, still talking amicably.

"I'd take you to see the village, but I'd have to change your leaves and that'd be a pain for both of us, and you're not well enough yet," then, his expression changes to a thoughtful one, lips pursing as he surveys the other's jaw where leaves fold over it. "Gee, Nemo really did a number on you."

"N-Nemo?"

He doesn't miss a beat. "The butterfly."

Ah. Her. "And you, child?" When the child holds the cup to his mouth again, this time filled with a sweetener that tastes like the tea of his home, he grips it with both hands.

Immediately, the child brightens, an endless well of energy and Kurapika quickly decides he is rather taken with the young boy, despite him being a Hunter. "I'm Gon Freecs! And who're you?"

It's been a while since he's had to introduce himself, and with a smile, he decides he likes this sort of exchange. With gracefulness borrowed from the bones of his mother, wherever she may lay now, he straightens his back and crosses an arm diagonally across his chest, a log against vines. "I am Kurapika; it is a pleasure to meet you, Gon-san."

And he chatters with Gon, finds a friend in a boy that breathes positivity into the small room he's been tucked into. Halfway through their conversation, three others join. A tall man who, if he hadn't been corrected, could've been Gon's older brother with the similar complexion and black-thorned hair. This man, Leorio, is the physician of the small village, and barks at Kurapika when he moves away as he tends his wounds. He notices, that like the butterfly girl, this man also wears a mask - it is of a boar, with thick ears and an elongated snout that he doesn't remove.

The other two are siblings, and look nothing like Gon and Leorio, with pale skin and hard faces. But the elder, the brother Killua, has a bundle of snow for hair on his head and sharp eyes that carve out Kurapika as he assess' him. His younger sibling, who he introduces as both Alluka and Nanika at collected intervals, though he only see's one child, has long hair brushed back by a band and an innocence he's only seen in Gon and Pairo. And their face is half painted - one side of a human, the other of a doll with black lips and eyelids. Alluka presses food into his hands, whilst Killua ruffles Gon's hair and they descend into a fight within the small room.

But he can tell, that these two children, though alight with a fire he's never met, have been caught in the teeth of the darkest shadows from the way the light plays off on the hollow of their cheekbones, and the soundless steps of their shoes.

It's two weeks later, when the sunlight bleeds a golden square through the flapping doorway of the room, and finds it's a hut within a circle of them, and the villagers greet him gently, but their body language speak scriptures; how they turn away when he's guided by kinder hands through their home. When Gon introduces him to Mito-san, a woman with dark skin and a bumblebee mask, she smiles warmly, but still threads her hands over Gon's torso when he leans against her. A warning wrapped in hardened flesh.

"We've met men like you, boy," she says, when Gon, Killua and Alluka have disappeared to scale the walls that run around a particular part of their garden. He notices, she won't bless him with a name, and her eyes dart beneath the bumblebee mask. "Gon's father, Ging - my cousin - he was a royal too, or at least in close enough encounters to be considered one. He promised a better life for us, for his son when he was old enough to find him."

But the Kurta can tell that that is not all that there is to this story; he is still between chapters, still caught in the plot as the curve of her jaw sets, and her head lifts higher. "But because of him, we had to leave our home. Because of Ging, Gon no longer has a father. We aren't fond of royals inside our forest. So tell me, boy - what is stopping us from getting rid of you?"

"Nothing," he concludes, and his head drops, bows in respect to this sandstorm of a woman. She becomes stationary, and Kurapika knows he's shocked her. Then, with the modesty he has gathered in the short time he has been in their care, and no longer a King's son, he crosses his arm over his chest, and bows to the bumblebee. "I have done nothing to warrant your care - I have eaten your food, taken your medicine and slept in rooms that were never mine. I am but a fallen king - no, a prince that never got the throne. My people were kind, and I don't know of the wrongs that have been done to you, but I would...I would like to help fix them, if I would be permitted too."

"You wish to stay?"

The voice is new, but not unfamiliar. The blond turns, comes face-to-face with the butterfly. She handles a bundle of wood, but her grip is slack like her jaw, mouth pulled open like a tidal wave breaking free. There's a beat and Kurapika nods.

"Why?"

"I would like to help, to pay back what I have been given. And to learn."

The butterfly does nothing for a moment, voice caught in the bars of her throat. Then, promptly, sh glides forwards until she stands in front of him. From here, he can see things he didn't before - the freckles on her bare shoulder blades, a scar over her collarbone. The wisps of purple hair as the wind breathes.

Then, there's a weight, and a rumble of wooden limbs knocking together. She presses the wood into his hands and places her own on her hips. "Then this is where you start," she says, and turns to Mito-san, lips plucking into a smile. "Mito-san, we're going to get some more firewood. Tell Gon I'll be back soon!"

"You do realize you'll have to train this child, Nemo-san? And talk to Netero-sama?"

"Hai, but I can handle him!" and with laughter against the back of her teeth, Nemo turns to him, and gestures her head to the mouth of the forest. "Come on then, royal. We've got to get some firewood."

So Kurapika stays.

and Kurapika learns.