title: broken limits
summary: Killua knows broken. He builds himself back up, until he can't, and then there's Alluka to help pick up the pieces. Killua knows broken, and he knows this isn't it. This is something missing, and for all the limits on the world he doesn't know what.
a/n: hello. It's a weekend and I'm getting this out, and it's looking good for me. I got A solids for Chemistry and English, now I just have to get rid of next week and I can start crunching the responsibility for the finished but unpolished projects in the corner.
This is basically an almost-AU where Killua just doesn't let himself think about Alluka because of Illumi's needle, memories are mysteriously swiped, and Alluka is the most patient person on earth. It was meant to be a Killua character study involving his sister but it evolved to this and I have no idea what moves my fingers these days honestly.
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There are only so many things he can do before he snaps like a broken rubber band past its limit – past its boundaries keeping it together, within its very coils. There's something odd about how the universe is created with limits, of all things, in mind, because as far as the crude eye of humanity can see the universe is infinite. It does not have limits. It does not have boundaries keeping the stars apart and together or squeezing the planets into one whole.
He is waiting to find his.
Killua does not look up at the stars to wistfully sigh or take his hands out of his pockets or close his eyes for the briefest moments of rest; he is on a job. There are no other reasons and there doesn't have to be. It is engraved within his muscle memory and he can only ignore it so much back at home, much less here in the dark of an alleyway waiting for his wayward target.
What is his limit, and where is it?
He is acquainted with the feeling of being broken; an ugly writhing of a wracking self, agonizing knives shooting up the insides of his arms and the shatter of his previous reality to be molded into the now, the now that exists, to discard the mold that had been so kind to shield him from the world. Every time he's broken, it's one more step to the truth, and he doesn't want the truth. He wants to forget every moment but he remembers everything with a frightening clarity.
He is acquainted with the feeling of being broken until he is nothing but scattered shards, and then he is built back up up up and he doesn't know how to discern him and the other him, the one that smiles as he slashes his fingers through a particularly tough neck and laughs at the feeling of temporary, caged freedom. It isn't real. He isn't real but he is. And isn't that always the most confusing part?
When nothing is real?
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Alluka is better. He knows Alluka. Alluka knows him. Knows how he cries at night and screams for it all to stop. Knows how he stops doing it, after a while, knowing it won't make things better. Knows how he laughs in his sleep and wishes for it to go on forever and ever and ever until he is neck-deep in blood that is not his, that never will be his. Knows how he sighs, how he grits his teeth and walks along, just because he has nothing better to do.
He knows how she talks to something in her head, as if Nanika is a someone. Knows that Nanika is a someone, knows that she's just as human as they are, knows better. Knows how she lies awake at night chattering about stars and how she'd like to see them and he'd tell her all about them.
It isn't pain, with Alluka. It's gentle and it's warm and it's – it's nice. It isn't jagged edges pasted together inch by rotting inch. It's broken pieces, building up and up and up and framed into glass, healing and healing until he's nearly whole. She's wonder. It's not a hard job to see how much he loves his sister, and it might take a few years to realize it's the same with the other one in his sister, too.
He'll be a good big brother.
He swears it.
.
It's a promise that doesn't last.
Alluka won't know him anymore.
.
There are moments when he is tired, when he cannot walk forwards, pushing towards a bleak void where he has no control. He knows he isn't right. It's been a long time since he's known what's right.
He keeps looking and looking and looking, because he knows what broken is and he knows that this isn't broken, this is something missing, that won't be replaced. It can't, because he can't find it anymore, and if anything, he won't. He just won't let himself.
It's a strange feeling.
Laughter bubbles up in his throat. Things are boring now, now more than ever and oh, so so little time until he finally snaps without that little rubber band kept on his little finger made with childish promises and regrets.
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a/n: I had to go and re-edit this because FF just wouldn't cooperate with normal line breaks on my mobile so I have to go back and put in the dots. And then somehow the summary ended up lost somewhere in there. Also FF ate my italics. Until next time.