His eyes ached, even now, even after so, so long...they throbbed, they pained him, in a way no one could understand. They ached from tears shed and from tears unshed, and they ached from sorrow, from anger, from fear, from hatred. He ached, right down to his bones, physically, emotionally. But he couldn't stop, not even for a moment, because if he did he knew he would crash, he would fail, and worst of all he might forget.
What was it he had said, ages ago?
"I do not fear death; I only fear that my rage will fade over time."
He mustn't ever, ever forget; he mustn't stop. It's easier to keep up momentum than to start it back up after crashing, falling.
Failing.
The word echoed in his mind, a tumult of thoughts floating around it.
"We accept everything, so take nothing back."
A bloody piece of paper. Spiders. Thirteen. They crawled around in his mind, but two of them were ghosts and one of them was chained to his soul. A fourth was not a spider at all, but an illusion, one that smirked and chuckled and infuriated, fading in and out of his subconscious, not important enough to be fixated on but too dangerous to ignore.
He saw the dead, always. Flashes behind his eyes, nightmares full of fire and blood and chains that weren't real, not really, and at the end a chill always hit him; like the snapping of the wind on a frosty day - or the snapping of a cold, brittle chain no longer attached to a beating heart. He wondered if spiders held funerals, like the kind he had, 128 graves hand dug and individually prayed over.
Did spiders gouge the eyes out of their dead? No, he knew, though they'd had no scruples about taking them from his. He stared at his own eyes, sometimes, watching them shift and swirl, colours moving and melting until his irises glowed eerily, the bloody scarlet hue that was sometimes the only thing that reminded him he was alive. Alive, and a shell. But a shell with a purpose.
Go to hell, a ghost whispered, hanging like mist in the air behind him.
Kurapika blinked wearily at his reflection, watching a tear run down his cheek without feeling it. The fire in his eyes blazed and flickered, and chains clinked as he clenched his fist.
No. Not yet.