life sends many gifts to death, and death always receives them. killugon. based off tumblr prompt.
PROMPT - 'life's a bitch and death is...well, death is actually a pretty great guy.'
WARNING - okay so i'm not exactly sure how long this will be ? like, i haven't planned anything out, everything is off the top of my head so this is either gonna be a work of genius or i'm gonna set a mental fire to it in a few months, idk. im just gonna try to write and write everything until i can either split it up or leave it in one chunk. but other than that and my disorganized ass, enjoy.
The first time he meets him after millenia, he's caught in retrograde.
Everything in him follows - every stammering nerve, each butterfly synapse fluttering to life when the boy appears over his shoulder, his breath dragging the darkness from the gallows of his heartstrings, pulls them up through his throat to choke on them. And Life is an elder being, has seen the world unfold beneath his palms, has felt Death;'s kiss on his jaw and knows that this is not his fault, it's not his fault, it's not his -
"Life," the voice is giddy, is filled with more bottled sunbeams than teeth that white should be allowed in a blackened mouth, "it's been years since we split up. The world tree misses you."
He softens his mouth around his words, dusting harp-string fingers over a hallowed cheekbone. The gentle doctor, gasps and swallows life back into him, chest rising once again like a mountain filling with lava, with destruction. the sight makes him smile. "It's only been a couple thousand years. It's not like she needs me anymore anyways; by the way, call...call me Killua now."
"You changed your name?" and here is where he see's him, finally, this fluttering of shadows, this burst of something beautiful between the corkscrews of anger and regret and sorrow. Though his mouth splits with sunlight, his body a bounce of energy, hair stacked like blackthorns around a boyish face, there is no humor here. Death's legs fold on the chair opposite, trailing mud from his boots.
Though Killua can smell the death in them, the life that had been folded in the dirt once, he folds his arm anyways.
"It's really pretty, Killua!"
"Idiot; shut up," roses blossom on snowed skin, tongue poking against the ivory slope of his teeth. He scratches at his cheek, scratches away the billowing of something sweet, something an elder being has no business lying in his chest. He curls inwards, folded paper of a boy, and peers at Death over his arms. "What about you? What's your newest alias?"
"Gon. Gon Freecs," a proud smile pulls his mouth wide, pockets innocence in the corner and he wonders - how has the stench of death not killed your heart along with it? After all these millenia? "I don't know if it suits me to be honest; 'equal.' As if there is anything fair about pulling life out of mortals."
"You are part of the balance, though, so it's kinda fitting. Mine means the exact opposite of my role," Killua sits higher in his seat, throne beneath the beginning of world, life already growing beneath his feet but his hands, his hands turn monstrous. They suddenly shift from softened ivory to deadly claws, veins billowing like uninvited guests. The blood lust comes back, the sudden pleasant yearning in his bones for something to satisfy him.
"It's still pretty."
"I told you to shut up!"
The yell doesn't faze him, doesn't remind him of tsunami's or the earth jaw cracking open along the equator, a bundle of messes he'd once had to clean up. He knows Killua, has laced his fingers with his and pulled the universe into existence beside him. But now, after all these years of lost, of dodging one another, they are in the same hospital room, crowded over a man with too much good to spare, healing hands turning ragged with age.
The atmosphere crumbles into silence, Killua's legs folding at the knee. He peers curiously at the man, a doctor and a friend and a brother to so many, and it aches in Killua's heart to realize, if Gon is here, he may not follow him back to a beating heart, working lungs, blood in his veins. If Gon is here, the doctor may not live.
"How old is he again?"
"62; Leorio Paladiknight; Doctor at Mercy Westeria hospital for over forty years. He's been saving lives long before he got a scalpel between his fingers though," Killua smooths out the wrinkles, both along Leorio's face and bed sheets, as if they are anything but loved, but hard-earned and undeserved. The doctor stirs, only slightly, and it is enough to smudge a smile into Killua's mouth.
Gon keeps his hands to himself; though every other edge of him leans forwards, watches Killua work to make the doctor more comfortable, filling him with more and more fight. However, the smile that mirrors Killua's when he looks up is bittersweet, filled with apologetic sentiment. "Killua...he's fought long enough."
"He still has a family who needs him."
"So do many others," Gon tries to tip toe around the edges, the live wires of Killua held up to the light. If he brushes a nerve though, Gon isn't sure who will be struck by lightning first. "I don't want to take him Killua, I really don't. But he's had a hard life, he deserves some rest."
"He has a -"
"I know," and Gon is tired, filled with ache and sleep, unwanting another conversation like this to split them open for another century again. He tilts his head, brows furrowed in fragrant need for Killua to understand - he will always have to come knocking. "She'll understand; he's been so sick. And she'll be fine, I've seen many women move on from the death of a lover. So have you."
Killua unwinds the stubbornness, the black thorn that tracks a scar over his rattled heart. Slowly, does he pull his hands from between aged fingers, watches how the life in them pales to an ashy grey. "Can we play for him?"
Gon can see the desperation. Can feel it in his own lungs and nods, solemnly, silently.
They play rock, paper, scissors and Leorio Paladiknight doesn't wake up.
"Do you have the six of hearts, because I swear you're cheat -"
"Killua! That's not nice," but there are no earthquakes with him, no tremors that fill the words and split him open at Killua's insinuation; only bleeding starlight. Only happiness as they each exchange a card across a patch of grass. Gon teeters on childhood, looking excitedly around the village filled with life and families and games. "This is a really nice spot; you did well with this area Killua."
"It's not much," he shuffles across the cards, picks out jacks, clubs, red diamonds that spill like blood into the center between them. Gon crows in annoyance, head falling back and revealing the white, ivory column of a throat. It distracts Killua long enough to momentarily forget his words, to feel the static in his mouth. "Just a few acres and wide open spaces for them to set up a life. They're humble; they've never asked me for more."
"They seem nice," comments Gon, hand cradling chin as he peers at them. Clothing etched with ancient design, eyes of spun scarlet. A child runs past, hair a matted mess of gold and leaves, a book held tightly in shaken hands. The sight makes them smile as he trips and stumbles in his haste to disappear into the throat of the forest.
"They are," Killua swaps another card, a queen of hearts sits between his fingers. "They're going to be amazing literary professionals in a couple centuries; the world will gather at their feet for answers. In fact, I'm quite proud."
Even with all this love that spills into the air from his heart, Killua knows. Gon is never somewhere for no reason.
It comes in a hail of hell fire; this pure world goes up in devil smoke. He can feel the buzz in his ribs, the ache that scratches through his eyes as they leave him and disappear down a darkened gullet. The world sits behind the notes of their screams. Oh, how easily his ears ring with their pain.
He is tear-stained when he finds Gon, paused on a blackened stump of a tree, head hung in shame. His hands are locked around something; something gentle and fragile and inexplicably, the last pure thing that resides in the valley of Lukso Province. He looks at Killua, closes his eyes and tries to force them shut with a smile so he doesn't have to watch the life die from Killua.
"You know," and he picks his hands open, dusts off the ash from whatever he has stolen from this place. He presses it into Killua's hands, choking back his darkness when their fingers touch for an accidental moment. Already, Killua can feel the decay in them. "As much as people say you're a bitch, I'm...you can see the life timeline Killua; but this was the best death timeline I could make for them."
Gon leaves through the cacophony, back to the violent screams. And Killua, hands stained with blood, opens his hand to find a red king in his palm.
It is weeks later - he can never leave the ghosts that try to grasp the last remnants of life - when the child returns. He is a shattered mess of full stops, an asterisk in the heartbeat. Mouth full of commas and question marks as he digs at the earth, scrapes it out of itself to lay them to rest within. He spends days, weeks here, ripping the earth apart to create a mausoleum, burning flowers into incense to decorate the graves. Grave stones replaced by sticks, splinters in the hand of a child.
He spends weeks mourning, trying to piece his heart together. And he cries, sobs, for what he has lost, calling out his mother and father's names, his best friend's name, into a place where although ghosts may take refuge, they cannot hear the mournful cries.
One day, Killua sits beside him. One day, Killua breaks taboo and touches a living mortal, threads his fingers through his hair and wipes away the tear-stains. He has been watching for days and has seen enough of the life dripping out of a child to feel much like an elder being any longer. The child curls into him, muttering the boy's name over and over and when Killua takes his face into his hands, looks him in the eyes, finally. He can feel the life coming back to him.
"...Pairo."
"Fight. Live. This does not get to make you a tragedy," he murmurs, pressing the snow-locks of his hair to the golden-threads of the child's. The boy grips Killua's arms, lost in a vision of his best friend's crooked grin once upon a lifetime. "You deserve to keep living."
He does not say, you were meant for more. He doesn't tell him that he can feel him, clawing back to earth, trying to come home to this gentle, rattled heartbeat.
Both boys leave after the child marks an open grave with his own name on it, and leaves it in Lukso Province.
"She's dying you know."
"Mm," Killua cradles a bird in his hand as Gon flits his fingers across dying plants, letting it flutter to life and take to the wind's responsible hands. He watches it for a moment, and settles just in front of the roots of the world tree. he doesn't touch her for a moment, waits for the inviting pulse before he reaches to his knees, leaning forwards and pressing his forehead to her body, and blossoms erupt beneath his loving touch. A tremor runs across her, welcoming him home.
"It's not my doing, I promise," cements Gon when the silence fizzles away, when Killua pulls back but keeps a hand in place.
"No, I know," and the boy stands, sighs around the sun bruise in his chest. He doesn't try to reach for the leaves that come to cradle him, browned and old from age and weather, nor tries to thread the roots of her back together. Instead, he watches Gon, the way he shuffles from foot to foot. How there's a bundle of nerves knotted somewhere in him, that makes him different. That makes that sweet ache that Killua's been feeling for eons swell. "It's quite the opposite, hm?"
"Eh? Well, -"
"Everything that's come for her; weeds, the assassins, all of them. You killed them off one by one so she'd live, so she'd grow," he pats his fingers across her tree-bark-flesh, and hopes that Alluka & Nanika will understand when he leaves for a little while longer. He approaches Gon, finds the honey-combs of his eyes and watches as they fill with tears. "You kept her alive, you kept my sister alive. And, in consequence, you kept me alive. So...thank you, Gon."
"It's not as if you've never done anything like this for me Killua," and that frustratingly, naive, broken smile slits back across that drawstring mouth, the same as when existence crafted and pulled them beside each other for the first time. He teeters on the balls of his feet, fingers clasped behind his back, despite the tears that fall from his eyes. "You did so much for me, have been, all these millenia."
"You were lonely."
"Yeah, but you still didn't have to do that," and he knows what he's saying, knows that Gon has been aware all these lifetimes that Killua has let him win their games, that Killua has let him take the life from mortals so he can take them to beyond, to a place where only Gon can visit. And he knows, by the shine that cascades over his flesh every time they meet up again, that Gon has made so many friends with Killua's gifts.
Killua sighs, shakes his head so the hair falls over his eyes. Though he doesn't have to hide from Gon to know that the other has already seen the tears in his own. "You're such an idiot."
"I know," for the third time in all their lifetimes, in all the existence of the universe, an elder being breaks taboo and touches another. He can smell the decay in him, this sarcophagus boy with too much love and ghosts to spare, when he hooks his finger under his chin. And he knows Gon can call the flutter in Killua to him, that eternal butterfly beat for the incarnation of death.
He guides him into a kiss, eyes closing and following with tears whilst repeating "IknowIknowIknow -" as Killua wraps himself in Gon, as Gon pulls the life to his chest and stays, for millenia, for lifetimes, in Killua's life.
In the end, Life sends Death so many gifts for millenia, for lifetimes. And Death always receives them with a grin.