As I mentioned in the summary, this is my first fic ever! Criticism and reviews are greatly appreciated so I can know if this story is good and what I can do to improve. ^.^ Thanks!


Killua was absentmindedly sharpenening his talon-like nails against a blade when he got the call: 24th Street, The Blacksmith's Guild club, 9:00PM, Assassinate Reiji Ashitori, son of the leader of an up-and-coming drug cartel based out of Yorknew City. The reward was two million Jenny and a tip on a potential, powerful Nen exorcist. Killua's ears twitched. Maybe this Nen user could survey the ocean and find the loophole he had been unable to locate a year ago. He threw on a black hoodie that cloaked his face and quietly left the hotel room.

Despite being an underground club, The Blacksmith's Guild sported high ceilings, chandeliers cascading downward creating the soft ambiance of a medieval chamber. The music was hypnotic, and lights flashed on the moving bodies below on the dance floor. Killua surveyed it all from a crevice in the ceiling that seemed to be in place for chandelier maintenance workers. Killua's demeanor did not betray any consideration to the importance of this job. He leaned back into the cement and closed his eyes, enjoying the view of general debauchery. He felt no fear of death going into this job or any other job he had taken and that's what made him so successful. In a fourth of a second he was on the ground, in the shadows, walking casually toward Ashitori. In two more minutes, he would push his way through the crowd to Ashitori and his bodyguards. There, it would take him approximately a sixteenth of a second to move behind the guards and pierce Ashitori's heart. His mouth curled into a frightening grin, and then it would take him just another second to be on the roof, heart in hand and ready to hear whatever lead his client had on the Nen exorcist.

It wasn't necessarily that Killua wasn't paying attention to his surroundings; but, rather, he was confident in his reaction time that if anyone were to engage in hostile behavior toward him, kanmuru would kick in and he'd be out of the club before anyone could register anything different. But as Killua closed in on the last 15 seconds before reaching Ashitori's bodyguards, he felt a hand on his arm and he did not expect that to happen. He paused, becoming as still as death, still shrouded in his cloak, and turned.

And faced what looked like the confused face of a 23-year-old version of Gon Freeces.


The two young men stared at each other for approximately three full seconds. Gon's hand remained on Killua's arm tentatively yet instinctively, and his dark amber gold eyes probed the shadows underneath Killua's hoodie. It was clear that Gon had surprised even himself in his unconscious decision to reach out to this seemingly, otherwise unidentifiable man. For Killua, the three seconds dragged on slowly, and he was paralyzed, mind filled with only static buzz. In the face of potential threat, Killua embraced his typical tactical move—he grabbed the heart and ran.

Gon reacted to the scene a few seconds later and traced Killua's scent—what had brought him to touch Killua in the first place—to the roof of the club. A furious swirl of wind was just dying down, when the trail suddenly went cold—Gon scratched his head—going skyward? He pulled out his cell phone (still the same beat-up ladybug device from his childhood) and dialed the number to the Hunter Association's System Intel Service.

"Hi, yes, this is Gon Freeces checking in," he said, still sniffing the air for any clue as to Killua's whereabouts. "No, I was unsuccessful in apprehending the man. Someone got to him before me." There was a pause on the other end before the voice began speaking again. Failure to complete a job was something new to Gon's record.

"Actually, I was wondering about the man," Gon interrupted. "Ah, yes, the man who intercepted my job. Do you have any records of assassins in the area?"

The operator paused for just a second before beginning to recite a list of all the assassins in the Yorknew area.

"Sorry," Gon interrupted again. "Would you mind listing off only the most notorious assassins? Preferably the ones with the largest number of kills over the shortest period of time."

The operator paused once more and then listed off a much shorter list of names.

"Great!" Gon replied cheerfully, ignorant as always of social cues. "Do you mind emailing the files of those people to me?"

The operator sighed and had just started to ask for Gon's email address when Gon promptly hung up. An errant hair lopped down into his face, tickling the inner part of his eye, and Gon huffed the hair back into place. It was then that he noticed the wind previously whirling about the rooftop had quieted to still silence. With furrowed brows, Gon scratched his wild lob of hair and took off, jumping building after building back, nose lifted skyward.


Killua stared emptily out the window that made up the entirety of the outer wall of his penthouse suite, which overlooked the whole of Yorknew City. Slowly, he sharpened his claws against his favorite knife. He was waiting for his client to follow up with more information regarding the Nen exorcist, and his thoughts focused almost entirely on the predicting what news he would receive and how he would move forward in his single mission: to reunite with Alluka. There was, however, the smallest sliver of thought reserved to revisiting his encounter with Gon only a few hours before. Every time Killua tried to revisit the scene, however, he would experience a blinding headache, as if some part of his mind was rejecting the reappearance of Gon into his life, as if he couldn't handle to face anyone from his past. In spite of the pain, Killua couldn't help but think something was wrong about the way that his mind instinctively rejected any contemplation of the event and any thought of his past life.

Before Killua could come to any further conclusions, he heard a knock at the elevator. Killua froze—this was the second time of the night he had been surprised by something. His En covered the entire floor of the penthouse by default; and, his heightened awareness, his En had been covering the entire building and a quarter mile radius surrounding the premises. The intercom buzzed, and Killua heard an uncertain, deep yet still somewhat childlike voice, echo throughout his minimally furnished apartment.

"Killua? Is that you? Are you there? It's me, Gon."

Killua's eyes widened in shock, and he immediately became hyperaware of the fast beating of his heart and the excruciating pain in the middle of his forehead. His silence lasted for only a few minutes before Gon beeped back over the intercom.

"Killua, I can smell that you're there," Gon's voice said accusingly. "I'm not leaving until you let me in."

Still more silence. Killua tightened his hoodie defensively.

"Killua," Gon's voice started to rise. "If you don't let me in now, I will force this door open and—"

The elevator door chimed and the doors slowly opened. Killua's violent headache seemed to pause temporarily, or maybe Killua was just distracted confirming to himself what he had seen only a few hours before. His face was still shrouded under the hoodie, but Gon caught a glint of icy blue eyes for a split second. That was all the confirmation that Gon needed. He leapt from the elevator, embracing Killua in a hug that would shatter any normal human's bones. Tears poured down his face as he exclaimed his shock and happiness at their reunion.

"Killua!" Gon shrieked in delight, seeming just as much the same 14-year-old boy who had left Killua so long ago. "I knew it was Killua! Well, I didn't know for sure to be honest. I was surprised I even walked up to Killua. I caught the tiniest scent from Killua in the wind. I've been training my sense of smell to be even better than before. If I hadn't known what Killua smelled like from before I don't think I would have recognized him. Killua's Zetsu is so good that that's what tipped me off. I smelled a person but no aura."

Gon continued to babble, walking Killua into his own living room, still embracing Killua in his bone-breaking hug.

"But why didn't Killua respond to any of my messages? After Ging and I met at the World Tree, he took me on one of his archaeological trips to these ruins actually close to your home, but north of it. I wasn't much use I think because at that point I still hadn't gotten my Nen back, but you wouldn't believe the birds that we saw there!"

At this point, Gon had planted Killua in a chair, and he was standing in front of Killua, gesturing wildly and reenacting some of his favorite scenes during his time with Ging and beyond. But Killua didn't hear anything of Gon's adventures. All Killua could do was stare at this person who was his best friend and wonder exactly why he couldn't feel happy to see him. Something was holding him back, but what?

It was Gon, the boy with whom he had trusted his life, to whom he had given everything as a best friend and yet still was turned away. No matter how fast Killua had become, he always would be rendered immobile by the memory of Gon's blank, cold stare when he had transformed forcibly into an older version of himself to defeat Pitou back in the battle with the Chimera Ants. And now here was a young man on the path to looking much more like that man. Gon had grown like a bean sprout, only a few inches short of Killua's tall frame. But what Gon lacked in height he made up many times over in his sheer bulk, muscles still somehow straining even in Gon's loose clothing. His hair was longer, and his face scruffier, more chiseled and masculine. But his eyes were still the same warm, amber gold, and his laugh, although deeper, still retained the childlike simplicity of their past.

Killua snapped out of his reverie when he realized that Gon had stopped moving and was waving his hands in front of Killua's face.

"Killua? Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Icy blue eyes locked with warm amber, but Killua's blank expression did not betray his inner turmoil of thoughts. He allowed himself to stare at Gon for five seconds before turning to sharpen his claws once more against the knife, eyes wandering over the expanse of the city outside the window once more.

Gon reached a hand out to Killua.

"Killua, what happened—"

In what seemed like a flash to Gon, Killua was leaning against the window facing away from Gon, still sharpening his claws as if he hadn't moved an inch. He was still staring out of the window, but his closeness to the window inadvertently adjusted his focus so that the hardness of his eyes met their reflection.

"Nothing," Killua's deep, muted voice rang through the apartment. He stopped sharpening his claws for a moment and turned to Gon.

"You should leave."

Gon fidgeted in place, watching Killua return to his sharpening. He walked up to Killua and grabbed both of his shoulders, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Killua!" Gon said forcibly with pain. "Don't make me leave."

Killua's eyes widened for a sixteenth of a second, Gon's words triggering a flashback to when they last met at the World Tree. Killua remembered his trembling hands, stuffing them in his pockets as he walked away with Alluka on his arm, repeating over and over again in his head, "Don't make me leave. Don't make me leave."

Gon was hugging him now, and Killua could feel the warm dampness of tears on his shoulder. His forehead was throbbing now, instinct telling him to run away but heart telling him yet again that something was irreparably wrong.

Arms hanging loosely at his side, Killua lowered his head away from Gon's embrace, looking outside once more.

"Fine," he said quietly, extracting himself from Gon's embrace and shutting the door to his bedroom, the sudden flow of water signaling a shower.

Stepping into the shower, Killua sucked in the water vapor and blew out mist to shroud the expansive, golden-lit bathroom. He felt safer in his mist, wrapped up in his thoughts, and the mist soothed the pervasive headache that had consumed him since his first encounter with Gon. Resting his head against the coolness of the shower tiling, Killua lifted a hand to the bridge between his eyes and nose and closed his eyes tightly, willing both his thoughts and headache to disappear. Numbness followed, and the headache lifted. Mind emptied, Killua reached for the soap, eyes hollow and alone.

Five minutes later (the equivalent of a thirty minute shower for Killua), he stepped lightly from the shower, brushing the last of watery residue from his hair with a flick of wind from his hand and pulled on a pair of silky pants. He opened the door to the shower, his misty cocoon streaming outward, and saw Gon facing away from him, fast asleep on his bed. Rather than confront the pains of his headache again, Killua sighed, grabbing spare pillows and sheets from his closet and opting to sleep on the sofa out in his living room.

Gon flipped over and stared at the closed door sadly. Whatever had happened to Killua, Gon deduced, it was going to take him a long time to fix. But that's what friends were for, right?