A Treatise on Hope and Despair
a Hunter x Hunter fanfic
by volta arovet
They had made a mistake.
That was what Franklin thought--what his intuition said, at least. He wished he could speak to Machi about it, but last he'd seen she was on the far side of the village, reattaching Phinx's ear. She was so much better at knowing when something had gone wrong.
It hadn't been a mistake to attack the Kurota. No, that was the right thing to do. Anyone who had seen Ubogin's toothy grin or heard Boronef's wind-filled song or seen Dancho's face light up as he gazed at the crimson eyes would agree.
It was a good battle, with none of the usual regrets. Women and men had fought with equal fury, and even children had proven themselves worthy when their eyes gained the Kurota glow. They had found their place in the land that warriors go to--so Phinx said, anyway, and a limping Nobunaga had agreed with him.
But they had made a mistake. Something had been off in the last house Franklin had been in. It had been one of the last strongholds in the village. (He said 'stronghold' but it was really just a thick-walled house with two moderately skilled fighters in it.) They had fought, and they had died, and there was little else Franklin could say about it, except.
Except that there had been a moment when his bullets had strayed and pierced one of the walls, and they had--if not faltered, then perhaps itwitched/i a bit. Anyway, Franklin hadn't felt any killing intent from behind the wall, so he hadn't investigated. He had one body per arm, and that was more than enough.
He lumbered through the town, casually taking in the destruction and the flowers alike. When he reached the town hall--their group's makeshift headquarters--he nudged open the door with his elbow and, with surprising delicacy, set the bodies on the floor.
"Two more," Franklin said, since Medochin's back was to him.
"Thanks a bunch, hon," she chirped, snipping her scissors merrily. "I'll get to them in a tic."
Franklin nosed his way into the next room and froze for a moment when he saw the blond hair--but that was just Shalnark, who was hardly more dangerous now than when he'd become Quoll's tiny shadow three years before. Upon reflection, it was foolish to mistake him for one of the Kurota, since beyond his baby face he was promising to grow into a relatively tall man, and his hair was far too mussed for the fastidious Kurota.
"Hey, Franklin," Nobunaga said, waving his free hand. The other one was busy wrapping a bandage around his leg. "How goes the hunt?" Shalnark glanced up at Franklin, gave him a courtesy smile, then focused back on his laptop.
"There's two more," Franklin rumbled. He added, "I think that may be the end of them," when it felt like more was expected of him.
"How are they?" Quoll asked, turning from the bottled pair of eyes he had been gazing at. Dancho's eyes were dark and warm and his tiny smile made Franklin's heart leap--would make anyone's leap, because that's who Dancho was.
"They're nothing special," Franklin confessed, resisting the urge to fiddle with his fingers' chains.
"Ah," Dancho frowned, turning back to the glass. "I suppose it's not unexpected to end this on a quiet note, though there are many who find utter despair attractive."
"Despair is not a pretty thing," Franklin said softly. "It was better when they had hope, rather than merely delusions."
"Mm, perhaps" Dancho said, and smiled again.
"Bonus points for the zen," Nobunaga said, and snickered. Franklin shrugged.
Ubogin barged through the doors like a gunslinger into a saloon. "I got you a gift! Can you guess what it is?" he roared.
He reached into his pocket and, with great showmanship, removed a plastic baggy containing two eyes. He plopped it on the desk next to Shalnark. "That's forty eyes! Did I get the record?"
Shalnark glared at him. "How many times do I have to tell you? You've got to bring the body too! How am I supposed to fill out these forms without it?"
"You're the smart one, I'm sure you can figure it out," Ubogin said, reaching out to ruffle Shalnark's hair.
"Ew! Don't touch my hair!" Shalnark screeched, ducking away from the admittedly disgusting, blood-encrusted palm.
"You know," Nobunaga drawled, "even if you get him mad, his eyes aren't going to change colors."
"Really?" Ubogin said as Quoll laughed.
"Well..." Nobunaga said. The two shared a pointed look.
"Hey, in that case, let me help you out," Ubogin said, neatly lifting Shalnark's laptop from under his protesting fingers.
"What are you--don't just--wash your hands!" Shalnark yelled as Ubogin merrily hunt-and-pecked his way through the eyes' previous owner's basic stats.
Franklin chuckled and would have moved to save Shalnark if Feitan hadn't chosen that moment to walk in. He was small and quiet as usual, good at staying unnoticed, even with the old man's body hoisted about his neck. Something in the line of his body told Franklin that this was bad news.
"Dancho?" Feitan said. "We have problem."
He let the body hit the ground; the old man gasped at the impact, a sound that was more instinct than pain. Franklin instantly realized what he had missed.
"Uh, Feitan?" Nobunaga said, drawing his sword as he rose from his seat. "You kind of forgot to kill the old guy. Let me get that for you." His blade flashed through the air as he quick-stepped across the room, one, two, three.
"Stop," Quoll said, and, unsurprising except for its swiftness, Nobunaga did.
Quoll knelt by the old man, fingers pressing into paper-thin skin, and gently turned his face to the light.
His eyes were green.
Quoll frowned.
"It's okay," Feitan said. "I can fix."
"Don't worry. We've just got to make him mad, right?" Nobunaga sheathed his sword and used the butt of it to poke the old man. "Hey, old guy. Someone's sitting in your favorite chair and going through your stuff. They're not selling Crystal Zetsupop anymore."
He paused, looked for a reaction, decided to pull out the big guns.
"They voted Mimirin off of Padokean Idol last night."
No reaction.
Franklin rubbed his temples and sighed. "I don't think that's going to work, Nobunaga."
Nobunaga shrugged and backed away, muttering that it would have worked on him.
"Don't worry," Feitan said again, more emphatically. "I will fix."
"Do it," Quoll said, lifting the old man from the ground and placing him in Feitan's outstretched arms.
Feitan looked around, then headed towards one of the back rooms. "I will go back here. Screams may be distracting for you," he said, nodding in deference to those working on the laptop.
Franklin followed Feitan, assisting him with the door and righting the chair that had been tipped over on the floor. "Need help with anything?" Franklin asked as they settled the old man into the chair. He found a length of rope and bound the man's feet and hands to the chair, thick fingers quickly tying the rope into clever knots. He was still feeling a bit guilty over his slip.
"Perhaps a good pair of pliers?" Feitan mused, then shook his head. "No, is best to improvise."
Franklin debated asking if Feitan's techniques had ever worked on catatonic men before, but instead simply said, "Good luck," and left him to do as he pleased.
He was thankful to see that Nobunaga and Ubogin had left while he was in the other room. He wondered if they had been chased out, or if they had read the writing on the wall and decided that when Dancho was in a bad mood, the correct place to be was Anywhere Else. Both were likely.
He settled himself into a corner of the room and waited. Things were quiet, and the room was noisy in its quietness. Dancho tap-tap-tapped on the glass of his favored pair of eyes, a book open but unread on his lap. Shalnark's keyboard clicked with the steady but erratic pattern of raindrops. Faintly, from the building's vestibule, he could hear Medochin's absent-minded humming and the sharp snip-snip-snip of her scissors. Occasionally, Medochin would deliver another pair of eyes and set of data for Shalnark.
From the back room, there was the occasional silver hiss of metal on skin, a popcorn snap of broken bone, a thud, a groan, a sigh. There was little to indicate that Feitan's subject was alive, let alone conscious of what was being done to him.
Dancho's mood grew darker.
After several hours, Pakunoda returned, the neat tapping of her heels adding a new bit of percussion to the collection of sounds. She and Quoll talked quietly for a few minutes, and then she entered the back room. All was quiet for a few minutes more.
"I've seen this before," Franklin said, rumbling voice finding echoes in the domed ceiling. Quoll's head turned to look at him, and even Shalnark cocked his ear to listen. "When I did some freelancing for The War, I saw comrades who had lost everything, like he had. They just shut down, like they couldn't hear or see or feel or care about anything anymore."
"What did you do?" Quoll asked.
"Nothing," Franklin said. "Nothing worked. They spent the rest of their lives just thinking about the past. Eventually, they just died--of dehydration, I think. I don't know anyone who came back from it. In the end, we just killed anyone who ended up like that."
"That's not what I hoped you'd say," Quoll said, frowning again.
"I know," Franklin said, and added, "I'm sorry."
Pakunoda exited the room, Feitan following close behind. "Any leads?" Franklin asked.
"Just faces of the dead," Pakunoda said, brushing a thin strand of hair from her face. She looked tired, like she would be carrying her heels in her hand if there were fewer witnesses in the room. "I'm sorry, but this might be a dead end."
"I will think of Plan B," Feitan said, and settled down to clean his blade.
"What if--" Shalnark began, and blushed. "No, never mind," he blustered, but everyone was already looking at him.
"Go ahead," Quoll said.
Shalnark turned to Franklin. "Would you mind watching over the old guy for a little while? Just sit in a corner and do that," he wiggled his fingers, "'I'm-just-part-of-the-wall' thing?"
"If it will help," Franklin said, and lumbered into the dark back room. The old man didn't look at him, didn't cringe. His heartbeat didn't even change.
He sat, and he waited.
Franklin thought about how strange it was that he'd never really thought about Shalnark. Not really. There didn't seem to be much to the boy. He was smart in a book sense, generally cheerful, moderately powerful in a trained-but-still-green sort of way. Not nearly on the same level as the phantom troupe and its leader, in either power or eccentricities. He was normal, for lack of a better word. The only strangeness about him was his lack of strangeness, and perhaps the fact that he had wriggled his way into the troupe.
The sounds from the next room changed. There was a faint rustling for a while, and then things were quiet.
The light shining under the crack of the door went out.
Franklin waited.
He wondered if it would be best to simply kill the old man now, tell Dancho he'd just stopped breathing. He could do it without leaving any marks--or, at least, marks that couldn't be distinguished from Feitan's. Dancho would be upset, but it was better than letting him give into his obsession and risk their being here for another week. The mission had already lasted three days. Staying longer would risk outside attention, and while it wouldn't necessarily be a threat, it would be a definite, unnecessary inconvenience.
There were footsteps in the outside room, quiet enough that there wasn't even an echo. Slowly, the door slid open. A boy entered--small, neat, and though the room was dark, Franklin could distinctly see that his hair was blond, the robes were blue and orange.
"Grandfather," the boy whispered. "Grandfather, wake up." He gently grasped the old man's cheeks, turned his face so his puffy, swollen eyes were aimed at him. "Grandfather, it's me."
The old man blinked once, twice. Slowly, his watery green eyes began to focus.
"Grandfather, please," the boy said. "Please wake up. We have to go."
The grandfather's mouth shivered, forming voiceless, meaningless words.
The boy struggled with a knife, cutting the ropes around the old man's hands. He cursed softly to himself.
"Kura...pika?" the old man rasped, his voice hoarse from misuse as much as necessity.
"Yes!" the boy cried. There were tears on his cheeks. "Yes, Grandfather, it's Kurapika!"
"How?"
"My parents hid me when they attacked," the boy said. The ropes binding his hands were sliced through. He bent to free the old man's feet. "About a dozen of us managed to escape. There may be more. We're still searching."
"No! Go, you--" The old man struggled feebly, foam forming at the corners of his mouth.
"Grandfather, I couldn't leave you behind." He straightened, took one of the old man's hands in each of his own. He gently lifted the old man to his feet. "I love you."
"My boy, my boy," the old man said, tears streaming down his face. He pressed his forehead to the boy's, closing his eyes.
The boy gasped, staggered back a step. The knife slipped from his fingers, clattering against the stone. He touched a hand to his stomach; it came back coated with blood. His right leg gave before his left; he toppled to the ground, twisting like a paper caught in the breeze.
Feitan smiled, flicking the blood from his sword.
The old man roared, grabbed the knife from the ground, lunged at Feitan.
A moment later, Franklin's nen bullet pierced his heart, and he was dead.
The lights flicked on.
Quoll knelt by the old man, turning his face into the light.
The eyes were red.
Beside him, Shalnark rolled over and braced himself on his elbows. He rubbed his belly tenderly, wincing a little. "Ow. Forgot how much those packets hurt. How's it look, Dancho?"
"I think we were both wrong, Franklin," Quoll said, smiling his inimitable smile. "It seems that a mixture of hope and despair can lead to the most beautiful results."
Franklin looked around the room, saw Feitan fastidiously cleaning the fake blood from his sword, Medochin jiggling her merry way into the room to deal with the body, the funny way the pool of fake blood had spread to meet the pool of real blood. Shalnark, either the most normal or the most frightening of them all, brushing himself off, hair already resisting the Kurota gel, falling into unruly spikes again.
In the next room, Franklin heard the others enter. Pakunoda popped a bottle of champagne. Nobunaga and Ubogin cheered, Phinx made some comment, Machi laughed.
Quoll sat there, smiling, watching everybody.
Franklin sat there, watching him back.
"I'm glad you're happy," Franklin said.
And he was.