The waters are calm, and when the shore breaks a little harder than usual, he doesn't think too much of it. Maybe he should have, maybe it would give him a fraction more of coherency, more thought to the pretense.

There's the patter of some river pebbles being dislodged, a scraping noise of sorts. The clatter is enough to draw his eyes.

Expectant, hesitant, willing, he looks up, and sees that face, almost punctured through by the brightness of those eyes.

"Killua," Gon begins, smiling a harsh smile. His mouth goes dry, and he can't place why Gon strikes him so. Killua ends it by walking up. His bare feet feel the creak underneath them, the current pushing them sideways, the gravity pushing him down, and Gon is there, pulling him forward from the center of his chest.

Gon slyly bows and welcomes him aboard with a flourish of his hand.

Something faintly aches on his hand, and runs down and out the other.

He bounces on his heels a bit as he enters. The boat doesn't appear to be the most sturdy of things. It's a smaller boat of aged wood, and there's the smell of salt despite their passage in a fresh water river. The planks of the boat extend maybe ten paces across, and no more than five wide. A worn seat is at the back, with the tell-tale sign of a steering stick for this two-man boat.

They don't feel like men. What is a two-man ship, with two boys to captain it?

But Gon — Gon feels like a man. He's as boyish as ever, with his tank top and shorts, with his green jacket long discarded possibly, or under a bench, but it's almost as if he's outgrown it anyway. And his jaw is the same, and the shape of him feels like Gon, but something within him gives him something else. This is the culmination of the boy he remembers, and the man he doesn't.

The nose points forward. Gon hauls up the plank Killua walked onto the boat on, and sets it into the wall, the pieces clicking together. He takes a seat at the bench with the steering stick, and sets his worn hand ready on it. He sets his gaze on Killua, heavy and kind.

The boat seems to feel itself losing its last touch with land, and surrenders itself to the current. Killua follows suit.

—

The river is gentle with them, and the current kind. They have no need for a mast at this point. The stream runs downhill at the slightest of angles, so they carefully slip along. The riverbed is never too shallow, and the sides give them leeway. However controlled it may appear, there is something delicate about their journey.

Killua sure doesn't remember their launching point. He thinks it was nice and gentle, and remembers sun and rain and the usual lot, but nothing particularly imprints his mind. Most of the days on the ship, he sits on the ground, and spends them looking out over the right side.

Past them rushes greenery, endless hills of grass, trees in the distance, shrubbery. At one point a mountain range is nearby; how near it is really is uncertain, as the flat lands separating the river from the mountain could be any distance.

Killua feels like screaming, feels like hearing it echo for miles, just to not be found by another ear.

They usually begin with asking questions.

"How have you been?"

Many a time, Gon had asked Killua to accompany him on a voyage. They were sporadic journeys, capable of lasting anywhere from a couple of days to months on end.

"Pretty fair."

It was a different boat every time, fitting for the journey they were set on. At one point, Gon showed up at a pier with a pirate ship. Killua had asked Gon where he procured it from, and Gon gave him a cheeky smile, probably the same one that he gave to the former owners of that ship.

"How long have you been traveling?"

This boat was aged. It seemed quite more sentimental to him than the others, Killua observed. He didn't let it slip his mind, the way Gon gripped the handle gently, brushed his hand on the edges absentmindedly.

"Quite a while."

It was never certain where or when Gon would appear. Sometimes he wouldn't hear from him for months at a time, and as soon as the new ship appeared, Killua would be filled with anger as he stormed up to the deck. But then Gon would rise from his seat and smile that smile, and the anger would melt.

"Where are we going?"

There's no response. Killua turns his head to the back, and sees Gon looking past. His mouth is a stiff line, and his face resolute.

The questions die fast this time.

Silence overtakes the ship.

—

Killua doesn't quite remember how this habit of their had begun. He likes to think about it sometimes. Maybe it was when they travelled together all the time. Maybe they had gone boat once, and found it way easier in a river country than any airship, and decided not to go back. Maybe it was a vacation of sorts and they were on a cruise; hell, Killua didn't know. The memories are all blurred, and often absent.

What he does remember for sure was one time when they were traveling by boat, and Gon had said, "I always wanted to make my own boat." What kind of guy was this? Killua was constantly trying to figure him out.

He asked why, and Gon grinned, saying, "For practical reasons, of course. Like fishing."

Gon was always a bit of a mariner, with his Whale Island upbringing amongst sea farers. Maybe that was it as well.

He's sitting by Gon's side on the bench when he turns and asks him how this began.

"Silly. It began how it always does. I asked you to get on, and you did."

—

One night they park the boat when they reach a sorts of lake that the river siphoned off into. It's a gorgeous twilight, and they sit back to back and fish as the sun set. They have quite the haul once they are done, and pack the fish in a cooler to have later.

They go ashore and make a fire. The orange light is almost overwhelmingly beautiful to him, and he can't place why an inanimate, familiar object pains him so. They roast fish and laugh and it reminds Killua so succinctly of that night on Whale Island, where the stars were so bright above them, and the world so small.

They sleep out there, and Killua feels so fulfilled, so peaceful for once. He feels his body relax into the earth, and the world's supply of joy seep into his skin through his skull, filling the hole Illumi's needles left in him, filling his lungs with a love for air he never had before. Gon's there, looking back at him, and they breathe in desire for everything in the world, and exhale content of having nothing at all. Their hands meet in the middle, but there's no feeling in it. It's a magnetism that pulls deep and peaks at their hands. The moment doesn't leave after the moment, or when they set sail again in the morning.

Killua knows it won't last.

—

A shake on the shoulder jolts him, and he gets up. It's been a while since he's let his guard down like that, Killua thinks. He can't tell if that's good or bad, that Gon can get him like this.

Gon's face is solemn as he says:

"We've reached the end."

He's pointing out to the front of the ship and Killua follows the line and sees it. An endless body of water before them, and the sharp scent of salt and the caw of seagulls tells him they've reached ocean. Gon's parked the boat on the sand, and Killua feels the waves bash into them every few seconds.

Gray clouds gather at the horizon. The way ahead is endless, and murky with the racket of the clouds which loom, expectant. Killua takes it in for a second, breathes carefully, and looks at Gon. He's waiting.

"We've reached the end," he says again.

It's a strange look that fills Gon's eyes when he says it. Almost like Gon had stared at the clouds ahead for so long that the very energy was encapsulated in his eyes.

"Where are you going next?"

Gon shrugged, turning outwards. His hands fold like cards. "I'm not sure. I have a feeling that what I want is out there. And I'm going to go get it. We're going to have to leave solid ground for a while, and I can't tell you how long."

Killua has never been one to refuse an offer like this. Hell, if Gon thought there was something out there, then there probably was something, and Killua would spend forever with Gon on a whim if he could, but something —

Something just wasn't right about this.

"There's a storm brewing," Killua says instead. "You might want to wait a day."

"No." Gon sees right through him, like he always does. "We have to go now."

It's the hardest thing in the world, and as Killua's heart weighs heavy, his tongue tied down with it, he feels himself say, "Then I'm not sure I can go."

And gravity, with her heavy hand, scrapes down his body when the storm retreats in Gon's eyes and he smiles that sweet, sad smile once more, and says, "I thought you would say that."

"I really want to go." It hurts.

"I know." And he does know. Killua knows he does.

"When will you be back?"

"Soon, of course! As soon as I can."

And they laugh together one more time, whistling in the dark. They are still on the boat, and the waters become progressively more agitated, like little hands knocking and rocking the ship.

Gon looks away, out. He comes back. "I have to go."

Killua is propelled forward, by that same magnetism, and kisses him on the cheek. It's a soft intimate thing that only lasts a second, before Gon breaks it by wrapping his arms around him. Millions of words flash before him, and Killua owns none of them.

And Gon removes that trusty plank from the wall, and lets Killua off with a mock flourish. Some things were the same it seemed, amongst the innumerable that were different. Just like that, the two-man ship became a one-man ship, only filled now with one in-between.

Killua's bare feet meet the gravelly sand. It's warm without the sun and solid yet formless. He bounces on his heels a bit to get used to it, and sinks into them as the water laps over his feet and tries to seal him in. He backs up a step, and try as the waves might, they cannot reach him at this time.

And Gon looks back for a second to wave once before gliding in, and does not look back again.

—

"GON!" He screams into the mountains, but no one finds his voice. It was lost in the sound of energy building up in the forest, and even Godspeed wasn't fast enough this time.

There's pain that enters through his hand, travels down and out the other from the electricity running laps in his nerves, but it's nothing, the burn in his legs and behind his eyes is nothing before the-

the orange light in the distance is overwhelming, like a beacon into the sky.

He reaches Gon too late, finds him with Pitou's still animated corpse, looking at him with those storm-filled eyes: expectant, hesitant, willing. He isn't wearing shoes, Killua thinks hysterically, he isn't wearing shoes. Where did they go, the shoes.

He can't remember much of that day when they ask, but when he tries to remember, he feels an absence, as if he were watching a distant ship slip over the horizon to a distant shore.

Rising from the bench, he looks ahead at Gon's broken body, and past that.

He leaves the room, steadies himself on solid ground, and begins.

Ok, so I'd been thinking about this for a while, and finally decided to write it this afternoon, publish it for kicks, get it out of my system. Title from Come From Away. References to many, many things, mostly some stuff I've read recently. :) Hope you liked it.

-CS