Disclaimer: KHR belongs to Amano Akira/Jump.
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A DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENT
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These days Squalo suspects he is turning into a good housewife with the Varia as the household he runs, and Xanxus as head of the family he must please. He exercises all the relevant traits in his daily activities; negotiates bargains, plans ahead, cleans up messes and trains other people to at least drop their dead bodies into a central cache so he can send them off for disposal. Most worryingly, he finds himself carrying out whatever Xanxus wishes him to do, no matter how ridiculous or futile he personally thinks it is. And when the time comes and he says, "I told you so," it makes Xanxus angry and then Squalo and Xanxus fight and Xanxus hits him and he gets angry and swears he will leave, tomorrow he will leave forever. But tomorrow comes and Squalo remains with the Varia, negotiating for fees or supplies, orchestrating assigned assassinations, picking up the bodies Xanxus leaves behind.
Once upon a time, he could have been head of the Varia himself. He had been a swordsman on his own, and he had defeated someone (as he had defeated many people before), and when it was over they came to him and congratulated him on his victory and showed him what he had won. But he had never been interested in what he had won. "This is different," they said, "we are a group of assassins, and you have killed our leader, so one day you must lead us."
He went away for a while to think about it. He had killed a man called Tyr because he had wanted to kill Tyr, because Tyr had been called the Sword Emperor and that meant he was a swordsman of special quality, and defeating him was a matter of great pride. When he won, Squalo had enjoyed knowing that he was a better swordsman than the great Tyr. But he looked at the faces of the men who had served under Tyr, who took him into their fold and spoke to him as if he were their leader, and he felt nothing. The promise of owning them meant nothing to him.
"Do you have any complaints?" Xanxus had asked him, when Xanxus took over the Varia instead of him. And Squalo had said, "I wish to follow you," instead of, "How many slices do you wish to be cut into?" and in doing so he lost an army and became a shadow.
*
These are intense days, when it seems that perhaps tomorrow Xanxus will ascend to his rightful place and the universe will now spin respectfully around them. Sometimes Squalo wishes time and fate would hurry up already and deliver a final verdict, victory or defeat, he doesn't really care. The magnitude of Xanxus's ambition and Squalo's own intense drive to fulfill his own promises is demanding more payment than he can make; his body and mind are both beginning to run into arrears. In the morning he waits to report to Xanxus in their meeting-room, blood fresh on his clothes from last night's kill, eyes red and bruised. "What's wrong with you?" Xanxus asks. "I had a bad dream," Squalo says.
But it had not really been a dream. Lying in wait for the target to appear, Squalo had wondered how the Varia might function without him, and one of the possibilities had been 'exactly as it functions today'. He had a nagging suspicion that he played no unique role in the organization; that someone else could step up and negotiate for fees and tell everyone how to clean up properly. In another dream he conjured up on his own, waiting for the car to take him back to the Varia, someone had pinned up long silver streamers that floated through the Varia's marble halls, and somewhere cats were screaming at one another. In this dream he was dead, and no one could see or hear him, and someone else did the things he normally did. "I'm gone, I'm not here any more!" Squalo shouted at the Varia as they walked through the halls. But everyone looked at the streamers and listened to the cats and said, "I see Squalo's hair and that's the sound of him screaming. I guess he's still around!" And they all walked off laughing and chatting of other things.
Squalo does not love the Varia; neither the people who represent it, nor the physical walls and rooms that they operate from. But to the Varia he remains forever faithful, and translates the intention of his faith into legible actions. Like a duel one has entered; entering, one has no honorable option left but to fight, and to win.
*
When Xanxus began to ask of him more than he asked of the others, Squalo complied. Their reasons for doing so were completely different. To Xanxus, who had been forced into a specific role of privilege all his life, there must be 'someone' who can achieve or is allowed to achieve certain things because they were created with automatic superiority to others. When Squalo pledged his support to him, and he understood who Squalo was, it seemed perfectly obvious to him that Squalo had the talent and instinct to cut down sufficient numbers of enemies, and report back to him with the mission accomplished. But Squalo was a creature of the moment who saw nothing but each moment as it pulsed through his body; who pledged his life and loyalty to the glamorous fury of a man he had seen only a moment ago, as easily as he drew invisible lines in the air with a sword. Even when he accidentally won for himself the title of emperor, what mattered to him was that he had destroyed someone else, not that he had taken their place. When Xanxus came to him with a request, it had felt like a new challenge - but one which he knew he would win. "And tell me when you have done it," Xanxus said, as certainly as Squalo could see his sword moving through the neck of his next opponent.
Squalo was fascinated by Xanxus not as a comrade or leader or lover - simply by Xanxus. Squalo had grown up without friends and felt no need for them; he was drawn to Xanxus because he had never imagined before that someone as selfish and proud and magnificent as this might exist. (Who fascinated him; yet whom he felt no desire to defeat.) But Xanxus accepted Squalo because Squalo believed in him, and all his life Xanxus had expected quite desperately that people of Squalo's power and ability should believe in him and his unquestionable rights over them.
*
Things that Xanxus expected of Squalo as an accomplished swordsman and senior member of the Varia: duels won, targets assassinated, difficult missions accomplished, punctuality, ability to hold his drink, tolerance of random projectiles connecting with his head, obedience, submission, loyalty. Things that Xanxus had not expected of Squalo but which came with the package anyway: temper tantrums like emergency flares, silver hair, nosebleeds, screaming arguments, pale eyes bruised and red-rimmed following him wordlessly after making a bad decision. And later: legs that went on forever, the shadows that formed below bony hips when he lay on his back, red mouth and white teeth, a dusky hollow below one cheek when he turned his face to the side to look out of the window. A warm body to wake beside; Xanxus had certainly not expected that of Squalo. Was it a role he expected someone else to fill? Xanxus had women from time to time but he did not allow them to linger, sent them away before he fell asleep. He simply did not want to be bothered in the morning, he had never considered that there was a place for someone to lie beside him while he slept, to remain there when he woke up. But once, overnight, he fell asleep in his chair, and when he woke up he found Squalo asleep on the rug in front of the fireplace, and realized they had spent the night together and he was none the worse for it.
*
In the most conventional meaning of love, buoyed by feelings and actions of tenderness and affection, Squalo does not love Xanxus; neither the power Xanxus represents, nor the physical presence of Xanxus scarred and sleek and superhuman. But to Xanxus he remains faithful, and translates the intention of his faith into legible actions; like the acceptance of a table in the face or a glass to the head when Xanxus loses his temper.
And for all this, Xanxus does not love Squalo, and this is the tragedy of their arrangement.
In the middle of the night Xanxus wakes up, reaches out; his hand touches Squalo's arm, where it meets his false hand. Squalo sprawls across the foot of the bed, his hair fanning in ripples around him. Moonlight glimmers on him from the naked window; he appears to be drowning in a tangled ocean of mercury. Xanxus pulls on his wrist, watches him raise his head blearily, eyes momentarily unguarded, pale irises blurred and out of focus. "Idiot," Xanxus says, and Squalo snarls, snatches his arm away, curls up to sleep as far away from Xanxus as he possibly can. Xanxus stretches; his foot prods into Squalo's hip, and Squalo recoils, folds himself stubbornly far away. In the morning Xanxus knows he will wake up and Squalo will be there, awake, lying coiled like a snake with diamond eyes.
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