Summary: Killua takes a good look at this stranger and almost doesn't believe it when he registers who it is. "Elf Ears," he snarls, the humiliating defeat from earlier still fresh in his mind. "What are you doing here?"

A/N: Just want to thank Killugon Fangirl for providing me with ideas for this chapter! I appreciate it very much.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hunter X Hunter.


Blood Ties

Third Child: Killua


A long, long time ago, Killua would have said that he liked his family.

He still remembers the days when hanging out with big brother Illumi was more than just a torture session, and when he and Milluki could stay in the same room without exchanging insults every minute. The days when he had enough free time to cut paper dolls with Kalluto, an era before Alluka was locked away.

All that, however, is now nothing more than a faint memory in the back of Killua's mind, buried deep underneath scars and bruises that have long since invaded his thoughts. It's one of the few fond memories he still has of his siblings.

He recalls the turning point clearly. A single visit to Heaven's Arena changed everything.

Illumi drops him off at the arena and registers him for his first fight. "I'll come back to pick you up once you reach the two hundredth floor," the older Zoldyck leads him to his hotel room with those final words before departing. Two years will pass before Killua sees his family again, though at the time, he was still arrogant and naïve, foolish enough to think that he could return to Kukuroo Mountain in only a week's time.

The first fifty floors are a breeze. He barely even has to lift a finger because of how much they underestimate him since hey, he's only a kid and there's no way he can hope to win against someone three times his size. After his first fight, he is given a ticket that allows him to skip to the twentieth floor and, okay, he admits that as a child, he let this small moment of victory get to his head a bit too much.

Not long after, he faces Umori, one of the Amori brothers. Umori spends a good five minutes boasting about how he's going to spend his prize money after he beats up his shrimp of an opponent. Killua waits patiently for him to finish his grand speech before sprinting forward and landing a solid kick to the teen's face. Umori is instantly knocked out and the Zoldyck heir is well on his way to getting to the top of the tower.

It takes him about half a year to get to the hundredth floor, which is completely unacceptable and aggravates six-year-old Killua to no end. He needs to step it up a notch, he decides; Illumi would never have taken this long to defeat a few measly challengers. He's going to finish all his battles quickly and then he's going to go back home. At least, that's the plan.

On the one hundred and thirty-seventh floor, he is defeated for the first time.

The person at the other side of the ring this time is a boy around his age with shaggy brown hair and long bangs that cover part of his face. He's a fairly skinny kid with pointed ears and he stands with his arms rigid by his sides as if he doesn't know what to do with them. Killua hasn't even bothered to remember his name, though maybe they could have been friends considering the fact that he hasn't seen anyone else as young as him once he passed the hundredth floor a while ago.

The brown-haired boy remains strangely quiet the entire time, unlike the others he's faced, who all liked to inflate their own egos. Whatever, Killua rolls his eyes, stretching his arms as the referee counts down to one; his opponent will soon be unconscious on the floor anyway, so it doesn't matter.

When the whistle blows signaling the start of their match, Killua leaps forward. He draws his hand back and releases a punch at the other boy, aiming directly for his stomach, when he realizes that he is only met with air. Two seconds is all he needs to retaliate, but it's two seconds too slow; the elf-eared boy is right beside him, close, way too close, and before he knows it, his legs are swept out from under him in one fluid movement.

He lands with a thud on the ground. His instincts kick in as he uses the momentum to follow up with a backwards summersault to distance himself from Elf Ears. Dizziness fills his head but he shakes away the feeling of being disorientated, because he needs to focus. There is barely enough time to block a fist that is coming toward him and he slides back a couple of meters due to the impact.

The assassin's eyes burns with rage. He charges straight again but feints to his left this time, cutting through the flesh of the brown-haired boy's arm with a clawed hand. Elf Ears lets out a whimper in pain, but still manages to stay on his feet. Killua's sharp nails seem to surprise him for a moment before he runs for the white-haired boy, and he is fast. With one arm limp and the other occupied to apply pressure to the wound, Elf Ears resorts to kicking, a fury of strikes assaulting his target at once. For the most part, Killua manages to dodge them, but one strong blow makes contact with his chest, and he can almost hear his ribs cracking.

After that, as the headache from earlier comes back in full force and his body is physically weakened due to all the damage he's endured, everything becomes a blur. Elf Ears continues to attack him, because of course opponents won't wait for him to clear his head, and Killua screams at his legs to move, damn it, move! but it's no use. He receives hit after hit, punch followed by punch, and in minutes, his vision starts to fail him as the world dissolves into the darkness. At some point, he thinks he even coughed up blood.

He hears the high-pitched sound of the whistle again just as he falls to the floor and doesn't even have the time to curse before he's out cold.

The familiarity of his hotel room welcomes him when he awakes. There are bandages all over his body and it's a struggle to sit up, the pain in his ribs increasing with every small movement he makes. It takes a few minutes for him to realize that he has company in the room and he's more than a little startled when he hears a voice call out.

"Hey, you're up. How do you feel?"

Killua blinks. The voice is soft and somehow sounds filled with emotion and monotone at the same time. He takes a good look at this stranger and almost doesn't believe it when he registers who it is. "Elf Ears," he snarls, the humiliating defeat from earlier still fresh in his mind. "What are you doing here?"

"I carried you back after the nurses fixed you up," he offers a small smile. "You're Killua, right? I'm sorry, I—I didn't mean to hurt you this much." A pause, and then, "If you need anything, I can get it for you, since the doctors said you should stay in bed until you heal."

"Go away," the white-haired boy's demand is cut off by a fit of coughs. "I don't need your help." When the boy remains silent in his seat, the assassin sends him a glare. "I said leave."

Maybe he had articulated the words too strongly or maybe he let too much of his killing intent show, but Elf Ears flinches as the threat leaves Killua's mouth. "O-okay… um, see you later, I guess…" He gets up to leave, and Killua only relaxes when he hears the sound of the door clicking shut.

They do see each other after that, too often for the assassin's liking. Although they aren't paired up in a tournament again, the occasional interactions in the hallway and at the dining area and even in the bathrooms are too much for him to handle. It's beyond awkward, mostly because Elf Ears always gives Killua a smile and then Killua will proceed to return the polite gesture by ignoring him completely.

One day, when Killua is browsing through the store looking for ways to spend all the money he's earned from previous fights, he notices Elf Ears come in and purchase a chocolate bar. He's always thought that chocolates shaped into robots was kind of dumb and childish, but curiosity gets the better of him and he decides to get one too, after Elf Ears exits the shop.

He takes a bite into it, expecting just normal chocolate, but the way it melts on his tongue and the warm feeling of it settling in his stomach throws him off entirely. It's delicious. So the next day, he goes back and orders the whole inventory of Robo-chocolates and ends up with boxes upon boxes of junk food in his room. He almost regrets it for a second, until he sees the confused and devastated look on Elf Ears' face when the cashier tells him that they're all sold out. Killua counts this a payback for the tournament.

The two of them go through these phases every day for almost a year. After a year passes, he gets a visit from Illumi, who brings him back home. Except it's not really home anymore, is it? There were nights spent at the Heaven's Arena where six-year-old Killua cried and cried to be taken away because being there was painful. Although he has many, many stitches as proof of his injuries, the pan isn't like what he experienced back at Kukuroo Mountain; this is more emotional embarrassment. Humiliation. Shame.

A Zoldyck heir taking two whole years to make it to the two hundredth floor? Unacceptable.

At home, he is praised constantly by mother and always taken care of by the butlers. Outside though, in the Heaven's Arena, he is just a kid. He hates the feeling of having unspoken expectations on his shoulders all the time, hates feeling incompetent and inferior, hates having to turn away from Elf Ears whenever they cross paths because assassins aren't supposed to make friends. As he walks out of the building with Illumi, he squeezes his brother's hand tightly, almost wishing that he could crush the bones and then just run away.

There was once a time in his life when Killua liked his family.

But not anymore. That was a long, long time ago.


A/N: This turned out way longer than I expected. I've always wanted to write about Killua's first time at the Heaven's Arena. Finally. And his chocolate addiction had to come from somewhere, right?

I bent canon a bit with the Amori brothers. They appeared in the series after the hunter exam during the arena arc, but I changed it so that they were there when Killua first went as well.

And Elf Ears, whose real name is Takeichi though I don't think that was mentioned in the story, is my OC. I'm thinking of using this chapter as a prologue to a multi-chap fic that will feature Takeichi as the main character. I've noticed that there aren't many male OCs, so would that kind of story interest you?

Next up will be Alluka!

~Madin456.