Chapter Ten
Crossed
Kurapika gasps with relief at the sight of Chrollo, as ironic as the moment is. The prince jerks him backwards, as if he's a shield, a useless doll failing in his duties.
Not now, Kurapika commands his mind. He can hate himself later, when Woble and Oito are alive.
"Who the hell are you?" Tserreidnich spits.
"Mmm, I don't believe you deserve to know," Chrollo replies. A muscle twitches in his jaw as he scans the room.
Kurapika is restrained by that worm. His beautiful eyes are bleeding, and Chrollo realizes with revulsion that he's already missing his eyelids.
The prince is quite the opportunist, isn't he. He must be strong, because Chrollo himself lost to the Chain User before. Impressive.
Ah. That's what he's searching for. The queen appears to be held down, protecting her child, by something invisible. The guardian the Zoldyck child claimed only she could see, most likely. Perfect.
Chrollo feigns a move towards the prince before throwing his hands out above Queen Oito.
Convert Hands works as he expects, because suddenly his image is holding Oito down, and Chrollo is invisible.
The guardian leaps towards where Chrollo last was, but he's already knocked Tserreidnich in his repulsive face.
The prince claws at Kurapika's eyes, and Kurapika summons his Chain Jail. It flies to Chrollo's invisible wrist.
Chrollo uses the prince's surprise to drag Kurapika free, to his side. The guardian, still a Chrollo figurine, flies at them.
The Kurta kicks the guardian away and releases Chrollo's hand from his chains. He dives between their enemies and Oito, as is his duty.
"Did you enjoy kicking my face?" Chrollo can't resist calling.
"I never thought I'd appreciate seeing it," Kurapika admits, forsaking his pride, just this once.
Chrollo keeps his bookmark on Convert Hands and flips to Indoor Fish.
Kurapika waves his hand, and a dolphin manifests before Chrollo.
"Okay, that is not Indoor Fish," Chrollo murmurs.
"I am at times a specialist," Kurapika says. "Stealth Dolphin will tell us what kind of abilities we're facing." His voice darkens. "And perhaps take them."
"What if we make it a contest to see who can steal this rot first?" Chrollo can't resist a quip.
Kurapika hisses. "Use your hands to switch with the dolphin."
It's not a bad idea. Chrollo obeys. Stealth Dolphin vanishes, and Tserreidnich flails about against something he can't see.
Chrollo emerges as a very large dolphin, and has to laugh at himself.
Tserreidnich lunges forward, but he hits nothing.
"Capture the beast with your chains," Dolphin Chrollo orders.
Kurapika shakes his head. "I can only use them on your troupe, lest I die."
Chrollo briefly contemplates smashing Kurapika's face into the wall once they've survived. "Well then. Indoor Fish."
Two sinister fish emerge, slithering towards the beast shaped like Chrollo.
"His Hatsu is rotting things back to their original molecules," Kurapika says, narrating Stealth Dolphin's information.
Should he steal it? Does he even want such an ability?
The bony fish slams the guardian against the wall, sipping from its neck.
To everyone's surprise, the guardian suddenly turns to Tserreidnich. It crawls off the wall and clutches his aura.
"Get off!" Tserriednich jerks away, but the creature has already sucked enough aura to send him into Zetsu…and then unconscious.
It fades away as Tserreidnich falls to the floor.
"You may kill him, if you wish," Chrollo hears himself say, returning to his true form. He steps forward, glaring down at the unconscious wretch beneath him. Perhaps he can ask Feitan to cut off his eyelids. He might even enjoy watching.
Kurapika steps forward, and Chrollo feels…disappointment.
"No," slurs Oito from behind. "Kurapika… my shtepshon."
"And a murderer," Chrollo says, kicking the prince.
Oito glares at him. Her jaw is still slack from whatever the prince as decayed in her face, but her eyes are hard.
"Holy Chain." Kurapika summons a chained cross, not unlike the tattoo on Chrollo's forehead, and presses it to her mouth. As Chrollo watches with interest, one eye still on the unconscious prince, Oito's face resets.
"Thank you, Kurapika." Oito sighs.
"What do you want done with Tserreidnich?" Kurapika's fingers itch. He can kill the prince, and then the eyes are for his taking. He won't have to steal.
"Call the captain. Put him in the brig." Oito sets her jaw.
"Are you certain?" Kurapika demands. "He's a threat as long as he lives."
Oito draws herself up. "Kurapika! You are my bodyguard, and I insist."
Kurapika's shoulders slouch, but Chrollo is certain there's relief in his ravaged eyes. "Okay."
"My, oh my, haven't the mighty fallen." Captain Baha – whom Kurapika can't respect since discovering his true identity – crosses his arms.
Tserriednich is carried out of Oito's chambers with chains and little ceremony. Fitting.
"My apologies, Queen." The Captain dips his head to her. His eyes, however, wrinkle as if hiding a smile.
No doubt he's enjoying the debacle. Chrollo rolls his eyes.
"Alluka saved the day," says Kurapika, nodding to the girl who stands nervously in a corner, as if expecting to be yelled at, banished, or otherwise harmed.
"Indeed." Chrollo bows to Alluka, and the Captain claps his hands.
"How marvelous."
"Alluka! Alluka!" Killua and Gon race into the cabin.
"What happened?" Gon cries.
"We just saw Leorio carried away on a stretcher," Killua adds.
"He'll be all right," Kurapika says.
Killua regards Chrollo, whose presence is certainly unanticipated. "Do tell the story."
"I think Alluka should," Chrollo says smoothly. "Since she's the heroine."
Alluka buries her head in her hands. "No, it was you and Kurapika…"
"Kurapika, what happned to your eyes?" Gon spouts.
"Oh." Kurapika gingerly reached to his head. "That's a thing."
"Kurapika, you must heal yourself," Queen Oito says, rocking her child. "Woble will be okay."
"No one will harm you," says Killua, turning his hand into a claw. "We'll protect."
"If I may," offers the captain, "my husband is a trained assassin. He may also be a guard while yours are treated."
"And he's also my brother," Killua says.
Oito blinks. "Very well, then. You have an interesting family."
"That's one word for them." Killua turns back to Alluka. "Now, tell me your story."
"You should sit down." Chrollo tugs Kurapika into his cabin and waits as Kurapika presses his chain to his eyes, which twitch with a desperate instinct to blink.
"Here." Chrollo grabs the chain and holds it to Kurapika's eyes, which have faded back to brown, not unlike drying blood. They're still very pretty, he muses.
His presence is awkward, but he doesn't want to leave.
"Never thought you'd be healing Scarlet Eyes, huh?" Kurapika manages.
Chrollo half-smiles. "No. No, I did not."
Kurapika forces a laugh. "Th – thank you."
"Never thought you'd say that, huh?" Chrollo can't resist. He feels too comfortable close to Kurapika, so he must sabotage this.
Kurapika flicks his fingers at him. A rather pleasant response, all things considered.
"Here we are, two specialists and nen thieves. We're more alike than I thought," Chrollo says lightly, unable to fully shake his self-punishment.
"Ha." Kurapika says instead of laughing. He pulls away from his Holy Chain, blinking his new eyelids in relief. "I don't use it for fun."
"You should try." Chrollo flutters his eyelashes.
Kurapika flutters them back, enjoying the sensation of new lashes, though his voice remains serious. "I refuse to allow that. I even set conditions so that I can't."
"Conditions?" Chrollo's mouth dries.
Kurapika looks at the ceiling. His voice wobbles despite his desire to appear steadfast. "Every minute I spend in my specialist state, an hour is shaved off my life."
Chrollo is speechless for a minute. "So…I must summarize. If you use your – very useful, even I can admit that – chains against anyone but us Spiders, you die, and if you steal nen, you lose hours of your lifespan?"
"Precisely," Kurapika says stiffly, still trying to pretend he isn't bothered. But he won't meet Chrollo's furious gaze. "My life for power. Isn't that how it always goes?"
"You're a masochist." Chrollo narrows his eyes. "Why? Trying to atone for survival? Trying to rejoin souls that have long left this place? Or perhaps both?"
Kurapika gasps. "Shut up."
"And here I thought you wanted to punish us for the sake of your clansmen and women. But it's just to atone for your own guilt, isn't it?" Chrollo marvels at the man before him.
"No!" Kurapika jumps up to grab Chrollo by his coat. He shakes him, desperate to shake off the feelings that come with Chrollo. "No, it's not just guilt!"
Tears spring to his eyes. He steps back, shoulders quaking. "It's not. It isn't."
"I killed them. Not you." Chrollo might sound cold, but he hopes that through his coldness, Kurapika might not blame himself. Because it's just illogical.
"Think of me as a more capable version of Tserriednich," Chrollo adds.
"Huh?" Kurapika wrinkles his nose as Chrollo guides him back to a sitting position at the edge of his bed.
"It was like looking in a mirror." Chrollo settles besides the Chain Bastard who might just be a pathetic friend. "Though we used other weapons to carve their eyes out."
He reaches into his pocket, holds his Ben's knife out in the light. "This was what I used."
Ugh. It's too ornate, too shiny, too pretty for murder. But isn't that always how it is? Kurapika is too pretty a friend, so he must murder their relationship, however feeble it is.
"It's poisoned, isn't it?" Kurapika touches the hilt gingerly. Perhaps the last thing his family saw.
"You're smart."
"What changed, then?" Kurapika pushes the knife back. He doesn't want to see it anymore. He'd too tired. "Today, I mean."
"I know you." Chrollo sighs. "Perhaps your friend Gon was right. Perhaps I do kill people because I don't know them. Because I'm afraid of them. Too many people, too many variables, too much potential for beauty or despair. How can I keep living unless I see people as nothing more than puppets? Am I word-vomiting right now?"
"A bit." Kurapika wants to be angry, but right now he is too spent. And grateful to be alive. He'll be angry later. "Considering you just saved my life, I'm more grateful to you for an explanation."
"That's an odd response. But then, you have always been odd." Chrollo smiles impishly.
"May I see your book?" Kurapika inquires suddenly. Because he may never get another chance to satisfy his curiosity, and somehow, he feels like Chrollo wants him to.
"Going to kill me with it?" Chrollo hands the leatherbound book to Kurapika, who is surprised by its lightness. "I call it Bandit's Secret."
"Of course you do." Kurapika flips through the pages.
"The blank ones belong to those who have died. Their abilities vanish," Chrollo says.
"Did Neon's vanish, then?" Kurapika asks, though he already knows the answer.
So he does know what Chrollo did. Unsurprising. Chrollo purses his lips.
"She was a pleasant girl. I wished no harm upon her," he says uncomfortably.
"That wasn't enough. Because there was harm, in the end." Kurapika squeezes his eyes shut. "I was released from my duties alongside the rest of the guards, because there was no pay."
"You didn't leave, no doubt."
"I did." Kurapika blows out his breath.
"Oh."
"I went off to threaten another Mafioso about his eyes. I succeeded, threatening him before the altar of a church, and returned to find that they made her and her father into another collection."
He laughs. His stomach still turns at the memories. "I'm as villainous as you."
"Well, you're not exactly inciting my sorrow for killing the mafia in Yorknew right now," Chrollo says. Neon, Neon was full of life, fluorescent just like her name. Shallow life, but still life. "Again, you didn't kill her. The mafia did. I'm more to blame, or even her father for pimping her gift to unsavory old men in suits, than you."
It does no good to mourn her, but a part of him does, anyhow. Neon didn't believe in the afterlife, but he wonders if she did when she realized there was only a second left in her time on Earth. Most people probably do.
"Perhaps she's met your clan already," Chrollo suggests.
"Perhaps she's met Pakunoda and Uvogin," Kurapika replies, and Chrollo shakes his head.
"Uvogin would adore her. Pakunoda wouldn't put up with such nonsense."
"Uvogin…" Kurapika shifts slightly, just away from Chrollo. "You once asked me what his last words were."
Chrollo is taken aback. "Do you still remember? After all this time?"
"I don't want to forget." Kurapika looks back at him. "They were 'Get lost. Fool.'"
The Phantom Troupe leader begins to laugh, to Kurapika's shock.
"Of course they were." Chrollo wipes his eyes. "I should have guessed. That's exactly like Uvogin."
Kurapika shakes his head. "He wouldn't answer my damn questions."
"He loved the Spider. See, love can exist even among twisted, murderous thieves." Chrollo pokes Kurapika in his nose.
"Touch my nose again and I'll steal your nen this time." Kurapika holds Bandit's Secret behind his back.
"I'll steal it back. I'm more accomplished as a thief, remember?" Chrollo grabbles for the book.
"Back off!" Kurapika srambles back, waving the book just out of Chrollo's reach.
The men can't help but laugh as Chrollo finally tackles Kurapika.
"Victory." Chrollo smirks.
The Troupe leader finds his skin prickling wherever he touches this man. And, perhaps subconsciously, or perhaps not, he lingers above Kurapika.
His fingers latch around his book, his head hangs over Kurapika's face, he feels his breath meet the breath of the young man who damned himself, and he can't help but wonder what kissing him, what taking Kurapika and making him his, would feel like.
"What's wrong?" Kurapika sounds confused. And innocent.
A voice from Oito's room interrupts them.
"Just what am I hearing about the Prince trying to kill Danchou? Where is he? I said move, Illumi." The door between cabins swings open.
"Oh dear," says Chrollo, making no attempt to move himself.
Machi's eyes nearly fall out of their sockets.
Danchou.
On a bed.
Practically lying atop the Chain Bastard.
"What the hell?!"