Resolution: Kurapika

Kurapika wished he was above the what could have beens, the stifling moments of quiet, lost in thought and longing. Stubborn and resilient, it is restless times like these that push him to the edges of his limits, and the brink of personal, intimate madness.

In a single breath, Kurapika knows his mortality, and truly fears what he's missing because of it.

The killing has become harder, in more than just one sense. Kurapika no longer feels the staunch detachment that he used to after his first, the hollow numbness that replaced his blood and insides the moment he made life ending contact. With age, and relative peace knowing that most of his people have been put to rest, Kurapika can feel himself slipping from time to time, experiencing something akin to emotion that he doesn't know how to deal with. Not only that, but those he hunts have become quiet, ghosts and stories and nothing more. He no longer has leads, no longer can trace their movements vis a vis a trail of tragedy. The world, it seems, is growing old with him.

Now that there's not much left for him, he is torn between tying up loose ends and ending his own existence.

Kurapika has no real desire to die; his own death is just another meaningless Kurta end, the true end of his line. The problem is that Kurapika has no real desire to live either, nothing to look forward to once everything he's set out to do is done, once those responsible for his pain have been put in the ground. Kurapika knows that he's useful, knows that he has much to contribute to the world, but can't seem to find something that he wants to do. There is very little that he wants, and those few things are what he's been denying himself for so long, he doesn't even know how to go about acquiring them.

He wonders what his friends are up to and shudders at the thought. By what definition are they his friends, anyway?

Kurapika has no illusions over the cause of his alienation - he knows full well that the rifts between him and the rest of the world were carved by his hands and tongue. He's acutely aware of just how much emotional damage he's caused them, how they've tried time and again to reach out despite that. What he doesn't know, after all these years, is what to do about that. In truth, he's terrified of the thought of facing them.

He's terrified by Leorio.

These past years of fighting and torment have been punctuated by the smallest surfacing of affection, the only scrap of emotion that Kurapika hasn't been able to completely stamp out. He knows without a doubt that he isn't the only one - Leorio has done nothing but try to push his way into his life at every chance - but that doesn't change anything. Kurapika is just starting to acknowledge all of the signs he's been given, his own body and mind screaming the obvious at him, but barely being heard.

Kurapika is desperately in love. He has been since he was seventeen.

Slowly but surely, the child that used to share his soul is beginning to wake up inside him. It's a strange thing, to be so experienced in the world, to have controlled life and death, to have fucked, to have died, but never to have really grown up. Despite his own disgust at himself, Kurapika cannot help but be thankful for locking himself away, whether it was intentional or not. At least he is beginning to see that some of himself has survived. Maybe, if enough surfaces, he won't find an excuse to end himself before someone else does. He won't, he's decided, give anyone else that honor.

Still, that doesn't mean Leorio would even want to see him again. Even in the best of cases, if he were forgiven, what would he do? How would he go about winning Leorio's favor, not to mention his love? Would he even want that - to be loved after everything that he's done? The logical answer is yes, but Kurapika can't bring himself to feel that way. He can't bring himself to feel as if he deserves to be loved, and therefore denies himself the desire.

Or, at least, he does sometimes. Others, there's nothing in the world he wouldn't do to be able to curl into those arms, to tremble and fall apart as he's held.

He's far too inexperienced in love (years of loving don't mean anything if he's never acknowledged that, he thinks) to know what to do with it. His idea of courting isn't something he thinks either of them are fit for, let alone would be successful at. If anything, Kurapika is afraid of failure, and he doesn't think he could handle the awkward blunders of normal dating ritual. No, loving Leorio is far too important for mistakes. Kurapika would rather risk losing him entirely than fumbling; he's made that abundantly clear in his previous abandonments.

This, as he sits and maps out his next mission, is still all very hypothetical.

At any moment the rage could surface again, given the right circumstances. Kurapika doesn't like to think about that, knowing how difficult it would be to come out of it if he's given a reason to revisit vengeance, to complete what he's spent the majority of his life chasing after. He knows, beyond reasonable doubt, that if he were handed the chance to kill another member of the Troupe, he would take it. He couldn't not, after dedicating his whole existence to it.

He's changed, but not enough to be above that.

Kurapika isn't above wishing for a second chance, despite knowing that he's been handed them all of his life. He's aware of it and remorseful enough, at least that's his hope. If Leorio is half as loving and forgiving as he was when they'd first met, maybe - and it's the maybes that are the most painful -it's worth giving a shot.

For the first time in nearly a decade, he picks up his phone and debates making the call.