Thank you everyone who reviewed!
Chapter Twelve: Equal, Opposite, Collinear
Killua dragged Gon through broken buildings, never-to-be-forgotten instincts of stealth and survival keeping them both alive as shadows in the rain. The weird fog that had blanketed the Spider's lair melted away only ten meters outside the building … He wasn't sure what that meant. But I'm not stupid enough to stick around like a dumbass. The Zaoldyek intended to get both him and his friend through this alive. Even if it meant leaving someone else behind.
She wanted to stay, he snapped at the quiet, accusing little voice that said he'd just abandoned Kurapika to a lonely death. His grip clenched down on Gon's wrist. She knew what she was doing!
A loud crash interrupted his recriminations, coming from somewhere behind them. Not my problem—
Unexpectedly, he found himself jerked to a halt.
"Gon—?"
"I'm going back."
Killua's heart sank as he took in the fierce, determined scowl on the other boy's face. His feet were planted squarely, digging into the gritty mud of a gutter and refusing to budge. Obviously, he really meant what he'd just said.
"Why? Let Kurapika make her own decisions."
Yeah, it was a cold attitude – but it was a realist's attitude. The kind of thinking your family pitched you into mortal danger in order to develop. At least, if your family was Zaoldyek.
"It's no good," insisted Gon firmly, twisting his wrist out of Killua's grasp and marching back the way they'd just come. "It's no good to fight like this."
"Like what?" Killua demanded, scrambling after him. "Hey, what are you thinking?"
Autumn rain beat down on his head, sliding through his hair and down the back of his neck. Buildings gave way to one another in a melting confusion of broken walls and empty doorways and shattered windows. All his work getting them through the kill-zone around the Spider's hideout, and they were going back in for a third brush with death. Mist puffed out from his footsteps, curling up from the ground. They were getting close.
"Oi, Gon," he called, trying to pitch his voice just right so that the splashing rain would cover it up. Seeing Gon about to round the corner of the next building, however, he reached out and hauled him backwards, hissing. "Not that way!"
The idiot had been about to charge out of cover, straight for the front door!
Fortunately, Gon wasn't really stupid … just a bit thick. He nodded, and let Killua lead them around on a circuitous path to the side of the building.
"I was shocked before," Gon whispered, trying to be quiet. "By feeling the nen that came from Kurapika's clan. And I couldn't say anything. But I'm not going to—!"
Someone reached out of the shadows behind him, a blood-smeared hand covering his mouth.
Killua hopped one short step away, his nails automatically sharpening into points – a Zaoldyek trick for quickly penetrating the enemy's flesh.
Then Gon snatched the thin fingers away from his mouth, a grin breaking over his features. Killua peered closer at the person standing over his friend, and felt himself relax.
"Kurapika!"
"You're too loud, Gon," she said … the calmest, most sensible words he'd heard her speak in what seemed like forever.
She looked like shit, though. Streaked with dust, ashes, her clothing ripped to the point of being almost indecent – and covered with enough dried blood to have died several times over. But Killua couldn't detect any open wounds. For all he could tell, she had walked out of whatever shredder she'd been through without an actual scratch. How is that possible? Nen, probably. And he wasn't sure he wanted to ask what kind.
"Part of the roof came down," she half-mumbled, rubbing one of hand absently against the knuckles of the other … which only smeared the dirt and blood on them across what little clean skin remained. Chains rattled at her wrist. "It should take them a while to figure out that I'm not still underneath it. Some are injured; they won't move until their reinforcements arrive."
"Injured?" Gon peered up into her face. "The Ryodan? You didn't kill them?"
She shook her head, but the gesture or the question seemed to leave her slightly staggered.
Partial shock, Killua decided. Probably still trying to process everything. That was good. She would be dazed, disoriented enough to follow his lead … and Gon, who wanted to discuss fighting philosophy or something, would follow her. We can get out of here!
"You can chat about it later," he announced, grabbing Kurapika by one dirty elbow. Once again, he began to tow his friends to safety.
Next person who argues gets a fist, just like Leorio! If he thought he could get away with it, he'd have knocked them both upside the head already. Off-again, on-again survival instincts are even worse than none at all. But, now that Kurapika was back with them, he felt a little relieved. No one was getting left behind.
Pakunoda knelt on the pile of broken rubble that used to be the left-hand wall of their base, trying to ignore the quiet argument raging behind her.
"No one in the upstairs," Phinks reported, kicking things out of his way in anger.
"So the chain-user is trapped under all this," Nobunaga growled back. "Or she's long gone. What's important is that—"
"What's important," Feitan interrupted, "is that the enemy might still be alive. We shouldn't be waiting around for her to escape. Or change her mind and attack again."
"Wait a minute," Nobunaga protested. "The injured—"
"As far as I can see, none of them are going to die," Feitan snapped. "They had their chance, and now it's our turn."
Nobunaga's voice went deadly soft. "Does that include Dancho?"
Prying deep into the tumbled pile of cement, Pakunoda shut out the argument. In the background, their voices carried on – angry and frustrated and, underneath all that, a well-suppressed fear – until Phinks and Feitan stalked away, muttering to each other. Her attention returned to her own task.
Blood, and fire. Darkness after the crash. Under her fingers, the edges of stone were cold. The memories that still lingered on them sent a shiver down her spine. Someone – or something – died under this.
She raised her head, scanning the night outside. Shadows moved there: uncertain shapes and the suggestion of movement. Raindrops flashed, reflecting long streaks of light from the Spider's hastily lit fire. The mist dissipated even as she watched – blown apart and fading back into the dying storm. It had been a long time since she had felt herself, almost superstitiously, beleaguered by the dark.
"Paku?" At her shoulder Nobunaga was hovering, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Got anything?"
Standing, she dusted off hands and knees briskly.
"Nothing." Not meeting his eyes, she brushed past him. "I couldn't read anything."
"Damn," he kicked at the rubble. "We know that no one came out the front, so—"
"It's not important," she cut him off. "How are the others?"
Nobu fell into step with her, their path taking them to the temporary medical area that had been set up in those first few, critical moments of their arrival on the scene. The other team lay propped up around the fire, the faint rising and falling of their breath indicating that they were alive. Machi, Shal, Franklin, Shizu, Hisoka – and Kuroro. Six Spiders, four of them combat and strategy specialists, completely undone in the time it had taken her team to sprint from the subway station to the base.
And Phinks and Feitan think they really have a chance.
"Dancho is the only one in immediate danger of dying," Nobu reported, respecting her as the first person to have started acting like she had a plan. "We found his hand, though, and the tourniquet seems to be working. Coltopi should be back with some ice and medicine in a few. Shalnark's got a nasty slash down his back, but the rest of the team made it out okay. Well, if you count being paralyzed and fucking helpless 'okay.'"
"Phinks and Feitan?" she asked him quietly.
"They want to go hunting the chain-user. If she retreated, then she's probably vulnerable right now." The samurai shrugged, tucking the hand not clutching his katana into the front of his robe. The dire situation seemed to have cooled his head – without dampening his desire to fight. "I agree. Why are you so dead set on the defensive?"
Because it might be the last order Dancho ever gives me. She bit one manicured nail – a bad habit she'd thought broken long ago. 'Don't let the Spider die.' He'd barely been able to grate that command out, before he'd collapsed in front of her. Quite probably, he expected they would be his last words.
"Just keep those two hot-heads from doing anything crazy."
"Even by force?"
She hesitated a moment … but only over how far she could trust him.
"Even by force." She waved a hand back the way they'd come. "Let them dig through that junk, if it'll satisfy them."
"You think there's anything down there?"
She took refuge in sarcastic humor. "What do you think?"
Nobu snorted. "That it doesn't take Machi's intuition to say this isn't over."
Kurapika drove through the night's wasteland, choosing a direction without conscious thought. She was running on nothing but excess adrenaline now. The fading heat of it numbed her veins. Through the windows, rambling city streets trailed out into desert. The rain poured itself out, and left them. Gon sat beside her; Killua was in back making sure that Leorio's limp form didn't slide around too much when her hand shook and the car fishtailed around the empty highway.
After what he had said in the parking garage, she hadn't expected him to be willing to help at all. Did I judge him too harshly, and hear only what I was afraid to hear? Maybe she had overreacted, unfairly interpreting his words as a rejection of the friendship she thought they shared. In his defense, comrades had no responsibility to help each other to destruction. But I was right, she insisted to herself with hollow stubbornness. I succeeded. Even the Spider could not keep me from that.
A poor argument, in face of what had almost happened.
Dark miles flowed by. In one hand, pressed against her chest, the Scarlet Eyes slipped against each other. But the spirit that had been trapped inside them for so long was gone. Nowhere on earth did that person exist anymore … no matter where she drove, how far or fast she ran, she would never catch up.
The image of a reversed cross was branded behind her closed lids.
Kuroro Lucifer. The person she hated most in the world. Now he had a name and a face – but she had hated him since long ago. You can never hurt enough.
She should have hit him with his own poisonous knife, paralyzed him to be sure he couldn't slip free of his bonds or interfere with her as she dealt with the curse … but she hadn't. She had left him his ability to struggle – stripped of his nen and left with nothing but the awareness of just how fragile the human body is, how it writhes and struggles for life even when the mind accepts death as inevitable. She had wanted him to suffer agonies. Delighted in the very thought.
I should have snapped his neck.
And yet her thirst for vengeance had been tainted by a Spider's death: the only human life she had ever snuffed out … and she could never go back to ignorance.
"This is just the way it is for us, kid." Stronger than the Eyes in her hand, she felt the pressure of a ghost's hand on her head. "You don't have to understand."
Kurapika did understand ― and how she hated him for forcing that on her. She knew, the conviction irrevocable as a promise, that she could never crush the Ryodan without feeling Ubo's regret. Ubo. A day too late, she learned his name.
Nothing marked the cliffs rising around their road as any different from the others they had passed, but she knew them by their shape. With a creak of metal, the car pulled to a halt just off the road. She longed for a moment to sit still, and rest, but instead she unlocked the doors and tossed the keys to Gon. He'd been watching her the entire time – perhaps on the verge of saying something – but something had kept him quiet.
"Stay in the car," she ordered, reaching across to unbuckle her seatbelt awkwardly; unwilling to let go of the Eyes, even for the brief instant of transferring them from one hand to another. "I'll come back in a couple of hours."
Muddy sand squelched underfoot, its heavy scent pervading her senses, and its reddish color staining the hems of her already ruined pants.
"We're coming with you," Gon declared, following her out.
"Gon, please." She was too tired to deal with this. "Just stay here. For my own peace of mind."
"Peace of mind?" Gon repeated softly, voice beginning to tremble with something that sounded like anger.
She turned, surprised, to find him staring at her. Killua had also left the car, and stood behind his friend in silent support. Under her confused, tired gaze, Gon's hands clenched into fists.
"I didn't think you were like this, Kurapika!" He was shouting at her suddenly, his words pounding against her like an ocean squall. "Aren't we friends? Shouldn't we be fighting together? All this time, and you never even said anything! But that was a curse, right? That's why you kept talking about them when we asked you about nen! That's what you were ready to give up for! Everything you said about being a Hunter, about protecting things! You were ready to throw away!"
"I—"
"You think that just because you didn't lie about it, that makes it okay to keep these kinds of secrets!" Once he'd started, it seemed impossible for him to hold back. "But aren't you just rejecting us because you're scared? You really don't get how hard it is for other people to be left behind! Just figure it out already! And find some other way to fight!"
For a long moment after the flood of his words cut off, Kurapika had nothing to say.
I can't. I can't―
But the fierce, sincere emotion ripping under his words defeated her. Because she understood this also.
They were children: younger than she had been when she lost the clan … without as many burdens, but each abandoned and lonely in their own ways. And too inexperienced to sense that this is far beyond their capabilities. Perhaps she had done them an injustice, by refusing to be as open with them as they were with her about the past.
Slow, stiff, her closed fist opened itself to reveal what she'd carried away from the Spider's base.
Killua sucked in a breath, the first to catch on. "Those are—"
"Scarlet Eyes," she finished. An ironic gleam of humor shone through, probably brought on by the relief of laying things on the table. "Well, only in name now."
It was true: the last of the crimson had faded from them, washed away by blood and nen. She'd paid the price for freeing another lost soul. Between her fingers they looked ordinary – the irises brown, the pupils black – glazed over with a faint, milky haze of true death.
"I'm not doing anything dangerous." Her own eyes, also back to their natural shade, met Gon's without reservation. "Or anything secret. I just want to bury them properly."
For a second, he just looked at her. Then he shook his head.
"You don't have to do that alone."
"You're a good kid, Gon." A surprising, blood-stained smile worked across her mouth. "That's why I worry for you."
Both he and Killua had seen the curse born of her clan … and they hadn't turned from her in disgust. She struggled with anger and awkward, unaccustomed gratitude. They don't know the truth, her conscience whispered. They know what, but not why. Tell them that, and see how long they remain by your side. The same old doubt, one that had pierced her over and over since the massacre, drove through her again.
Do we deserve to suffer?
"I don't want you to curse anyone, Kurapika," Gon said, pressing forward to tug at her sleeve.
For a surreal second, she was surprised that he could touch her. Then she almost laughed at herself. I'm not dead. Life was a burden, but also a relief. I'm still here.
"Thank you, Gon."
What she owed him, and Killua, could never be expressed in just those words. Thank you ― for being what you are. If it hadn't been for her friends, she was sure that she would have lost her humanity somewhere in the ugly labyrinth of York Shin's underground auction. And I am already far too close to being a monster.
Kurapika held out her free hand.
"Killua, can I borrow your phone?"
He gave it to her wordlessly.
"Hello?" the woman sounded hesitant as she picked up.
"Senri, it's me."
"Kurapika! What's happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm still alive."
"You sound—"
"I can only imagine. Listen, Senri—"
"Just tell me where you are."
"You're still in York Shin, then? Good."
She gave her only absent ally their location, and hung up.
Killua accepted the phone back with a tentative, questioning look.
"You can't come with me." Kurapika held up a hand to forestall Gon's protest. "But if I'm not back by the time Senri arrives, she'll be able to lead you right to where I am."
"You trust this person?" asked Gon, with unfamiliar caution.
"Yes." Kurapika hesitated, then nodded in a second affirmation. A smile touched her face, a tired lifting of her heart. "I have four good friends."
Gon searched her face, and whatever he found there seemed finally to satisfy him. "Then we'll join you as soon as you're done."
Without another word, she vanished the desert, leaving Gon and Killua and even Leorio's faint aura behind.
A cool wind, chasing the shadow of the storm, ruffled pale hair back from her forehead and whispered promises in a secret language of its own. Chains clacked against each other at her hand, burning hot and cold on her skin. Surrounded by the stone walls of the canyon, a long walk beyond the reach of her friends' awareness, she stopped.
It was as good a place as any.
"What you want is possible," her nen-teacher had said. "But understand that things will never be the same. You cannot return to the time that was before the curse."
She'd known that already.
But it was impossible to leave her comrades trapped in the bloody, broken bits of their own corpses … to suffer for as long as the seventh wonder could be preserved by human hands. So she'd bent and twisted her own nen, chained herself to the fate of the Scarlet Eyes for one last chance to free them.
Is worse, she wondered distantly, to have seen a monster – or a beloved comrade?
Terribly weary, she knelt and began to scrape out another grave.
"You can't carry this burden alone."
But there was no one else.
"Machi?"
Someone was shaking her shoulder. Her eyes slitted open, reluctantly. Something was wrong with her voice – or her head – and words slurred, rambling away from her.
"Dammit, Machi! Get your head out of your ass and start moving!"
"Screw you, Nobunaga."
There. That came out alright.
Her tormentor turned and shouted far too loudly. "Hey, Machi's up!"
Pakunoda's worried face appeared over his shoulder seconds later. The light was rough, flickering yellowish red and black and playing tricks on her uncertain vision. As her eyes focused on their expressions, though, she couldn't complain about it the way she'd planned.
"What … happened?" Her mouth still stuttered over the sounds, but she forced the question out.
"We got here too late," Nobu snapped, topknot waving perilously over his head. "The chain-user trashed our base and disappeared. That's what fucking happened!"
"She—"
"But once we found the knife, we knew what the poison was so—"
"There's no time for this," Paku broke in, biting at one finger with unusual agitation. "Dancho needs your help."
Say that kind of thing first! But Machi was too busy heaving her unwilling body to its feet to criticize. She didn't even try to reject the helping hands that supported her as her muscles began to unlock and move again. By the time she made it past Shizu and Franklin's still immobile forms, she was walking under her own power.
Kuroro lay on the other side of a pile of damp, reluctantly burning boxes, like a life-sized rag-doll of himself.
He looked half-dead.
Machi frowned, levering herself down beside him and ignoring Nobunaga's offered hand. She had treated the other Ryodan plenty of times … but it had been years since Kuroro had gotten himself so badly hurt that he needed serious attention. Someone – Coltopi – shoved a bucket of ice into her hands. One finger broke through the pile of ice. Dancho's hand? Sure enough, his right arm ended in a bulky swathe of bandages – probably packing more ice around the wound.
The Spider ran a hand through her messy hair, tugging a little to clear her head of distractions. Now really wasn't the time to ask stupid questions, like Pakunoda had pointed out.
Warmth blossomed at the tips of her own fingers as her nen-threads began to unwind. Machi plucked a needle from the pincushion strapped to the back of her hand, and threaded it. The operation took a couple of tries, but by the time she got it done she was feeling up to the operation ahead. Nen squeaked beneath her practiced fingers as she unwrapped bloody bandages from around Kuroro's wrist.
They waited for someone else to arrive – Kurapika, or her unknown ally, or Leorio returning from dreamland. Every once in a while, a car would rumble past on its way out into the desert. Killua watched their white headlights flash into red tail-lights that disappeared into the night.
"We messed up, didn't we?" Gon asked the quiet dark.
Killua wasn't exactly sure which of their multiple blunders he was referring to, but replied anyway.
"We screwed up, Kurapika screwed up, the Spiders screwed up. Everyone screwed up. Whatever is going on is real frickin' screwed up."
"Yeah."
The two boys sat beside each other on the trunk of the car, staring at the distant, neon twinkle of York Shin.
Killua had never known that nen like the Kurata clan's existed; the memory of its sickening aura still crawled around in his head. Born a killer, and he had wanted to piss himself and run from it. Even the Ryodan, even Hisoka and the never-to-be-discouraged Gon, had been given pause. And he had watched Kurapika stand at its center – and emerge alive and uninjured.
She had even been able to smile at Gon.
No wonder she was so insistent that 'her type' of nen wasn't suitable for us.
On the edges of his aura-enhanced awareness, the Zaoldyek could still sense the shadow of the Kurata's presence. The twisted, disquieting aura that she hadn't quite been able to hide after she rejoined them bubbled against his senses like a geyser just after it blew … or just before. But Gon didn't seem to have picked up on the faint, bone-chilling emanation. So Killua said nothing.
After what seemed like hours, the other kid spoke up again.
"I don't want to fight them anymore."
"The Ryodan?" Killua looked over to find Gon fiddling with the cuff of his jacket. "You were really enthusiastic earlier."
"But now I don't want to."
"What about Kurapika?" asked Killua. "If she goes after them seriously, I think she might actually have a chance."
He'd always thought she had been serious … until he saw the way she looked at the Eyes.
"I don't think she should fight anyone the way she is now." His friend fidgeted uncomfortably. "I don't think we could help her."
"Why not?" Killua didn't really have a problem with that, but he had expected Gon to charge ahead – the other boy never backed down from a challenge.
"We can't do anything against them the way we are. Much less against Kurapika's curse."
That made sense, so it was surprising that the words came out of Gon's mouth – maybe he had underestimated his friend's survival instincts after all.
"We're not strong enough yet," Killua nodded.
"We need to develop special techniques, like Kurapika."
"No," Killua shook his head. "Not like that."
Gon glanced over at him.
"Yeah," he agreed, after a minute. "Not like that."
Whatever it is, it's as likely to kill her or us as it is to kill anyone else.
The wind hissed over drying sand and stone and the highway's asphalt, ruffling Killua's white hair. Desert creatures scratched and scrabbled about in the darkness, pursuing their own secret business. The Zaoldyek listened with the quiet stillness of an alert hunter – but he had just been reminded that he could easily become one of the hunted.
I should never have forgotten it, even for a second. A life full of hard lessons meant that he was already fitting this high-priced knowledge into place … but he knew himself again to be a stupid brat. Away from the long shadows of his father and brothers and family, playing among the less talented, he had come in danger of getting too complacent.
So when a car pulled up beside them and a short woman hopped out, carrying a flat, dark case that was the right size to hold any number of guns or other weapons, he was high-strung enough to leap into a defensive crouch on the other side of the car. Gon rolled around to land beside him a second later. Peering around the bumper, he found a large, mustached man had joined the balding woman.
"Sorry for startling you," she said, holding up her hands with a smile of good faith. "You must be Kurapika's friends."
Kurapika lay on her back, too tired to move. Mud from the recent downpour oozed between her fingers, clotting in her hair and leaving grit in her mouth. Clouds drifted above her in the uncaring, moonless night. Above the weathered cliffs of the wasteland, the lights of York Shin glowed against the sky.
A second soul, released. But there would be a third, and the fourth after it, and the fifth … all of the Scarlet Eyes scattered throughout the world. Each pair home its own tortured spirit, its own cursed and cursing prisoner. All my life, for other people's sins. But her hands were no longer clean either.
She remained on the ground where she had fallen, battered and bound by the ghosts of the past.
Always more things to lose.
The desert storm tainted every breath. Memories sifted and scattered in her mind, but none of them held the resolution she wanted. Kurapika turned her head to one side, muddy water splashing her cheek. An expanse of freshly disturbed earth, harrowed by the driving rain, stretched out around her. She lay beside another grave.
"What did you have, that the clan lacked?" she asked, though the one buried could no longer hear. "What could you possibly have understood?"
But, as stubborn as he had been in life, the dead man refused to answer.
Kurapika knew she had to get up, to keep moving. The grime of the Spider's grave – Ubo's grave – smeared with the blood and sweat caking her side and back. I killed this person. And she longed to feel nothing.
"You sacrificed everything," she whispered to him. "And the happiness of dying to save precious comrades is yours."
She rose from his resting place. Looking at her own hands, free of chains but still filthy with dirt and blood, she wanted to tear off her skin. A creeping greyness obscured her vision, eating in from the edges of her sight to the center. The desert wavered around her as the world seemed to tremble on its axis ― but that was just the illusion of her own impaired balance.
The wrong survivor is returning, she thought suddenly, insanely. I should be dead and he should be walking out of the desert to meet his friends.
Kurapika shook the thought away, staggering as she took the first steps on the road before her. Gon and Killua and Leorio and maybe even Senri were waiting for her at its end. To return to the small refuge they represented, she dragged herself through the wasteland.
Leorio woke to find Killua's upside down face staring at him. For a brief second, he blinked at the confusing image. Then reality returned in an unpleasant, head-aching rush. He scrambled into a sitting position, almost cracking his skull against the Zaoldyek's.
"Don't hurt yourself, old man," the boy advised, his customary smirk lacking edge. "There's no rush anymore."
"What?" Leorio twisted to stare around Killua and out the open door of the car. "What's going on?"
As if by magic, the sprawl of grungy buildings and alleys outside the car had been replaced by sandy rock and desert canyons.
"Eh … weird stuff happened."
"Well, that's helpful," Leorio snapped, beginning to remember that he had good reasons to be very angry with this particular kid.
"You might want to ask Kurapika."
"She's alright?"
He ignored the unhappy twinges in his stomach from where he had been hit and tried to shove past Killua, which ended in an awkward tangle in the confines of the car.
"We wouldn't be sitting here if she wasn't." Killua extricated himself and hopped to the ground, trying to act like he wasn't hovering as Leorio stumbled out after him. "Gon and one of her allies from the mob, a melody-hunter, are bringing her back."
"Back from where?" Leorio demanded. "The Ryodan―"
"Not exactly," Killua shoved his hands in his pockets and looked shifty. "They haven't killed each other."
"What?"
"Not yet, anyway."
"Sit down and explain what happened," he ordered sternly.
Fortunately for him, Killua knew better than to argue with that tone of voice.
They were deep in a very involved narration of a ghost-story, combined with some sort of sick tragedy or farce, when Killua cut off abruptly. He leaped to his feet, ignoring Leorio's protest. A few minutes later, the older man caught sight of what the boy must have sensed.
From out of the twisting canyons before them, three strange figures resolved themselves into Gon and a short woman, who must be the melody-hunter, supporting Kurapika's stumbling progress. Leorio ran to join them, sliding over the difficult terrain.
Up close, Kurapika looked even worse than he feared. Her brown eyes stared through them all, fixed on some distant point beyond the world. Mud streaked her gold hair and one cheek. The entire right sleeve of her shirt looked like it had been burned off her. No actual burns, but he could see blood, dry and flaking – he couldn't say for sure whether or not it was even hers. In his professional capacity as a doctor he would have diagnosed her with the shock and exhaustion that should have been accompanied by extreme blood-loss, even though she wasn't visibly injured.
Most alarming was the way she did not even seem to notice when he picked her up and carried her the rest of the way to the car.
He helped her into a back seat, where she curled up – expression still frighteningly drained even of anger or sadness. The boys crowded close to her on the other side. He had never seen them with such subdued expressions before either. With Gon's help, he managed to get Kurapika safely buckled down.
Closing the door, he turned to find himself faced with the stranger.
"I'm Senritsu," the melody-hunter introduced herself quietly. "I know you're hurt, but would you mind driving us back? I'm a bit short, so the peddles are …" she trailed off with an apologetic shake of the head.
"How did you get here?" demanded Leorio, unwilling to put up with yet another mystery.
"A coworker gave me a lift." She smiled. "But I sent him back since his remarks are not always tactful." Her expression turned anxious. "I can call him again, if you're really not feeling well enough to drive."
"No," he had already given himself a cursory medical check while Killua tried to explain, "I'm not really damaged."
"I'm glad that's true," she smiled at him, as though pleased.
Kind of a weird person, but seems nice, Leorio shrugged to himself. If Killua hasn't objected and Gon doesn't show any instinctive dislike … then what can I do but accept her?
He got into the driver's seat, and realized that he wasn't sure where to take them all.
"I think it's best to avoid our boss's hotel," Senritsu said, sensing his hesitation as she sat beside him.
"She can't run into the Ryodan again tonight," added Gon firmly from the back. "I don't want to see them right now either."
Killua snorted at that, but the one most concerned said nothing. They debated around her silence, rejecting hotels in general and Zepairu's place as too crowded. Hospitals were also off the list when Killua pointed out that they had no idea what the Kurata's nen ability might do. From the way he and Gon talked, it was prone to act up violently when she got upset.
"Besides," Gon added, ever the optimist, "Leorio's almost a doctor anyway, so it's alright."
Leorio wished that he had that much faith in his own capability to fix whatever was wrong.
In the end, they decided to set up temporary camp in an abandoned building of their own. Killua, who had the most experience in this field, mentioned a derelict apartment complex he remembered noting as a good place to lie low for a few days. The engine of the rental car grumbled to life and they finally headed out.
As they left the desert behind, Senritsu pulled a dark leather music case onto her lap.
"Do you mind?" she asked, removing a flute from it.
He shook his head, figuring that the question had been more of a courtesy than anything else.
Senritsu lifted the instrument to her lips. Soft music filled the car – wrapping them in a sweet, calming melody. Leorio felt himself physically relax. He checked the mirror, and saw the flicker of life return to Kurapika's face as well. Freed from whatever dark prison her mind had been plunged into, she tipped sideways to rest against the window. Wide brown eyes finally closed beside their reflection in the glass.
Leorio thought that he had never seen anyone so defeated.
Machi snipped the last thread with her teeth, a sharp snap of released tension. Stitches glimmered for a moment against the flesh of her shoulder, then melted into the regular tone of her skin; the stab-wound from the chain-user's last attack had finally been repaired. She'd taken care of the worst of everyone else's injuries … which would amount to a tidy profit, once they were able to pay. Though it would probably take some convincing to squeeze the money out of some of them.
Except for Kuroro, of course. Machi always felt strange asking him for money – giving him the right to set his own price on those rare occasions he needed her skills. He had never abused the privilege by trying to stiff her.
All around, the other paralysis victims were beginning to recover as well – stretching numbed, clumsy limbs. Once Shizuku had regained use of her nen, she'd been able to draw the poison out of the others … though the after-effects still plagued them. Franklin, pacing back and forth to return the feeling in his limbs, gave her an acknowledging nod as he passed by.
Machi nodded back, getting to her feet.
Her first patient was sitting beside the fire, not quite listening to whatever it was Phinks and Feitan were trying to tell him. Just about to join her leader, Machi stopped.
Kuroro was staring at his reattached hand, flexing the fingers over and over with a curious expression on his face.
"Dancho?" she asked.
He glanced up, and smiled. But an incredibly bad feeling dropped through her stomach like a stone. Something was definitely wrong. Machi would have bet all her zenni on it.
Dark water submerged her, salt stinging in wounds that had already healed.
"Kurapika?"
Someone was calling her name, syllables warping underwater in strangely muted vibrations, but her answer choked in the depths.
"Kurapika, are you awake?"
Voices and music tangled together as time lurched forward in uneven, disconnected bubbles of clarity.
"She's gone back to sleep."
"But her eyes were just open!"
"They're closed now. Let her rest."
Far below, a hundred red embers glowed – fire unquenched by all the water of the world.
Kurapika drifted deeper, closer to their numbing heat, and let the noises of the surface drown in the tidal rush of the ocean's pulse.