AN: this isn't so much of a filler chapter as it is a plot driver, though it does highlight how the character's react to the situation at hand. also, at the end of this month, on march 20, convergence will officially be a year old ! aaaa ! that's insane, but that means that in a couple of chapters the story will be ending and i hope people have enjoyed this and yona and isas' journey of their mythology, as well as gons journey of familial discovery. i hope you all have a wonderful day !
ps - i'll be uploading the next chapter on convergence's birthday !
. . .
chapter thirteen
that i promise you, dear reader
Leorio's peeling back the blanket to check her temperature when Kurapika perches on the edge, cradling cold, twisted-up fingers between each other and a sunken head. The kind doctor smiles, ignoring the blossoming fear that sews itself through his chest like a needle. Beneath his hand, Yona doesn't stir and merely stares into space, into the wall bare of life.
Between the three of them, the tension is palpable, can be torn with the flick of a sharpened fingernail. And, try as he might, Leorio has blunted his own so often in fear of breaking what for once, his hands cannot fix. Where he can thread torn veins and press the life back into decaying organs again, he cannot patch bruised hearts. Cannot steal the memories from a punctured lobe. It turns power to weakness, turns all his effort into sand, falling effortlessly between his hands.
The doctor stays quiet, unknowing of what to say or do or think, when slowly, he watches. Watches how Kurapika slips from his perch, towards where Yona's head is half-covered by a blanket and gently, lifts it to his lap. Fingers drag through the strands, the blond trying to calm the storm that rages in her head the only way he knows how; with silence, with a quiet mind and quieter hands.
Ah, thinks Leorio as he settles back against the seat, a bent flower stem, how I missed this I'll never know.
"Leorio," Kurapika chokes up his words like an offering, two hands too small to hold them entirely before he scrambles to his next ones, "have you gotten any sleep yet?"
"No, none of us probably will," murmurs the doctor, bones creaking like floorboards when he finds his own perch against the couch's side, at Yona's feet. His long fingers pat at Yona's ankle, enough to drag her eyes towards his hands before pulling herself into the blanket, hiding away the unshed, frustrated tears in her honey-comb eyes. Gently, Leorio's heart bleeds for her. "This'll be a long night."
"Mm," agrees Kurapika, fingers steady in their ministrations, coaxing the demons from her hair as his mother once had for him. He doesn't know what bends his bones into kindness nor why he runs a comforting hand over shoulder blades, jagged with sobs. It is just what he does, as familiar as humanity had been to him once, when he hadn't stolen ghosts from the bones of others once. To be in the presence of those that would never take a life, that would rather sew dandelions and fruit into the earth than seek blood for their wounded hearts, Kurapika is almost blindsided with the need to comfort her.
"The important thing is," and Leorio says this with a raising alarm, a twist of the torso towards Yona, never letting his hand stray from her leg, "is that we're not letting this go. We're getting him back; tooth and nail and blood."
Wordlessly, the blond nods and Yona hiccups, a broken and flightless thing in this small pocket of space, where her demons have scratched her clean. When they'd returned, she'd explained her connection to the priory in detail, of how when she'd been young and starving and a mother to her younger brother, they'd given her work. Enough to feed and help Isas get better steadily, even enough to buy back the home Ging had once built for them. But then the work became dangerous. Started to thread blood that wasn't hers under her nails, had her reciting scriptures like a sacrifice - enough that it had scared her to silence. They'd then hung the threat of debt over her, owing back all the borrowed money for Isas' expensive treatments over her head and Yona ...
... Yona had crumbled.
Had given in and worked, had taken lives that weren't hers to take and had more ghosts between her teeth than she'd care to admit. And still, she'd made all the wrong moves, the chess board a multitude of checkmates and stolen bishops in her hand. A young girl tasked with too much on her shoulders; could they blame her for the steps she'd taken? For trying to keep the one life she held precious to her heart alive?
No, Kurapika thinks, I suppose I would've done the same if I'd been fortunate enough to keep them.
"Are Gon and Killua asleep?"
Leorio shrugs tiredly, mouthing at a beer. When the terror had scored through the village, a search party for both Hawthorne and Isas has been hefted from the masses and the two youngest had wanted to go. But adults let the children of this world down all the time, for even a search through the island would not find Isas unless the Priory wanted them too. So they'd sent them to bed, but Gon and Killua had never known the meaning of obedience and were either up, clutched in fervent, angered planning or out among the masses, dragging themselves through the plant life to find the boy that had been stolen from their hands.
It was up to them, this small patchwork of stories, to find the Priory. Only, static filled their minds on how to find what could not be found.
They lapse into silence, the night licking into day with the purple that reminded them of bruises, of juice in summer. It ached itself through the sky, long and twisted until melding into orange and faint pinks. Dawn approached and nothing stirred, Leorio fast asleep whilst Kurapika mindlessly, tired with thinking and worrying, continued to run his fingers through his hair.
Yona did not sleep. She didn't have too.
"Get out." her voice is hoarse, riddled with pain from her screams so much that she has to swallow between words to drag them from behind her tongue. A stray fingertip runs over her eye, rubbing away the open-eyed nightmares and memories of when she'd thought Gon to be dead, both her brother and father lost to a torturous ocean current. She can only hope it does not take her another eleven years to find Isas alive - but she'll take it, just so that that beautiful loving boy's heart is still beating, still breathing.
A laugh splinters through the haze, gentle and deceivingly kind if she had not seen the physique, the lean body dressed in a joker's outfit. A stack of cards trails between his fingers. Nails sharper than her eyes and she doesn't need to wake the others to know this is a monster in sheep's clothing, that the magician has more tricks than she can count up his sleeve. The sunlight, despite its usual gentle glow, paints him harshly. It creaks out from behind him, gnarled and spotted with the smell of his blood lust. Even now though, that leftover ache, the taste of death that sits behind her teeth, doesn't leave.
"I said get out," she bites, sitting up from Kurapika's lap, whose hands have stopped moving, though she knows he's awake on some level. He never goes still for long.
"Cruel; from what I was told Yona, your mother taught you better~" Hisoka, forever the apparition to her reality, bleeds in and out of focus as the sun peels itself, waking to the realization that there is a true enough beast in her doorway to the veranda, shoulder pressed to the framework as easily as if he'd slept in these rooms. As if he'd known this home longer than her. As if a trick of the light, the magician produces a card, flicking it lazily up and back into his fingers, spotted with red life. "Of course, we can't blame orphans for bad manners."
"If you've come to taunt me about his whereabouts, there is no need; I'm already tortured enough," confusion paints her jagged, for it is not Yona's voice that comes through the tripwires of a broken voice box, but something old. Ancient. For a moment, she wonders if Hawthorne's whispered rumors in her ear were true, for are legends not plagued with truths?
Hisoka sighs, a chuff of a laugh in his mouth before his tongue peers out from painted lips, dragging over the card between his claws. For a moment, a zephyr pulls between them, the silence aching through and remaining until he pushes off the door, the creak signalling his disappearance and he wanders inside, peering around dejectedly at the interior. Yona stands, as if to greet the man who may murder her brother.
"Torture is a delightfully delicious word, don't you think," he murmurs, cutting eyes towards her shaken frame, how she hangs like forgotten clothing on a washing line. All loose ends. All seeped through with something foreign and clinging, something she could not shake if she tried. There is something delicious on how the woman folds in on herself to Hisoka, like a god falling to ruin right in front of his eyes. Hisoka perches on the coffee table, crosses a leg, and Yona watches morbidly.
"It depends on the psyche of the person."
"In an old language," he begins, splaying out cards between his hands, as if to ask the girl to pluck one from the deck in a game. But Yona is tired of card games, of monsters hiding between the decks she was dealt, ready to change her hand at a moment's notice. "It once meant 'to twist,' and then 'to torment.' Twisted torment. That's how I choose to think of it mostly, for is this not all a beautiful game? What is the point of playing if you are not strong, if you cannot win? Simple: you don't."
"Is there a reasoning for your being here, or do you just wish to spout analogies?"
The sunlight peels a broken square over him, crisscrossed with the sickle pink of his clothing and the way decay seems to follow him, dragging backwards through his heels. How Yona had not run from the monster when she had met him what seemed like millennia ago now, she would never know. Hisoka turns, facing the girl head-on, plucking a sharp nail to the underside of her chin. It tilts her gaze upwards, staring at hair the color of scarlet.
Distantly, Yona remembers the feel of knives in the kitchen and the feel of Hisoka's nail as one. "Contrary to what you may believe, Yona, I am only interested in the potential. Not the already strong. And you have much, like a fruit ripening to being picked. But you merely need a push," he comments, inching forwards like a beast approaching the open space, the wild beat of a heart beneath his hand.
There is a choke-up of air in her shipwrecked lungs, brutally torn from screaming and fear. And then, "Hisoka."
"Ahh~" he sings, tilting his gaze towards Yona side, where she peels her gaze to Kurapika, eyes narrowed and accusing, reminiscent of the night he had questioned her reasoning for wanting to send Gon home, to a place where demons didn't run rampant through her. For a moment, Kurapika looks like a comet rushing to meet the earth, all white-hot flame and earth. "It seems our conversation has been cut short, Yona dear."
"It has," says the blond, pausing on the edge of his seat, all hackles and bristles. But Hisoka does not remove his nail, mouth plucking higher and unfortunately, Yona knows the magician is still in control. Has her life pulse under his finger, and even Kurapika cannot kill a nightmare. "But you never arrive without reasoning; speak."
When Hisoka draws his hand back, Yona feels the loss like a hot brand, a forever-stain that she can't scrub clean. And, as pitiful as she believes it to be, she sinks back into Kurapika, into safe warmth and a tight grip on her fingers. Subconsciously, she feels the quake in him and does not know if it is anger or fear.
"As I said before, my interest is in potential, not strength. And there is a way for Yona to retrieve her brother which interests me; the Witch of the ages," the name shatters through all her atoms, a life lived in story-telling conjuring up a woman draped in flowerbeds, rivers of scarlet flowing from her eyes as the earth dug itself apart. If she were not brought up with her mother's heartbeat and the love an island shared for its history, she would've written her off as a fairy tale, a story for children to fall in love with. Now, it dips up and under into her, decorating her insides with terror. "The old stories talk of her giving gifts of power to those of worth, with potential to be strong. Do it, and you shall have a chance for your brothers life."
The magician sways, all sleight-of-hand and trickery in his footsteps, towards the veranda. The sun paints an orange glow through the sky, the telltale of dawn waking up and Yona shifts, filling herself with hope. Hope, hope, hope. The word has no home in her, pushing its way through the bone and crimson in her, knocking out a place to lay itself to rest. Once upon a time, she'd thought she'd let it die with the other parts of her - the child, the fragrant dreaming and the love for her father - but here it is, flared and burning a hot current through her. Blinding.
"Remember this riddle; where mornings belie glory, the earth has made a home. Here, the threads intertwine and stars clatter over the bend of distant teeth. Here, among the cave dunes, does she live in magic's mouth."
Just as he peels his way outside, Kurapika stands, rigid and full of an intellect Yona couldn't dare to go up against. "What's your prize in all this, surely not the act of a good deed?"
The world goes still around Hisoka's chuckle, body a bend of scripture, of unholy sound. Kurapika stares, wondering what kind of worship Hisoka has trapped himself into now, enough to come praying at this temple of a home.
He turns, card hung between jagged jaw. "I just see fruit ripe for the picking." And he throws it.
It cuts through all the air, a knife in motion, diving for a heartbeat. But Kurapika does not think of himself, doesn't even register that perhaps, Hisoka's bloodlust had cornered him and he'd taken a strike at the blond. But he doesn't need too, for the card dives for Yona and slices through her cheek, drawing a line of blood in the darkened features a life lived in sunlight had given her. The brunette does not flinch, too full of resolve to look away from the magician until Kurapika's movement drags her gaze to the card.
She swallows and turns back to Hisoka, only to find in his place is merely a shadow of the flowerpot, untouched and half-dying from lack of water. Distantly, she touches a hand to her cheek, finds the red wet of herself on her fingers and knows it is another scar to join the rest.
"Are you alright?" Kurapika asks, fervent and slightly surprised, leaning down beside her and ignoring Leorio's continuous snores, dead to all that had occurred. He doesn't drag his hands over her, trying to find the places where pieces don't match up, where Hisoka, before he'd awoken and found her in his jaw, may have hurt her. But Yona says nothing for a moment, merely turning to pluck the card from where it is embedded into the couch behind her. A stain of blood litters the cotton scar.
She stares at the card she has been dealt; a three of hearts, drenched in Yona's blood. "Yeah," she murmurs, and already, she can taste the lie, "I'm fine."
"HE WAS WHAT?"
"Leorio, we have repeated ourselves four times..."
"WHY DIDN'T YOU WAKE ME UP? I COULD'VE HELPED!" still paused like a live wire over the two, morning dipped in a bright yellow, Leorio splays his hands and voice wide. Alarm settles like an old buzz in his mouth, inking worry and fret through his atoms when Kurapika, from his perch on the arm of the chair, recites tales of the early morning hours. How long he and Yona had stayed up, talking of a possible plan. How Killua had wandered in after, asking when they'd begin. How Gon stayed silent.
Now, Yona is peeling through all her manuscripts, legends and fairy tales with truths at the core beneath her hands, searching. She knows the story, has heard the witch's name in whispers between adults teeth when youth had held her closer. Growing up on an island covered in legends will instill you with a love of stories, and the coffee table and chairs detail this, scattered with books. The obsession with literature had just crawled inside her, fervent and desperate.
Beside her, Gon trails through a detailed map, clutching Ging's old one in his conch-white knuckles. On his other side, a bundle of morning glories sit, plucked from the earth to study. The child peers up at Leorio, tilting his head. "I think they did okay Leorio, they probably just wanted to let you sleep. You've been pretty tired lately."
"Or he'd just mess them up more."
"'Ey!"
"Killua," chastises Gon, casting his gaze back to the boy sat behind him, legs curled up like knotted thread around a thick book that spills age through his fingers. Gon shuffles back, until he's sat at the cleft between Killua's knees. The child unknots himself, uncurling from the small shell he's made-up of his skin, until his knees sit over Gon's shoulders and his arms are crossed lazily over the blackthorns of Gon's hair, chin pillowed in place. Gon peers up, arms crossed, "you're not helping."
"I'm not here to help. I'm here for support."
"And you're not even doing that," says Gon, though his mouth splinters into laughter at the blush that bottles beneath Killua's skin when he says, "you look cute though."
Yona looks to her younger brother, alive and in love and blossoming even with anger beneath his tongue, and for a moment, she's thankful. Even if there is the threat of the Priory, of her tangled-up mentality turning her inside out, she is so glad that she found him. Her gaze turns soft - and then she remembers whats under her fingertips.
"Gon, could you pass me that map you were looking at please? Thank you," she unfolds it like a raindrop turned inside out, like if she pulls too hard everything will drip away into the floorboards. Her hands drag over it like braille, finding the corners she knew from childhood and the homes she'd pass on her way to work. Yona knows this place like the back of her hand, having an entire lifetime to construct her own map in her head, and it does not take her long to dig out the bones of a legend. Her nail points to the mountains, a few ways away from where Ging had stashed his treasures. "Here."
Over her shoulder, Kurapika raises a brow. "Why there?"
"Hisoka said about cave dunes, and unless the witch can breathe underwater, these are the only caves that sprout morning glories year-round," then, she follows the jagged line of the mountain tops, how they'd pierce into the sky and tear apart the white blanket of clouds and stars, "and the mountain ridges look a lot like teeth if you think of animal jaws; I think it's all just perspective really."
All at once, a lightness that had been stolen the night before returns to the room, the prospect of having a solid chance at Isas returning home taking root, like an oak tree flowering from the soil. Gon guides a grin into his features, that curious nature that spills in abundance taking over and dragging his gaze to the map, clutching at all the ways towards Isas, towards ending this lifelong debt that Yona had paid a thousand lifetimes over.
However, not all demons die quietly. "Yona," says Kurapika, guiding her eyes to his when she sits back so Killua and Gon can formulate a plan, "I need you to tell me of the Priory; I understand that they, as a loose term, 'recruited' you for a time, so that begs the question of whether you have any knowledge of their inner workings?"
"I do," she sighs, disgusted, and Kurapika places a calming hand over bruised knuckles, and when she looks to him, it reminds her of the fire of a comet. Leorio nudges himself behind her, half-leaning over the couch into the conversation. "They...operate on a sort of delusional code name system. They use old, lesser Gods names to hide their identities; the ones I've been introduced too are Haki, Hawl and Aloiki. They handled most of the communication with me and the only one whose identity I know is Hawthorne, whose Hawl. Unfortunately, they always prepared the place and times for meetings, so I don't know where their base of operations is."
"My conclusion is that its perhaps in or underneath Hawthorne's workplace, city hall," comments Kurapika idly, settling his back to the couch cushions. Despite the comfortable expression, his hand laced in hers, she can see the scales that ripple beneath his skin. A blistering ball of light beneath her fingers, anger disguised. "And before you speak Leorio, no, we won't be storming the place. I believe Hisoka's riddle holds truth, and that perhaps it may be beneficial to at least encounter the place to see if there is validity to his statement."
"Do you all think I'm stupid or something?"
"Is that a trick question?"
Before Leorio can bite a corkscrew of anger towards the blond, Yona interrupts, "Boys," she says, and across the room, they look to her. The light from the windows, the veranda, pluck through her skin, and she almost turns a deep orange like the sun. She heaves a breath into her lungs, then lets it go, "thank you for everything, I'm so indebted to all of you. But I want to make something clear, because I've gotten to know you and I know what you'll do if the problem arises; if the Witch lives and she asks for something scarlet, I'm going to be the one to give it too her."
Who taught her to be the mouth of a rifle, Kurapika thinks. When blood is threatened, Yona goes scarce and quiet until the boom, until the bottled explosion and he has watched it catch fire under her hands over the weeks he has been in her presence, has seen the beginnings of a supernova in her mouth when blood has been scratched away at. And the blond knows, that when he first met her, he almost thought her fragile, rather than splintered, rather than gun wounds and pockets of space between her ribs.
Kurapika watches her features harden, resolve an aching reminder behind her teeth. For all Yona sees of her brothers, young and powerful and the center of her world, Kurapika can see the power the blossoms under his hands. Knows, that Yona is not her brothers but rather, Yona is herself.
Gon leans forwards, tries to shake away the self-sacrificial lamb that has coiled around Yona's heartbeat. "No, we're doing this together. We're family and we -"
"Gon, sweetheart," affectionate laces its hand through her hair when she runs her own through Gons, and she doesn't let go of Kurapika's hands because both know that she's scared, because both know that scarlet can mean a drop or a life, "thank you, and I'm not saying that I'm doing this alone. Despite what I'd like, I'm not as strong as you. I need all of you to help me; but this is my mistake, and if there's a price, I'm the one to pay it."
Gon stills, staring up at his sister, trying to understand. Then, slowly, the child nods.