"I knew you would come back. I was waiting."

Killua dragged the heavy freezer door back into position, not allowing himself to appear fazed by the girl's comment. The latter half of the statement was sheer idiocy, as far as he was concerned, as Misaki was still in excessively poor physical shape. The splint he had so been so kind as to craft and secure to her spine doubled in use to keep her broken rib from puncturing through the flesh by upholding her posture. It also applied contrasting pressure to the spot where he may have shifted the bone out of alignment. She wasn't particularly capable of leaving, and so announcing that she had been waiting seemed to him foolish and redundant.

The initial expression however, did in fact cause him some discomfort. Perhaps the girl had loaded the comment with the same asinine inspiration she'd channeled throughout the rest of it, but the thought in isolation was detestable. Was it not bad enough that Illumi held so much over him; including things he still felt he could not understand fully, without this stupid…lackey of his reiterating a similar power over his personal motivations?

Yet it was difficult to keep things in perspective, and even more difficult to properly blame Misaki for everything he wanted to blame her for when he had betrayed his own sense of logic and rescued her at the cost of his safety. Could he reasonably condemn her for the things she hadn't even done when he had abandoned his own duties to pursue personal interest? Was it sensible to consider her exempt from the very same compassion he was willing to review reasonably for himself?

He glanced up at her finally, realizing that too much time had elapsed to reply to her original 'greeting' either way. Her lips were a grim line across her face, though oddly her eyes seemed to do the smiling for her. She was lying down again, her head marginally tilted in his direction.

He set down a tray onto a rolling steel cart sitting adjacent to him and moved it next to the counter she was positioned upon.

"You're feeding me?" she asked with an arched brow.

With a smirk that dripped with irony he replied, "I'm not your old man."

She mimed the act of laughing and then said, "I would thank you if I wasn't being locked up in a warehouse freezer."

"Are you going to eat it or not?"

The girl struggled to shrug for a moment before giving up and using her energy instead to hoist herself slowly and painfully into a seated position. With a trembling hand she reached for the tray, plucking a single, thick noodle from it and holding it between her thumb and index finger at her mouth. The blankets around her shoulders slipped, and she borrowed a long moment to correct it before continuing.

"So, what exactly is the plan?" she suddenly questioned between bites.

"What plan?"

"Well," she said, avoiding eye contact for a moment, "you interrupted my fight to bring me here… Is it foolish for me to assume that you had a plan?"

Killua scowled. The topic bothered him, though in truth his actual lack of foresight was the cause. Nonetheless he disliked being confronted with it, particularly by Misaki.

"Interrupted your fight?" he repeated coldly, attempting to focus on her failure rather than his own. "If I hadn't gotten involved, you'd be dead now."

"You've already said as much. I just thought you might have had a reason for saving me… some sort of clever scheme or something of the like."

Killua lowered his stare, feeling partially trapped in both the conversation as well as within his own body and mind. The discussion had turned from one of his shortcomings to another, and worse, one he still did not understand. Why had he bothered to help Misaki? Was it simply because she had told Illumi that she respected him? Was that even a good enough reason to put himself at risk?

It sounded wrong no matter how many times he ran the possibility through his head, and yet he could find no better reasoning. Yet there were more elements of contradiction. She had not necessarily expressed any particular attachment to Gon, and had ventured as far to say that he meant absolutely nothing to her. In fact, she hadn't specifically stated that she would not kill Gon, and so her presence should have been labeled as a potential threat to his dear friend. Although Killua had taken precautions, such as locking the girl in a commercial warehouse freezer away from his comrade, he still couldn't rationally justify putting Gon at risk… and yet was that not exactly what he was doing?

He wondered if he could even blame it on his own selfishness, as he could hardly understand why he should even want to keep this walking liability around him. Was he still secretly feuding with his eldest brother somehow; bringing Misaki here simply under the pretense that in doing so Illumi couldn't have her? Was he even capable of such a profound level of defiance?

"Are you going to fight him?"

Her question, emitted so casually between mouthfuls, startled him somehow. Unfortunately she seemed to notice this, and her eyes softened. Killua inherently despised the suggestion of being pitied and hardened his glare.

"You're the one who told me all that junk about not taking your family for granted."

"Yes, and I stand by it whole-heartedly," she agreed. "I was only asking because if you were planning to fight him, I would have to stand down."

"What do you mean 'stand down'?"

"He's your brother, and if it turns out you really wanted to fight him then I would have to wait until you were finished before I could challenge him again."

"You think that you can fight him like this? You pretty much lost and last time you went in without any wounds…"

"Yes, but coming out alive is not necessarily the purpose for a fight like this."

Killua scrunched his face involuntarily.

"You should always fight to win, idiot."

"Maybe winning means something different to me than it does to you, Killua."

He sucked in a sharp breath and let it out slowly, staring at his visible breath as it swirled and disappeared into the frigid air.

"Are you still going to kill Gon?" His voice was firm and tainted with loathing.

"I can't answer that question."

"Why not?"

"It's a dangerous question and the answer could have serious repercussions."

He considered her response (which he found to be quite a poor one) for a moment before slamming his fist against the steel rolling cart.

"Your revulsion looks good on you," she whispered after a beat.

"What the hell does that mean?"

She was silent for a moment.

"It means that I'm sorry for hurting you."

His pale features looked doubtful amidst the confusion.

"I'm sorry that I put my job ahead of your feelings… and mine… and I'm sorry that I have to warn you that it will probably happen again," she explained.

There was anger creasing in his expression now.

"I don't know any other way to act."

"Don't you want to change?" he asked hesitantly.

Inwardly he recognized that most individuals in the business were ruthless. He had grown up inside that world. Gon had helped him understand that he was an exception to that vast majority.

"It's not about what I want. It's about who I am."

"Well, who are you then?" he asked, his tone echoing the irritation he felt.

She smiled weakly, running her fingertips over a faded scar on her forearm.

"I'm second place to my job, Killua. I can't promise you that I can really exist outside of it anymore..."

"Shut up! That's a stupid excuse," he spat. "Are you telling me that playing cards and reading were part of your job? Stop feeling sorry for yourself and agree to help us, or I'll throw you back out there to Illumi and you two can just kill each other for all I care!"

Her eyes widened and he knew he had struck a nerve. After a moment she smiled and reached shakily over to muss his hair.

"You moron," she chuckled out softly, endearingly. "I was already planning to help you or I wouldn't have asked what you had planned in the first place."

Killua was certain to turn away before foolishly smiling; an overwhelming sense of multiple victories rushing through him and turning his cheeks a peachy shade of pink through the slight breech of adrenaline. For a moment, he felt that his existence was his own to control and manipulate at will.

As it happened, that moment was just enough to elate his mood significantly.