Eventually, Kite woke up.

There were people rushing past his room when he was lucid enough to hear them, and then all noise disappeared but for the steady beeping of a heart monitor. The next thing he registered was the sterile, actinic smell of surgical cleanliness, and when he finally opened his eyes, he came to recognize his surroundings as a hospital room and the tubing on his wrist as a morphine drip. After several seconds of numb, confused appraisal, he tried to yank it out of him, but the arm he reached with seemed not to exist. Oh, there it was—in a plastic bag on the tray beside him, along with that other thumb he didn't have. Pitou had… oh. Oh, that kinda sucked.

And then he looked up to find literally the last person he'd expect to be standing there.

"Hi, Kite," Machi said.

Seriously. Ging himself had a better chance of showing up than she did.

"… The fuck?" Kite intelligently croaked.

"Looks like you lost some stuff," she observed, gesturing to the objects of his dismemberment. "The Hunter Association hired me to help with that."

It shouldn't have surprised him that the Association could access such a disgusting level of the world's black market, but Kite was presently drugged out of his mind, so he did nothing but struggle to process the information as she popped open the bag and retrieved the arm, dangling it over him like a macabre mobile of fingers. Then she reached out to his bandaged stump, and he flinched a full two centimeters away from her in spite of his sluggish stupor.

Of course he had to flinch.

Unamused, Machi retracted her hand. "Do you want your arm back or not?" she asked him brusquely. "I've already gotten paid, so I intend to do the job, but I won't bother if you're gonna be difficult."

"My… oh, my arm."

"Yeah. Trying to help you, here."

"Why couldn't you have done it while I was unconscious?" he slurred, jumping once more at her touch.

This time, she turned a wry look at his resistance. "Because I wanted to say hello to my favorite boy toy," she drawled. "Hi."

And that sufficiently shut him up as she stripped away the gauze all over his right side, the starchy cotton peeling off the lacquer of his clotted blood.

"Nen Stitches."

In the wake of each dizzying flash of her needle, countless Nen threads wove from body to limb and pulled the two together, and then Kite was flexing his once-missing hand as if nothing had ever happened. "It feels… weird."

"That would be the skin graft," she explained. "There was another guy before me who took care of the worst of your burns."

Sure enough, there were two narrow strips of foreign skin crawling up his forearms, a distinctly healthy mesh against the rest of the inflamed tissue. "Shouldn't this be bandaged…?"

"Who knows?" was Machi's rhetorical answer. "Now give me your other arm."

So, much in the same way his right side was restored, Kite soon found himself with a full set of opposable thumbs—which he immediately used to rip the morphine drip out of his wrist. Machi watched his efforts to sit up for a disinterested moment before turning away. "Well, I'm off. Have fun being a dad."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he muttered, eyes following the afterimages that filled the room whenever he turned his head; that may not have been morphine, what he was on.

"Hm? They say the kid they brought back is yours. You did a real shit job raising him, by the way; he's stupid as all hell."

"What?" Kite said with a dazed smile. "Gon? Gon's not—ha! Gon's not my kid. I mean, sometimes I wish that he was… uh… that he was my son, and—well, if he asked me to be his dad, I'd sign the papers in a heartbeat—but there are other times where I'm really… hah… I'm really glad that we're not actually…" He trailed off as he more fully considered her statement, disbelief slowly catching up to him. "Wait—wait a minute; you know Gon?"

Detached in a keenly cynical way, she seemed bored out of her mind at his rambling. "Hardly," Machi sighed. "We had a few run-ins from when he was trying to tail me and the rest of the gang. Oh, and his little boyfriend tried to kill me."

One neural beat at a time, the words slowly drifted into their meanings. Run-in. Tail. Gang. Boyfriend…?

And then it dawned on him—Killua, duh. Of course she meant Killua. "Well, he is a Zoldyck," he apprehensively replied.

"Tch. Whatever."

And Kite was not sure how to feel about Gon doing something so stupid as to chase after the fucking Phantom Troupe. Had he always been like this, harboring a literal death wish? Or did he just like the thrill of living on the edge? Kite had thought the self-destructive impulse was exclusive to this ant fiasco, but maybe the problem went back way further than that. Was that how he met Killua, to pick a fight with someone that could kill him eight ways before he hit the ground? How the hell had he even survived up to this point?

… Oh, no.

"Wait!" Kite blurted out as Machi turned to leave again. "He's alive, right? When you say that they brought him back… you mean that they brought him back alive, don't you?"

She paused to give him an unreadable look.

"Go find out for yourself."

And then she closed the door.

So there Kite was, still high as a kite on whatever the hell was in that IV, stumbling through a busy hospital in search of someone who would tell him what the fuck was going on. Interestingly enough, despite his obviously injured state, no one tried to stop him or even ask him any questions, and then he noticed the black circlet around his wrist: a strip of Nen-pasted paper that carried the Association insignia in prominent red ink.

Ah, that's right; as a Hunter, he had free reign of the place. No civilian doctor could issue any order to keep him contained—or, now that he thought about it, deny him access to other people's medical records. Sometimes, Kite felt a bit guilty about how much undue power he'd been given over the rest of the world, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't find it useful.

Well, if there was any time to abuse his authority, now would be it. Thus, Kite shakily approached an information desk and asked without preamble, "Are there any other Hunters checked in here?"

The nurse's eyes nervously darted from his wristband to his face. "Er… I'm sorry, but Hunters are protected under Code—"

"Of course there's a catch," he muttered to himself. "Well, did anyone from the Association leave me any messages? The name's… uh… my name's Kite."

"Oh, um… no, I don't see anyth—"

So Kite wandered away, hand anxiously rubbing at the thin seam above his right arm. The only thing he could do, then, was to wait in his room until someone came for him. But who knew when that would happen? It could be days, weeks—

He collapsed into a chair beside the wall, unable to stay standing. The pain was starting to kick in, and the burn itched like hell at the ridges of his donor skin, and Kite suddenly needed to vomit, because it could be days, weeks—

"Kite!"

And then Knov was helping him to his feet.

"You weren't supposed to get up, yet," said Knov as he reached around Kite's torso to lead him back to his room. "Your doctor recommended that you spend at least a few days in bed. He'll be coming to debrief you in an hour or so. Oh, how's the arm?"

Kite swallowed the bile that crept up his throat. "Attached, I guess. Seems to work fine."

"Well, it better, with a price tag like that," he muttered. "But that's good to hear."

"… Huh?" Kite breathed. "You paid for it?"

Knov wrested the door open with his non-dominant hand. "Well, of course. No one who fought at the palace should have to pay their medical bill; heroes like you are more than entitled to an arm and a skin graft. Speaking of which, why isn't that bandaged?"

"I dunno," Kite panted as he staggered over to the bed, so Knov went rummaging through a cabinet and pulled out a roll of bandages alongside a folded shirt. "So did you just pay for it, or did you also contact the… specialist?"

"I funded the Association to reach out through its own channels," Knov disclosed, sitting down beside him. "So no, I didn't choose the woman who attended you."

Well, that made sense; Knov didn't seem like the type to deal in such shady business. Being a competent Hunter, he'd probably function well enough in that sort of setting, but only if the situation demanded it of him. The point was he wouldn't ordinarily seek out those connections, and that was something that made him… likable. Or, rather, not unlikable.

So Kite was comfortable in his perception of Knov as the man began to dress his wound. "Thanks for doing this," he replied in all sincerity—Knov simply nodding his acknowledgement, focused on getting the correct wrap—and Kite felt his lightheadedness begin to leave him. "… Hey, can you tell me what's in that IV?"

"Huh? Just morphine."

"Oh, alright then. Because it feels a little… funky," he tried and failed to describe. "Kinda reminds me of LSD, when you shoot it, but without the visuals and the… destiny. But it's wearing off, now."

Knov fixed him with an incredulous look. "You've injected LSD?"

"I was a dumb kid," Kite mumbled. Knov simply raised an eyebrow—perhaps a little mirth in the smile he wore, touched by an unexpected air of camaraderie—and finished taping the gauze. For no particular reason, Kite felt as though they'd reached a common ground, that there was a mutual understanding between them—a something that bridged the gap. Or maybe that was just the morphine talking; either way, it was a quiet moment.

"Well, the only thing you need to focus on now is recovery," Knov stated. He handed him the shirt, and Kite gingerly pulled it over his shoulders. "Morel's in room four-twelve, if you wanna go talk to him. Knuckle and Shoot… didn't pull through."

Taken aback, Kite's breath caught in his throat. "Oh…"

And the peace was shattered when he abruptly lurched forward, eyes wide with remembrance.

"What about Gon? He… he made it, right?"

He had to have made it. There was no other option. Kite couldn't imagine the other option.

And Knov fucking hesitated.

"Um, yeah," he finally said. "Yeah, he's here. But… there's something wrong with him. It seems to be Nen-based. But it's not life-threatening, or anything like that! I've got people at the Association working to come up with a solution as we speak."

That… did not sound good.

"What's wrong with him?" Kite asked, as tense as he's ever been.

"… You probably want to see him, don't you?"

He slowly nodded.

"Well," Knov sighed. "He's in room four-thirty-three. I'll take you there."

Indeed, it was clear that something was wrong the moment Knov helped him through the door. Gon sat upright on the bed with the blanket thrown over his legs, dressed in the hospital brand of a button-down polo with its first few buttons undone. Face relaxed and wide awake, he looked entirely unscathed but for the IV sticking out of his arm, and yet he didn't turn his head to address them—didn't even blink, staring straight ahead.

Staring at a jar that contained Pouf's severed head.

"You see, he doesn't respond to anyone or anything," Knov explained. "Physically, he's fine—breathing steady, heart rate normal—but part of his mind just… isn't there. We had to hook him to an IV because he doesn't eat or drink. I don't think he's even slept since he was brought here three days ago," he said, peering at the dark circles under Gon's eyes. "And if you remove him from Pouf's head, he gets… violent. Palm figured out the hard way."

"What happened to Palm?" Kite breathed.

"She was the one who found him," Knov recounted. "After giving up on getting his attention, she tried to pull him away, but he went crazy when he lost sight of the head. Like, he never actually seemed to notice her, but he thrashed around with a lot of Nen to get back to Pouf's body. Palm was caught by surprise and ended up with four broken ribs and a fractured clavicle."

Kite stumbled forward to lean against the railing of the bed.

"But that didn't stop her," he continued, a wistful quality softening his voice. "She picked herself up, dropped the head into his arms, and managed to carry him to the rendezvous point. Heh, such a stubborn girl." He paused to clear his throat. "But anyways, there's a strange aura connecting him to the head, which is probably why he can't seem to stop staring at it. I've made arrangements for a Nen exorcist to take a look at it; they should be here in a week or so."

Eyes alight with Gyo, Kite observed the writhing tendril of aura that linked Gon's living head to Pouf's dead one.

"It's his technique."

"What?"

"A Hatsu," Kite said quietly. "It makes him focus only on his opponent, and vice versa."

"And what makes it stop?"

"When he's content with the outcome of the fight."

Knov considered this silently.

"… But that would be a Specialist move," he concluded. "And Gon's an Enhancer."

"I know."

And that's when Knov finally seemed to grasp the severity of the situation.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

"That's… not supposed to be possible."

"Turns out that it is."

"Jesus. I mean, I knew there was something off about him, but I never suspected anything this flat-out insane."

"He was strong about it," Kite said. "Strong about how he was hurting. Sometimes, he'd mention it, a little, but he… he tried to keep it inside."

Knov tentatively put his hand on Kite's shoulder.

"Do you want to spend a little time with him?"

Kite gave a single nod.

"Alright. Um, take my phone," Knov said as he placed it in Kite's hand. "I've got another one on me you can call if you need to get in touch; the number's in the contacts. And if you need help getting back to your room, just dial three on the phone in here," he instructed, pointing at the landline riveted to the wall. "That'll get you the service desk, and then you can call a nurse. Sorry we don't have the normal 'help' button in place; the hospital wanted to save on technology, since Gon isn't in a state where he could make use of it."

"That's fine," Kite murmured.

"I'll be here for another two hours, and then I'll come back later with the Nen exorcist, if you don't call me here beforehand. And… I'll make sure the Association does everything in its power to help him, Kite."

"Yeah."

"Okay, then. Take care."

So Knov walked out and shut the door behind him.

Kite pulled a chair beside the bed and slumped down in it. There, he studied Gon's face in all its aspects—the indigo wreaths beneath his eyes, and then the arrangement of his bottom lashes, and then all the ebb and flow of color in each hazel iris. The top lashes, then, which fanned out from the rim of his unflinching eyelids—oh, he blinked. That was nice to see.

His thin eyebrows and the lack of creases on his young forehead. The disheveled, unwashed needles of hair and the way it cropped up in short bits at his nape. The spray of freckles across his high cheekbones, sixteen larger ones and twenty-one very small. The childish swoop of his small nose. The fall of his cheeks. The smooth ridges of his medial cleft and how it met his cupid's bow. All the plates of dead skin encasing his chapped lips. The jawline curving fluidly into his chin. The slender stalk of his neck and the winglike spread of his fluted collar.

And then the room's motion-sensors turned the lights off, throwing a shadow over all of it.

"Killua's dead, isn't he?"

Relying on the daylight that labored through the window curtains, Kite looked back up to Gon's eyes.

"That's why you did this, right? Pouf said something that convinced you he was dead. Something undeniable.… Yeah, I can tell. That's the only reason you would go this route. You were always going to do something extreme, but… I'm pretty sure you didn't have this in mind. I can tell. I can feel it."

"Oh, God. What can I say? I'm so sorry. I… I wanted him to be alive for you. I wanted to believe. But at the same time, I knew that I couldn't say anything else, because then I'd lose any hold I had on you, and you'd be free to lose touch with… everything."

"God, I'm sorry. I wish I could turn back time and make it so I never brought you and Killua into that place. It was so fucking dumb, to just charge in there by myself with two little kids, thinking that we could handle it. If I'd waited just one damn day, we would've had reinforcements—the Chairman himself, for Christ's sake! G… God, it didn't have to be this way. We could've been alright. You could've been alright."

But reality didn't work with what-ifs. It worked with facts, and it worked with people, and nobody can ever do anything about it. If We Were Alright was but the twilight of conjecture, the no-man's-land of wishful thinking. This was one truth Kite could understand on his own.

"And then… and then I let Bisky go try to clean up after my mistake, and she paid the price of my failure. I should've been the one to leave and never come back, and she should've been the one to stay behind with you. And then I failed that part, too, because I let you fall into this state. I promised Bisky I would look after you, and I tried so hard, but I failed her. I failed you. And… and… and you failed me."

His hand clenched into a powerless fist.

"How could you do this to yourself? Make yourself into a petty murderer?! God, you were better than that! You were better than me! Fuck, I've killed more people than I can count—it keeps me up at night, sometimes—but you had a clean slate. You only get one of those, in life, and you're supposed to cherish it while you can still afford to be innocent. To cherish not having anything to regret."

"And you ruined it without a single thought, for no good reason. And now you're just like the rest of us. Blood on our fucking hands."

"Though, I suppose it's a bit presumptuous of me to assume that was your first human kill. Maybe you've been killing people this whole time, huh? You little sociopath."

"… Fuck, I don't want to stand by a… a child murderer. I don't want to stand by the sort of person that kills little girls just because they're angry. Why do you make me do that, Gon? How could you put me in this situation? All I can do now is move on from it, because you left me nothing else to do."

"So here I am, your fucking accomplice. I won't tell anyone what you did, if they don't already know. It seems like they don't, so… you're probably off the hook. Not that anyone would press charges to begin with; you're a Hunter, after all. But I know the truth. And I'm so disappointed in you."

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few long seconds of nothing.

"I don't like our relationship, Gon. I'm not a masochist—believe me, I'm not. And yet… I'm still here, aren't I? Still refuse to call it quits. I'm in way too deep with you, with this, with everything. And I love you, I guess. That's love, I guess."

It was the sort of thing people always wish they could regret.

"And fuck, Gon, you had it all! Talent. Charisma. Family. Friends. And you treat it like it's nothing, you ungrateful brat. When I was your age, I would've given anything to have any of what you have. Now I get to watch you dedicate your life to staring at a head in a jar. God, I wanna hit you! Is this what you wanted for yourself? Is this your big 'want?'"

"You had a real future, but you just… threw it all away. And over what? A boy."

And it sounded so stupid when Kite put it like that.

"Someone to kill time and fool around with. To kiss and hold when you're feeling lonely. Just some random boy."

But of course, the boy wasn't just any boy, because the boy was Killua, and Killua was…

And Killua was…

"And every day he didn't walk through the door, it was hurting you, of course. Every day he didn't jump out of the bushes, you had to… to push yourself a little harder to say, 'Tomorrow, for sure.' And then the next day. And the next. 'He'll be back. He'll be back.' Kept pushing yourself a little bit harder—until one day, you woke up to find that you… didn't really like being alive, anymore."

Kite found his head slowly tilting backwards to rest atop the back of the chair, face pointed straight above him. His throat was tight. His eyes felt hot. Like a man watching the water level swell toward the ceiling of a sinking ship, it was a chime of clarity, and it was pain.

"But it's alright, now," he spoke softly to the darkened light fixtures when his voice finally returned to him. "It's okay. It's okay, Gon. Everything's gonna be just fine. And you know why?"

He swung his head down to look back at the boy.

"Because you've got me. And I'm a resourceful guy. I am going to make things right."

"I am going to fix you."

"And if you still want to kill yourself, then I just won't let it happen. I'll hold you down for as long as I have to. Because you know what? I'm stronger than you. You'll just have to sit there and take it, because you can't do anything to stop me."

Moved by a sudden tenderness, Kite reached out to Gon's hand and laced their fingers together. The mesh was bizarre, with Kite's larger, burn-littered digits crowding out those of Gon's unblemished hand—and it hurt, to spread his fingers so wide and jam Gon's in between them, pressing up against all the lesions of his flesh, the skin on each knuckle cracking open to let fresh blood shine through. But with a steely grimace of tempests long weathered, Kite decided that he didn't really mind.

"Would it change things, if I fixed you?" he quietly asked, the question irrelevant but existing nonetheless. "Maybe not back to the way things were before, but… better than how they are now, at least. If I fixed you so that you could move on with your life… could you ever end up liking me again?"

But Gon did not respond.

"Kite!" Knov called out to him as Kite strode through the door. "I was just about to fetch you for Dr. Mandel. He's waiting in your room, right now, and—hey, where are you going?"

"I need to have a talk with Ging."

Author's Note:

A bit of a slow chapter, I know, but I promise things will pick up again soon

Sorry for being late… there was a weird error going on with updating chapters to this story? Nothing was showing up on my end, even though I could preview it… weird