Chapter 36

Eimear had a way of looking at a person - as if all of the parts of you were spread out in front of her and she was holding back judgment on whether she wanted to try and fix you or leave you in the dirt. I had a feeling she enjoyed doing the latter much more than the former.

"Where's your warden?" Eimear's dark eyes darted around the trees like she was expecting to find Hisoka leaning against a trunk, his lips pulled back in a violent smirk.

Minoru's eyes met mine. I had pulled away a considerable amount of my nen so that he would be visible which I was still unsure was a good idea. Eimear's eyes tracked my nen beast like a cat catching sight of a mice, her mouth opening softly as she drew in a long breath. Like she could smell him from across the space between us.

Minoru took a step back, shyly moving behind me. Oh my god. She's looking at me. Do I still have salmon on my muzzle?

"He decided that he didn't have any use for me," I said instead of answering him, turning fully to face the stooped woman. Her eyes returned to me with a swiftness that unnerved me, her fingers tightening along the grooves of her staff. "We parted ways a little over a week ago."

Her jaw worked. In the dying light of the day, Eimear's face reminded me of the walls of a clay building, accustomed to the ebb and flow of the years and people that passed around it. Even though she seemed infinitely older than me, there was an endlessness in her face that made me think of her age almost as an afterthought. Years and years from now, I would expect to find her here, one moment from tearing away at my nen.

Her jaw worked a bit more, those fingers tapping methodically at her staff until her lips finally split into a smile that seemed to threaten to eat me up. "Hisoka Morrow decides a creature's worth on a day-to-day basis." Her tongue worked along the inside of her cheek. The dark depths of her eyes deepened, reminding me of what it must feel like to sink to the very bottom of the ocean. "But I'll let you in on a secret, my beastly girl."

Minoru's eyes ticked to me worriedly, his maw opening and closing as Eimear gave us a sickly sweet grin. Both of her hands folded delicately atop her cane.

"Hisoka doesn't offer his nen up freely," she whispered and I strained to hear the words over the soft mountain breeze rustling through the trees around us. "At least… not for items that he's willing to let wander away from him."

I gulped down my initial retort. The parts of Hisoka's personality seemed too warped to fit together. He was possessive and yet detached. He seemed to view me as a person and yet spoke to me like I was a chew toy he had gotten at a shop. I was a pet to him - something that he could train before selling to the highest bidder, an item that he wanted to design before tearing apart.

"He wasn't allowing me to find out my nen classification." Eimear wanted me to give her things and I was more than willing. In my short time under Hisoka's teaching, I had found that to learn, you needed to give up a little bit of yourself in return. One wasn't meant to simply grow and grow. It was a common misconception. The world isn't big enough for giants. So to get ahead - to learn what we need to to survive - we kill off parts of ourselves to make room. We push aside the pieces inside of us that we once thought were special to make room for what we need to obtain. The world was a series of murders, small and large, taking place all around us.

"I can pay you-" I started out slowly. Minoru and I had made a small sum of money from pickpocketing. Enough where we would live comfortably for a week, maybe two. It wasn't something to impress-

"Hisoka didn't want you to come here?" Her whole face had sharpened, her eye narrowing to slits.

I paused, feeling my gut tighten. I had assumed that they weren't close but what if I had been wrong? The muscles in my calves bunched up one my one, the instinctive urge to run tightening my stomach.

Tell her. Minoru whispered to me, his eyes critical as they ran over the older woman.

My hands clenched, rolling the truth around on my tongue before I finally let out a long, slow breath. "He didn't want me to learn nen. He wouldn't tell me why but he refused even letting me try at water divination-"

Thunder roared through the space, bouncing off the trees and assaulting my eardrums enough to make me flinch. I blinked, finally taking in the fact that Eimear's head was thrown back, her stomach heaving. Laughing. Right. She laughed like a storm about to desecrate a small village. I gulped, unsure how to take this.

Finally, Eimear jerked forward, storming toward me like a cat ready to maul me. I tensed, a jolt of fear bursting through me as I saw the flash of her teeth, the bun atop her head bouncing as she stopped abruptly an inch in front of me.

Somewhere in the time that I had left her, I had grown taller. I blinked down into her grinning face. "You should have told me that from the beginning. I'll be right back with a cup."

I stared down into the chipped glass, watching as the leaf drifted lazily across the surface. Eimear plopped down into the dirt across from me, a cloud of dust bursting around her with a great woosh as she eyed me. Her staff rested across her lap.

"You know hatsu?" It sounded like an accusation.

Minoru glanced over at me, his eyes narrowed. Like he was testing me as well.

"Hatsu is just one's natural nen," I recited faithfully, a bit miffed that Minoru didn't even believe that I had memorized it. "It's used to cast ones nen for a certain function-"

"Like water divination - good," she finished for me. "You'll go into this state. Put your hands on either side of the cup."

I blinked. My head spun, trying to follow the directions. Hisoka had always been oddly clear about his intentions and instructions. He had almost instinctively known when I had been confused.

"I've spoiled you, pet." He had told me.

I grimaced, wrapping my hands around the glass and getting a whack on the head for it.

"Ow," I snarled, jerking away from the cup to rub at my head.

"Don't touch it," she snapped, glaring at me. "Hands around the glass. Hatsu. That's all you need to do."

I didn't respond, choosing instead to follow directions and just get this whole ordeal over with. Hands on either side of the glass not touching. Hatsu. I concentrated, switching over to it easily. The leaf spun another lazy time, the water still inside of it's container. I waited, pouring a bit more of my nen into it. Nothing happened.

Cold sweat formed along my spine, panic starting to nudge at my insides. Was it possible to have nen with no category? Had Hisoka guessed? What would-

A thin vein inside of the leaf pulsed, wiggling slightly. I gulped in a breath of air, smelling lilacs and… metal stung at my nostrils. Blood. The smell of blood. Red burst from the small vein, dying the water a sickly crimson. More veins grew and burst, looking like worms wiggling, screaming before exploding. I resisted the urge to flinch, watching as the water at the bottom of the cup bubbled while the surface stayed eerily calm, the leaf slowly seeping into the water below. Another vein burst, splattering blood across my face.

"Well, now you know," Eimear breathed, an odd stillness curtaining her face. I jerked my hands away from the glass, gulping a breath of air and then another. The heel of my hand rubbed harshly at my face, trying to scrub away the leaf's frightening blood. "You're a specialist."

"Is this what he taught you?" Eimear demanded from across the clearing, her cane thumping once and then again into the dirt, creating small poofs of anger each time. "How to dance around like a wood elf in the trees?"

For all her griping, Eimear hadn't been able to hit me a single time with the stones that she had been throwing at me for the last hour and a half.

When you watch someone fight long enough, you begin to learn their movements. The way their body flows into each strike or jerks. Some people were violent fighters - an odd notion but when you look at Illumi and Hisoka in the middle of an attack, you'll understand. My brothers were brutes - they liked the feel of breaking bones. It was what had fed us. But I had never been good at strict brute force combat.

Hisoka and Illumi had taught me that grace could win you a fight. Treating your opponent like a dance partner that needed to be dominated would get you just as far, if not farther.

So instead of using up my speed, I flowed. I spun and dipped my way around each stone thrown. Sweat seeped down my back, collecting in the waistband of my shorts. Dirt coated my fingers, packing under my nails as I flipped into a handstand.

Mori-

Minoru's warning came too late.

The harsh ground took my breath away, dirt and stones rubbing my face raw as something took me down. Hard. I gasped, blinking away stars as something deep, deep inside of me tore away. Words spluttered up, my stomach turning sickly. Dust clogged my lunges as I breathed in, face pressed to the ground. Distantly, I heard Minoru give a roar.

"You can continue to fight like they taught you, my beastly girl," Eimear called and I choked back a scream as something else bit into me. God. It felt like someone had reached into the very base part of me and dug in, sinking their claws and teeth into the very meat of me. Minoru voice rose in a chilling wail. "But you will never win like this. You'll get pushed to the ground over -" I gritted out a wail, struggling to get up and giving out as a cane hit my back. "And over-" Another chunk of me got torn away. Fuck. Was it me - My head spun - She wasn't actually ripping out hunks of skin from my body but it felt - "And over again. Use your nen. Or you're wasting my time."

It took me a long time after she had gone to even force my head out of the dirt. A few feet away, Minoru was sprawled out, his side heaving up and down in great breaths. She had bitten into him with her gift, her nen ability. I bit back my own disgusted reaction. I had asked her to teach us. My fingers reached for my nen beast, pumping a bit more of my aura toward him. His breathing settled, his rigid position relaxing a bit.

This was a lesson.

One that I wouldn't forget.

"Get up," Eimear hissed, sneering down at me. Pushed to my limit. Dots burst and condensed along my lids, the sweat raising down my face and spine, turning the dirt into clay beneath me. The heel of her cane slammed down into the back of my hand, breaking a scream from my throat. I should have had enough nen in me to lessen the blow. Instead, I heard the tell-tale crack of my bones, pain so sharp and strong lancing up my arm. "Is this what you waste my time with?"

I bit back a curse, trying desperately to force some sort of strength into my limbs. A week after we had done my water divination. A week and I still didn't know anything about my category. Specialist, she said. But what did that mean? What did that mean?

"You know," she had insisted. But I had blinked at her, unable to come up with a single thing. "Your abilities don't just come to you at random. They're wishes. Tiny dreams made reality. You. Know."

The problem was that I didn't. I shut my eyes tight, gritting down on the pain. I just didn't know.

The lessons had gotten more and more brutal after that. She had started out slow - by taking my nen one bite at a time. But the very essence of someone doesn't just revive itself overnight. Even with the amount that I had - the amount that had been with me for so long. Minoru had started to be affected. And I - I was so tired.

I wanted to know. I wanted to know so bad. But just like so many other things, the answer alluded me. It was locked inside, trapped by whatever my mother had done to me. Maybe even by the death of my brothers.

I gulped down a well of tears, breathing in another layer of dirt. Leave me here, I wanted to beg her. Leave me here. I just can't - no more -

It was bone-crushing - this weight. It drew me down further and further each day.

"Oh, have you given up now?" There was an edge to her voice that I didn't fully understand, a sharpness that I didn't have the energy to match. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly down at me, her cane grinding down crunching around in the broken bones of my hand enough to make me gag. It was hard to breathe. My brain flickered, pieces of this moment blinking to life and then dimming. "I wonder why Hisoka didn't go about things this way. It seems like you only respond to pain - and even that you seem to have given up on."

The cane lightened and then disappeared and I let out a harsh breath. It didn't feel like a reprieve. It felt like being chained to the ground - God I wish I could fly. Wish I could fly again to get away from this dank hell.

I was that scared child again, trapped behind the dumpster.

Her boots crunched steadily across the dirt, drifting away-

I recoiled, eyes opening wide as a guttural scream broke through the clearing. Birds shuddered, diving from the trees to fly away. Something inside of me broke as Eimear's cane came down on Minoru's back once more, the familiar feeling of being ripped apart from the inside out bursting through me.

"STOP!" I screamed, my broken hand throbbing as I tried and failed to level myself up. With each whip of her cane, she dragging away more of my nen. We were already so low - so near passing out.

Eimear's eyes glared coldly across the clearing at me. "I've figured out why you haven't been broken already," she called out and Minoru sagged back into the dirt. "You're warden cares about you. Hisoka Morrow - unwilling to tear something apart."

Another hit and I screamed, my own voice mingling with Minoru's.

"You know how many people he's brought to me - all so that they could be eaten up with my ability. So that they could save his." Minoru's voice was growing fainter. I sagged back to the ground, feeling the world start to echo, like a bowl being rapped with metal. Get away, get away, get away, a desperate voice inside of me beat. "I know him. I know the vile, putrid mess that he leaves behind for his own gain. I knew the boy that he was. And I know the man that he is. And what he isn't is kind. So the real question is-"

Everything went silent. I could feel the cane tearing into me - distant like the lap of water against your toes. I felt the dirt beneath my cheek, the sun warming my face.

"I told you to stop," I breathed. Something wild and free lashed out, grabbing onto every stone and rock and tree that I touched.

I wasn't tired anymore. My neck felt worn like a doll that had been used too much as I turned to stare up at Eimear's stunned face. A cloud of rocks hovered above us, suspended in a silent vigil. Around us, the trees had uprooted, the long lines of their roots extending to skim the ground.

Nen abilities were wishes. And my wish when I was a child was to be able to fly away.

I laughed. I felt it soar out of me in a uncontrollable wave, the feeling of such a pathetic, powerful thing bowling me over. I laughed so hard that it hurt. I laughed so hard that Eimear's face, tightened with horror blurred in front of me, tears streaming down my cheeks into the dirt.

The trees boomed back to the earth, shaking the ground. The rocks pelted down on me as they lost all levity. And I blinked into unconsciousness.

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