perfect poison
. helium lost .

Author's Notes: Takes place in an alternate universe (or perhaps even a possible future for the course of Hunter x Hunter!), where Phinx has been killed by Kurapika.

Enjoy!

Theme: #13: excessive chain (余計な鎖)

Date: 7/1/2006

Eyes the color of molten amber, yet cold, devoid of any sort of emotion. Mouth set in a straight line, not even hinting at the slightest curve indicating a smile or a frown. Small, white hands, smooth, deceiving, like the hands of a child—

But they were the hands of a torturer, a killer.

These bitter hands with their fingers dripping of screaming memories touched themselves to the cold neck of the dead body, checking for a pulse, checking for the faintest sign of life. They insisted, pressing against the artery, searching—but coming up with nothing.

There was no way…

Those eyes fixed themselves upon the face of the body. The body's eyes were open, staring blankly up at the cracked ceiling; the fading lips were slightly parted, as if letting loose a small breath, maybe even a word or a whisper.

He straddled the body, continuing to stare down at those eyes that had once held life and humor, waiting. Of course, this was all just a grisly joke. The Ryodan members were virtually immortal—it would take something immense to kill a Ryodan member, not some thin chain from a teen hell-bent on the disappearing notion of justice, a teen who had signed his life away to the fickle mistress that was vengeance.

Nevermind that he had already claimed Ubo and Paku…

He jerked his head viciously, clearing the thoughts from his head. There was no way that he'd let some idiot teenager take Phinx. Raising his hand, he summoned all the strength he had and hit the body's (Phinx, whispered a small voice in his head, but he silenced it swiftly) face. He heard a sickening crack and knew that he had broken the body's neck, but still its eyes remained unblinking, unmoving—simply staring to the left as the vertabra protruded from beneath the paling skin.

"Get up, you piece of shit, get up," he hissed under his breath, leaning in closer—but there was no response.

"Goddammit!" He got up and kicked the limp body halfway across the room, where it lay, crumpled again into a heap. In a split second, he was over to the body again, seething with rage. Again he slugged the body's face, feeling the cheek bone shatter beneath his shaking fist.

He found himself breathing harder, breathing more quickly. He flung the body over so that it lay on its back once again, and again he straddled it, tearing open the shirt it wore, exposing bare, unmarred flesh, a pure, empty canvas. He dragged his fingernails down that chest, leaving five parallel gashes at least a foot long and half an inch deep each. The flesh gaped open, mirroring the lips on the face, but they didn't bleed—only remained open, like those glassy, dead eyes staring blankly up at him.

Of course, he'd seen his share of dead gazes, most worse than this—most of them were from faces too mutilated to be recognized as something more than a mass of bloody shreds of flesh dangling from a skull peering out from the carnage like some sort of twisted voyeur. Sometimes, the victim's eyeballs would be dangling out like sick lightbulbs; other times, the victim's mouth would be frozen into a howl of torment and anguish, screaming and pleading wordlessly to be released.

And he'd reveled in it.

But this—this subtle, tiny death—it unnerved him to no end. The placid look on the body's face—the fingers gently curled on both hands, relaxed—it was—it—terrified him—if that was even the word—no, he was never terrified; the Ryodan knew no fear…

But—Ubo had died and he had barely frowned, and the only thing he did for Paku's death was to light those candles. And the only feeling that he had ever felt after their deaths was regret—regret that they couldn't have been killed in a more honorable way, that they had to pay their lives to a nobody who dared to challenge the Ryodan and cage them in a chain, that infuriating chain, coiling and binding itself around their hearts, writhing and telling them that it was either to give up their nen or die.

And he thought that he was the master of torture.

There was something bubbling up from inside his depths, threatening to spill over at any moment as his erratic, ragged breathing quickened.

He was an idiot, there was no doubt about it. A reinforcement type, naïve and simple. There was nothing special about him. There was nothing special about his nen. There was nothing special about his looks, his personality, his intelligence.

But there was still something—that something that would elicit a smirk from him when he saw him aggravated, that something that would make him smile in return to his crooked, boyish smile. Something in the way that that simplicity fit into him so perfectly, melting into those crevices left unfilled by his lies and deceit.

He heard the pages being turned, then a voice that declared plain and simply, "You're a sick and twisted bastard, you know that?"

His only response had been to look up from the weathered pages of another book and smirk.

"And you called me a sick bastard," he muttered, idly scratching more and more at the chest, covering it in a myriad of paper-thin lines. "Who do you think you're fooling? If you don't get up now, I swear you'll have hell to go through."

He felt a swell within him, threatening to tear through him and burst free, the lurching within his chest. He clutched a hand to his chest, trying to quell the waves, to stop those overwhelming feelings. He narrowed his eyes and frowned as his heart seemed to beat faster and faster, as if panicking and throwing itself around in a cage; what was this; he couldn't stand it—he clutched tighter and tighter, tearing through the thin fabric he wore and drawing blood from the crescent-shaped lakes of red dug by his fingernails; he felt it drip down his chest and land, pitter-patter, onto the chest of that body, spreading and filling into those paper-thin cuts like some sort of blooming disease.

"你停著" he hissed as the first of the tears spilled over, kissing the body's chest and mingling with the blood. "你看你干了什麼。 你傷著我了。 我流眼淚了。 我恨你… 我愛了你。 躺著干什麼﹖ 你是什麼樣的混蛋﹖"

He hit the body a final time in the chest, feeling a furious satisfaction as he heard the sternum and the ribs shatter, as he felt the masses of muscle and tissue explode from the impact. Standing up, he gave the body a final look as armor formed around him and the room filled with a blinding, white-hot light.

Moments later, fire trucks screamed down the street and unleashed torrent after torrent of water onto the burning building as a small figure clad in black walked calmly away, leaving behind the remains of the only person he could have ever called a friend.

Author's Notes: Here's a translation of the passage with the Chinese:

"Stop," he hissed as the first of the tears spilled over, kissing the body's chest and mingling with the blood. "Look at what you've done. You've hurt me. I'm crying. I hate you… I loved you. What're you doing, lying there? What kind of sick bastard are you?"

Being that this was written in the span of roughly one and a half hours, and that I am 100 sure that there are inconsistencies and errors, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks:)