In the breeze, under trees, Gon races, green flashing against his face as the sunlight plays with the branches overhead. The leaves filter the gold against his skin, skin that has browned, turned hard as a nut over the last few weeks of constant sun-exposure and he laughs, feeling his lungs burn as Killua lets out a small whoop beside him. Gon turns back with a smile, and a shake of his head.

'Fun, huh?'

Killua wrinkles his nose, but does not disagree.

But then Gon's head tilts to the side, his ears catching hold of the thin crack of noise grass makes when it is snapped underfoot, and he darts into the darkened hollows of the bushes beside the path, Killua not a step behind. They wait until someone comes out, tumbling through a billow of yellow weeds and dusty, sun-cracked leaves; all evidence of drought, set against the weaker and less durable plants in the area. Or perhaps they are simply the dust-swirled leftovers from some crusty spokes of wheat.

But Gon's attention quickly leave these small gold scatterings and instead he feels his breath escape his throat. For there, before him, stands someone that once upon a time, he killed. Then he blinks, a contortion running over his face. No, this is wrong, all wrong, the shape is wrong, smaller, and the scent is too...too...fluttery.

But this 'fluttery' person stops. Stares. Blinks back into the shadows with round, golden eyes, then flicks his hair back, the white curls running like a wave over his neck.

'Hmph,' he sniffs, one of his ears twitching. 'Come out. I can smell you.'

Killua snorts. 'Not very bright, is he? Can't even tell how much stronger we are.'

But Gon's eyes remain fixed on the ears poking through the hair, on that tail that runs, long and slender, through the grass. It's thin, like a whip or a bone, thin like Neferpit- he stops before he can remember the name entirely. It calls on him, tugs at his anger and he narrows his eyes at the bleed of colour that stains the white in front of him, the difference freeing him from the unwanted mermory. He finds himself focusing on those scarlet stripes that tuck their way round the tail like a tiger's, bearing all the stiff strangeness of a scar, like a great dragon's claws had marred the sleek twist of muscle in-between. And the ears...looking closer, they look nothing like that person's. They belong more to a bobcat than a domestic pet's, taped off into curved tuffs like upright pears and coated with warm grey spots, like freckles.

It only takes a second, but he steps into the light. And with that move, he travels back in time. For the little cat flings itself at him, bloodlust stretching out from the menace of its leap, it's claws hooking into the air. And perhaps Gon would have felled its flight, reaching out to pluck it from the air with a sickening crunch, except, at that moment, the creature, with it's eyes staring and afraid, hisses out, 'stay away from my mother!'

- and Killua is suddenly there beside him, his hand wrapped tightly round Gon's wrist. He reaches out beyond Gon's stillness, his hand extending in a pale flash to tug at the ruff of fur flung out from their attacker's neck in a bristled clump. But the cat-like being still screeches regardless, as though he really has been shocked, coming to spin from the fingers of Killua's hand like a puppet.

'We don't kill kids,' Killua says firmly. 'And we talk to their parents before fighting them.' He turns a quick eye on Gon. 'Right?'

Gon can only nod. It seems the right thing to do because Killua smiles at him, gently.

'Right then.' Killua turns with a smirk to their prisoner, giving him a good shake, hard enough for him to let out a planative yowl. 'Where's your mommy, kid?'

Surprise, surprise, the kid glares at them and refuses to utter a word.

Gon sighs. Right then. Tracking skills, it is.

They spend the next ten minutes running through fields that crinkle at their edges with the rot of a dry summer, the snap of brown stalks ringing out like cracked bones against Gon's shins. Annoying enough, hardly a whisper emerges from Killua's feet, despite the fact that Gon can see his shoes landing where his own had been only moments before. But before the grumble can rise out of his throat, out ahead looms the small shape of a house, its sides comprised entirely of wood.

And on the porch an old man sits, rocking to and fro in a large chair, his weight making the boards creak with a gentleness unbecoming of the three boys and their own harsh, field-snapping cracks. And yet all he does, upon seeing them, is lift his pipe out of his mouth and beam.

'Hello, hello! It's always nice to have visitors! Would you care for some poetry?' Then he frowns. 'I would appreciate it though, if you let Shia go. It's not good to support a young man from his neck like that.'

Shia spits at him. 'Where's mother?'

'Out paying her respects. Which is more than I can say for you.'

Despite the uncomfortable clench of Killua's fingers on the back of his neck, Shia finds it within himself to roll his eyes. 'Yeah, yeah. I'll wash the dishes later.'

'No, not later. Now.' He looks at Killua expectantly. 'If you wouldn't mind.'

Nonplussed, Killua lets Meruem's grandson drop and Shia delivers a glare in return, before scampering off inside the house with a bounding trot, that, for some reason, appears more dog-like than cat. The man watches him with a fond smile.

'It's good to be young, isn't it?'

Gon lets his lips rise in a smile that for once, he doesn't feel. 'Yeah, I guess. I mean I do enjoy it! But thats not what we need to talk about. Where's his mother?'

The man frowns.

'I believe I already said so. Out paying her respects.'

Kokoriko has had an uneventful day. And yet, each sullen petal she presses to the ground makes her feel as though a spark of occasion has lit the air around her. She pauses, glancing up at the stone cross hammered down into the soil with muscles more suited for thumping down gungi tiles than erecting grave markers.

'Purple today,' she says softly. 'I don't think you ever had a favourite colour, Youpi; you were too indecisive for that. Or perhaps, you were simply too wrapped up in the decisions I made, than to worry about your own.' She lets her breath flutter out, then allows it to roll back in, bringing with it the delicate stir of lavender. 'At least here, you won't have to worry anymore.'

There is no fighting when she arrives back home. Only a slight widening of the eyes as she see who her two guests are. Her son races over to her immediately, tugging at her hand with his own as he swings round to level another glare at the humans.

'He is my only progeny,' she informs them stiffly, ignoring the way her heart seems to gallop through her veins, and all the fury that rises with it. 'Call your doctors, your nen healers; they will confirm it with their own eyes and see all the scars I had to pay for it.'

Her son's ears flatten again. 'Moooother,' he whines. 'Gross...'

'I have had no more', she continues, her voice prim and ready to delve into coldness at a moment's notice. 'Again, all things people with different skill-sets from your own can confirm.'

Gon looks at her. 'Hm,' he says, but the consideration there, for all of one second, reminds her of Hisoka and she shivers before his natural warmth creeps in to shake the timbre out of his voice. 'You're telling the truth. I can tell.'

'The father?' Killua asks, his eyes sweeping over her son yet again, and raking out another hiss from him in the process.

She shakes her head. 'I am not my mother. I am a chimera queen. The 'fathers' as you would call them, are all bit and pieces of the things I ate prior to having him.'

Both of them stiffen. And she laughs, loud and rancorous, taking delight in how very Pouf-like she sounds.

'Oh no, don't worry. Not a drop of human blood has passed over my tongue since the last time we met.'

'Take it,' he had begged, almost spat, as his head fell, lodging its way into her lap. 'Take it. It is yours to do whatever you want with it.'

She doubts even now, that he had had understood the metaphor twisted in with his offer, what with the beseeching look in his eyes and the way his fist formed a knot over his heart.

Take it, rip it out,' he had demanded, and she had had to stifle her gasp, as the blood spurted out from between his teeth in rivers that swum with chucks, meshed-up flesh that she could not restore or shove back in.

Everything had a limit, and she was not god. Not even close.

'Take it.'

It was the first thing that he had wanted from her, had framed in a way that was more than a request. And how could she possibly refuse it?

'I forgive you for leaving me,' she muttered, trying not to sound too sulky about it, before her nails ripped in, diving through his innards as they sought out his heart. With a squeeze and a pull, it slapped its way into her palm, writhing like a fish. And then it sank, deflating like a balloon as Youpi's eyes bulged and his breath rose out in a twisting gasp, his spirit fleeing alongside it.

She waited there for a while, just long enough for the blood to harden like plastic against her fingers. Then, with one deft motion, she swallowed his heart, hating it's taste. For it tasted hard and rubbery, as though it had been packed into the chest of a war-horse, trained in battlefields to mow down men who fled and wailed in fear of its canter.

Kokoriko took a breath, then another, stealing herself. Then she lowered her head to the rest of the body, the body that was not Youpi anymore. And began to chew.

She pauses.

'The fact that my boy walks, can talk like you, I owe it all to my loyalist friend.'

Gon frowns. And a flicker runs over Killua's face. But the expression it creates is nothing like disgust.

'Yeah,' he says, 'loyalty. It's a pain to deal with, huh?'

Kokoriko turns her face to the sun. 'You have no idea.'

'Actually,' says Killua softly, 'yeah, I kinda do.'

She turns back to him, considering. And remembers the glare of his hair and the way electricity had crackled round its surface as he stared at her, back in that cave another lifetime ago. She had sensed danger from him, felt it in the way he brushed his fingertips against the light that touched him, sparks he had sent out into the dark to dance before her eyes with the smell of lightening. She remembers the taste of it, sharp and corrosive, like acid. She remembers how it had run deep, frying her tongue with its scent. But only, only when she talked to Gon.

'Yes,' she acknowledges, 'perhaps you do.'

There is silence for a time. And for once Gon actually looks uncomfortable.

'Who's the-'

'-geezer,' Killua interrupts him, jamming his thumb in the direction of the man, still cheerfully swaying backwards and forwards, inside the curved slopes of his chair. It rises to loom over his shoulders like the outstretched hood of a cobra and helps to form an eeiree, almost hypnotic picture, with the way he refuses to stop smiling.

Briefly, Gon wonders if this is what other people feel like dealing with him.

'It doesn't matter,' says Kokoriko. 'Who he is now, doesn't matter. Just what he chooses to do now.'

Well. There is certainly weight in her words, and it leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable. And perhaps that should press in on everyone, lean on their souls with something akin to the force of gravity, except, right that second, comes the crash of dishes. And then, in their wake, a quiet, 'opps.'

The smiling man places his pipe in his mouth while Kokoriko rolls her eyes.

'Hard isn't it,' she calls out wryly. 'Eavesdropping and washing up at the same time. Maybe next time you'll do your chores when I tell you to, instead of leaving them for later.'

'Moooom... '

'No whining! '

Gon bursts out laughing. 'You're like Mito-san and me!'

Kokoriko tilts her head to one side. 'Is that a good or bad thing?'

Gon pauses. But before he can answer, Killua's voice cuts across his hesitation like a whip.

'It's good,' the former assassin says roughly, like there's a waiting cough wedged down inside his throat, ready to rush out. 'Very good. As long as the kid isn't afraid to whine to you about the work you give them, then it's good.'

Kokoriko does not invite them in for tea. And as they leave, Killua finds himself glaring back, through their tiny window to where Shia has raised a single finger above the smashed crockery, all in the grand showmanship of the young and very rude.

'Oh,' says Gon. 'That's pretty rude of him. Mito-san would definitely have never taught me that.'

'Bet that creepy old man did.'

But Gon is already looking at him, his mind switching over to a different thought as he gives him a level stare. 'We're not gonna report this,' he says, phrasing it like an order.

Killua doesn't mind.

'No, ' he agrees, thinking of Alluka and the way she is waiting for them both, down in a lodge only two towns over from the middle of nowhere. 'No. It would be too boring anyway.'

Shia dreams that night. He dreams of leaving, of wandering halls of glass and marble, of pressing his feet against sand that burns deep enough to leave whorls of red on his toes. He dreams of pressing his jaws into quivering meat, of racking up points he wins from people other than his mother. He dreams of the melody she has picked up from books, of the tune she saws on mended strings from the violin she only ever allows him to slide his fingers against.

He dreams of winning.

Later, he wakes up to that same melody, the long, slow thrust of sound spilling out from under his mother's stiff fingers.

'Does it have a name, yet?' he asks her, not expecting any real answer in return.

But Kokoriko, mother, queen of no one, not even him, turns, the clouds pulling over the moon just as her expression slips into his hazy sleep-tinted view.

'I think,' she replies, 'that it is called a lullaby.'

He snorts. 'That's not a proper title.'

'No,' utters the old man, now free from his rocking chair, 'no it's not. But I was once a king and I can tell you, for free in fact, that titles are not as important as they seem.'

Shia rolls his eyes. He does not believe that the man who claims to be the former leader of East Gorteau was ever more than a farmer who likes to rest his spine against wood.

'Whatever. What do you know? One day, I'm gonna leave this dump.'

Kokoriko's bow, the one she has spent afternoons fashioning out of the stems of saplings and thin quirks of hay, pauses, with a quiver, to rest against a string.

'I know. But when you do, I hope you will not let others twist your name into a different shape. Not even for a title.'

Shia stares at her.

'No,' she tells him firmly. 'You have years to grow into, before you can come up with your own answers.'

And then, like magic, her bow starts to etch out the next melody in her mind.

'Hmm,' she says. 'I like this one. I think I shall call it, 'home.''

Notes: Wow. When I started this story, I originally thought it would be nothing more than a short six-chaptered fic about Meruem and Komugi. And look...what ended up happening. It's been a big long trip for me, and hopefully some of that rubbed off on a few of the readers, if they managed to make it this far. I guess I have a lot of mixed feelings about what I've done, case in point being the title. To date, the title of this fic is the one I have struggled with the most, out of all my works. 'Domestic Divergence', always felt a little wrong, a bit pompous whenever it flashed up into my face. And yet...and yet, I pondered, what else I could call it?

It is only now, trotting out these last two chapters, that I realise, finally, what this story is about. Finding somewhere to call home. It should have been obvious, and maybe it was to some of the readers here, but it was not, at least not to me, until I typed in the last, final word, of this fic.

And I'm...I'm not sure whether I will end up changing the title of this fic. But if I do it will probably be to something like 'Home', or 'Discovering Home'.

And I'm sorry to those of you, who wanted something more big, or epic or sprawling. I knew this would never be that and would always be more character driven. Though I will confess, a part of me feels a little truimph that I managed to kill off Hisoka, of all people. Jeez.

At any rate, thanks to those of you who commented, or wished me well through some other means of communication. Its been a year, almost, and finally, finally, I can look back and say 'I'm finished. I achieved something great.' Hopefully, some of you will feel the same.

Edit: I was recently queried about certain aspects of this story that left a reader slightly confused. Although I did send them a message detailing some of my thoughts on the matter, I figured I would copy and paste them here as well, in this more public venue, in case any other reader held the same questions.

For example, although I never revealed the precise words Kokoriko spoke to Alluka when she made her wish, it was implyed the following chapter that she wished to be delievered to the place her parents met. This was so that she could gain a better understanding of who they were, and so by extension gain a better understanding of who she was, as opposed to the way others in the fic were focused on WHAT she is and the danger, or in Pouf and Hisoka's case, the hope she represents.

This was all meant to lead into her greater wish to find a home for herself, something she was not really capable of verbalising, or indeed able to think of in more specific terms, until the prophectic dream involving the figures of her parents occcured later on, which is partly why she was unable to express such a thing to Alluka at the time. It was not really a thing that could be listed in a series of clear-cut steps and I did try to leave hints - I'm pretty sure I have Kokoriko ruminate, during her exploration of the palace, on why she didn't ask Allluka to take her to the hut where she was born, another place where she might have developed a sense of who her parents were as people, for example.

Kokoriko, as some other real-life orphans do, just knew that something was missing, some sense of understanding about herself. She felt she lacked information, or at least a solid foundation for herself, and Alluka was basically a handy way for her to remove herself from the watchful company surrounding her without further bloodshed, all in order to help achieve this hole-filling. Or it gave her the illusion of doing so, at any rate.

As for Youpi, he did not make a wish. He rather pointedly doesn't. As he told Kokoriko, Alluka gave him the choice of asking. And when Nanika grants you a favour, like she does for Killua, there seems to be no obvious rebound, or cost for it. And...I guess I delved into non-cannonical territory here. I have seen someone say somewhere, that one of the frightening things about Alluka's family was that they sought ways of controlling her rather than sitting down and talking to her and that maybe, if they had tried to understand her like Killua, Nanika would have granted them requests as well. But they never did. They never ASKED.

Also since Youpi offered to pay the cost for Kokoriko's wish, that softened Alluka and Nanika towards him as well. But he never acually made a proper wish and phrased it as such, unless asking to be taken to where Kokoriko was, counts.

As for his death, well that was an inevitable consequence of being exposed to the Rose Bomb back in the first chapter. The difference was, unlike Pouf, Meruem and Komugi, he was the only one of them who lived long enough to actually die from it. All their lives were cut short before the poison could kill them completely. And indeed, the chapter prior to the last had Kokoriko reflecting on how she knew he was not going to last for too much longer. Which was why she killed him before he stopped breathing, because he asked her too, because he WISHED for it. His whole life, he had only ever wanted to service the king and then her, and then, with his body failing him, the last valuble thing he could offer is sustenance.