It wasn't that Killua wanted to die -well, not if he could avoid it anyway- it was that he'd been at peace with it.
He was going to die though, that much had been certain to him the moment he saw Gon's face. The darkness that had swept over him like a sudden, shivering nightfall the moment they'd prepared for the final battle, eclipsing the light that had inhabited his warm, amber eyes.
Killua had wondered, as he took up his designated and rightful post beside his once best friend, if those brilliant eyes would stay that way forever.
But he'd known for sure, at that very moment, that this would be their final fight, their last hurrah on a grand quest that they wouldn't be able to see to the end. Not that they had a choice though, or that it had really mattered at all. Their fight against the Chimera Ants was the only fight that mattered anymore, and no amount of grueling training, immaculate teamwork, or even dumb luck would be enough to save them this time.
No, the ants were too strong and far too evolved to be bested by a pair of overzealous teenage boys who believed their sheer willpower and determination would be enough to win the day.
Even if those boys were him and Gon.
So yes, Killua knew he was going to die, but that was okay. To him it had been.
He'd been content with the reality that had been staring them both in the face the moment they stepped onto those palace stairs. Yet it was okay.
Killua would die, but he would die with Gon, and that was what made it okay.
He would keep his promises, both of them.
Killua wouldn't betray his friend, his best friend. He would stay by Gon's side until the last breath between them was drawn and they went up in what would assuredly be a final blaze of glory, not going down without a fight, and hopefully taking the monster that had murdered Kite with them.
They would die, but they would die together, and Killua was fine with that outcome. At peace with it. It wasn't as if he had much of a say in the matter anyway, hadn't ever since Gon had first stormed from the room that held the vacant, mangled marionette of a man he cared so deeply about it was hurting him. One of few true living connections Gon had to his father...
It had all seemed so inevitable to Killua after that. Gon could not be halted in the relentless pursuit of his revenge, only a fool would try, and Killua would rather follow his best friend through every layer of Hell and back before proving himself one.
They would die.
And yet...
And yet Killua hadn't, although every passing moment it seemed his heart was desperately trying to convince him otherwise.
Gon's weight is painfully unfamiliar on his back as Killua trudges endlessly through the sticking mud, careful to step over the shattered remnants of the once great forest that litter the ground around him.
Much of the debris still flickers with dying embers seemingly more numerous than the stars in the night sky, broken and blasted parts of trees forming their own little constellations where they lay. All of it the wretched evidence of the calamity that had shook the land to its core.
Of the explosion.
Killua struggles desperately to dam up the next wave of tears that threatens to break through at the thought, failing rather miserably at it when he tries. That was seeming to become something of a theme this evening wasn't it...
Not that it matters anyway, his face is already soaked with them.
Gon's heartbeat thumps against his skin through their sweat and blood-soaked clothes, that single repeating feeling the only thing keeping Killua grounded, the only thing stopping him from shattering completely.
And even then, the beating is so irregular, so subdued and weak and nothing at all like Gon that Killua fears even that won't be enough. He wishes that he had something else to prove that Gon is still alive... to prove that Killua still has a reason to stay that way...
He regrets his greedy desire the moment he feels the thuds against his back cease.
"No!" Killua cries, voice breaking horribly as he hauls Gon's broken and impossibly frail body off of his back and sets him down on the ground.
Impossible because it can't be Gon that's lying before him now. The mere idea that the boy who had once seemed to carry the energy of the entire universe beside him, who had always been a stunning ray of brilliant perfection and strength and goodness and light...
The idea that the boy he cared about more than anything in this world or the next was slipping away right in front of him was too painful to conceive of.
So Killua doesn't let himself.
Calling upon the remaining flickers of aura that still burn within him, Killua feels the familiar tingle of his electric nen sparking brilliant arcs between his trembling fingers.
He may not have enough energy to run Gon to safety, Godspeed had already used up most of that, but he does have enough for this.
Teardrops fall and sizzle into vapour instantly on the current between his hands, and Killua swallows the growing lump in his throat before bringing his palms down to Gon's frail chest. His assassin training had never really been too focused on how to save a life, but he'd seen enough movies over the years to know where the current was supposed to go.
A wretched sob escapes from his throat each time he feels Gon's body shake beneath him from the shock, at how unmistakably wrong the texture of it is, the delicacy of it, like he might crumble to dust if Killua pokes him too hard.
Yet he keeps going, shock after shock and each time feeling for a pulse afterwards that doesn't seem to come.
And with each shock, each fragment of life Killua tries to force back into his dying best friend, comes a memory. They strike at him viciously and without mercy, each more painful and traumatizing then the last as they drag Killua through a perverted highlight reel of what had quickly become the worst night of his life.
Killua pushes on anyway.
Shock.
"Please, please let this work..."
Gon stands with his back to him, and not just because Killua is too cowardly to stand next to him. This time Gon chooses to turn away, and Killua doesn't know what to do.
The broken debris of the ruined palace lay sprawled around them, but Killua knows Gon's focus is singular, angry, and entirely locked onto the Royal Guard Neferpitou and the girl he's healing, the one the ant is apparently willing to give his life to protect.
It's unexpected, certainly not part of the plan, but Gon won't change his mind, Killua knows that. No force on heaven or Earth will be able to deter his best friend from the suicidal revenge quest he's set himself on.
Still though, Killua has to think of something, has to figure out this whole confusing situation quickly and try to stop Gon before he does something reckless.
After all, that was his job wasn't it. Gon had said so himself.
So as the blackened, raging fire of Gon's aura collects dangerously in his fist, ready to obliterate Pitou and the nen-beast keeping the girl alive, Killua tries.
He says the only thing he can think of to keep Gon from slipping over the edge, that Kite will never be whole again if he kills Pitou. Even though Killua knows deep down that there was never truly a chance of that in the first place.
But Gon still thinks there is, and Killua hopes that reminder of their true goal will be enough.
For the briefest of moments Killua thinks he's succeeded.
Gon's furious nen dissipates like a whisper and he stands straight once more. Killua shudders an internal sigh of relief, thinking his words had worked, that Gon was calming down.
And then Gon speaks...
"Sure, you're fine. You can stay calm..."
"Because this has nothing to do with you!"
...
Killua's breath catches in his throat.
Gon's voice is cold, colder and more bitter and resentful than Killua has ever heard it before, especially directed at him.
The shock at hearing it is only overshadowed by the horribly sickening twist of Killua's insides, and the single crack he can feel sprawling out across the center of his heart.
It hurt more than any torture, more than any nen-infused punch or needle being ripped from his head.
It felt worse than dying, hearing Gon say those words, but Killua couldn't let it stop him.
So he steels himself through a deep breath and trembling lips and pushes his wounded heart aside. It'll reel itself back later and probably cripple him, but he cant let it just yet. He needs to keep trying to save Gon, no matter what.
Even if it costs him his friendship.
Gon walks away...
Killua sobs at the spike of icy pain as the memory shoots through his chest, but he keeps going, he can't stop.
Another shock.
"Please don't leave me..."
Killua slides to a standstill at the far end of the palace hallway, his bones shaking with the force of the blow that Palm struck him with.
He can see her approaching, wrapped in an impervious cocoon of her own nen-infused hair, a sadistic grin stretched across her face.
He knows he can't beat her, not like this. She was already strong to begin with and the Chimera Ant DNA only seems to have multiplied that. He can't win without using Godspeed, but that must be saved for later, he can't waste it on this. And even if he could, Killua wasn't even sure how he would go about fighting Palm.
So he does the only thing he can think of, he apologises. Killua stops fighting and tries to reach out to the woman who seemed to want nothing but his head on a stick in that moment. Sure they loathed each other, for a number of reasons, and Killua still feels a sickening, envious twist to his gut every time she crosses his mind, but that doesn't matter.
She's still Palm Siberia, he can feel that deep down in the way she speaks, the way she fights, the way she seems to still remember much of her past.
She's still their teammate, his teammate, and she's still Gon's... whatever...
That has to mean something.
And so he begs, pleads with Palm to stop and see reason because he can't let her kill him, can't let her get to Gon.
He desperately hopes that the feelings Palm still seems to have for Gon will be enough to snap her out of this twisted trance, even if Killua had once wanted nothing more than for them to go away.
But now that they're useful to him, he has to work with those feelings and reason with Palm, buy time. He doesn't have any intention of actually letting her go see Gon though, or at least...
"If you appear before Gon looking as you do now..."
Not at first.
"Gon will..."
He'll totally snap, and only when Killua says it out loud does he truly understand.
'I can't stop it.'
That's the singular thought which takes over his entire being in an instant, a sudden and impossibly painful realization.
No matter what Killua does, Gon will snap anyway. If he holds Palm here and prevents her from getting to Gon, time will run out and he'll finally lose it on Pitou, but if Killua lets Palm go to Gon...
'Maybe it's better that way. Maybe she can actually save Gon when you can't.'
Killua's thoughts rattle on and on like an incessant, raging chorus in his head, going over every possibility, every plan and contingency. But in the end, it all leads to one singular conclusion...
There's nothing he can do.
He can't save Gon, not anymore, and maybe he never truly could.
But maybe Palm can.
"Before we entered the palace, Gon was really worried about you," Killua says. The concern he'd felt radiating off of his best friend for Palm had been unmistakable.
Killua feels a pressure building behind his eyes.
Of course Gon was worried about Palm, he cares about her, cares about her a hell of a lot since they're...
How can Killua blame Gon though? Palm is powerful and pretty and clearly isn't afraid to show she cares about him, of course Gon would like her more than most people.
Of course Gon would like Palm more than him.
Palm may be the last chance Killua has at saving Gon, and even though the thought brings angry, jealous tears to his eyes, Killua's knows what he has to do.
So through a cracking voice that trembles with sobs he desperately tries to suppress, Killua tells Palm what she has to do. Tells her his conditions for letting her see Gon because she may be the only chance he has left.
'Gon doesn't want me, he made that clear enough, but I can't just leave him. I promised.'
Only Palm can reach him now.
Killua swallows his pride and his deepest, most secret desires and begs one final time for the woman before him to save his best friend. He'd give anything for that now, but he couldn't do it himself. He was powerless in a way Palm wasn't.
Because Gon could never, would never...
Not Killua.
Because it doesn't matter what Killua feels. In the end, he knows it never had.
He can't...
"I just can't do anything!"
The words tear from his throat with a stream of tears and the dam shatters, what feels like a lifetime of carefully constructed barriers around his true feelings come crumbling down in an instant, and Killua falls to his knees from the weight of it all.
The second crack in his heart hurts even more than the last, and a part of Killua wonders if this time it'll kill him, if he'll choke to death on his own sobs as he cries out helplessly for the boy that means everything to him.
It doesn't matter if Palm is the only one who can save Gon now, as long as he's safe. Killua will sacrifice anything and everything to keep him that way now.
Even if it costs him his heart.
Killua cries...
This time the memory steals Killua's breath entirely, forcing him to lean over Gon's tattered form and clutch his own chest where the pain burns the strongest.
Palm's words had been the only thing that had saved him then, the only that kept his heart and mind from shattering to unmendable completion.
"Never forget. The one Gon cares most about is you."
As Killua steals himself for another round of shocks, he wonders if what she said was true.
Shock.
A rending sob.
"Come back to me Gon!"
The night is cold and the forest is far too bright and this can't be real.
The figure, the monster, that stands before him now is utterly unrecognizable, and yet Killua knows...
In that single moment of corrupted, destructive light, he understands everything.
Pitou had been killed, the ant's body twisted and broken beyond all recognition and head smashed into a bloody pulp. A dismembered arm lies driven like a spear through his chest. The only identifiable features remaining were the tattered clothes that Pitou had once worn, and even then there wasn't much left.
And the being that stands atop that broken body is more horrifying than any ant could have ever been. An endless tower of ink-black darkness billowing up into the sky, impossibly large muscles ripple and strain under clothes that had once been worn by a boy a quarter of the size.
Gon's right arm is gone, the mutilated stump and the arterial spray it kept spewing serve a visceral reminder to Killua of the price his friend is paying for this...
Killua can't bring himself to call it a victory, not even close.
The missing arm was also a reminder of just how close Killua had come to losing Gon forever. The fact that he'd been just able to push his best friend out of the way in time, not caring for the first time in his life if he was silent or careful in his steps, will forever be a permanent fixture in his mind.
Killua stops everything, his brain running a mile a minute as he scrambles to know what to do next. Pitou may be dead but how is he supposed to fix this? Can he fix this? Surely there must be some way. There's always a way, they always find a way out of all their problems, Killua just has to think.
Just has to think, he's the smart one, the one who makes the plans. He should know this. It's his job to know how to fix this...
Then Gon starts to speak.
"Show...me...rock..."
Killua's already ravaged heart stops in his chest. Sickly black swirls of malicious aura collect in the space where Gon's arm used to be, before expanding out into a blinding ball of power that seems to threaten to consume them both.
"Gon, NO!" Killua cries out desperately, a last-ditch attempt to reach whatever was left of his best friend.
But Gon doesn't hear him, and Killua doesn't know what to do, more paralyzed with fear than any of the times Illumi's voice had tormented him in his mind.
A part of him doesn't want to believe it, to believe that this is truly Gon standing before him because how could it be? Gon had always been perfect, so impossibly good and beautiful that no force in the world could ever break him. He was the brightest light Killua had known, but all he sees before him now is the darkest of shadows, cast by the light of a power it can't possibly hope to wield.
'Gon, stop it, please!' Killua's mind screams. 'Don't use anymore power! How much will you have to pay!?'
His life...
Killua knows, as the leaves swirl around his feet and get drawn in by the vortex of overwhelming energy, he knows that this next punch will cost Gon his life.
And there's nothing he can do to stop it.
"Jan..."
"Ken..."
Gon's light bursts from out from him until Killua is blinded, and in that moment his heart takes over completely.
Killua casts aside every thought and screams, louder than he ever has before. A tear-filled, rending cry of his best friend's name that shreds his throat as every emotion battling within him bursts out all at once.
For just a moment, it rings out over all the other noise, even the powerful rumbling din of Gon's nen-filled fury.
And for that singular moment, it seems that Gon actually heard him. Seeming to hesitate, Gon turns his massive form around and Killua's breath catches.
Tears stream down his best friend's face but he can see them now. Gon looks him dead in the eye, and Killua can swear he sees his expression morph into something unexpected.
He looks... happy...
Gon hears him, Gon knows it will kill him...
Gon looks right at him...
And does it anyway.
A single strike and Killua's heart shatters in his chest along with his entire world, each cracking, brutalized fragment carrying with it the final thoughts that enter his mind.
'Why! Why couldn't you let me go with you!? Why must you be so selfish!?'
'I'm a terrible friend. I should have done more, said more earlier, tried to find a way to stop you. There must have been some way, I know there was. I don't deserve to be your friend... I'm sorry.'
'I love you! I love you and this is how you choose to leave me!? I thought we promised to stay together...'
In the end, perhaps they had.
And then everything went white...
Killua shakes the dark tendrils of the final memory away, hating his mind for allowing it to resurface.
They hadn't died then, by some miracle, and they wouldn't die now.
As far as Killua was concerned, they'd been given another chance, he'd been given a final chance to save Gon, and he wasn't about to waste it.
The shocks continue, but after the sixth attempt with no success Killua keens, slamming his elbows into the sticky mud as he cries out in anguish.
Gon's frail body still lies empty and lifeless, and with each passing second Killua feels like he's back to that accursed forest, watching Gon kill himself over and over again. So he resorts to something he never thought he would have to do in his entire life.
Killua prays.
He beseeches and begs a force he doesn't even believe in to save the boy he cares most about, because quite honestly, what else can he do?
Please... Please let Gon be okay. Please save him, I'll do anything, take me instead if you have to but PLEASE! I can't live without him! I can't leave him...
I DON'T EVER WANT TO LOSE HIM!
Killua's nen crackles, and he brings his hands down once more, unable to even see if he put them on the right parts of Gon's torso through his tears.
It's only after Killua feels like he might fall apart completely that he feels Gon's chest rise against his fingers...
Did it... work?
With a mix of fear and excitement Killua searches for Gon's pulse, and feels his own flutter with relief when it drums against his fingers. It's weak but it's there, and that's all that matters.
With relief crashing upon him like a wonderful wave Killua wraps his arms around Gon and presses him against his chest, staring up into the night sky as tears flow freely down his pale face.
A single flash of light shoots across his vision from above, so fast he almost misses it, but he doesn't.
A shooting star...
And with that, Killua steels his resolve. He carefully heaves Gon over his shoulders and brings himself to a shaking stand once more, setting off back towards safety with new determination.
'I'm going to save you Gon.' He thinks to himself. 'I'm going to save you, and I'm going to make sure you apologize real good this time. I'm going to make sure you're sorry!'
Killua adds that promise to all the rest that he keeps fighting to keep as he trudges on.
However, he only makes it about a kilometer before Gon's heart flutters to a stop once more.
Yet this time Killua doesn't panic. Gon won't die. He won't die because Killua won't let him die because he promised.
So instead of losing himself in anguish this time, Killua simply rests Gon down once more, and sets about charging up his hands...
