#emptyxmind

He does not wish to kill for his lunch --- his hands are more inclined to fragile book’s bodies, carefully cradling the curves of their spines as he swallows their words, the stories they bleed. They are more attuned to the strings of harpsichord’s and violin teeth. He does not kill for his food; but that was a lifetime ago and here, the rivers run free with fish for this small village to eat. 

Once, Nemo nudges him, and for all her brittle annoyance at the young once-royal, she smiles apologetically. I don’t like this either. “Hey,” and she lowers herself beside him, and he wonders how she moves like a piece of music in a quiet forest as she takes his hand and folds it properly over the spine of the spear, “you need to do this to guarantee Netero-sama’s trust. “ 

Netero-sama. The name turns Kurapika’s mouth slightly dry with worry. The man is old, but made of sharp things -- viper tongue and poisonous blood that reminds him more of a rose’s thorns that anything human. He is the only elder that wears no mask of an animal, but a small golden pendant of a crying lady with a hundred arms swings from his throat, disappearing into the numerous (stolen) robes he wears. His hair is long, scrambled into a single white puff of a ponytail at the crown of his head with thick eyebrows that hang down the sides of his face like pendulum’s, with a long, curving beard to match. He seems frail, old and weak by age, but beneath his numerous robes is toned muscle. 

And there’s something. Something not quite of this world that surrounds him, that makes him seem even more dangerous, like he lives in a candle and will never be burnt.

When he’d first met Netero-sama, he’d almost been cast out. On his knees, the elder man had stood over him, spat words such as “weak,” “small” and “what use do we have of a would’ve-been royal, butterfly?” 

And Kurapika says nothing, only presses his head further into the dirt of the mud-hut, the smell of dandelions growing in his throat. But, suddenly, there’s a sound. Nemo stands, the butterfly in a room of predators called the Zodiac, and squares her shoulders. It’s something he hadn’t expected, as rebellion curled frost in her mouth, fighting for the Kurta’s stay. And at the end, when her voice becomes ellipsis, Netero promises the blond’s stay only on the guarantee he prove himself. To learn the way of hunters and then, eventually, become one. 

Being of royal blood and of hands that always gave without restrictions, he finds anger in his veins. This was not what he wanted -- he wanted castle walls, the laughter of his people, his mother’s hands. Not to live between the tree’s teeth, the animals howling to the bloated moon ringing in his ears each night. 

However, before he could fight, Netero seemed to zero in on his shaking form, and consequently, pressed his foot into the splayed knuckles, crushing the bones slightly, saying, “do you wish to live, boy?” 

Now, he flexes his bandaged hand and continues fishing, with Nemo’s pleased smile as he continues the stance she’d helped him create. Gon arrives, food in a basket and shares it all willingly with Alluka & Nanika threading flowers into chains behind him. Their small fingers, chubby from age, expertly weave orchids and cherry blossom into a crown that Kurapika would think fit for a king. The child crawls into Nemo’s lap, depositing the flower crown over the arched ridges of her butterfly mask and giggles happily when the elder tickles her. 

And he feels more than grateful, when Alluka & Nanika places one on his own head as well. He finds he enjoys this crown far more than his previous, though the weight remains the same. Expectancy, molded in either metal or plant, still weighs the same.

Over the years, he begins to integrate into this life of the hunters. He still does not gain Netero-sama’s trust, but he finds it in others. In Senritsu, the mask of a mouse and voice that searches for something to sing in the midnight celebrations. In Basho, a man with a bear mask and hair to match the density of the fur, who sweeps up Senritsu like the stars have aligned in his eyes for her. He finds it in others too, others he wouldn’t have met if he’d been a prince -- in Zushi, Bisky, a child called Woble, a disgraced Chimera ant, a blind girl called Komugi with a kind penchant for fallen kings. He often finds the latter with Meruem, another fallen king, who tries not to smile when she winds her arms around him and offers yet another match of Gungi to fill their compatible silence. 

The hunters nights are filled with laughter, of dancing around the crackling tongue of fire and more often than not, he’s been swept up into this ritual of thrumming bodies, of lives undisturbed by fear and anger. It makes him realize -- he had thought his kingdom was pure, was full of hope, but now he has truly seen pure. 

He see’s it when Gon grasps Alluka & Nanika’s hands and teaches them to dance on his toes, when Killua lets Bisky throw him around the fire and laughs when they trip. When Leorio bangs a drum out of time and no one scolds him. When Nemo grabs his hand and tugs him into the dance, saying he belongs to the shadows with them all. Her voice feels like a tidal wave, something that pushes him closer to home than he’s felt like in years. 

It is a feeling he falls in love with, long before he falls in love with the butterfly. 

There are nights he cherishes with her, the girl who’d brought him into this world of family. When she points out stars on their breaks from training him, when she teaches him of the best ways to heal a wound. How she prays and thanks the animals for their gift of life when she hunts. She tends the earth back into itself for everything she does, and he can only stare in amazement at this constellation of good things. To Kurapika, a prince that always had the best of everything, the butterfly seems like something he should not hold in his hands, should not be allowed too because she is far too good. 

Of course, if he ever voiced this concern, she’d smack him. 

But this feeling cannot last. 

It is five years from the Kurta clan’s massacre when it happens, and he is different. He no longer wears his robes, but pieces of the forest. Grass in his hair, mud scraped across his chest, he can feel his eyes burn when he looks into the man’s eyes as he holds a child by their throat, as their legs begin to dangle motionlessly. His grip tightens on the chains he has grown to use to protect those he loves.

The magician clicks his tongue. “A kurta?” 

“The last. Let the child live. I will be your opponent, magician.” 

His smile turns wicked. “Such potential.” And when Kurapika returns, a bloodied arm and bruised face with chains rusted and half broken, child cradled in his arms, he finds that the rest of the village had not been spared. The magician --- Hisoka, his name had been --- had been part of the same troupe his family had been slain by. And he collapses, weary and hurt and wakes to find Nemo winding a bandage around his arm and his chest bare with ragged cuts over the torso. Her face, finally without the butterfly mask on, is streaked with red, and immediately, the butterfly throws herself at his chest.

”I thought you dead, Kurapika!” 

“Then it is a good surprise I am not, correct?” 

“i know you’re smiling and it’s not funny, you little rat,” and he laughs at the purple-haired woman, and watches her eyes. How they turn white in the sunlight and freckles touch over her nose, looking like stars in a bursting constellation in the sky. She smiles slightly, still red-eyed, still scared he’s not actually there and he brushes her hair back, fingers lingering far too long for this to be considered friendship any longer. 

He’s still looking at her when Leorio bursts through the hut door, and laughs loudly at the scene, turning both teenagers red. And he gets to work, gentle hands around the Kurta’s wrist as he surveys the damage the clown had wrought. And by the end of his analysis, he delivers a message. “Netero-sama wishes to see you.” 

And he’s suddenly breathless. 

When he is in Netero-sama’s presence -- the whole village is watching, hands clasped, eyes horrified from the brutality of the nights before. And he explains, that the troupe was here because of him, looking for the final pair of eyes to place on a pedestal. He concludes that because of this, because he is a fallen prince, their small village is in constant danger. 

But Kurapika; he has learnt. He has grown between vines and mud and has learnt how to grow things in them. He prays for animals when they give their lives for his meals, threads dandelions and weaves them through the ebony tendrils of Alluka & Nanika’s hair, lets Killua spar him and win. He knows the ways of hunters because he has become one. 

So he stands, squares his shoulders and looks Netero-sama in the eye. But his interest is not the elder of the Hunter’s, but the hunter’s themselves. He turns, and sounds more like his father than he ever thought he would without a crown on his head.  

“I apologize,” he says immediately, and spreads his arms, a white flag once again but this time, it is not just to the butterfly, “that my presence has harmed your existence. I thought them to think all my clansmen dead, including myself. But unfortunately, you learnt that my way of thinking was wrong. And it was in the worst way possible, so again, I apologize.” 

He breaths, becomes a king in his own right. Finally. 

“But, they have wronged you. And I believe that vengeance, for the fallen, for the wounded and hurt, should be taken. You are gentle, but I have seen you hard. And when you are like this, none can stop you. So please, I ask of you all,” and his head lifts, something like the wind in his mouth as he speaks and locks his eyes to Nemo’s whose hands are clasped beneath her mouth, “will you mourn in silence, or will you mourn in victory?” 

A resounding roar reaches the would-be prince, and Gon topples him over in a hug, followed by Killua and Alluka & Nanika, and Leorio scoops all four into his arms with a booming laugh. Senritsu grins from where she holds Basho’s hand, Komugi squeaks from where Meruem cradles her and Zushi tugs excitedly on Wing-san’s shirt, itching to test out his new moves. When he is put down, Nemo barrels into his chest, butterfly mask hanging around her neck as she laughs into his throat. 

At the chorus of agreeing voices, the Kurta turns to Netero, still paused on his knees before he exchanges a look with the Zodiacs. Reaches behind him and grasps something long, with pointed ears and a long snout. Beady eyes stare at him from the mask face. 

“If you had let me finish, boy,” he says, and immediately, Kurapika can feel his ears turn red, “because you are a fallen prince, our village is in constant danger. But you protected one of our own, with nothing but the chains you had not yet learnt to use and a bravery I have not seen often. We are in constant danger, because you are not yet one of us. But with that, I am glad and proud to say -- welcome home, Rat of the Zodiac.” 

He supposes it is either a playful joke from the whimsical Elder, or that the only space they had left was the one from Ging, but still, he accepts the mask, slips it on his features and even with wounds scored across his body, throws his hands up high when the villagers of the Hunter’s descend into happy screeching for a new comrade. Nemo’s arms wind around him and he spins her, finally part of their home. 

And then, they go to war. They stalk towards the Lucilfer Dynasty’s castle -- Castle of the Kurta, home of his childhood -- and tear through. It reminds him far too much of the years before all this, how he’d watched Pairo’s life leave his eyes, his father’s hand stop twitching. But this -- this is for an entirely different reason. 

And when he meets the head of the wretched spider’s, he does not remove his mask. Does not give him the gratification of seeing the face, the red eyes, that steals his own comrade’s lives (Uvogin, then Pakunoda. Shalnark and Kortopi fall by the magician’s hand however), that steals his own nen even when he produces his famous book. He does not kill him; he knows his mother and father would be disappointed and he does not have time to pray in thanks for this giving of this creatures life. But he wounds him, exponentially. A scar her. A lost arm there. And when they are finished, when the Kurtan home falls silent and Chrollo stares up from the ground, fingers curled into a bloody boulder and clothes shredded from the nen and fists that had been displayed, he smiles. 

He spits blood. “I remember you, little one.” 

No you don’t, he wants to say, but he sighs. Lets loose some rage as he throws his foot into his jaw, hears the crack of teeth against each other in the silence. As Chrollo spins, and stops, he says, “I am not so little anymore. Leave my home.” 

The spider does, heads towards the east among canyons and doesn’t ask for his comrade’s last words in this lifetime. And Kurapika collapses between his parent’s old thrones, swipes the dust from them and remembers this is where he’d sit at ball times when he was tired. His mother would pat his head and his father would watch her with a smile on his mouth.  

He leans against one, and sleeps, remembering the feel of piano fingers in his hair. 

When he wakes, they clean. Rids his -- their -- home of dust and dirt and blood and the spider’s remnants. He guides his new clan, his family of blood-not-his to the tombstones where he’d buried them after the spiders had discarded their bodies. Around them, grow weeds. He has not been home for a long time. 

And it is with realization, as he watches Leorio scrub the blood from the grounds, as Gon jumps high into the rafters to rid it of hidden treasure, as Killua powers the castle with something he calls ‘electricity’ and Alluka & Nanika grow wildflowers in his old garden; he is a king again. It is with realization, as the Hunter’s build their homes around his old one, as Netero teaches young children to fight, as Melody blows into a flute at midnight celebrations, as Bisky talks of Islands full of Greed long ago, as Woble learns to walk on his family’s homeland with his mother finally laughing again, that he will enjoy this life more than the previous. 

Suddenly, he awoke and was running --- the world, his world, caving with the threshold of the night and the blue crackle of violence in the air. His sleeping robes clattered around his ankles, knocking beads and loose fabrics together like falling teeth as he unhooked the bokken he kept on his person and sped towards the hall. 

He’d retreated to his quarters early, under the laughing bells of his mother’s voice as she asked, hand smoothing away the errant locks that never found their way out of his face. The party dragged on into the night, and he could recall his father slipping a kiss into his hair as he sleepily descended into his bed, wishing him a good night’s sleep. Those voices were humming at the point of his spine where it met his skull now, an itchy reminder, sending chills down his thrumming skeleton as he circled the labyrinth of the Kurtan home he’d grown in. 

As the doors yawned open, he could feel the blast of the fire, of the world he’d grown up in go up in smoke and it felt like he’d been swallowed into the gullet of hell. 

He doesn’t stay. Hears the cackles of more bodies, doesn’t want to watch the burn of Pairo - sweet Pairo, who stole wildflowers from Mairi’s window this morning to thread through Kurapika’s hair - disappear into ash, nor how his mother and father are slain behind the twin thrones who no longer have owners. He feels his feet scamper, his bokken clatter loosely, though they still dangle. He wants to fight but he is only a boy in borrowed robes. 

And when he catches that face, the face of the allied Genei Ryodan empire's King, standing over his father's corpse, at the bloodied tendrils of his mother's hair with a bag dripping red between his fingers, he fees unimaginable rage. Lets it curl and fester as he catches his eyes, lets it work it's way to the sneer of his mouth like a wound working out the disease. But he is only a boy in borrowed robes, and he cannot stay and fight on this hallowed ground littered with his clansmen.

And the boy runs.

The forest that circles their - his land swallows him, accepts him into it’s belly with thorns and shadows scratching into his skin. His robes are pulled and frayed, and blood and mud splatters him when he trips and breaks skin. The tears blind him, distort this forest he’s played in, climbed it’s trees in, until those same trees look like hands grasping for his throat, fingers itching for his ribs. 

Kurapika remains in the forest for three days, finds shelter in hollowed trees and nests for Boar-Hawks, has trouble with finding water. He is still mourning, still reeling from the death of his fallen clan when the world tips sideways and his back digs into the rocks of the picked-apart forest path. 

A scream catches on the walls of his teeth, but a hand closes over his mouth. The fingers are long, gaunt, reach over the bend of his jaw with little effort and he turns his gaze skyward. For a moment, his heart jumps like a drum has been punched, because the blond stares at the face of a butterfly. Long wings spread out and white and purple circling the bends of it’s fragile body. The blond tries to list in the back of his mind, due to his large knowledge, of what species this could be that has the face of an animal and the body of a human. 

But, like coming out of a nap, he realizes it’s a mask and the person behind it is human - he knows through the way the head moves, how the eyes beneath the butterfly’s own narrow with an intensity he’s only seen his hand-maid, Rejiki show when he’d tried to wriggle him into his schooling, from what life that feels like it’s been eons since he’s lived it. The clothes are loose, hanging by threads and forest grass to keep them on the slim waist of the person.

”Rajia no kyo?” the voice licks the words with it’s uncertainty, high-pitched and instantly identified as a female to the Kurta. It takes him a moment to connect the unsure language to something he knows, and the boy gestures to the hand. They don’t remove it right away, but only down his face until the hand can grip his throat. 

He swallows, this boy of royal blood turned to mud. “Maiija...Maiija cano Kurapika. Torou plena te c’hal, menda.” 

The butterfly pauses, and slowly, the body unbends, legs that had been placed on both his sides uncurl like coiled springs, the hand leaves his throat and he lifts a hand to rub it. When the butterfly is only an arm’s length away, he tries his hand at the language again. 

“Tenma lechau?” 

The butterfly’s eyebrows furrow. “Tenma?”

”English.”

”Yes; I speak it.” Relief floods through his chest like a tidal wave returning home, but the butterfly does not share this relief. Instead, their body language hardens, their shoulders tighten and the Bo staff in their hand shakes with how hard they grip it. Kurapika can feel the air crackle, spit fire between the two. “Are you a royal?” 

The question catches around the middle, scores a scar into his chest where the empty space of his clan had taken refuge in. The word ‘royal’ sets a wave for him, the lessons he learned with Pairo, the trouble they had thrown themselves into with laughter in their mouths. How they talked of leaving their home one day for an adventure, and to fix the pain behind Pairo’s eyes.

With the sound of his best friend’s laughter in his ears, he spreads his hands like wavering flags to the butterfly. “I was once.” 

He hadn’t expected pain to explode within his jawline and the world to turn dark. 

When he wakes, there’s a face staring into his. The blond jumps, throws obscenities from his tongue like firecrackers have been bred from the wet of his mouth and doesn’t realize that he’s swung at a child (and thankfully missed) until there’s laughter. Loud and booming and sunlight in every direction. Kurapika stills, finds his eyes turn wide as the child folds his legs like a lotus, and ignores the way the Kurta stares at him until he quiets. 

Red blooms on the child’s browned cheeks, and he lifts a hand to scratch nervously through the blackthorns of his hair. “Ah, I should’ve known. You’re probably scared, but you don’t need to be. We won’t hurt you.” 

From where he’s laden down with Cabarrera leaves, Kurapika raises a brow. “W-We?” The scratch of his throat feels like nails in his voice, and the child stands to offer him water, which he gulps like a horse in the sun, eliciting another bout of laughter. 

“Yeah, this is our home; we’re Hunters.” Kurapika knows of these people - they live in grasslands, in forests where they build homes from leaves and mud. They remind him of the simple-beginnings of his clan, how they turned corn-crumbs into meals for their children; but Hunters are frightful creatures. They are not fond of royals, no matter what branch of nobility they are from, and his clan had never turned to killing. So Kurapika shuffles slightly in hs seat, and knows not to talk of his origins. Thankfully, the child doesn’t see to notice the sudden wariness, as he lifts a hand to the back of his neck to scratch idly.

“I’d take you to see the village, but I’d have to change your leaves and that’d be a pain for both of us,” then, his expression changes to a thoughtful one, lips pursing as he surveys the other’s jaw where leaves fold over it. “Gee, Nemo really did a number on you.” 

“N-Nemo?” 

He doesn’t miss a beat. “The butterfly.” 

Ah. Her. “And you, child?” When the child holds the cup to his mouth again, this time filled with a sweetener that tastes like the tea of his home, he grips it with both hands.

Immediately, the child brightens, an endless well of energy and Kurapika quickly decides he is rather taken with the young boy, despite him being a Hunter. “I’m Gon Freecs! And who’re you?” 

It’s been a while since he’s had to introduce himself, and with a smile, he decides he likes this sort of exchange. With gracefulness borrowed from the bones of his mother, wherever she may lay now, he straightens his back and cross an arm diagonally across his chest, a log against vines. “I am Kurapika; it is a pleasure to meet you, Gon-san.” 

And he chatters with Gon, finds a friend in a boy that breathes positivity into the small room he’s been tucked into. Halfway through their conversation, three others join. A tall man who, if he hadn’t been corrected, could’ve been Gon’s older brother with the similar complexion and black-thorned hair. This man, Leorio, is the physician of the small village, and barks at Kurapika when he moves away as he tends his wounds. He notices, that like the butterfly girl, this man also wears a mask - it is of a boar, with thick ears and an elongated snout that he doesn’t remove. 

The other two are siblings, and look nothing like Gon and Leorio, with pale skin and hard faces. But the elder, the brother Killua, has a bundle of snow for hair on his head and sharp eyes that carve out Kurapika as he assess’ him. His younger sibling, who he introduces as both Alluka and Nanika at collected intervals, though he only see’s one child, has long hair brushed back by a band and an innocence he’s only seen in Gon and Pairo. And their face is half painted - one side of a human, the other of a doll with black lips and eyelids. Alluka presses food into his hands, whilst Killua ruffles Gon’s hair and they descend into a fight within the small room.

But he can tell, that these two children, though alight with a fire he’s never met, have been caught in the teeth of the darkest shadows from the way the light plays off on the hollow of their cheekbones, and the soundless steps of their shoes.

It’s two weeks later, when the sunlight bleeds a golden square through the flapping doorway of the room, and finds it’s a hut within a circle of them, and the villagers greet him gently, but their body language speak scriptures; how they turn away when he’s guided by kinder hands through their home. When Gon introduces him to Mito-san, a woman with dark skin and a bumblebee mask, she smiles warmly, but still threads her hands over Gon’s torso when he leans against her. A warning wrapped in hardened flesh.

”We’ve met men like you, boy,” she says, when Gon, Killua and Alluka have disappeared to the scale the walls that run around a particular part of their garden. He notices, she won’t bless him with a name, and her eyes dart beneath the bumblebee mask. “Gon’s father, Ging - my cousin - he was a royal too, or at least in close enough encounters to be considered one. He promised a better life for us, for his son when he was old enough to find him.” 

But the Kurta can tell that that is not all that there is to this story; he is still between chapters, still caught in the plot as the curve of her jaw sets, and her head lifts higher. “But because of him, we had to leave our home. Because of Ging, Gon no longer has a father. We aren’t fond of royals inside our forest. So tell me, boy - what is stopping us from getting rid of you?” 

“Nothing,” he concludes, and his head drops, bows in respect to this sandstorm of a woman. She becomes stationary, and Kurapika knows he’s shocked her. Then, with the modesty he has gathered in the short time he has been in their care, and no longer a King’s son, he crosses his arm over his chest, and bows to the bumblebee. “I have done nothing to warrant your care - I have eaten your food, taken your medicine and slept in rooms that were never mine. I am but a fallen king - no, a prince that never got the throne. My people were kind, and I don’t know of the wrongs that have been done to you, but I would...I would like to help fix them, if I would be permitted too.” 

“You wish to stay?” 

The voice is new, but not unfamiliar. The blond turns, comes face-to-face with the butterfly. She handles a bundle of wood, but her grip is slack like her jaw, mouth pulled open like a tidal wave breaking free.There’s a beat and Kurapika nods. 

“Why?” 

“I would like to help, to pay back what I have been given. And to learn.” 

The butterfly does nothing for a moment, voice caught in the bars of her throat. Then, promptly, sh glides forwards until she stands in front of him. From here, he can see things he didn’t before - the freckles on her bare shoulder blades, a scar over her collarbone. The wisps of purple hair as the wind breathes. 

Then, there’s a weight, and a rumble of wooden limbs knocking together. She presses the wood into his hands and places her own on her hips. “Then this is where you start,” she says, and turns to Mito-san, lips plucking into a smile. “Mito-san, we’re going to get some more firewood. Tell Gon I’ll be back soon!” 

“You do realize you’ll have to train this child, Nemo-san? And talk to Netero-sama?” 

“Hai, but I can handle him!” and with laughter against the back of her teeth, Nemo turns to him, and gestures her head to the mouth of the forest. “Come on then, royal. We’ve got to get some firewood.” 

So Kurapika stays.