The
Hidden Child
He’s so terribly angry. Of course, he’s working on not showing it, but I can tell. His green eyes, they’ve got that particular gleam to them that tell me he’s upset, and his hands are shaking. I don’t think he likes being upset. He especially doesn’t like losing control of his emotions.
“Why?” The word breaks out of him, sharp-edged.
I shrug. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I say. I study him with a calculated motion, as if assessing him. “I suppose it wasn’t, in the long run.”
He’s trembling. All these years, there’s still a part of him that’s afraid of me, deathly so, even through the times we’ve worked together.
“Although, if I were to think more on it…” I say, letting my words trail off deliberately.
“Tell me,” he manages. “What…what are you thinking about?”
“I had known about you, of course. I always knew you were there. It seemed too delicious of an irony to pass by the opportunity.”
“Opportunity?”
“How else did you come to be outside that night? I called for you.”
Silence.
“You see, even before the curse we were bound together, our fates called toward one another. I didn’t know why I was in that town – it just seemed right at the time. I was about to leave, though. But then, I heard about you. The hidden son of a prominent family, a curse that lived through the blood…I couldn’t let it pass by.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You see Hisoka…” I frown. I don’t like having to tell him this. But a promise is a promise. “Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? We’re here now, and the past is past.”
“You promised.”
“Yes.” I lean my hand against my chin. “I suppose I did.”
“So…so…”
“I was on my way back to Tokyo from a short sabbatical. I stopped in a town – your town – and I decided to stay the night instead of continuing my drive. I recall that it was because I was tired. I rented a room at a local establishment, and fell directly asleep.
“It seemed that I was being called as I slept. Not myself specifically, you see, but in a general sense. It was as though the silent suffering cries of a child who was somewhere in that strange cusp that is neither childhood nor adulthood was calling. Calling for help. For someone to save them. Anyone.
“When I woke later that evening, it was with a sense of profound unease. I thought to cleanse myself of that with my usual sport at the time before I left town. I don’t think I need to explain that in detail. Suffice to say, my chosen companion let it slip – the secret child, the family’s curse and blessing, hidden deep within the rambling estate. I believe she was a maid at some point, a village girl from the mountains that came in search of work.
“It seemed too painful at the time, a perverse parallel. So I killed her. Nothing more that needs to be said about that. But all the while, my mind kept returning to the same image, the lost boy beneath the stairwell, the child hidden from sight. It was too much the same.
“And that’s when I saw you. The green eyes of the boy who called out to me, the one I could hear in my dreams. Like a firefly in a dark forest, your energy burned so brightly about you that it was almost a blinding flash. I did not require any light to find you and catch you when you ran.
“Presumably, I recall words to the direction of the dangers of catching a murderer at work. But I wanted you. I wanted you, and I wanted you dead.
“You had prayed for help, did you not? And this was the help I could provide, to worship at your altar and lay your blood before the gods. It seemed fitting, a beautiful end. You wanted to be free. I wanted you to be free.
“But ultimately, it was a mistake. Because I couldn’t kill you. My hands wrapped around your throat, but no matter what, I couldn’t force myself into that final burst of pressure, the one that crushes the fragile cartilage and snaps bones like the breaking of a bird’s wing.
“You and I were too much alike. Locked away, hidden from view, children who were bound, a curse upon their families. Did I ever tell you that until Saki came into my life, I was forbidden from ever leaving the house? Or that my father refused to look at me until it was obvious that he could not run away from his own fate?
“I couldn’t do it. It would have been like killing myself to do kill you then.
“I bound you with the curse, because I could not destroy you directly. So I could always find you. So you would die. And even though the suffering would be all-consuming, you would shine so brightly in the night, the flame of your life burning so quickly and intensely that you would die from it.
“Because you wanted to be free. And I did too. But instead, I bound us further into that twisted spiral of fate, like the workings of a nautilus, the hollow whorled turns that ultimately coil toward each other.
“I think, Hisoka, that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry…” The sound of his voice is like a faint breath, an exhalation.
“Yes.”
“That’s it?” He stands up.
“Yes.”
“All right then.” He walks away. The door closes. I am alone now.
I don’t like the truth. But I am as truthful as I can be with him, because he knows well enough to see through the lies. With him you can be only clear. Perhaps that is why he was marked with ‘true.’
Truthfulness, however, does not mean I have do disclose everything. There is one thing I didn’t tell him. It’s
my own secret.
For a bare moment, when I looked into his bright green eyes that night, underneath the rain of silken petals, I saw myself. And as his eyes grew glassy with asphyxia, I had wished that it had been someone else’s hands on my throat, ending my childhood and my life before I could become what I am.
It would have been a blessing.
Two pages of a random idea I had yesterday for a Hisoka/Muraki conversation. I had been wondering what Muraki could say to Hisoka regarding the 'night under the sakura' and the line, "The hidden son of a prominent family" came to mind. The fic is loosely centered around that thought. It doesn't really fit anywhere, and I think it's too short for a stand-alone, so I'll post it here.
There's not nearly enough Hisoka in this, which I know. He should be more vocal or responsive. But it's just 'fun' writing, no serious depth. If I was going to do anything with it, I'd probably fill it out more around the edges, set up a why and where, give Hisoka more of an active role.