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The first time Leorio calls him, it’s the day news of the Chimera Ants hits across the world. He’s seen a few reports about the Hunter Association’s involvement, but not much else beyond that. Kurapika is in a meeting of sorts when his phone goes off, a wealthy businessman before him. Just another collector, a fanatic. A man so entirely enamoured with finishing his collection he’s travelled halfway across the world just to meet with Kurapika. He’s looking for a lock of particularly silver hair belonging to a race of people known as the Tsukino. Their hair glows under the moonlight. It’s said to have healing properties. It is a coveted gift the Tsukino people used to help others. But Kurapika knows from experience that this man cares for none of that. No, all he wants is to stick this hair in some glass case and boast to his equally revolting friends about its addition to the room decor.
Kurapika of course, knows all this, has known it since he first put a tail on the man before him. Since he’d first found out he’d had a pair of his tribe’s eyes locked up in his home as a part of his collection . He always knows exactly the kind of men he makes dealings with and still barely hesitates as he seats himself right in front of them. He’s well aware of each and every atrocity he becomes a part of, perhaps in some false hope that it will change his mind. It doesn’t. Not when his rage remains much stronger than any sense of guilt his heart could possibly try and tug him into. In the grand scheme of things, it’s better this way.
Because if he allows his mind to wander, he will have to think about the means with which he acquired the Tsukino hair strands he hopes to trade with this man. He will have to consider their dying population, their desperate need for their own gifts being snatched out of their very hands by people like him. The similarities are just… fucking uncanny. If he stops to think for even a second, he’ll have to see that there’s not a great deal of difference between the Kurta and Tsukino people. Certainly not in all that’s happening to them. It’s like a bloody repeat of history. Except this time, he is on the other side of the deal. He is neither the coveted nor the coveter, but rather, a dealer, an enabler. In many ways, he’s become no different than the leader of the Phantom Troupe himself.
But what does it matter that the very idea of becoming anything like the members of that accursed group makes him sick to his stomach? He’s doing all this for the sake of those who cannot exact revenge themselves, it’s the least he owes them, for not being there that day. His feelings on the matter are irrelevant right? Ever since the day he’d returned to the forest to find nothing but the empty bodies of all those he’d ever loved lay bare before him, and the day he’d first discovered who’d been behind it all, Kurapika has known what role he would play in their revenge. His people are the judge and jury, all he has to do is be their executioner. All he has to do is not think, not feel, just focus on that rage that burns within him and hope… that it will be enough.
So he’s sitting in a chair in front of this man, decidedly, deliberately not thinking about any of it. And then his phone goes off. A shrill tone cutting through the man’s chatter and shocking Kurapika, on the verge of sickness, into motion. He apologises briefly to the man before glancing quickly at his phone screen. Leorio’s name flashes a bright white against the interior of the room. Kurapika hesitates, glancing between the irritated expression on the man’s face and Leorio’s name.
He declines the call with a measured click. He has to focus on the meeting. He cannot risk letting even an ounce of his emotions show in front of this man.
But try as he might, he can't shelve the part of him that does feel, reeling at the implications of the phone call. It’s not rage or anger that burn through him right now but… worry. And before he can stop himself, it festers. Leorio doesn’t call him often, especially not during these hours of the day. However Kurapika may insult his intelligence, he’s well aware that Leorio is incredibly astute about people, and situations like this. He knows what Kurapika means when he says his “work” keeps him busy and calling him is dangerous. He wouldn’t have done it unless… unless something happened. He hasn’t heard from either of the three in months now has he?
“Anything the matter boy?” The man’s gravelly voice snaps him out of his thoughts. His smile is lecherous and in that moment, Kurapika wants nothing more than to punch it off of his face.
Instead he replies, “No. Of course not. Shall we continue?”. Kurapika is careful to keep his voice level. He has a deal to make, he reminds himself. A job to do. His friends will have to wait.
“Well alright then. Rather rude of you to have your phone on during a meeting.”
Kurapika bristles, “My apologies, I only keep it around for emergencies.” He makes a show of switching his phone to silent to appease the man and tucks it into his pocket. Leorio would’ve thrown the phone right at this old geezer’s face by now.
“Well, I only came all this way because I heard you had a few strands of that Tsuko hair didn’t you?” he drawls. Gon would’ve hated the way the man butchered their name. He’d have seen it as the height of disrespect.
“Tsukino”, Kurapika finds himself correcting suddenly.
“What?”
“They’re the Tsukino people.”
The man gives him a strange look. “Right. Whatever. Listen here, I’m not making any deal until I’ve seen the hair. Who knows if you’ve even got the real deal boy. You don’t exactly seem to know what you’re doing here.” Killua would’ve never let some useless old man talk to him that way.
Kurapika’s voice turns cold, “I could say the same for you. How am I to believe you hold a true pair of Kurta eyes. This exchange works both ways, we are both holding items of value after all, are we not?”
The man grumbles under his breath. Kurapika senses an opportunity here however. Men like this are so easy to fool.
“But out of my own goodwill, I’ll go first.” The man’s face flushes red in anger at Kurapika’s little dig, but he still acquiesces. Greedy bastard.
Kurapika reaches behind him, pulling forward a black, nondescript sort of suitcase. He makes a show of slowly opening the locks of the case, flipping the lid inch by bare inch. He can practically smell the man’s impatience. It is dark enough in the room that the faint glow surrounding the strands of hair stands out immediately. Kurapika pulls the case away when the man makes to grab at it.
“And now your end of the deal.”
“Right.”
He turns around and gestures to his guard standing at the entrance near the room. He beckons the other man closer until he’s standing next to them at the table pulling something out of his bag. The guard searches for a few seconds before pulling out… a tablet and retreating to his place by the door. But unless it serves as some sort of portal to this moron’s house itself, to the pair of eyes he was promised , Kurapika will be putting a hole through both that tablet and its owner in a matter of seconds.
“What is that?”
“My evidence of course.” He then proceeds to proudly present Kurapika with a photo. It’s the eyes, in some crystal jar on a shelf, they’re decoration of course. They’re also not here , as a part of his deal, and he’s getting closer and closer to reaching the end of his patience.
“We agreed to conduct the deal here. Where are the eyes?”
The man scoffs, “Why on earth would I have risked bringing them here. They’re at my lodging, and you’ll be receiving them once I’m satisfied with the conditions of our trade.”
Kurapika tamps down his rage at the man’s response with a vicious ferocity. It’s just a business deal. He needs to keep calm. “Is this some sort of joke to you?” he asks coolly instead, head tilted as if in genuine confusion. As is always the case with these deals, it seems a little intimidation is in order. He hates doing it, but he knows he looks young and Hunters License or not, these men never take him seriously without a healthy dose of fear. Kurapika flits between roles so, so easily these days. He is anything it takes to get him the eyes. He is never himself. To some dealers he’s an eclectic, a collector just like them. To others, he’s but a naive business man. And to those who don’t respect him, he’s a blacklist Hunter, the feared chain-user himself.
“Because I don’t think you quite understand the position you’re in. Do you think I walked into this meeting blind? That I didn’t come in here knowing everything there was to know about you? The Hunter Website makes looking up people like you mere childsplay.” He laughs a little, arrogant. He doesn’t actually know a thing, Kurapika’s just bluffing at best,, but the way the man’s breath catches at the mention of the Hunter Website is rather telling.
And to think he’d faulted Leorio for having a disingenuous motive for becoming a Hunter. He wants to laugh at the irony of it all. Honourable Hunter Kurapika, using the position’s name to scare blacklist dealers into working with him. He wonders what Leorio would have to say about him now.
Kurapika falters. Only for a second, but it is enough for the man to regain some of his bravado.
“These Koorta eyes are worth quite a bit, I’m doing you a favour here. I won’t be talked to like this.”
Kurapika stands up, his chair cluttering to the floor behind him. “You— “ But the man ignores him, continuing on with his half-baked rant.
“Boy, I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been alive. I have a keen sense for these sorts of things you know. You should be grateful, if anything, that I bought these eyes before they became rare.”
Before they became rare? Before his people ran out of eyes and blood and life to fucking give? It’s as if a dam breaks within him. He doesn’t know what it is exactly, the man’s casual derision, his words, his tone, but suddenly he doesn’t care what happens here. He’s awash with that familiar red haze.
Kurapika strides over and grabs the fool by his flimsy collar, pulling him right up to his own face. The man sputters and kicks, but Kurapika is taller and infinitely more enraged so it's of little use.
“What do you think you’re doing boy!”
“What I should’ve done all along” he hisses. His body guard tries to move towards them from the door but is quickly intercepted. Tanaka, one of his men who’d been standing by, grabs him by one hand and has him quickly pinned against the wall.
Kurapika turns his attention back to the man before him, cooly considering his options, and the pain he wants to cause. He has his contacts on, he always does, but he wishes for a small moment that he didn’t, just so he could see the sheer terror his burning glare would invoke in the man before him. He already looks about ready piss himself. He feels his lips curl upwards a little at the thought. But just as he makes his chains appear, as one starts to creep up his hand on the man’s collar, he catches a bright flash of white. He diverts his eyes from the man’s terrified stare to look to his left. His phone lies face-up on the ground, it must’ve fallen out of his pocket in the scuffle. It’s silent, but the name that flashes a bright white on the screen sears into Kurapika’s eyes. Leorio. It’s Leorio again.
Leorio who has no idea the kinds of things he uses his nen for these days. Who despite having the shortest temper he’s ever seen on a man, always knows when to draw the line. Who would’ve maybe punched this man in the face for his words, not tried to make him hurt the way Kurapika had just been planning to. A man who is the same as him, the old him, on a fundamental level, would be disgusted with his actions.
His grip on the man’s collar loosens. His chains disappear.
The man falls to the floor with a thud but Kurapika barely sees him. He’s still watching his phone, just flashing that name over and over again. Eventually, it rings out. The sudden darkness of the screen abruptly snaps him out of whatever trance he’d fallen into and he turns to where the man had been a few seconds ago. He must’ve scampered off. There’s no one left in the room except him.
As the rush of adrenaline, of rage finally seeps out of him, Kurpika realises three rather important things in succession.
His only link to a pair of his tribe’s eyes has just disappeared.
He let it happen. He caused it to.
He still wishes he’d picked up the phone above all else, if only so he could’ve heard Leorio’s voice once more.
He squats down to the floor, dropping his head into his hands. He presses his cool palms on his eyes. What is wrong with him?
The third, or maybe fourth time Leorio calls, Kurapika doesn’t allow himself even a moment to consider answering, he declines immediately. Leorio’s last call had turned him into a complete mess. It cannot happen again.
Today is the day of the exchange, he needs to go in with a clear head. When the man had first contacted him to schedule another meeting, Kurapika had been shocked. He hadn’t thought he’d hear from him again. Now, he is just grateful for the man’s greed, it seems to overshadow his dislike of Kurapika enough to allow him this second chance. And he will not waste it.
He clenches the phone tightly in his fist and then shoves it deep into his suit pocket, before he can change his mind. He clutches the case holding the locks of hair from the Tsukino people and makes to enter the warehouse where the deal will be taking place. The night is a frigid cold against his thin suit jacket, but it hardly matters, all things considered, that he is cold.
He will not think. He will not feel. And he will come out of there with a pair of his tribe’s eyes no matter what happens.
Kurapika takes a deep breath, and steps forward.
He places the jar gingerly on the shelf before him.
Apologises. Steps away. Takes a seat.
Kurapika goes through these motions almost methodically, barely aware of what he’s doing. His mind is still whirling from the aftermath of the meeting. It’d gone well, all things considered. The apologies and reassurances he’d had to make had cut deep at his pride, but they’d been necessary.
Kurapika had changed tactics. He’d played the part of a simpering fool rather well, and explained away his anger as a brief lapse in judgement, nothing else.
He was still new to the business of trading. He had no idea what came over him that day. Oh, he’d just been stressed. He’d only been bluffing, his nen wasn’t really capable of any harm.
So, he’d come away from the meeting successful. If also less himself.
And now he sits in a damp cellar below their office. Just, sits there and stares. Several pairs of eyes stare back. But they float aimlessly in dirt-grimed jars and hold no gazes of their own, no matter how much he may want them to. He’s placed candles and small flowers beside them, in some sort of mock vigil. There is nothing traditionally Kurta about it, but it is all he can offer them now. A candle-lit cellar, and revenge.
He glances up and catches the eyes of the latest addition to the shelf. He has no idea who they belong to, he will likely never know. They could be his mother’s. His father’s. Pairo’s. The clan Elder’s. They could belong to any one of them. And all they can amount to are jars in his basement. Kurapika knows his collecting of the eyes may not be enough to truly put his clans’ souls to rest, but he doesn’t know what else to do. He wouldn’t even know where to begin arranging a funeral rite for his people.
When he’d returned to the forest, that first time, he’d just buried all their bodies. Digging, digging, digging for days on end. It’d allowed him something to do, in those days when he hadn’t even known who to blame, where to begin grieving a loss so heavy. He’d never learned of the Kurta rites, of what his people believed would allow souls to pass on in peace, because when his mother had sat him down to explain, he’d whined and complained until she let him go play in the woods with Pairo.
Back then, all he’d ever wanted to do was leave. He’d been so sick of those same woods, of living in an entirely self-induced seclusion, of knowing nothing of the people beyond the boundaries of their little home. Kurapika had wanted to see the world. Now, he would give anything for another moment in those woods, a dinner with his mother and father, a silly game with Pairo, a reprimand from the Elder, anything , for a chance to see them all one more time.
The sudden ringing from his phone snaps him out of his thoughts. He lifts it up and knows without really looking who’s calling him. Leorio’s name flashes brightly once more. Kurapika stares at the screen, his thumb hovering just a spare inch over the answer button. His hand trembles with the effort, the phone in his grip clutched iron tight. It would be so easy, so fucking easy to just answer the call. To hear Leorio’s voice once more. To hear and be heard, by his best friends in the world, it is a comfort he can’t help but long for. Especially on nights like this, with the office quiet, and his thoughts beating to the cacophonous tune of self-loathing.
He knows deep inside that if he just reaches out, there is something of a family, a home even to be found with Leorio, Gon and Killua. He knows all this and yet, can’t quite make himself do it. Because what then? Of course his friends would understand his plight, hell, they’d probably insist on helping him find the rest of his clan’s eyes. But Kurapika knows now what this sort of a life does to a person. He sees it in the mirror everyday, even as he tries so desperately to look away. How can he knowingly lead them down the same path? Gon and Killua are still just kids, and Leorio… Melody had once told him Leorio had the gentlest heartbeat she’d ever heard. That it was kind, soft in a way so few people were these days. He’d give anything to preserve it. To preserve them.
And most of all, he’s afraid. Kurapika’s afraid that he’ll see his friends and stay. That finally finding that form of kinship after so many years alone, will allow him to truly lay down his weapons and… and rest . That in a few years, his rage will ebb away, his pain might even lessen into a dull throb.
That staying with them, will lose him the ability to do what he needs to.
There’s a reason he’d put such a heavy condition on his nen, and on the chain that wraps tightly around his heart. His abilities, his resources, his everything is tied to his family and what he owes them.
He forces himself to look up now. Focuses back on the sightless eyes before him. This is not about what he wants. This is about what he owes. His grip on the phone loosens, just a little. They can’t see him, there’s no gazes he needs to shamefully meet, but on the days he cannot seem to do so himself, they hold him accountable.
How can you even consider it? They seem to say . How could you think to rest now, when you’ve still so much to do.
It’s as if whispers truly do accompany the words, because Kurapika feels a certain chill settle over his shoulders. He keeps his gaze steady this time, even as the eyes continue to float, listless and moving. With each second, his grip on the phone grows looser.
Kurapika lets the call ring out. And after a few more agonisingly long seconds, the high pitched tones of his phone finally stop echoing across the cellar walls. There is a moment of blessed silence where he switches his phone to silent. Maybe Leorio will finally give up on him now. He hasn’t done anything to deserve the other man’s kindness in a long, long time.
He holds the phone gently, head lowered and breathes a sigh of relief when it remains quiet.
Good. It’s a good thing.
A second passes, a few more.
The phone lights up once more.