Rising Sun

Chapter 1 - Killua

Authors Note:
Yo,
This is my first story.
I uploaded it on a different website some years ago but sadly I forgot my password. .___.
I wanted to rewrite it because of typos, though please bear with me when some still occur here and there, I did this in a sleep deprived state xd
Because I'm doing this in my free time, I can't say when updates are coming, but they are coming for sure. c:
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Alone. Apart. Separated. Cold. Without. Missing. Departed. Frozen. Confined. Lost. Hurt... Killua....

If Killua had a comfort object, that comfort object was loneliness. He had become accustomed to its embrace. As much a prison as it was a grave, loneliness would wrap itself around Killua like a blanket made of snowflakes with gentle, icy kisses dancing across his pale skin. This was familiar, his bones, skin and heart told him so. The loneliness would cut out the world around him, cut off the elements and emotions so vastly distributed throughout the atmosphere. Things like pain were distant, not able to find footing within this realm. Too many, he knew, often misinterpreted this feeling, the isolation, as warmth. Killua did not make this mistake of course. He may be a broken shell of a being but he was still no fool. He was fully aware that this frigid embrace induced nothing near warmth. It only offered numbness to the cold. To Killua though, this was warmth, or the nearest thing to it. The closest he had ever been to warmth in his short life was the absence of the feeling of cold. The absence of feeling anything. A lesson he had learned well as a young child of the Zoldyck family while shackled and tortured. You had to earn this kind of loneliness, you see. This loneliness and the refuge it offered resided in the deep. A dark expanse of territory far below with ocean upon ocean of nothing stacked endlessly upon it, pressing it deeper and deeper with all the might and force of gravity spurred on by the weight of the cosmos strewn on top.

But every now and then there was...something. Something stirred in the vast expanse of nothing. There was a small ripple in the consistency of the barrier to life that loneliness cast. It vibrated and sung and glowed gently in the back of Killua's mind. Something threatening to tear the loneliness apart, exposing Killua to everything. Something that Killua could not completely suppress, not completely control, short of suicide.

Memories....Killua thought.

Memories of a certain time. Dangerous memories. They were memories of a time where Killua had managed to step halfway out of this world of loneliness. One foot in, one foot out, daring to feel, to touch, to be...warm. Killua also remembered another feeling, one that frightened him deeply. Vulnerable. During this time he had felt and been very vulnerable. Something Illumi had taught him to avoid entirely. Run. Run if you are vulnerable. Run if you are weak. Run if you can't resist. This was the doctrine Illumi had so deeply instilled within Killua's mind. But Killua had not listened, he overcame Illumi's manipulative Nen and the needle injecting into his brain. He had stayed, he had remained vulnerable and because of it he had been deeply wounded. It was a wound that penetrated deeper than any other, there was no veil, no shield, no buffer to slow its force. It shot through every part of his being, ripping through his soul, skewering it on a white hot spear that twisted and turned eternally, barbed with all the memories that had been darkened and formed into cruel spikes. It did not relent. This was a kind of pain that loneliness could not numb and Killua knew now that it would always be there, below the surface, threatening to disturb what little comfort there may be in his accustomed solitude.

I was born into a prison, Killua thought, and when I knocked down the walls to free myself I found only a new prison, but one of which I am not the warden.

Gon.

The name rung out in Killua's mind like a bell struck by a hammer, an uncomfortable lingering clang.