Umbrella.

A month, mind you.

Chapter was originally posted : 27/10/2023 on AO3 by 0Creativity0 (me).

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Flutters and butterflies were not enough to describe what Killua's felt when he woke up to Gon, holding a plate of pancakes in his hands, a sweet smile harbouring his sweet face. The bags under his eyes suggested he hadn't slept all night and the bloodshot red color they took made it clear that he had been crying, but Killua's simple awakening seemed to make everything so much better immediately.

Breakfast was pretty hard to sit through. Gon randomly started crying at some point. He lowered his head, stuffing his mouth with food in an attempt to muffle it, and Killua's heart shattered at the image.

He managed to crack a joke about Gon's ears going pink, even if his mind was a bit too heavy for comedy at the moment. In the end it had been worth it, because Gon giggled at the comment, sniffled and brushed a few tears out of the bridge of his nose before returning to his little smile that had Killua's heart racing. Then, he resumed eating his pancakes in silence, but this time his face was clear of any tears.

Turns out Retz really was the one to die. Killua hadn't been that surprised. Gon spent the rest of the day telling Killua about how amazing she was, and everytime he mentioned how much he missed her, Killua edged closer to breaking down. He wanted to leave and only come back once this was all behind them, but he know Gon needed him now, and not once things were better, so he sat there and did what he did best: pretended.

Killua was there when eventually Gon's dads discovered about Retz's death and he had to explain it all. He was across from the camera in a way he wouldn't be seen, holding Gon's hands and smiling his way, encouragingly.

Retz's funeral was too much for him to handle, tho, and he'd refused to come, stating how busy he was working for his family business. Gon, too tired and sad to argue, had simply responded with a little red heart. Killua had never mentioned a family business before. He brushed past it.

That day was probably one of the hardest in the whole process. It took place a full six days after her body was found, on Saturday. Gon had gotten ready to serve a last homage to his friend alongside Neon. She broke down at multiple occasions, redoing her makeup three times before eventually settling for waterproof mascara. He wore a black suit, the only piece of clothing he hadn't taken with him when he left Whale Island. His fathers had to shipp it. He'd only ever worn it to Abbe's and Mito's funerals, he'd hoped to never wear it again. He'd pretended it didn't exist. It looked like a bad memory, it smelt like the tears he'd shed. And also like the cardboard box it'd been shipped in.

Once this was all over, he'd push it to the back of his suitcase like he pushed those events to the back of his mind.

Retz's coffin was closed, they wouldn't let people look inside. Said they'd tried their best, that overall, her body hadn't been too mutilated either - it was actually pretty clean, asides from the fact that it was disassembled -, but the two weeks it'd spent rotting underground gave her a bad look.

Staring and the picture her brother picked (a picture from her passport in which she wasn't even smiling, far from representative of her sweet, sweet personality), Gon cried all over again. Biscuit was a strong girl, she was the one to stand up and comfort everyone. Anita seemed mortified. She's recently lost her father to an assassin, the situation was all the more terrifying for her. Meleoron seemed kind of zoomed out. He couldn't accept what happened, not just yet.

Retz had grown up in a fucked up environment of violence and drugs and death, with a fucked up family of dealers and addicts and offenders. She and her brother hadn't escaped to the mental trauma her entire bloodline had been inflicted, it seemed her brother was even the only one to escape death yet. Local news called him unlucky. He was, really, but he'd also become an asshole of first class. Maybe by all he'd been through, yes, but Gon couldn't bear to just watch him stand, so untouched, at his own sister's funeral.