Beyond the Grave [ILLUMI X CHROLLO]

[1] And Who Cares? Divine Intervention~

When Illumi died, he did so under the assumption that his brother would live. He'd expected to find solace in knowing that he'd achieved his goal. It all came back to that dreadful, pesky, eldest-sibling complex Alluka accused him of exploiting.

When the two of them were on worse terms, it wasn't an insult so much as it was a reminder: that everything their parents had done was pointless if not a single one of them could get into an ivy league. Any one.

Their mother had dreamed of attending Yale in her youth, but her acceptance to Yale was cut short by Illumi's existence. And then, once Illumi was in preschool, she'd hoped to enroll again. She'd been rejected, and then came all his other siblings. Illumi always suspected motherhood manifested with the hope of a payoff.

And, even before Alluka enrolled at their late grandfather's university, it became clear to Illumi that his mother had spent thirty years not on payoff, but on a punchline. It was cruel, it was unusual, and it was something Illumi had stopped thinking about five years prior to leaving Killua at Central Park for the last time.

This was what woke Illumi from his spirit's week-long slumber.

Illumi raised a tentative hand to his head, as if the sensation would do anything for him now.

So it is true, he thought, eyes wavering from the foot of a four-poster bed to his argyle socks atop the comforter.

In the week following Illumi's ultimate and complete death, he'd confirmed everything Gon hadn't been able to explain to him. Gon, who had technically died more times than Illumi could count, had spent countless hours in step with Death and yet had failed to mention the obvious—what every near-death experience story culminated to.

He'd watched his life unfold like pages in his grandfather's library. He believed, fully, that this was precisely what had occurred in the seconds after joining the Princes of Sin for the court hearing.

As Illumi's mind was laid bare to the divine masses, he could now read it, too. A surface-level skim, perhaps, but one he comprehended well. He'd lived it, after all.

Every second he'd spent in the contempt of his mother. The quiet, disillusionment of his father. The need for his siblings to succeed where he had failed, because only their mother could hate him. He'd be damned if she hated the rest of them, too.

Ever the conscience of a guilty oldest child, his grandfather would probably say.

To that, Illumi scoffed to himself in the empty, gothic bedchamber he now resided in, encased in the glow of a dozen crimson candle flames.

He'd gone before the judge, jury, and had faced his executioner without worry. Where his confidence came from, he didn't know, and now he was here.

In Pride's domain.

There was something peculiarly... vengeful about the eldest of the fallen angels, and the answer wouldn't cross Illumi's mind for some time. There were pieces missing in his extensive mental catechism that could only be answered by the Prince of Pride himself.

Illumi pushed to the edge of the bed and stood, brushing out the wrinkles in his slacks and adjusting the collar of his turtleneck. In the mirror, he was just as he remembered himself: prepared to die on Killua's behalf.

Illumi circumnavigated the room from its aggressively ornate wood paneling to a armoire filled with clothes. There were paintings on the walls that, once noticed, speared Illumi's already-bleeding heart.

His eyes flooded with tears, and once they arrived, they didn't stop.

He rubbed his hands across them, cursing. "Fuck, not now," he groaned. He'd witnessed this once before and had received ample warnings from Chrollo to never let them linger.