Lucilfer (ChrolloxReader)

Epilogue

I'd ruined relationships with my friends, entirely cut them off; I'd used my friends for my own selfish purposes. And I'd hurt her, the only one I love, in trying to control her, to make her be what I wanted her to be, to stifle the real facets of who she is, who she will always be. Finally, however—perhaps the most agonizing conclusion of all—my efforts to save the remnants of my clan, their memories, their laughter and their civilization, had destroyed me. I was nothing now.

Regardless, I loved her. I'd tried to convince myself, for a transient second, that I didn't, that I merely loved my idea of her, my perception of her, but it wasn't true. It would never be true. I loved her more than my rage, and so my rage had decimated that part of my character, as well. Rightfully so, in reality—I'd committed to my rage; I'd fed my rage and cultivated it and watched it become a monster, willingly. Did I really assume that it wouldn't also sabotage my love for her, as well?

I've sabotaged so much already.

My emotions were incomprehensible as I stepped forward, and my eyes were unseeing as I progressed over the valley of death. There was nothing else for me, no drive left but for this to come to an end. I'd exhausted myself, mind and body and spirit, and heart. And if I couldn't even expect myself to save something as simple as memories, legacy, how could I save myself?

"You have further purpose, Kurapika."

Liar. Murderer. Thief. Vile dog.

Screams. Blood, and fire, and destruction.

Scarlet.

It didn't matter that I hated him, my tormentor, because he was now made to be invincible. I'd writhed under that realization for so many hours, several days, but it began to harden me, to freeze me over, to leave me with the nothing I was always fated to have, a nothing I could never admit to possessing, because I'd known, even back then, that it would destroy me. I'd only been too hotheaded to take heed.

Not even my rage could disturb me now—I was too tired to entertain it any longer. What good would it do? It had only served to hurt me, to hurt her. My motives had been twisted, and my righteousness, left in shambles. And I'd blamed her, at first, but even I knew, in the darkest parts of my thoughts, that I had played the role of the fool. And now, everyone was gone. No one remained, but myself.

I have nobody.

It pained me, but not enough to make tears fall. I'd already accepted what fate so eagerly rung me down to, how it drew so much joy from shoving me further underground until dirt and soil filled my eyes and nose and mouth and lungs. Once a victim of strangulation accepts their fate, only then can the strangulation truly take place.

Numbly, I looked down to my right hand, watching the dreadful silver links jingle mutedly in the soft wind. One of them, Chain Jail, had grown visibly weaker—to me, but most likely not to anyone else. It was an auric weakness, brought on by the chain in my own heart that I had relinquished, only to soon be replaced by another. I'd revoked my life sentence to solely using Chain Jail on the Spiders, simply because if I must proceed in the way I wished to, it was to be only the way I wished to. I needed my heart freed from any daggers of rage—it didn't matter that I couldn't use something of the same valor against the Spiders, since I wouldn't be such a thorn in their sides anymore. The Judgement Chain had dissipated from my heart.

One more time, I gazed out at the rolling hillsides, the place where I, myself, had buried each and every mangled and slaughtered member of the Kurta Clan. I could almost see myself now, thirteen years old, patting down their graves through rain, and snow, and boiling heat. Presently, however, I realized I didn't believe in spirits, or even an afterlife—I felt none of their energies, not a drop of their vitality, their lust for existing, for living. I was alone.

Was this what Chrollo felt in the moments leading up to when I would condemn him to my Judgement Chain? Was this what acceptance felt like? What the acknowledgement of fate and the hands that guide the actions of humanity ultimately led to?

"I can't seem to shake the feeling you will be the one chained down."

Izunavi's words revisited me; they haunted me. How ironic, and ultimately fitting, that I, the one who had professed the necessity of some being chained to a wretched hell, had finally come to the mercy of those very chains. Perhaps, in the end, this was how it should've been, how it always was going to be. I'd spent so long angry, at the throes of my own passions, that I couldn't begrudge fate for the destiny she'd bestowed upon me.

Leaning my head back, I squinted my gaze at the sky and deployed the very last Judgement Chain. My legs bent as I knelt on the ground, not bothering with keeping the cultural clothing I'd marred with the golden stitches of a perfect soul connection free from grass stains, and my lips parted, my eyelids fluttering closed as I spoke the only condition I would set for my own death.

"Forgiveness," I breathed, toneless.

I spared not a moment before charging the vessel into my chest, feeling the familiar cutting sensation of sharp suffocation for merely a second before my jolted body was brought back to peace again—I could almost pretend that the chain wasn't there.

And I could see everything so clearly. I understood that relinquishing the unjust blame and damn near hatred I'd wanted to hurl at her like daggers was the only way I could truly love her now. I was letting her go, and leaving her with no malice from my ghost. A dwindling part of me hoped that she would eventually find it in herself to forgive me, too.

As I sat back into my hips, allowing the sun to warm the barely healing score on my cheek, I released a final sigh, and murmured four quiet words, hoping, impossibly, that they would somehow reach the only love I'd ever known, and succumbing to the death sentence of wringing my own heart with the chain meant for my tormentor, ultimately lying still with the nothingness I'd been fated to possess.

"I forgive you, (Y/n)."

The End.