Hunter X Hunter||Chrollo lucilfer X Reader||A collector's soul
Just another session of journaling, tea at 5am before the world gets to loud, slow down and take a deep breath.
'Collections do not leave the collector unaffected. The art of collecting results in a certain turn of mind' ~ Douglus Wilson.
Tracklist...
🖤 Sad Girl- Lana Del Rey
🖤 Young And Beautiful-Lana Del Rey
🖤 Snow On The Beach-Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey.
Chrollo Lucilfer habits revolve in an almost dark romantic subplot like a Gothic novel that was taken from an archive most of it's texts were smudged with ink, the book seemed to have survived just because of the leather bound journal, the pages yellowed with age the fountain ink was almost scribbled like the author themselves couldn't decide if they wanted the words on the pages to be read, or was it better to keep that inky distance?
He overconsumes almost like a law in his system; he was a thief who put half the world in disarray. The dissonance was a blur. In search of an identity, it was such a fickle thing for Chrollo. It was an endless, never-ending quest; he could travel through oceans, he was a bibliophile, he collected books, memories, experiences, abilities and even people.
You would watch him, seated on his armchair a book in your lap, the page not turned for quite some time your hands stilled at a page, you would watch him restore a book from the auction which was passed arounf like an artifact the mafia men, organisations would spend hours decoding the cryptic language in hopes of discovering a valuable nen ability, that they could hoard around a fragile sense of power and Chrollo pried on such ambitions. Information was always at the tips of his fingers, the vast collection of bandit' secret had just a touch of what he needed to bring the book to life before he would place it on his shelf.
Now, you found tacked-up notes written in his elegant cursive when you opened a rustic book out of curiosity. Chrollo's mind was a web of what a wanderer might store; he was an encyclopedia of his own strange system, which drew in danger from the underbelly of Yorknew and Meteor city. Those tucked-in notes were historical references, word meanings, some annotations, and an invitation for you to join in his parade. You didn't know if that was flattery or something uniquely tempting.
Chrollo would keep a leather-bound journal in a black or forest green journal, folded around the pages a commonplace notebook of all sorts, nihilistic quotes from Russian authors, and some authors whose entries were long confiscated or already buried in an archive. The quotes were emotionally clinical his opinion carried a weight of a fog it was the same direction Chrollo did when he was faced with conditional nen, studying the nen for hours then each condition broken, loopholes found and abondoned then the nen ability was used better than the original nen user, and you don't know if this man who quotes romantic quotes in the quite epilogue of your room, where plush pillows, warm throws cocooned you, the steady beat of his heartbeat, the scent of danger, husk, an undertone of temptation, candlelight flickering. You couldn't tell if this man had reverence or if he was just a demon taking coverage in a collector's soul. That decided you were now the book he wanted to read, and Chrollo never abandons a book halfway.
His protective fury ignites when you, his lover, are in danger, or harm threatens you. He had long accepted that death followed him; it was how he moved through his life with that detachment. But, to lose you was to lose the warmth of your fingers when she holds his hand, he was a mastermind who could orchestrate the fall of a civilisation his whole demeanour had been an ink blanket of the night sky endlessly calm, distant to a commoner's eye, endlessly calm, secrets filtered in each touch, but there were stars now embers.
He was no saint, he wanted to give back the world anything it had taken everything from dragged it like a broken glass just to hear how it breaks like a opera with to many high notes, his identity was a Shred extinguished before the fullstop, his sense of belonging was with his family, the spiders they would dig the underbelly of any auction, any neon city lights, any soil to make a mark, it didn't matter if it was through blood. They were children, childhood was a luxury they couldn't afford, to grow up too fast.
It was all he knew to collect, for something tangible he held in his hand, he embodied the term 'wanderer' more prominently, but even wanderers in their journey needed a safe space, a harbour where the journey ceased to exist for a fortnight.
For Chrollo, it was you who was the wishtree. This time, he wasn't reading the lines of absence; he had grown to accept it as his everyday, a constant, but now he was reading for your presence.
The steady rise and fall of your chest, as you slept enveloped in the warmth of a blanket he would place around you the weight of his hand, a promise, a vow someone like Chrollo would not make lightly information was a weapon, emotions and memories could be twisted to poison and the world preyed on such delicacies. He would shield you from the world that was too loud.
For someone like Chrollo, who was used to being the ghost of another page, another day in his own story, he was always just passing by, collecting dream vials. You know how dangerous it was; you made a man like Chrollo fall for you. He was a dangerous paradox.
Damnation and Salvation could not exist on the same day, the same way you can't lose your sense of time and navigation at the same time, now he could.
Right now he felt like a man who found a scripture, a devoted man found a puzzle piece, but never a right fix, each one a mystery, no start or an end point. His curiosity was his downfall and your downfall was falling for the paradox.
