On This Planet Spinning (21/23)
On This Planet Spinning
aka post-apocalypse au, aka painfic
Pairings:[Spoiler (click to open)]Baekxing, Xiuhan, Chansoo (+Chanyeol/Plant)
Genre: post-apocalypse, fantasy, drama, romance
Rating: R
Length: 137K total
Warnings: mature themes, violence/injury, some possibly disturbing imagery, threat of death, poor mental health, very brief mentions of suicidal ideation(?), sad times
Summary: Over a century after meteors destroyed Earth, making the surface uninhabitable, communities are returning from their bunkers and attempting to recolonize the planet. But resources are scarce, tensions are high, and neighbouring communities X-22 and Q-16 are fighting tooth and nail over the Valley, a rare patch of fertile land. Add to that a controversial group of humans with special abilities, and people will start to realize it's not the coming winter that's humanity's biggest obstacle-it's humanity itself. But that doesn't mean hope doesn't exist.
Chapter links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
*****
It’s so dark in Chanyeol’s new prison. He was moved here a couple days before his puzzle box was opened-and he knows it was, because he was questioned about it very thoroughly-because he was considered dangerous around his tools, and at first, he hadn’t cared. They were all prisons.
But now, he cares. The windows are boarded up, the door is solid, and only faint trickles of light seep through, leaving him in eternal near-blackness. And there’s nothing to do. Nothing he can build with his hands, nothing to keep him distracted from his thoughts, which grow darker every day.
It’s been eight days, he thinks, since he saw Kyungsoo. Eight days since he last heard a friendly voice, since he saw someone smile at him. Since he still felt any semblance of sanity. Now he just sits in the dark, day in and day out, gets up to stretch his aching limbs, eats small, sporadic meals, whispers to himself just to hear something. It’s so quiet inside his prison. So cold. So lonely.
The days run into each other. Every time the door opens, part of Chanyeol hopes it’s to drag him out, kill him. Finally. But the other part of him is terrified of that possibility. Even when death would be preferable, his survival instincts kick in, try to keep him alive. He eats when food is given to him. He sleeps as much as he can. He exists, but little else.
And then, one day, he hears a voice he recognizes. It’s not talking to him-never talking to him-but he knows that he knows it, even if it takes him a minute to place it. It’s talking to the guards posted outside his door, telling them he’s here to relieve them, per Boa’s orders. Leave him the keys and a blaster.
It’s Sehun. Kyungsoo’s brother Sehun. Hope flutters dangerously in Chanyeol’s chest, and he tries desperately to quash it. He can’t handle disappointment at this point.
The voices converse briefly, and then the two former guards leave. With bated breath, Chanyeol waits for something to happen.
But nothing does. Sehun is silent, the door remains closed, and Chanyeol is still alone with his laboured breaths.
“Sehun?” he says quietly, voice rough. “Are you there?”
There’s no answer. Chanyeol can’t even tell if Sehun is still standing guard.
“Sehun?” Chanyeol asks again, desperate. “Sehun, is something-is something happening? Please answer me.”
But he doesn’t. Chanyeol’s chest collapses, heart squeezing painfully. Was it even Sehun’s voice that he heard? He would never doubt himself if it was Kyungsoo’s, or even Seulgi’s or Joohyun’s, but he heard Sehun’s a lot less. And even if it was Sehun’s voice he heard, Chanyeol certainly wouldn’t put it past his mind to be playing tricks on him. It wouldn’t be the first time he thought he heard a voice that wasn’t really there.
Minutes pass, and Chanyeol stews in his misery. What is he supposed to do? He has no idea what’s in his future, or ever how long his future goes. The uncertainty eats at him. Should he be planning an escape? He knows he probably wouldn’t get five feet outside his prison, but at least he would have tried. And then at least it would be over. The waiting. The loneliness.
There’s a scuffle of feet in front of Chanyeol’s door, and then a rattle of metal against metal. The door opens, and for the first time in over a week, it’s not the nose of a blaster gun that Chanyeol sees first.
It’s a face. Most of it is covered by a rudimentary mask-helmet combo, but the eyes are showing. It’s hard to see whoever it is, with the sun at their back and shadow falling across their face, but hell if Chanyeol doesn’t recognize them immediately anyway. It’s a face that’s been haunting his dreams for months now.
“Kyungsoo?” he breathes, heart hammering against his ribs, blood rushing in his ears, limbs weak with disbelief as he clambers to his feet.
A finger is raised to the figure’s face, in front of his mouth, although Chanyeol can’t see it. Then he steps in, drops an armful of supplies, and walks forward to wrap Chanyeol in a hug.
Chanyeol cries.
He can’t help it. He’s so overwhelmed, so relieved, and he has never felt something more earth-shattering than Kyungsoo’s arms around him after days of solitary confinement. It’s a shock to his system; it feels like a scab being ripped off and a warm bath all at once. He breaks down, utterly and completely, before he even knows why Kyungsoo is here. It hardly matters to him, in that moment. If Chanyeol is about to die, at least he will have had this singular moment of comfort before that.
But then Kyungsoo pulls away, holds Chanyeol’s face between warm hands-god, Chanyeol never wants him to let go-and says, “This is a rescue, but I won’t lie and say it isn’t for reasons other than just getting you out of here. We need your help, Yeol.”
Chanyeol’s heart thuds, chest still heaving. “What?”
“Put on this helmet. I’ll explain everything in a minute. Can you walk okay? Are you injured?”
Chanyeol shakes his head mutely. He has some bruises, some fresh wounds, but nothing that would incapacitate him. He’s been that lucky, at least.
“Good. Great. Come on, there are some people who are dying to see you.” Kyungsoo smiles-his eyes smile-and Chanyeol’s stomach twists. He doesn’t even want to blink.
Kyungsoo helps Chanyeol put on the helmet and some light makeshift armour, and then, quietly, they ease themselves out of the building.
“Act natural,” Kyungsoo says, voice low, not looking at him. Chanyeol finds it hard to do so when he’s blinking against the glaring sunlight after being in the dark for so long. “Sehun, you go a different way and pick up some food from the kitchens-say they missed our house or something. Meet us at home.”
Sehun nods and walks away without another word, his gait stiff but his face revealing nothing.
“We’ll go straight home,” Kyungsoo says quietly, and then he starts walking, too. Chanyeol stumbles after him, breathing hard, his heart loud in his ears. He feels exposed, tense, vulnerable. He feels like he’s dreaming, but that it could turn into a nightmare at any second. Is this really happening? He wants to reach out for Kyungsoo’s hand, seek reassurance, seek comfort, but he knows that’s too dangerous. He keeps his hands to himself and follows Kyungsoo blindly, not daring to look around, barely daring to even breathe.
Eventually, Chanyeol looks up and sees, in the distance, fields, and among them, the storehouse where he’d lived and worked for the past three months. Mentally, he recoils, horror curling in his stomach. He doesn’t want to go back there. He doesn’t want to be stuck there again.
But then Kyungsoo stops, turns, opens the door to a house. “Get in,” he murmurs.
Swallowing hard, Chanyeol obeys.
Inside sit five people, three of whom Chanyeol knows, two of whom walk in his dreams every time he closes his eyes. He wrenches off his helmet, throat closing up. “Yifan? Baekhyun?”
Yifan all but pounces on him. His arms are strong, his warmth familiar, and Chanyeol clings to him, unbelieving. Maybe he really has gone insane. At this point, though, he can’t bring himself to care. Insanity is sweet.
After a long minute, Yifan pulls away-too soon-and holds Chanyeol by the shoulders, looks over him, joy and relief clear on his face. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, cheeks wet, and Chanyeol laughs brokenly because he doesn’t feel okay. He feels like he’s drowning. But maybe in a good way.
“Chanyeol,” says Baekhyun behind him, and Jongdae-an odd face to see, but not an unwelcome one-is helping him walk towards him. Chanyeol breaks away from Yifan, meets him in the middle, holds onto him so that he can never get away again. After a moment, he feels Yifan’s arms around both of them, and Chanyeol revels in their warmth, their solidity, their realness. He closes his eyes and just feels, as much as he is capable. If this is a dream, if it’s a lie, then he wants to soak it in as much as he can before it’s taken away from him.
They stand there, holding onto each other, holding each other together, until the door opens again, and Chanyeol startles away, on guard.
It’s just Sehun, though, balancing two trays on top of one another in his arms. “This is all I could get,” he says, looking around bashfully.
“We’ll grab stuff from the fields as we pass through,” Kyungsoo says, shaking his head. “Thanks, Sehun. Put them down, we’ll share.”
Chanyeol feels jittery and unstable as he sits on the floor next between his best friends, finding comfort in the press of their knees against his own. He eats what is handed to him-more than is given to anyone else-and finally dares to ask, “What’s going on?”
The story that follows is as hard to believe as it is incredibly cathartic. Chanyeol is confused, but somehow, things make sense. He’s been more removed from everything that’s been going on than anyone else, but everything he has seen suddenly makes sense.
“Is that my plant?” he interrupts abruptly, looking at the familiar pot and familiar leaves that sit next to the wall.
“Oh. Yeah. I brought it with me for emergencies,” Baekhyun says, cracking a smile.
Chanyeol holds out his hands for it, and someone-he doesn’t even pay attention to who-fetches it and places it in his hold. Grinning softly, Chanyeol touches its leaves, runs his thumb along the stalk. It’s still healthy, strong. Still thriving in this broken, messed up world. It’s kind of poetic.
“Okay,” he says on a sigh. “Keep talking.”
He learns a lot of new things. That Baekhyun was injured. That X-22’s paranormal pair was kidnapped and held hostage, just as Chanyeol was. That Yifan was trying to rescue him, like Chanyeol always believed he would. That he just couldn’t do it in time. That Luhan’s been inside X-22 this whole time, looking for him, searching for a way to save him, just out of sight.
He learns that Luhan is here now, at the storehouse with Jongin and his conjurer partner, because the real reason Chanyeol was broken out of jail was because they need him to make a new container to hold the whole fucking plague.
“What if I can’t do it?” he asks, dazed, feeling panic build in his chest. “What if I just can’t?”
“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo says, voice low, soothing. “You took apart and put back together a working piece of high-tech, century-old machinery. I know you can do it.”
Chanyeol swallows hard, hands shaking. “I have to, don’t I.” It’s not a question.
Five faces stare back at him. They don’t say anything, but that’s confirmation enough.
The storehouse looks exactly how Chanyeol left it. His tools are lined up on the floor and along the walls, his blueprints are spread out around them; there is still mold in the corners, oil stains next to where his bed used to lie. His friends and rescuers slide through the gap in the door that Luhan has opened for them, the lock a mangled mess on the hard ground, and look around in wonder and horror.
“This is where you lived?” Baekhyun asks, holding onto Yixing’s hands as he struggles to his feet.
“Yeah,” Chanyeol sighs. “Home sweet home.”
“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo says quietly, eyes cast down.
Chanyeol shakes his head. “It wasn’t your fault.” He turns, finds his puzzle box on his old desk. “Damn, they really did a number on that thing.”
Jongin looks nervous as he walks towards it. “Be careful,” he says. “It’s leaking disease.”
“If I’m going to catch it, it’ll happen no matter where I am,” Chanyeol says with a shrug.
Jongin doesn’t seem reassured, but he backs off, looking positively sick himself. Sehun clings to his arm, and Minseok lays a steady hand on his shoulder.
Chanyeol heard about Jongin’s plan to sacrifice himself, as Omega did before him. He hates it as much as anyone, but knows it’s not his decision to make.
“So what’s the plan?”
Chanyeol turns, sees Kyungsoo standing beside him, jaw set, eyes hard. He wishes Kyungsoo would smile, but understands that now isn’t the time for joy. “I’m going to repurpose the box we already have,” he says, picking it up, looking it over. “I’m assuming it’s made of a non-porous material, and it’s solid. And then I’m going to make a bigger box to seal it in after everything’s inside. That one will have to be airtight, but only for as long as it takes for me to stick it in a third box, which I’ll weld shut around all the edges.”
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says, like he always does when Chanyeol is explaining his work to him. Like he believes in Chanyeol’s capabilities completely. “What can I do to help?”
Chanyeol blinks at him, surprised. “What?”
“I want to help. I don’t know any of the technique, but I can hand you shit, and I can talk through things with you.” Kyungsoo looks up at him, face open, earnest.
“O...okay,” Chanyeol says. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Kyungsoo’s lips twitch up in a smile. “How long do you think this might take?”
Chanyeol sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “A couple hours? Usually I would take several days to design and then put together something like this, something finicky, that needs to be airtight but also able to open and close. But...I’ll try to go as fast as I can.”
“That’s fine, Chanyeol. Just do your best.” Kyungsoo reaches out, squeezes his wrist. The casual, comforting contact is still a shock to Chanyeol’s system. “Jongin, Minseok, you two rest up. Okay? I’m assuming you’ll need all the energy you can get.”
Jongin nods slowly. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to get much sleep…”
“Try,” Kyungsoo says. “Go home. We’ll come get you if and when anything happens. Sehun, do you want to go with them? Joonmyun and Yixing, too, if you guys want. You don’t really need to be here.”
Sehun and Joonmyun nod, but Yixing says, “I’d rather stay.” He glances at Baekhyun, who smiles weakly. Joonmyun clasps his hand tightly, then follows the younger boys as they slip back outside and head for Jongin’s home, Sehun clinging to Jongin’s hand. Luhan and Minseok exchange a look by the door, but in the end, Minseok looks away first, sliding out through the gap, following his partner back towards the community.
It leaves the men of Q-16 and Kyungsoo behind, faced with tools and machinery parts most of them don’t know anything about. Baekhyun makes himself comfortable against the wall, with Yixing and Jongdae on either side of him, and Luhan next to Jongdae. Yifan hovers next to Chanyeol for a while, but eventually realizes he’s only getting in the way and joins his friends on the floor. Kyungsoo sticks to his side, hands ready, eyes bright.
Chanyeol places his plant on his desk, closes his eyes briefly, and gets to work.
Building a new box to hold the plague is just as stressful and challenging as Chanyeol had expected. Moreso, even. He wipes nervous sweat from his forehead constantly as he sketches out drafts, searches for appropriate materials, tries things out. He burns himself as he’s welding pieces of metal together, he cuts his hands on jagged corners. He shakes so badly he can barely draw a straight line.
When that happens, Kyungsoo reaches out, lays his palm over Chanyeol’s hand, looks up at him with a gaze so steady that Chanyeol’s breathing evens out automatically, his tremors gentle. Kyungsoo gives him a soft smile, wipes beads of blood from Chanyeol’s fingers, and encourages him to continue.
The storehouse is mostly quiet, apart from the quiet conversation going on along the wall behind Chanyeol from his friends. Usually, it would be distracting, but today it’s comforting, knowing they’re still there, that he can turn around and look at them and make sure they really exist. He thinks that’s probably why Kyungsoo didn’t tell them to leave.
The plant is a comfort, too, a familiar sight even after all this time, reminding him of why he’s alive, why he’s still fighting, even when everything seems hopeless. If Chanyeol’s plant, so delicate and fragile, can overcome odds, can grow roots and brave the harshness of the world to thrive here on earth, then so can he. So can humanity.
Hours pass, Chanyeol thinks. He’s not really paying attention to the passing of time, but the shadows move on the floor of the storehouse, and Chanyeol gets work done. He seals up most of the openings in the puzzle box, builds another box large enough to hold it, seals eight of its edges and constructs a lid for the top, pipes silicone along the sides for an airtight seal. He tests it, finds faults, searches for solutions, tests it again. He hunts for ways to latch it, to lock the lid in place. His first attempt wrecks his lid, and he has to make a new one, swallowing down his frustration. Kyungsoo stands beside him, looks for hinges with him, rests a calming hand on the small of his back to soothe him.
Behind them, Yixing pulls Baekhyun up off the floor, leads him around the room, holding onto his hands, saying he can’t give up on his physio now. Chanyeol turns, watches, smiles at them. Baekhyun blushes as Yixing brushes a kiss across his cheek.
Seems like Baekhyun has a star-crossed lovers thing going on, too.
No, no, not too. Chanyeol has to remember that. That only happens in his dreams.
He focuses on the task at hand. Planning, sketching, finding the right parts, putting them together, checking that they function as he needs them to. Correcting the mistakes he makes in his rush to finish as quickly as possible. He hovers between thinking about how much is at stake if he fails, and trying not to let that distract him from his goal. He can’t afford to scare himself so badly he can’t concentrate, but at the same time he has to realize that it’s vital that he does this right.
Kyungsoo keeps him on track with quiet words, soft touches, and that same steady confidence and endless compassion that made Chanyeol fall for him in the first place.
He makes Chanyeol think that he can do this.
Of course, Kyungsoo’s support isn’t the only thing that could make or break his success. Chanyeol is just flipping down his welding mask to join two sheets of metal together when a cold voice says, “Put down the torch and step away from the table.”
Chanyeol whips around in shock, heart pounding frantically, and sees Boa standing at the barred door, blaster raised and pointed at his chest.
In the next moment, though, Kyungsoo is stepping in front of Chanyeol, lifting his own blaster in response, his stance solid. “No.”
Boa looks stunned, and then much less so. “Kyungsoo. Why am I not surprised you’re the one behind this?”
“Because I’m the only one with a functioning conscience in this whole damn community?” Kyungsoo suggests, voice clipped. Then he sighs. “Boa, I understand this looks bad, but you have no idea what’s happening.”
“Quite right,” Boa says, lips pressed together.
“It’s complicated,” Kyungsoo says. His blaster hasn’t dropped an inch.
He’s threatening his community leader to protect Chanyeol.
“What’s complicated is that there are no guards posted outside our prisoner’s quarters, despite the fact that I assigned two to be there, and there are no guards here either, and our prisoner has been given free reign of his tools after constructing not one, but two deadly devices that could and might destroy our entire community,” Boa says, one eyebrow lifting.
Kyungsoo doesn’t falter for even a second, even as Chanyeol wilts with shame.
“Throw us out later,” he says, unwavering. “I don’t fucking care. But right now, we have things that are a little more important than your paranoia.”
“You don’t think my paranoia is warranted?” Boa asks. “My own soldier is pointing his blaster at me.”
“I am not your soldier. I never pledged blind, unquestioning allegiance to you. I have full right to doubt your methods and your ideologies. And I understand and acknowledge your fears and the decisions you’ve made because of them. But they have no place here.” Kyungsoo adjusts his grip on his blaster. “Let’s discuss my exile later. Right now, your prisoner is trying to save your community.”
Boa blinks at him in surprise. “What?”
Kyungsoo waves his hand dismissively. “Of course, now you’d like the whole story. Yeol, how close do you think you are to being done?”
Chanyeol’s heart is beating loudly, but at this point he’s not sure if it’s from fear or emotion. “An hour, tops?” he stutters.
“Great. Awesome. Luhan, you have that long to explain, through the door, what’s going on to her. Yifan, keep your blaster on her. Your turn to be prisoner, Boa.” Kyungsoo flashes a grin. “No disrespect intended.”
Chanyeol is embarrassed of the way his heart flutters.
Boa looks flustered, and even more so when Luhan creeps out of hiding from his spot against the wall and tentatively begins relaying the story to her piece by piece. Yifan keeps his blaster up even after Boa has lowered hers-they’re not taking chances.
“Thank you,” Chanyeol murmurs, ducking his head as he turns back to his work.
Kyungsoo shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. Me standing up for you now doesn’t right all the wrongs I’ve committed, by action as well as inaction, in the past. But I’m going to do my best to make it up to you.”
Chanyeol swallows hard and doesn’t bother mentioning that he forgave Kyungsoo a long time ago.
“If you’re telling the truth, I need to go tell people,” Boa argues at the end of Luhan’s long-winded explanation, when Chanyeol is putting the finishing touches on his triad of boxes.
“We don’t need more people swarming us and causing a ruckus,” Kyungsoo says, shaking his head as he hands Chanyeol a screwdriver.
“The Valley is not very far away from the Dead Zone. Which is where both of our militaries are,” Boa reminds him.
“What would we do? Walk into open fire, try to call a truce? You think that would work?” Kyungsoo holds the box steady as Chanyeol tightens a screw in the hinge. “We’ll deal with them when the time comes.”
“Seems dangerous,” Boa warns.
Kyungsoo turns to look at her. “It’s very dangerous. People might die. But you know what’s even more dangerous? Doing nothing. Which is what you’ve been doing, by the way, and is also what I have been doing so far. I’m done doing nothing.”
Boa gives him a long, steady look. “You’d make a good soldier, Kyungsoo, if you could learn to follow orders,” she says, approval colouring her voice.
“You’d make a good leader, Boa, if you could give orders that didn’t demand opposition.” Kyungsoo smiles slightly.
Boa chuckles lightly and shakes her head. “You are...something else.”
Kyungsoo nods. “I aim to be.”
Chanyeol smiles to himself, tests the clasps on his second box. They click into place smoothly. “I think I’m done.”
Kyungsoo turns back to him, places a hand on his waist as he leans over. “You think?”
Chanyeol hesitates, plays with the clasps for another second. “I’m done,” he amends.
“Excellent. You’re incredible, Chanyeol, I mean it. Can someone go get Jongin? And Sixers, we’re gonna need that truck of yours.”
All heads turn to face him. Kyungsoo looks determined, unstoppable, fearless. Everything that Chanyeol is currently lacking.
He doesn’t really need it, though, with Kyungsoo in the lead. “Alright, men,” Kyungsoo says, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
***
Jongin doesn’t want to die.
He knows going against the plague is a suicide mission. He knows it will likely be too much for him; a sorcerer who came into his powers too young, who still gets overwhelmed daily, who barely got any formal training, who has only been working with his conjurer for three months. He knows it’s unlikely that he’ll live through this.
But he doesn’t want to die.
He’s scared. He’s so scared that he considers, lying there on his bed mat and trying to get a few hours of sleep, running away from everything. If he ran far enough, maybe he would be able to get away from the plague. From the pain and the fear and the very real possibility of death.
But he knows he can’t. He knows he won’t. His parents gave their lives to purge the plague from his body. Maybe they knew, back then, that someday he would have to do the same to purge the plague from the earth. Maybe they saw something in him that Jongin has never seen in himself. Strength. Purpose. Worth.
Sehun lies beside him, and Jongin can feel the tension in his body. He knows Sehun isn’t sleeping. He knows he’s causing Sehun pain.
He wishes he could take that out of him, the same way he took out the sickness in his brain.
But no. Pain has a purpose. Sadness has a purpose, and so does fear, and anger, and joy. They make you human. They tell you that something is wrong, or that something is right. They help you cope with loss, and they help you celebrate victories. They bring people together.
Silently, Jongin hopes that his sacrifice will bring people together, too.
Across the room, Minseok slumbers, too-or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he, too, drifts in and out of consciousness, dreaming, wondering, knowing this might be the end. Jongin feels guilty for making him do this. Minseok has a family, has people that rely on him. Jongin hates himself for tearing him away from them.
He tries to force himself to sleep. He knows he needs it. But it’s so hard when his stomach is twisting up in knots, his heart is hammering against his ribs, his head is full of doubts and fears and what ifs.
Eventually, Yixing comes to wake him and the others. Jongin stands up numbly, listens only halfheartedly to what people are saying around him. Minseok stands beside him, steady and familiar. Sehun holds onto his hand. Jongin walks where he’s led, climbs up onto a wheeled contraption he’s never seen before. The others climb up with him. Boa is there, and he hears some people questioning her presence, but Jongin doesn’t care. Other people come out of their houses, too, gather in front of them-the wheeled machine makes a lot of noise. Jongin doesn’t care about them, either. He squeezes Sehun’s hand, keeps his eyes on the puzzle box in Chanyeol’s. Everything else feels very far away. Like Jongin is still asleep-still in a nightmare-except the nightmare is real life.
They drive to the Valley, and Jongin sees it for the first time. A sprawling patch of overgrown grass, a sparkling pond nestled between reeds and flowering weeds, a solid tree at the center, easily fifteen feet high, its trunk a foot wide. Fruit hangs heavy from its branches, and more lie rotting in the grass below it. Jongin walks towards it in a daze, presses his hand to its smooth bark. He can’t tell, without probing, that it’s a Reward. It’s likely uncommonly strong, remarkably able to withstand harsh conditions, but Jongin has no point of reference with trees. This is the only one he’s ever seen.
When he reaches out with his mind, though, touches the energy deep inside the tree’s core, he can feel its personality, passed on from the souls that gave it life. He can feel the person within the wood, immortalized through sacrifice.
He wonders if his sacrifice will produce something similar. Maybe he’ll just be immortalized through a scraggly little weed.
A hand touches his elbow, and Jongin turns to see Minseok watching him. “Ready?” he asks softly.
Minseok is scared. Jongin can feel it; it permeates his wavelengths, nearly consumes him. Somehow, it comforts Jongin. It reminds him that he’s not alone in this. He’s not alone in his fear. It makes him feel stronger.
“Yeah,” he says, nodding.
“Let’s go.”
Nobody cries. Jongin is glad; he thinks he might start crying if someone else did. Sehun hugs him, squeezes him tightly. So does Kyungsoo, and then Yixing and Joonmyun. They tell him he’s so brave, they’re so proud of him. They don’t say they’ll miss him, or anything like that. They don’t acknowledge that tomorrow, he might be gone.
But Jongin hears it anyway, in their choked voices and stilted words.
He stands with Minseok in the grass next to the pond, and Minseok turns to him, jaw set. Jongin reaches for him, and Minseok catches his hand, his rough palm warm and comforting. “Thank you,” Jongin says, and then his throat closes up and he can’t go on. He can’t say thank you for helping me help others. He can’t say thank you for making me stronger. Thank you for making me better. He can’t say thank you for giving me a family when I had none.
He thinks Minseok hears it anyway. His partner nods, swallows hard. “I’m...proud to stand beside you,” he says, and his voice is rough.
Jongin draws a shuddering breath, closes his eyes, and lets the energy pummeling against his defenses flow into him.
It feels like stepping out into a storm, except it’s stronger than any storm Jongin’s ever seen. They’ve seen one or two pretty heavy rainfalls since the resurfacing, some pretty strong gales, but nothing comes close to the power of the warring energies that immediately flood Jongin’s body. It’s two crashing typhoons, pushing against Jongin’s skin, raging through his veins, consuming him. It hurts-Jongin thinks he screams. But the pain is grounding. He stands firm, locks his knees, and pulls. He doesn’t just let it in. He pulls as hard as he can, funnels it out of his body and into Minseok’s, pushing past their limits. He pulls and he pulls and he pulls, black and light energy in equal measures, an overpowering current running through him from the ground.
Beside him, Minseok works hard, and he works fast. He condenses, converts, creates. He builds a solid mass of black energy and wraps a net of raw energy around it, reining it in, keeping it under control, blanketing it so that it doesn’t kill Jongin on its way back through him.
In normal circumstances, Jongin would be in awe. But right now, that’s not his problem. Right now, he has an important job to do, an important role to fulfill. And he puts his all into it. He draws on every ounce of willpower, all his anger at their broken world, all his regret, all the tears he’s shed to get up to this point. He thinks about the families who will lose children or parents if he does not succeed. He thinks about all the people who will die, he thinks about all the people who already have died at the hands of this sickness. He thinks about the people who sacrificed their lives to provide the energy that he’s using now.
He thinks about the people who had to suffer so that everything would work out as it did today. So that everyone would be in the right place at the right time. The injury and the sense of revenge from Q-16 that brought Baekhyun, Yixing, and Joonmyun together so they could figure out Omega’s involvement in the first place. Liyin and Zitao’s separation that put the sorcerer in Q-16 to help them along, and the conjurer on the borders of X-22 to keep Yifan safe. Sehun’s epilepsy, which resulted in Chanyeol’s capture, which put Chanyeol in X-22, able to make the container for them right in front of the only people capable of using the it to recapture the plague. The death of Jongin’s parents, which left him alone, which brought him to X-22, where the world needs him. Every person, every tragedy, intricately placed and designed so that this, here, could take place.
Jongin will not allow for all of that to have happened in vain.
The sickness rips through him, tearing at his insides, boiling through his system. Jongin embraces it, uses it, feeds off of it. He drinks in the raw energy from beneath his feet, soothes it over his flayed edges, lets it chase after the plague. Good after evil. The way of the world.
Minseok transforms it, shapes it, and Jongin pulls it back out of him, directs it back into the box on the grass, forces it through the tiny gap and into its prison, where it belongs.
There’s so much of it. Too much. More than Jongin can handle. It’s wearing him down fast, and as he continues to pull, it resists. The sickness that is already rooted inside the people of X-22 struggles against his grip, holds onto its hosts. Jongin yells, tears at it, wrenches it free. He lets the energy of the earth pour into him, light him up, and he does things he’s never dreamed of doing before. Usually, he would be too scared. He would be fearful of it being too much for him, of it destroying him.
He’s still scared. But he’s not letting it stop him. He knows it’s destroying him, from the inside out. He embraces it. He pulls harder, even as he feels the life drain from his body.
He lowers the walls from around his mind, he dissolves the defenses he’s spent so long building up and strengthening. He doesn’t need them anymore. He needs every ounce of power he’s been given, and he needs it now.
The energies scream in his ears as they rush through him, louder and higher with every passing second. Jongin’s sight goes from black to white. It doesn’t make sense; his eyes are closed. But at the same time, he can’t be sure that they are. He can’t even be sure he has eyes. He doesn’t feel them. He doesn’t feel anything, apart from pain and force and pressure. He doesn’t feel like he exists. Everything is just power, and light, and guttingly powerful energy. Louder, higher, brighter. Squeezing into a dark little box. Consuming him, bit by bit, as it passes through him. All of it. All of him.
And then one moment of silence, of perfect serenity. One moment of victory.
And then nothing.
*****
NEXT>>
A/N: Find me on twitter, tumblr, and ask.fm!
aka post-apocalypse au, aka painfic
Pairings:[Spoiler (click to open)]Baekxing, Xiuhan, Chansoo (+Chanyeol/Plant)
Genre: post-apocalypse, fantasy, drama, romance
Rating: R
Length: 137K total
Warnings: mature themes, violence/injury, some possibly disturbing imagery, threat of death, poor mental health, very brief mentions of suicidal ideation(?), sad times
Summary: Over a century after meteors destroyed Earth, making the surface uninhabitable, communities are returning from their bunkers and attempting to recolonize the planet. But resources are scarce, tensions are high, and neighbouring communities X-22 and Q-16 are fighting tooth and nail over the Valley, a rare patch of fertile land. Add to that a controversial group of humans with special abilities, and people will start to realize it's not the coming winter that's humanity's biggest obstacle-it's humanity itself. But that doesn't mean hope doesn't exist.
Chapter links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
*****
It’s so dark in Chanyeol’s new prison. He was moved here a couple days before his puzzle box was opened-and he knows it was, because he was questioned about it very thoroughly-because he was considered dangerous around his tools, and at first, he hadn’t cared. They were all prisons.
But now, he cares. The windows are boarded up, the door is solid, and only faint trickles of light seep through, leaving him in eternal near-blackness. And there’s nothing to do. Nothing he can build with his hands, nothing to keep him distracted from his thoughts, which grow darker every day.
It’s been eight days, he thinks, since he saw Kyungsoo. Eight days since he last heard a friendly voice, since he saw someone smile at him. Since he still felt any semblance of sanity. Now he just sits in the dark, day in and day out, gets up to stretch his aching limbs, eats small, sporadic meals, whispers to himself just to hear something. It’s so quiet inside his prison. So cold. So lonely.
The days run into each other. Every time the door opens, part of Chanyeol hopes it’s to drag him out, kill him. Finally. But the other part of him is terrified of that possibility. Even when death would be preferable, his survival instincts kick in, try to keep him alive. He eats when food is given to him. He sleeps as much as he can. He exists, but little else.
And then, one day, he hears a voice he recognizes. It’s not talking to him-never talking to him-but he knows that he knows it, even if it takes him a minute to place it. It’s talking to the guards posted outside his door, telling them he’s here to relieve them, per Boa’s orders. Leave him the keys and a blaster.
It’s Sehun. Kyungsoo’s brother Sehun. Hope flutters dangerously in Chanyeol’s chest, and he tries desperately to quash it. He can’t handle disappointment at this point.
The voices converse briefly, and then the two former guards leave. With bated breath, Chanyeol waits for something to happen.
But nothing does. Sehun is silent, the door remains closed, and Chanyeol is still alone with his laboured breaths.
“Sehun?” he says quietly, voice rough. “Are you there?”
There’s no answer. Chanyeol can’t even tell if Sehun is still standing guard.
“Sehun?” Chanyeol asks again, desperate. “Sehun, is something-is something happening? Please answer me.”
But he doesn’t. Chanyeol’s chest collapses, heart squeezing painfully. Was it even Sehun’s voice that he heard? He would never doubt himself if it was Kyungsoo’s, or even Seulgi’s or Joohyun’s, but he heard Sehun’s a lot less. And even if it was Sehun’s voice he heard, Chanyeol certainly wouldn’t put it past his mind to be playing tricks on him. It wouldn’t be the first time he thought he heard a voice that wasn’t really there.
Minutes pass, and Chanyeol stews in his misery. What is he supposed to do? He has no idea what’s in his future, or ever how long his future goes. The uncertainty eats at him. Should he be planning an escape? He knows he probably wouldn’t get five feet outside his prison, but at least he would have tried. And then at least it would be over. The waiting. The loneliness.
There’s a scuffle of feet in front of Chanyeol’s door, and then a rattle of metal against metal. The door opens, and for the first time in over a week, it’s not the nose of a blaster gun that Chanyeol sees first.
It’s a face. Most of it is covered by a rudimentary mask-helmet combo, but the eyes are showing. It’s hard to see whoever it is, with the sun at their back and shadow falling across their face, but hell if Chanyeol doesn’t recognize them immediately anyway. It’s a face that’s been haunting his dreams for months now.
“Kyungsoo?” he breathes, heart hammering against his ribs, blood rushing in his ears, limbs weak with disbelief as he clambers to his feet.
A finger is raised to the figure’s face, in front of his mouth, although Chanyeol can’t see it. Then he steps in, drops an armful of supplies, and walks forward to wrap Chanyeol in a hug.
Chanyeol cries.
He can’t help it. He’s so overwhelmed, so relieved, and he has never felt something more earth-shattering than Kyungsoo’s arms around him after days of solitary confinement. It’s a shock to his system; it feels like a scab being ripped off and a warm bath all at once. He breaks down, utterly and completely, before he even knows why Kyungsoo is here. It hardly matters to him, in that moment. If Chanyeol is about to die, at least he will have had this singular moment of comfort before that.
But then Kyungsoo pulls away, holds Chanyeol’s face between warm hands-god, Chanyeol never wants him to let go-and says, “This is a rescue, but I won’t lie and say it isn’t for reasons other than just getting you out of here. We need your help, Yeol.”
Chanyeol’s heart thuds, chest still heaving. “What?”
“Put on this helmet. I’ll explain everything in a minute. Can you walk okay? Are you injured?”
Chanyeol shakes his head mutely. He has some bruises, some fresh wounds, but nothing that would incapacitate him. He’s been that lucky, at least.
“Good. Great. Come on, there are some people who are dying to see you.” Kyungsoo smiles-his eyes smile-and Chanyeol’s stomach twists. He doesn’t even want to blink.
Kyungsoo helps Chanyeol put on the helmet and some light makeshift armour, and then, quietly, they ease themselves out of the building.
“Act natural,” Kyungsoo says, voice low, not looking at him. Chanyeol finds it hard to do so when he’s blinking against the glaring sunlight after being in the dark for so long. “Sehun, you go a different way and pick up some food from the kitchens-say they missed our house or something. Meet us at home.”
Sehun nods and walks away without another word, his gait stiff but his face revealing nothing.
“We’ll go straight home,” Kyungsoo says quietly, and then he starts walking, too. Chanyeol stumbles after him, breathing hard, his heart loud in his ears. He feels exposed, tense, vulnerable. He feels like he’s dreaming, but that it could turn into a nightmare at any second. Is this really happening? He wants to reach out for Kyungsoo’s hand, seek reassurance, seek comfort, but he knows that’s too dangerous. He keeps his hands to himself and follows Kyungsoo blindly, not daring to look around, barely daring to even breathe.
Eventually, Chanyeol looks up and sees, in the distance, fields, and among them, the storehouse where he’d lived and worked for the past three months. Mentally, he recoils, horror curling in his stomach. He doesn’t want to go back there. He doesn’t want to be stuck there again.
But then Kyungsoo stops, turns, opens the door to a house. “Get in,” he murmurs.
Swallowing hard, Chanyeol obeys.
Inside sit five people, three of whom Chanyeol knows, two of whom walk in his dreams every time he closes his eyes. He wrenches off his helmet, throat closing up. “Yifan? Baekhyun?”
Yifan all but pounces on him. His arms are strong, his warmth familiar, and Chanyeol clings to him, unbelieving. Maybe he really has gone insane. At this point, though, he can’t bring himself to care. Insanity is sweet.
After a long minute, Yifan pulls away-too soon-and holds Chanyeol by the shoulders, looks over him, joy and relief clear on his face. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, cheeks wet, and Chanyeol laughs brokenly because he doesn’t feel okay. He feels like he’s drowning. But maybe in a good way.
“Chanyeol,” says Baekhyun behind him, and Jongdae-an odd face to see, but not an unwelcome one-is helping him walk towards him. Chanyeol breaks away from Yifan, meets him in the middle, holds onto him so that he can never get away again. After a moment, he feels Yifan’s arms around both of them, and Chanyeol revels in their warmth, their solidity, their realness. He closes his eyes and just feels, as much as he is capable. If this is a dream, if it’s a lie, then he wants to soak it in as much as he can before it’s taken away from him.
They stand there, holding onto each other, holding each other together, until the door opens again, and Chanyeol startles away, on guard.
It’s just Sehun, though, balancing two trays on top of one another in his arms. “This is all I could get,” he says, looking around bashfully.
“We’ll grab stuff from the fields as we pass through,” Kyungsoo says, shaking his head. “Thanks, Sehun. Put them down, we’ll share.”
Chanyeol feels jittery and unstable as he sits on the floor next between his best friends, finding comfort in the press of their knees against his own. He eats what is handed to him-more than is given to anyone else-and finally dares to ask, “What’s going on?”
The story that follows is as hard to believe as it is incredibly cathartic. Chanyeol is confused, but somehow, things make sense. He’s been more removed from everything that’s been going on than anyone else, but everything he has seen suddenly makes sense.
“Is that my plant?” he interrupts abruptly, looking at the familiar pot and familiar leaves that sit next to the wall.
“Oh. Yeah. I brought it with me for emergencies,” Baekhyun says, cracking a smile.
Chanyeol holds out his hands for it, and someone-he doesn’t even pay attention to who-fetches it and places it in his hold. Grinning softly, Chanyeol touches its leaves, runs his thumb along the stalk. It’s still healthy, strong. Still thriving in this broken, messed up world. It’s kind of poetic.
“Okay,” he says on a sigh. “Keep talking.”
He learns a lot of new things. That Baekhyun was injured. That X-22’s paranormal pair was kidnapped and held hostage, just as Chanyeol was. That Yifan was trying to rescue him, like Chanyeol always believed he would. That he just couldn’t do it in time. That Luhan’s been inside X-22 this whole time, looking for him, searching for a way to save him, just out of sight.
He learns that Luhan is here now, at the storehouse with Jongin and his conjurer partner, because the real reason Chanyeol was broken out of jail was because they need him to make a new container to hold the whole fucking plague.
“What if I can’t do it?” he asks, dazed, feeling panic build in his chest. “What if I just can’t?”
“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo says, voice low, soothing. “You took apart and put back together a working piece of high-tech, century-old machinery. I know you can do it.”
Chanyeol swallows hard, hands shaking. “I have to, don’t I.” It’s not a question.
Five faces stare back at him. They don’t say anything, but that’s confirmation enough.
The storehouse looks exactly how Chanyeol left it. His tools are lined up on the floor and along the walls, his blueprints are spread out around them; there is still mold in the corners, oil stains next to where his bed used to lie. His friends and rescuers slide through the gap in the door that Luhan has opened for them, the lock a mangled mess on the hard ground, and look around in wonder and horror.
“This is where you lived?” Baekhyun asks, holding onto Yixing’s hands as he struggles to his feet.
“Yeah,” Chanyeol sighs. “Home sweet home.”
“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo says quietly, eyes cast down.
Chanyeol shakes his head. “It wasn’t your fault.” He turns, finds his puzzle box on his old desk. “Damn, they really did a number on that thing.”
Jongin looks nervous as he walks towards it. “Be careful,” he says. “It’s leaking disease.”
“If I’m going to catch it, it’ll happen no matter where I am,” Chanyeol says with a shrug.
Jongin doesn’t seem reassured, but he backs off, looking positively sick himself. Sehun clings to his arm, and Minseok lays a steady hand on his shoulder.
Chanyeol heard about Jongin’s plan to sacrifice himself, as Omega did before him. He hates it as much as anyone, but knows it’s not his decision to make.
“So what’s the plan?”
Chanyeol turns, sees Kyungsoo standing beside him, jaw set, eyes hard. He wishes Kyungsoo would smile, but understands that now isn’t the time for joy. “I’m going to repurpose the box we already have,” he says, picking it up, looking it over. “I’m assuming it’s made of a non-porous material, and it’s solid. And then I’m going to make a bigger box to seal it in after everything’s inside. That one will have to be airtight, but only for as long as it takes for me to stick it in a third box, which I’ll weld shut around all the edges.”
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says, like he always does when Chanyeol is explaining his work to him. Like he believes in Chanyeol’s capabilities completely. “What can I do to help?”
Chanyeol blinks at him, surprised. “What?”
“I want to help. I don’t know any of the technique, but I can hand you shit, and I can talk through things with you.” Kyungsoo looks up at him, face open, earnest.
“O...okay,” Chanyeol says. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Kyungsoo’s lips twitch up in a smile. “How long do you think this might take?”
Chanyeol sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “A couple hours? Usually I would take several days to design and then put together something like this, something finicky, that needs to be airtight but also able to open and close. But...I’ll try to go as fast as I can.”
“That’s fine, Chanyeol. Just do your best.” Kyungsoo reaches out, squeezes his wrist. The casual, comforting contact is still a shock to Chanyeol’s system. “Jongin, Minseok, you two rest up. Okay? I’m assuming you’ll need all the energy you can get.”
Jongin nods slowly. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to get much sleep…”
“Try,” Kyungsoo says. “Go home. We’ll come get you if and when anything happens. Sehun, do you want to go with them? Joonmyun and Yixing, too, if you guys want. You don’t really need to be here.”
Sehun and Joonmyun nod, but Yixing says, “I’d rather stay.” He glances at Baekhyun, who smiles weakly. Joonmyun clasps his hand tightly, then follows the younger boys as they slip back outside and head for Jongin’s home, Sehun clinging to Jongin’s hand. Luhan and Minseok exchange a look by the door, but in the end, Minseok looks away first, sliding out through the gap, following his partner back towards the community.
It leaves the men of Q-16 and Kyungsoo behind, faced with tools and machinery parts most of them don’t know anything about. Baekhyun makes himself comfortable against the wall, with Yixing and Jongdae on either side of him, and Luhan next to Jongdae. Yifan hovers next to Chanyeol for a while, but eventually realizes he’s only getting in the way and joins his friends on the floor. Kyungsoo sticks to his side, hands ready, eyes bright.
Chanyeol places his plant on his desk, closes his eyes briefly, and gets to work.
Building a new box to hold the plague is just as stressful and challenging as Chanyeol had expected. Moreso, even. He wipes nervous sweat from his forehead constantly as he sketches out drafts, searches for appropriate materials, tries things out. He burns himself as he’s welding pieces of metal together, he cuts his hands on jagged corners. He shakes so badly he can barely draw a straight line.
When that happens, Kyungsoo reaches out, lays his palm over Chanyeol’s hand, looks up at him with a gaze so steady that Chanyeol’s breathing evens out automatically, his tremors gentle. Kyungsoo gives him a soft smile, wipes beads of blood from Chanyeol’s fingers, and encourages him to continue.
The storehouse is mostly quiet, apart from the quiet conversation going on along the wall behind Chanyeol from his friends. Usually, it would be distracting, but today it’s comforting, knowing they’re still there, that he can turn around and look at them and make sure they really exist. He thinks that’s probably why Kyungsoo didn’t tell them to leave.
The plant is a comfort, too, a familiar sight even after all this time, reminding him of why he’s alive, why he’s still fighting, even when everything seems hopeless. If Chanyeol’s plant, so delicate and fragile, can overcome odds, can grow roots and brave the harshness of the world to thrive here on earth, then so can he. So can humanity.
Hours pass, Chanyeol thinks. He’s not really paying attention to the passing of time, but the shadows move on the floor of the storehouse, and Chanyeol gets work done. He seals up most of the openings in the puzzle box, builds another box large enough to hold it, seals eight of its edges and constructs a lid for the top, pipes silicone along the sides for an airtight seal. He tests it, finds faults, searches for solutions, tests it again. He hunts for ways to latch it, to lock the lid in place. His first attempt wrecks his lid, and he has to make a new one, swallowing down his frustration. Kyungsoo stands beside him, looks for hinges with him, rests a calming hand on the small of his back to soothe him.
Behind them, Yixing pulls Baekhyun up off the floor, leads him around the room, holding onto his hands, saying he can’t give up on his physio now. Chanyeol turns, watches, smiles at them. Baekhyun blushes as Yixing brushes a kiss across his cheek.
Seems like Baekhyun has a star-crossed lovers thing going on, too.
No, no, not too. Chanyeol has to remember that. That only happens in his dreams.
He focuses on the task at hand. Planning, sketching, finding the right parts, putting them together, checking that they function as he needs them to. Correcting the mistakes he makes in his rush to finish as quickly as possible. He hovers between thinking about how much is at stake if he fails, and trying not to let that distract him from his goal. He can’t afford to scare himself so badly he can’t concentrate, but at the same time he has to realize that it’s vital that he does this right.
Kyungsoo keeps him on track with quiet words, soft touches, and that same steady confidence and endless compassion that made Chanyeol fall for him in the first place.
He makes Chanyeol think that he can do this.
Of course, Kyungsoo’s support isn’t the only thing that could make or break his success. Chanyeol is just flipping down his welding mask to join two sheets of metal together when a cold voice says, “Put down the torch and step away from the table.”
Chanyeol whips around in shock, heart pounding frantically, and sees Boa standing at the barred door, blaster raised and pointed at his chest.
In the next moment, though, Kyungsoo is stepping in front of Chanyeol, lifting his own blaster in response, his stance solid. “No.”
Boa looks stunned, and then much less so. “Kyungsoo. Why am I not surprised you’re the one behind this?”
“Because I’m the only one with a functioning conscience in this whole damn community?” Kyungsoo suggests, voice clipped. Then he sighs. “Boa, I understand this looks bad, but you have no idea what’s happening.”
“Quite right,” Boa says, lips pressed together.
“It’s complicated,” Kyungsoo says. His blaster hasn’t dropped an inch.
He’s threatening his community leader to protect Chanyeol.
“What’s complicated is that there are no guards posted outside our prisoner’s quarters, despite the fact that I assigned two to be there, and there are no guards here either, and our prisoner has been given free reign of his tools after constructing not one, but two deadly devices that could and might destroy our entire community,” Boa says, one eyebrow lifting.
Kyungsoo doesn’t falter for even a second, even as Chanyeol wilts with shame.
“Throw us out later,” he says, unwavering. “I don’t fucking care. But right now, we have things that are a little more important than your paranoia.”
“You don’t think my paranoia is warranted?” Boa asks. “My own soldier is pointing his blaster at me.”
“I am not your soldier. I never pledged blind, unquestioning allegiance to you. I have full right to doubt your methods and your ideologies. And I understand and acknowledge your fears and the decisions you’ve made because of them. But they have no place here.” Kyungsoo adjusts his grip on his blaster. “Let’s discuss my exile later. Right now, your prisoner is trying to save your community.”
Boa blinks at him in surprise. “What?”
Kyungsoo waves his hand dismissively. “Of course, now you’d like the whole story. Yeol, how close do you think you are to being done?”
Chanyeol’s heart is beating loudly, but at this point he’s not sure if it’s from fear or emotion. “An hour, tops?” he stutters.
“Great. Awesome. Luhan, you have that long to explain, through the door, what’s going on to her. Yifan, keep your blaster on her. Your turn to be prisoner, Boa.” Kyungsoo flashes a grin. “No disrespect intended.”
Chanyeol is embarrassed of the way his heart flutters.
Boa looks flustered, and even more so when Luhan creeps out of hiding from his spot against the wall and tentatively begins relaying the story to her piece by piece. Yifan keeps his blaster up even after Boa has lowered hers-they’re not taking chances.
“Thank you,” Chanyeol murmurs, ducking his head as he turns back to his work.
Kyungsoo shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. Me standing up for you now doesn’t right all the wrongs I’ve committed, by action as well as inaction, in the past. But I’m going to do my best to make it up to you.”
Chanyeol swallows hard and doesn’t bother mentioning that he forgave Kyungsoo a long time ago.
“If you’re telling the truth, I need to go tell people,” Boa argues at the end of Luhan’s long-winded explanation, when Chanyeol is putting the finishing touches on his triad of boxes.
“We don’t need more people swarming us and causing a ruckus,” Kyungsoo says, shaking his head as he hands Chanyeol a screwdriver.
“The Valley is not very far away from the Dead Zone. Which is where both of our militaries are,” Boa reminds him.
“What would we do? Walk into open fire, try to call a truce? You think that would work?” Kyungsoo holds the box steady as Chanyeol tightens a screw in the hinge. “We’ll deal with them when the time comes.”
“Seems dangerous,” Boa warns.
Kyungsoo turns to look at her. “It’s very dangerous. People might die. But you know what’s even more dangerous? Doing nothing. Which is what you’ve been doing, by the way, and is also what I have been doing so far. I’m done doing nothing.”
Boa gives him a long, steady look. “You’d make a good soldier, Kyungsoo, if you could learn to follow orders,” she says, approval colouring her voice.
“You’d make a good leader, Boa, if you could give orders that didn’t demand opposition.” Kyungsoo smiles slightly.
Boa chuckles lightly and shakes her head. “You are...something else.”
Kyungsoo nods. “I aim to be.”
Chanyeol smiles to himself, tests the clasps on his second box. They click into place smoothly. “I think I’m done.”
Kyungsoo turns back to him, places a hand on his waist as he leans over. “You think?”
Chanyeol hesitates, plays with the clasps for another second. “I’m done,” he amends.
“Excellent. You’re incredible, Chanyeol, I mean it. Can someone go get Jongin? And Sixers, we’re gonna need that truck of yours.”
All heads turn to face him. Kyungsoo looks determined, unstoppable, fearless. Everything that Chanyeol is currently lacking.
He doesn’t really need it, though, with Kyungsoo in the lead. “Alright, men,” Kyungsoo says, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
***
Jongin doesn’t want to die.
He knows going against the plague is a suicide mission. He knows it will likely be too much for him; a sorcerer who came into his powers too young, who still gets overwhelmed daily, who barely got any formal training, who has only been working with his conjurer for three months. He knows it’s unlikely that he’ll live through this.
But he doesn’t want to die.
He’s scared. He’s so scared that he considers, lying there on his bed mat and trying to get a few hours of sleep, running away from everything. If he ran far enough, maybe he would be able to get away from the plague. From the pain and the fear and the very real possibility of death.
But he knows he can’t. He knows he won’t. His parents gave their lives to purge the plague from his body. Maybe they knew, back then, that someday he would have to do the same to purge the plague from the earth. Maybe they saw something in him that Jongin has never seen in himself. Strength. Purpose. Worth.
Sehun lies beside him, and Jongin can feel the tension in his body. He knows Sehun isn’t sleeping. He knows he’s causing Sehun pain.
He wishes he could take that out of him, the same way he took out the sickness in his brain.
But no. Pain has a purpose. Sadness has a purpose, and so does fear, and anger, and joy. They make you human. They tell you that something is wrong, or that something is right. They help you cope with loss, and they help you celebrate victories. They bring people together.
Silently, Jongin hopes that his sacrifice will bring people together, too.
Across the room, Minseok slumbers, too-or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he, too, drifts in and out of consciousness, dreaming, wondering, knowing this might be the end. Jongin feels guilty for making him do this. Minseok has a family, has people that rely on him. Jongin hates himself for tearing him away from them.
He tries to force himself to sleep. He knows he needs it. But it’s so hard when his stomach is twisting up in knots, his heart is hammering against his ribs, his head is full of doubts and fears and what ifs.
Eventually, Yixing comes to wake him and the others. Jongin stands up numbly, listens only halfheartedly to what people are saying around him. Minseok stands beside him, steady and familiar. Sehun holds onto his hand. Jongin walks where he’s led, climbs up onto a wheeled contraption he’s never seen before. The others climb up with him. Boa is there, and he hears some people questioning her presence, but Jongin doesn’t care. Other people come out of their houses, too, gather in front of them-the wheeled machine makes a lot of noise. Jongin doesn’t care about them, either. He squeezes Sehun’s hand, keeps his eyes on the puzzle box in Chanyeol’s. Everything else feels very far away. Like Jongin is still asleep-still in a nightmare-except the nightmare is real life.
They drive to the Valley, and Jongin sees it for the first time. A sprawling patch of overgrown grass, a sparkling pond nestled between reeds and flowering weeds, a solid tree at the center, easily fifteen feet high, its trunk a foot wide. Fruit hangs heavy from its branches, and more lie rotting in the grass below it. Jongin walks towards it in a daze, presses his hand to its smooth bark. He can’t tell, without probing, that it’s a Reward. It’s likely uncommonly strong, remarkably able to withstand harsh conditions, but Jongin has no point of reference with trees. This is the only one he’s ever seen.
When he reaches out with his mind, though, touches the energy deep inside the tree’s core, he can feel its personality, passed on from the souls that gave it life. He can feel the person within the wood, immortalized through sacrifice.
He wonders if his sacrifice will produce something similar. Maybe he’ll just be immortalized through a scraggly little weed.
A hand touches his elbow, and Jongin turns to see Minseok watching him. “Ready?” he asks softly.
Minseok is scared. Jongin can feel it; it permeates his wavelengths, nearly consumes him. Somehow, it comforts Jongin. It reminds him that he’s not alone in this. He’s not alone in his fear. It makes him feel stronger.
“Yeah,” he says, nodding.
“Let’s go.”
Nobody cries. Jongin is glad; he thinks he might start crying if someone else did. Sehun hugs him, squeezes him tightly. So does Kyungsoo, and then Yixing and Joonmyun. They tell him he’s so brave, they’re so proud of him. They don’t say they’ll miss him, or anything like that. They don’t acknowledge that tomorrow, he might be gone.
But Jongin hears it anyway, in their choked voices and stilted words.
He stands with Minseok in the grass next to the pond, and Minseok turns to him, jaw set. Jongin reaches for him, and Minseok catches his hand, his rough palm warm and comforting. “Thank you,” Jongin says, and then his throat closes up and he can’t go on. He can’t say thank you for helping me help others. He can’t say thank you for making me stronger. Thank you for making me better. He can’t say thank you for giving me a family when I had none.
He thinks Minseok hears it anyway. His partner nods, swallows hard. “I’m...proud to stand beside you,” he says, and his voice is rough.
Jongin draws a shuddering breath, closes his eyes, and lets the energy pummeling against his defenses flow into him.
It feels like stepping out into a storm, except it’s stronger than any storm Jongin’s ever seen. They’ve seen one or two pretty heavy rainfalls since the resurfacing, some pretty strong gales, but nothing comes close to the power of the warring energies that immediately flood Jongin’s body. It’s two crashing typhoons, pushing against Jongin’s skin, raging through his veins, consuming him. It hurts-Jongin thinks he screams. But the pain is grounding. He stands firm, locks his knees, and pulls. He doesn’t just let it in. He pulls as hard as he can, funnels it out of his body and into Minseok’s, pushing past their limits. He pulls and he pulls and he pulls, black and light energy in equal measures, an overpowering current running through him from the ground.
Beside him, Minseok works hard, and he works fast. He condenses, converts, creates. He builds a solid mass of black energy and wraps a net of raw energy around it, reining it in, keeping it under control, blanketing it so that it doesn’t kill Jongin on its way back through him.
In normal circumstances, Jongin would be in awe. But right now, that’s not his problem. Right now, he has an important job to do, an important role to fulfill. And he puts his all into it. He draws on every ounce of willpower, all his anger at their broken world, all his regret, all the tears he’s shed to get up to this point. He thinks about the families who will lose children or parents if he does not succeed. He thinks about all the people who will die, he thinks about all the people who already have died at the hands of this sickness. He thinks about the people who sacrificed their lives to provide the energy that he’s using now.
He thinks about the people who had to suffer so that everything would work out as it did today. So that everyone would be in the right place at the right time. The injury and the sense of revenge from Q-16 that brought Baekhyun, Yixing, and Joonmyun together so they could figure out Omega’s involvement in the first place. Liyin and Zitao’s separation that put the sorcerer in Q-16 to help them along, and the conjurer on the borders of X-22 to keep Yifan safe. Sehun’s epilepsy, which resulted in Chanyeol’s capture, which put Chanyeol in X-22, able to make the container for them right in front of the only people capable of using the it to recapture the plague. The death of Jongin’s parents, which left him alone, which brought him to X-22, where the world needs him. Every person, every tragedy, intricately placed and designed so that this, here, could take place.
Jongin will not allow for all of that to have happened in vain.
The sickness rips through him, tearing at his insides, boiling through his system. Jongin embraces it, uses it, feeds off of it. He drinks in the raw energy from beneath his feet, soothes it over his flayed edges, lets it chase after the plague. Good after evil. The way of the world.
Minseok transforms it, shapes it, and Jongin pulls it back out of him, directs it back into the box on the grass, forces it through the tiny gap and into its prison, where it belongs.
There’s so much of it. Too much. More than Jongin can handle. It’s wearing him down fast, and as he continues to pull, it resists. The sickness that is already rooted inside the people of X-22 struggles against his grip, holds onto its hosts. Jongin yells, tears at it, wrenches it free. He lets the energy of the earth pour into him, light him up, and he does things he’s never dreamed of doing before. Usually, he would be too scared. He would be fearful of it being too much for him, of it destroying him.
He’s still scared. But he’s not letting it stop him. He knows it’s destroying him, from the inside out. He embraces it. He pulls harder, even as he feels the life drain from his body.
He lowers the walls from around his mind, he dissolves the defenses he’s spent so long building up and strengthening. He doesn’t need them anymore. He needs every ounce of power he’s been given, and he needs it now.
The energies scream in his ears as they rush through him, louder and higher with every passing second. Jongin’s sight goes from black to white. It doesn’t make sense; his eyes are closed. But at the same time, he can’t be sure that they are. He can’t even be sure he has eyes. He doesn’t feel them. He doesn’t feel anything, apart from pain and force and pressure. He doesn’t feel like he exists. Everything is just power, and light, and guttingly powerful energy. Louder, higher, brighter. Squeezing into a dark little box. Consuming him, bit by bit, as it passes through him. All of it. All of him.
And then one moment of silence, of perfect serenity. One moment of victory.
And then nothing.
*****
NEXT>>
A/N: Find me on twitter, tumblr, and ask.fm!