APTF [Final Chapter]
Title: A Prayer Time Forgot
Length: Chaptered [14/14]
Rating: NC17 now, to be safe.
Genre: Umm. Unsure. Angst, supernatural, generally. Weirdness. We'll see.
Pairing: Yes, there are pairings. (Gasp! A first!) I'm guessing it's YunJae.
Summary: …Hey, this is Yunho and Yoochun Jung. We can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave us a message and how we can contact you…
Previous chapters found here.
A/N: Okay so it's not an epi but a final chapter. An epi, I figured, would leave a lot of questions unanswered so I didn't put it in. There will be another A/N at the end.
Forgive me. (You'll know why)
---
Chapter Fourteen
It’s Junsu who greets him at his bedside, eyes mottled from crying, ears and nose flushed carnation under the stark hospital lights. Yunho feels fingers encircling his own: warm, assuring, alive. Colored spots are dancing in front of his eyes and he blinks painfully; his throat is dry, and he forces himself to fight against the odd, heavy, achy feeling that’s overcome his entire body.
Jaejoong, he whispers, because it was Jaejoong who had been there, Jaejoong who had somehow saved him. He sees as Junsu bites his lip, makes a poor attempt to hold back tears.
Hyung, Yunho hears, guilt staining the words like blood. He does his best to squeeze Junsu’s fingers, implores him to tell him where Jaejoong has gone.
Jaejoong, he mouths again, and this time, Junsu gets on his knees by the bed, his body suddenly quietly shuddering.
Hyung, I’m sorry.
---
Yunho wakes with a gasp, feverish, his sheets bunched up in his fists and sweat clinging to his temples. His head is throbbing from a phantom ache of years past and for several seconds as he slowly regains his senses, he hears nothing but the pounding of his own heart and Junsu’s fast-fading voice, stubborn remnants of his dream that cling to him like ghosts and cobwebs.
(Yoochun had gone missing…he had taken Changmin’s car…been rescued from the Han…is okay but Jaejoong…Jaejoong…)
He thinks of Yoochun first, an instinct long driven into him since that night. He stumbles out of bed and half-runs down the narrow hallway and into Yoochun’s room, stops dead in his tracks when he sees the boy’s room empty, the rumpled sheets on the bed pink and yellow from hues of dawn that bleed in through fingerprint-stained glass and fine summer dust. Where, is the word his mind conjures first and he feels cold sweat trickles down his neck as a conditional response. Not again. This can’t be happening again.
He hears ringing from far away, and suddenly he remembers a corner smile and flashing eyes, little boys lost and found, little boys dead and gone.
…Hey, this is Yunho and Yoochun Jung. We can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave us a message and how we can contact you…
He reaches the phone before the answering machine’s message finishes.
“H-Hello, this is Yunho Jung,” he says, and his voice shakes even after clearing his throat; his tone is a little too tight and perhaps a little too high for his liking and he tries again. (Yeoboseyo still clings to the tip of his tongue as a habit but Parisians, he’s learned, are temperamental, so he’s always careful.) “Hello?”
“Hyung!” he hears on the other end, and it’s Yoochun, his tone light. “I thought you were still asleep so I was just hoping to leave a message on the answering machine…you told me to call as soon as I got here.”
An old French song is wafting in through his open window, calms him as much as Yoochun’s voice does, and Yunho remembers. He slides down onto Yoochun’s floor, his shoulders slumping from relief. Here, of course, is Seoul where Yoochun has gone, where Yoochun will be until the month is up. Here is a faraway time and place, where Yoochun is already ten and not six, no longer the small little boy that vanished from bedrooms in the middle of the night.
“Oh yeah,” he says, feeling foolish and reassured at the same time. “I…I forgot.”
“Hyung, are you okay? You sound…weird.” Yoochun sounds worried, and Yunho can’t really blame him. It’s Yoochun after all who’s been woken up too many nights by him screaming a name they’ve ruled out as something never to be stated out loud, Yoochun who’s grown up the past four years holding onto Yunho’s sweaty hand in the middle of the night until his nightmares recede.
“No, no,” and Yunho forces a smile, because the past is dead. As dead as the memory of the little boy back in their old apartment. As dead as
(I looked him up, hyung. The internet, police records, everything, Changmin tells him weeks after his recovery. The only Kim Jaejoong was registered to have died 15 years ago. The mother’s dead as well; died of some respiratory disease a few weeks back. According to official records, hyung, he…our…he never existed. There aren’t any pictures or ID records and neighbors in Cheongnam are refusing to talk. Apparently they’d never liked the Kims. The only things we have now are the paintings he sold to people...the drawings he left behind.)
“I’m okay. Just…I just woke up.” He licks his lips, and lifts his chin to look at the drawings Yoochun’s done and tacked up on his wall. The drawing of the figure in a beanie and black coat flecked with paint he knows Yoochun did a year ago, and he turns away like he always does, pretends he doesn’t see the smiling eyes and mischievous laugh, the childish Hangul scribbles of a name painted onto the paper. “How was your flight? Were you able to spot Junsu hyung right away?”
“Yeah. He’s setting up my room. He told me I could talk to you while he’s at it.”
Yunho smiles. Almost. “You must be tired, Mickybo. You know you could have called me after you’d gotten some rest first.” He keeps his eyes trained on the floor, studies the grains on the wooden floorboards, focuses on Yoochun’s voice and pretends he’s perhaps only in the other room. Only the first time they’ve attempted this and already he hates sending Yoochun away; hates the feeling of silence and empty spaces closing in on him and of emotions being magnified, crushing him, and he’s almost left breathless, tears pooling in his eyes.
“I wanted to call,” comes the reply, and Yunho can almost hear words unsaid: Because I was worried you might not be there. Because I’m afraid you might disappear.
(And Yunho remembers Yoochun at six after the only ghost left to deal with is guilt, crying for him, begging him, hugging him, because Yunho might as well be dead, refusing to eat, to see anyone, to cooperate with doctors. You said we’d be okay. For me, hyung. You promised me. For me, please, for me)
“Yah,” Yunho forces his voice to sound light. “I’m fine, Mickybo. You don’t have anything to worry about.” The seconds of silence following his statement makes Yoochun’s doubt more palpable, and Yunho attempts to ease it by genuinely trying to laugh. “You kid. You’re too young to be worrying. Just have fun with Junsu and Changmin hyung. I’ll be fine here.”
“No you’re not,” Yoochun says, and suddenly his voice sounds too high. “I know you still think about it. I’m not stupid, hyung. It’s not your fault…
(Junsu holds him as he’s crying, runs thin fingers through his hair. His confession seems to hang over them like a dark cloud and he clutches Junsu by the sides of his coat. It’s not your fault. Nothing is your fault. You couldn’t have known…you couldn’t have stopped anything from happening.)
“Jung Yoochun.” Yunho says, warns, and the familiar feeling of guilt eats his nerves raw. “That’s en-”
“I miss him too. Just because I don’t talk about him doesn’t mean I don’t remember.” Yoochun blurts out, suddenly sounding so far away, suddenly sounding so hurt that Yunho almost chokes on his own breath. “You’re always sad and you keep pushing me away…I lost him too, hyung.”
It’s a replay of darker days, when Seoul ceases to become home, and Junsu and Changmin’s presence become more stifling than comforting. When Yoochun keeps waking up crying in the night and thoughts of death aren’t anymore as unwelcoming to Yunho. He hadn’t wanted it to happen again, and Yoochun’s words bring him back, makes him remember what really matters.
(For me, please, for me)
“I’m sorry, Mickybo,” he says, slowly, softly, because he keeps forgetting.
“You shouldn’t have sent me back. I could get Junsu hyung to…”
“Yah, Jung Yoochun.” Yunho says, and this time he’s the adult. “Listen to me. I promised your hyungs I’d send you back. It’ll be good for you to be there for a while. Change of environment.”
(Yoochun first. Yoochun always.)
“You don’t have to take care of me, Yoochunnie.”
I’m the one who should be taking care of you, and I’m sorry I haven’t been doing that job properly over the years, Yunho says in his heart because he hasn’t the strength to say it, but he knows Yoochun knows. That Yoochun has always known.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” Yoochun tells him, sounding almost angry. “You stuck with me. And you’re still here. You kept your promise.”
Of staying. Of not leaving. Has he really?
Yoochun is sniffling. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? Promise, hyung? Don’t or I’ll run away from here. I’ll steal money just to get back if I have to.”
He almost laughs at Yoochun’s words, at Yoochun’s naïvete, but there’s an ache in his heart that is preventing him from doing so.
“…I’m still sorry, Mickybo,” he repeats, because it can never be enough. For the guilt, the lack of attention. For him being the cause for constant worrying.
For him being selfish.
“We’ll be okay, hyung. We will. We will.” Yoochun tells him, and Yunho remembers days of long past, when he had been the one saying those same words, when had believed in them so much that it almost hurt.
How times have changed.
“Trust me.”
And Yunho says nothing else, imagines the words as a child’s wish on a dandelion’s seed being blown far far away to someone who can actually hear it.
---
He pulls the plug on his assistants, cancels exhibitions left and right and tells them he’ll be going on a temporary leave until Yoochun comes back. They let him go easily because it’s been four long years that Paris has welcomed and accepted him, four long years that Yunho has offered his work nonstop. His nephew is the only thing he has, the gossip goes, Without the child he must have lost his center.
Yes. No. Not quite.
Yoochun calls every other day, checks on him, reports on what he, Junsu and Changmin have been doing. Once in a while he gets to talk with either Changmin or Junsu, and conversations go like well-rehearsed plays: light, automatic, practiced.
“You should come home to visit sometime, hyung,” Changmin dares to say one time. “You should be the one touring Yoochun. He misses you a whole lot.”
“He’ll be fine with you,” Yunho answers. “He’ll have a great time with you two clowns.”
There’s laughter for a bit, but then it dies, gives way to Changmin almost sighing, “Hyung, the police are still keeping his case open.”
His words silence Yunho, but Changmin, being Changmin, plows on, drives the stake deeper into the ground.
“This isn’t healthy anymore, hyung. For you or Yoochun. For any of us. Yoochun says you can’t even say his name out loud…”
The room is constricting again and he can barely breathe. Yunho knows what’s coming next, feels it like an oncoming storm, and he hangs up before he hears it being said without even so much as a hasty goodbye. Like secrets yet to be unearthed, however, like truths longing to be surfaced, the words still rumble inside of him like thunder, clear, commanding, true.
You have to let him go.
---
He remembers wanting to die, when depression would creep up on him like a thief in the night and he would end up burying his face into his pillow to muffle his sobs just so Yoochun wouldn’t hear. Living is worse than death, he’s figured. To live with no reason for living is to be dead, and it’s only because of Yoochun that he’s still trying. Only because of Yoochun that he’s still living.
He’s never really accepted it. Secretly he’s always hoped that someday he would turn up, looking the same, smiling the same, and they could pick up where they had left off. But Changmin’s and Yoochun’s words keep coming back to him, haunting him, and slowly his walls had started crumbling.
(It’s been too long.)
“Jaejoong-ah.”
His name tastes bittersweet in Yunho’s mouth. It’s the first time he’s said it consciously since Seoul, the first time he actually wants to say it. He traces Yoochun’s drawing with his eyes from his spot on Yoochun’s bed, actually seeing it for the first time.
“How are you?”
Yoochun had been getting better at drawing over the years, and Yunho smiles as he actually sees resemblances from the right mixing and balancing of lines and colors. The drawing is actually quite good.
He stands up slowly, approaches it almost with caution. He runs his finger over the drawing, cleaning it of any dust that’s gathered on it.
“It’s been so long since I last saw you…you must already have billions of paintings I’ve yet to see. You forgot to give me one. I’m still partial to black and white, but I’m trying now. I remember how you liked color…”
Liked, not like. The switch in tense takes Yunho by surprise and he stops as he feels the lump growing in his throat.
Keep going, a voice inside him is saying, Keep going.
“Yoochun misses you. He told me the other day. He’s a good boy. He can speak Korean now, and French too. He’s a smart little bugger. You would’ve been proud of him.”
The drawing is starting to blur in front of him.
“…But I’ve been neglecting him. I haven’t been a very good uncle. I’ve been too busy being angry, being sad…I keep forgetting about him, even though he’s the one that keeps me going.” He looks up, focuses on the drawing of Jaejoong’s smile. “I’ve been too busy with you, Jaejoong.”
(You left me with nothing to remind me of you.)
“I’d been dead for so long that I forgot how to live, but you brought me back, and I didn’t want to lose you, not even in memory…We were together for such a short time and I was so scared of forgetting…I was so scared…”
There are days when Yunho can only remember bits and pieces of Jaejoong: the end note of his laugh, the mischievous gleam in his eye, and normally the realization would frighten him. He thinks of Jaejoong now and for the briefest of moments is only able to see his face clearly, but this time, there’s something inside of him that is calming him down. Something he can’t understand, but he knows is something he needs.
“I don’t regret anything. Not anymore. I have so much to thank you for…but it’s time. It’s time.”
He raises his hand, traces the drawing with his finger. There are thin pencil lines drawn behind Jaejoong that Yunho has never noticed before and he manages a smile as he realizes what Yoochun has drawn in.
(Wings)
“Yah, they suit you don’t they? They suit you well…”
The lump in his throat has grown, but he’s nearly there. He’s nearly there.
“Forgive me, Jaejoong-ah.” He says, and this time when the tears come, he knows it will be the last. “But I’m tired. I’m so tired.”
(Live. I want to live.)
He almost feels as though arms are encircling around his waist and he allows himself to remember Jaejoong for a moment.
“I love you.” He whispers, and it’s the last time. “Thank you.”
(Goodbye.)
---
He hears the last word even when it’s unsaid, and he smiles at Yunho, is proud of him. This is what he’s been waiting for all these four long years.
One last touch. One last kiss.
Thank you, he whispers, hopes Yunho would hear. I love you.
He lets go.
Goodbye.
END.
**milollita was able to provide a link to the angel!JJ pic as sheilapiglet had suggested. Please be reminded that this artwork isn't my own and am consequently not claiming it as such. My respect to the wonderful artist who made the drawing.
You can view it here.
A/N: BEFORE YOU ALL KILL ME WITH FLYING DURIANS, I'D JUST LIKE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF:
- Originally, I'd really planned for Jaejoong to die. To my credit, after reading your responses, I attempted to write several endings wherein something else would happen.
- One ending was that Jaejoong didn't die. Yunho would go back to Seoul to pick Yoochun up. He and JJ would meet serendipitously in the park they first met and everything would be fine and dandy. I didn't continue with that ending because it was unrealistic. I couldn't figure out just how JJ would have been able to be saved from the Han. So...yeah, I trashed it.
- Another ending was I let Yunho die, though not by his own doing. Accident, and all that jazz, while Yoochun was away. But I couldn't. Because even though it would have made sense because everything would have come full circle, I couldn't leave Yoochun uncle-less. It tore me apart. So, that went into the bin too.
- Another was that it would be open-ended, wherein you as the reader would be deciding whether or not JJ died after me leaving clues like 'no body was found' etc etc. But...I couldn't write it.
- There were several other endings but I always ended up going back to this one. It was the original plan. And, if you reread the past chapters, there are clues there hinting that the Jaeho love affair really isn't something that would last. JJ was really just someone fated to help Yunho get his life back on track, and he succeeded, although they had ended up falling for each other along the way. JJ is actually a pitiful character, more pitiful than Yunho, but by Yunho letting him go he finally gets the peace he deserves. :D
Kthat'sallthanks. You can go back to stabbing me now. *shuts eyes*
Length: Chaptered [14/14]
Rating: NC17 now, to be safe.
Genre: Umm. Unsure. Angst, supernatural, generally. Weirdness. We'll see.
Pairing: Yes, there are pairings. (Gasp! A first!) I'm guessing it's YunJae.
Summary: …Hey, this is Yunho and Yoochun Jung. We can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave us a message and how we can contact you…
Previous chapters found here.
A/N: Okay so it's not an epi but a final chapter. An epi, I figured, would leave a lot of questions unanswered so I didn't put it in. There will be another A/N at the end.
Forgive me. (You'll know why)
---
Chapter Fourteen
It’s Junsu who greets him at his bedside, eyes mottled from crying, ears and nose flushed carnation under the stark hospital lights. Yunho feels fingers encircling his own: warm, assuring, alive. Colored spots are dancing in front of his eyes and he blinks painfully; his throat is dry, and he forces himself to fight against the odd, heavy, achy feeling that’s overcome his entire body.
Jaejoong, he whispers, because it was Jaejoong who had been there, Jaejoong who had somehow saved him. He sees as Junsu bites his lip, makes a poor attempt to hold back tears.
Hyung, Yunho hears, guilt staining the words like blood. He does his best to squeeze Junsu’s fingers, implores him to tell him where Jaejoong has gone.
Jaejoong, he mouths again, and this time, Junsu gets on his knees by the bed, his body suddenly quietly shuddering.
Hyung, I’m sorry.
---
Yunho wakes with a gasp, feverish, his sheets bunched up in his fists and sweat clinging to his temples. His head is throbbing from a phantom ache of years past and for several seconds as he slowly regains his senses, he hears nothing but the pounding of his own heart and Junsu’s fast-fading voice, stubborn remnants of his dream that cling to him like ghosts and cobwebs.
(Yoochun had gone missing…he had taken Changmin’s car…been rescued from the Han…is okay but Jaejoong…Jaejoong…)
He thinks of Yoochun first, an instinct long driven into him since that night. He stumbles out of bed and half-runs down the narrow hallway and into Yoochun’s room, stops dead in his tracks when he sees the boy’s room empty, the rumpled sheets on the bed pink and yellow from hues of dawn that bleed in through fingerprint-stained glass and fine summer dust. Where, is the word his mind conjures first and he feels cold sweat trickles down his neck as a conditional response. Not again. This can’t be happening again.
He hears ringing from far away, and suddenly he remembers a corner smile and flashing eyes, little boys lost and found, little boys dead and gone.
…Hey, this is Yunho and Yoochun Jung. We can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave us a message and how we can contact you…
He reaches the phone before the answering machine’s message finishes.
“H-Hello, this is Yunho Jung,” he says, and his voice shakes even after clearing his throat; his tone is a little too tight and perhaps a little too high for his liking and he tries again. (Yeoboseyo still clings to the tip of his tongue as a habit but Parisians, he’s learned, are temperamental, so he’s always careful.) “Hello?”
“Hyung!” he hears on the other end, and it’s Yoochun, his tone light. “I thought you were still asleep so I was just hoping to leave a message on the answering machine…you told me to call as soon as I got here.”
An old French song is wafting in through his open window, calms him as much as Yoochun’s voice does, and Yunho remembers. He slides down onto Yoochun’s floor, his shoulders slumping from relief. Here, of course, is Seoul where Yoochun has gone, where Yoochun will be until the month is up. Here is a faraway time and place, where Yoochun is already ten and not six, no longer the small little boy that vanished from bedrooms in the middle of the night.
“Oh yeah,” he says, feeling foolish and reassured at the same time. “I…I forgot.”
“Hyung, are you okay? You sound…weird.” Yoochun sounds worried, and Yunho can’t really blame him. It’s Yoochun after all who’s been woken up too many nights by him screaming a name they’ve ruled out as something never to be stated out loud, Yoochun who’s grown up the past four years holding onto Yunho’s sweaty hand in the middle of the night until his nightmares recede.
“No, no,” and Yunho forces a smile, because the past is dead. As dead as the memory of the little boy back in their old apartment. As dead as
(I looked him up, hyung. The internet, police records, everything, Changmin tells him weeks after his recovery. The only Kim Jaejoong was registered to have died 15 years ago. The mother’s dead as well; died of some respiratory disease a few weeks back. According to official records, hyung, he…our…he never existed. There aren’t any pictures or ID records and neighbors in Cheongnam are refusing to talk. Apparently they’d never liked the Kims. The only things we have now are the paintings he sold to people...the drawings he left behind.)
“I’m okay. Just…I just woke up.” He licks his lips, and lifts his chin to look at the drawings Yoochun’s done and tacked up on his wall. The drawing of the figure in a beanie and black coat flecked with paint he knows Yoochun did a year ago, and he turns away like he always does, pretends he doesn’t see the smiling eyes and mischievous laugh, the childish Hangul scribbles of a name painted onto the paper. “How was your flight? Were you able to spot Junsu hyung right away?”
“Yeah. He’s setting up my room. He told me I could talk to you while he’s at it.”
Yunho smiles. Almost. “You must be tired, Mickybo. You know you could have called me after you’d gotten some rest first.” He keeps his eyes trained on the floor, studies the grains on the wooden floorboards, focuses on Yoochun’s voice and pretends he’s perhaps only in the other room. Only the first time they’ve attempted this and already he hates sending Yoochun away; hates the feeling of silence and empty spaces closing in on him and of emotions being magnified, crushing him, and he’s almost left breathless, tears pooling in his eyes.
“I wanted to call,” comes the reply, and Yunho can almost hear words unsaid: Because I was worried you might not be there. Because I’m afraid you might disappear.
(And Yunho remembers Yoochun at six after the only ghost left to deal with is guilt, crying for him, begging him, hugging him, because Yunho might as well be dead, refusing to eat, to see anyone, to cooperate with doctors. You said we’d be okay. For me, hyung. You promised me. For me, please, for me)
“Yah,” Yunho forces his voice to sound light. “I’m fine, Mickybo. You don’t have anything to worry about.” The seconds of silence following his statement makes Yoochun’s doubt more palpable, and Yunho attempts to ease it by genuinely trying to laugh. “You kid. You’re too young to be worrying. Just have fun with Junsu and Changmin hyung. I’ll be fine here.”
“No you’re not,” Yoochun says, and suddenly his voice sounds too high. “I know you still think about it. I’m not stupid, hyung. It’s not your fault…
(Junsu holds him as he’s crying, runs thin fingers through his hair. His confession seems to hang over them like a dark cloud and he clutches Junsu by the sides of his coat. It’s not your fault. Nothing is your fault. You couldn’t have known…you couldn’t have stopped anything from happening.)
“Jung Yoochun.” Yunho says, warns, and the familiar feeling of guilt eats his nerves raw. “That’s en-”
“I miss him too. Just because I don’t talk about him doesn’t mean I don’t remember.” Yoochun blurts out, suddenly sounding so far away, suddenly sounding so hurt that Yunho almost chokes on his own breath. “You’re always sad and you keep pushing me away…I lost him too, hyung.”
It’s a replay of darker days, when Seoul ceases to become home, and Junsu and Changmin’s presence become more stifling than comforting. When Yoochun keeps waking up crying in the night and thoughts of death aren’t anymore as unwelcoming to Yunho. He hadn’t wanted it to happen again, and Yoochun’s words bring him back, makes him remember what really matters.
(For me, please, for me)
“I’m sorry, Mickybo,” he says, slowly, softly, because he keeps forgetting.
“You shouldn’t have sent me back. I could get Junsu hyung to…”
“Yah, Jung Yoochun.” Yunho says, and this time he’s the adult. “Listen to me. I promised your hyungs I’d send you back. It’ll be good for you to be there for a while. Change of environment.”
(Yoochun first. Yoochun always.)
“You don’t have to take care of me, Yoochunnie.”
I’m the one who should be taking care of you, and I’m sorry I haven’t been doing that job properly over the years, Yunho says in his heart because he hasn’t the strength to say it, but he knows Yoochun knows. That Yoochun has always known.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” Yoochun tells him, sounding almost angry. “You stuck with me. And you’re still here. You kept your promise.”
Of staying. Of not leaving. Has he really?
Yoochun is sniffling. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? Promise, hyung? Don’t or I’ll run away from here. I’ll steal money just to get back if I have to.”
He almost laughs at Yoochun’s words, at Yoochun’s naïvete, but there’s an ache in his heart that is preventing him from doing so.
“…I’m still sorry, Mickybo,” he repeats, because it can never be enough. For the guilt, the lack of attention. For him being the cause for constant worrying.
For him being selfish.
“We’ll be okay, hyung. We will. We will.” Yoochun tells him, and Yunho remembers days of long past, when he had been the one saying those same words, when had believed in them so much that it almost hurt.
How times have changed.
“Trust me.”
And Yunho says nothing else, imagines the words as a child’s wish on a dandelion’s seed being blown far far away to someone who can actually hear it.
---
He pulls the plug on his assistants, cancels exhibitions left and right and tells them he’ll be going on a temporary leave until Yoochun comes back. They let him go easily because it’s been four long years that Paris has welcomed and accepted him, four long years that Yunho has offered his work nonstop. His nephew is the only thing he has, the gossip goes, Without the child he must have lost his center.
Yes. No. Not quite.
Yoochun calls every other day, checks on him, reports on what he, Junsu and Changmin have been doing. Once in a while he gets to talk with either Changmin or Junsu, and conversations go like well-rehearsed plays: light, automatic, practiced.
“You should come home to visit sometime, hyung,” Changmin dares to say one time. “You should be the one touring Yoochun. He misses you a whole lot.”
“He’ll be fine with you,” Yunho answers. “He’ll have a great time with you two clowns.”
There’s laughter for a bit, but then it dies, gives way to Changmin almost sighing, “Hyung, the police are still keeping his case open.”
His words silence Yunho, but Changmin, being Changmin, plows on, drives the stake deeper into the ground.
“This isn’t healthy anymore, hyung. For you or Yoochun. For any of us. Yoochun says you can’t even say his name out loud…”
The room is constricting again and he can barely breathe. Yunho knows what’s coming next, feels it like an oncoming storm, and he hangs up before he hears it being said without even so much as a hasty goodbye. Like secrets yet to be unearthed, however, like truths longing to be surfaced, the words still rumble inside of him like thunder, clear, commanding, true.
You have to let him go.
---
He remembers wanting to die, when depression would creep up on him like a thief in the night and he would end up burying his face into his pillow to muffle his sobs just so Yoochun wouldn’t hear. Living is worse than death, he’s figured. To live with no reason for living is to be dead, and it’s only because of Yoochun that he’s still trying. Only because of Yoochun that he’s still living.
He’s never really accepted it. Secretly he’s always hoped that someday he would turn up, looking the same, smiling the same, and they could pick up where they had left off. But Changmin’s and Yoochun’s words keep coming back to him, haunting him, and slowly his walls had started crumbling.
(It’s been too long.)
“Jaejoong-ah.”
His name tastes bittersweet in Yunho’s mouth. It’s the first time he’s said it consciously since Seoul, the first time he actually wants to say it. He traces Yoochun’s drawing with his eyes from his spot on Yoochun’s bed, actually seeing it for the first time.
“How are you?”
Yoochun had been getting better at drawing over the years, and Yunho smiles as he actually sees resemblances from the right mixing and balancing of lines and colors. The drawing is actually quite good.
He stands up slowly, approaches it almost with caution. He runs his finger over the drawing, cleaning it of any dust that’s gathered on it.
“It’s been so long since I last saw you…you must already have billions of paintings I’ve yet to see. You forgot to give me one. I’m still partial to black and white, but I’m trying now. I remember how you liked color…”
Liked, not like. The switch in tense takes Yunho by surprise and he stops as he feels the lump growing in his throat.
Keep going, a voice inside him is saying, Keep going.
“Yoochun misses you. He told me the other day. He’s a good boy. He can speak Korean now, and French too. He’s a smart little bugger. You would’ve been proud of him.”
The drawing is starting to blur in front of him.
“…But I’ve been neglecting him. I haven’t been a very good uncle. I’ve been too busy being angry, being sad…I keep forgetting about him, even though he’s the one that keeps me going.” He looks up, focuses on the drawing of Jaejoong’s smile. “I’ve been too busy with you, Jaejoong.”
(You left me with nothing to remind me of you.)
“I’d been dead for so long that I forgot how to live, but you brought me back, and I didn’t want to lose you, not even in memory…We were together for such a short time and I was so scared of forgetting…I was so scared…”
There are days when Yunho can only remember bits and pieces of Jaejoong: the end note of his laugh, the mischievous gleam in his eye, and normally the realization would frighten him. He thinks of Jaejoong now and for the briefest of moments is only able to see his face clearly, but this time, there’s something inside of him that is calming him down. Something he can’t understand, but he knows is something he needs.
“I don’t regret anything. Not anymore. I have so much to thank you for…but it’s time. It’s time.”
He raises his hand, traces the drawing with his finger. There are thin pencil lines drawn behind Jaejoong that Yunho has never noticed before and he manages a smile as he realizes what Yoochun has drawn in.
(Wings)
“Yah, they suit you don’t they? They suit you well…”
The lump in his throat has grown, but he’s nearly there. He’s nearly there.
“Forgive me, Jaejoong-ah.” He says, and this time when the tears come, he knows it will be the last. “But I’m tired. I’m so tired.”
(Live. I want to live.)
He almost feels as though arms are encircling around his waist and he allows himself to remember Jaejoong for a moment.
“I love you.” He whispers, and it’s the last time. “Thank you.”
(Goodbye.)
---
He hears the last word even when it’s unsaid, and he smiles at Yunho, is proud of him. This is what he’s been waiting for all these four long years.
One last touch. One last kiss.
Thank you, he whispers, hopes Yunho would hear. I love you.
He lets go.
Goodbye.
END.
**milollita was able to provide a link to the angel!JJ pic as sheilapiglet had suggested. Please be reminded that this artwork isn't my own and am consequently not claiming it as such. My respect to the wonderful artist who made the drawing.
You can view it here.
A/N: BEFORE YOU ALL KILL ME WITH FLYING DURIANS, I'D JUST LIKE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF:
- Originally, I'd really planned for Jaejoong to die. To my credit, after reading your responses, I attempted to write several endings wherein something else would happen.
- One ending was that Jaejoong didn't die. Yunho would go back to Seoul to pick Yoochun up. He and JJ would meet serendipitously in the park they first met and everything would be fine and dandy. I didn't continue with that ending because it was unrealistic. I couldn't figure out just how JJ would have been able to be saved from the Han. So...yeah, I trashed it.
- Another ending was I let Yunho die, though not by his own doing. Accident, and all that jazz, while Yoochun was away. But I couldn't. Because even though it would have made sense because everything would have come full circle, I couldn't leave Yoochun uncle-less. It tore me apart. So, that went into the bin too.
- Another was that it would be open-ended, wherein you as the reader would be deciding whether or not JJ died after me leaving clues like 'no body was found' etc etc. But...I couldn't write it.
- There were several other endings but I always ended up going back to this one. It was the original plan. And, if you reread the past chapters, there are clues there hinting that the Jaeho love affair really isn't something that would last. JJ was really just someone fated to help Yunho get his life back on track, and he succeeded, although they had ended up falling for each other along the way. JJ is actually a pitiful character, more pitiful than Yunho, but by Yunho letting him go he finally gets the peace he deserves. :D
Kthat'sallthanks. You can go back to stabbing me now. *shuts eyes*