Is it really a sin?
OH MY FREAKING GOD GENG I'M BACK FOLKS!!!!
took me forever and I'M SO SORRY!
no, it's not a Blood Ties update...!
Title: Is it really a sin?
Pairing: Sihan
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Mentions of character death. Mentions only.
Disclamer: I own no one!
Summary: Hours of waiting, hours of wondering what happens, hours of imagining what could have happened...
This fic is the alternate ending/additional part to reina_randwulf 's Is it a sin? You need to read this fic first!
Part one | Part two | Part three
They killed him… they will pay… they will pay…
He sees the knife in his hand; he hears the shouts… he watches as blood splatters on the walls, his own masterpiece of sadness and despair…
The masterpiece from a lost case of a sinner…
“Siwon! Wake up! Yah! Come on! Open those eyes properly!”
Heechul?
“You sure he’s waking up?”
Hyukjae?
“The doctor said that his head was badly hit… Such sweet people, Han Geng and him, being attacked like that… don’t those fools know what they have done?"
Hyeyeon… everyone is there? Why are they around him? Why can’t he open his eyes? Where is he? Where is Ge…
Geng.
Oh god, Geng…
Geng’s dead.
His eyes opened as fast as he sat in his bed. Geng had been killed by their neighbours. They had to pay… He hadn’t killed enough of them, they had to pay, and they had to burn in Hell… He couldn’t let them live without any consequences of ending the life of someone this marvellous as Han Geng…
“Siwon! Calm down, come on, lie down…”
Why was Heechul talking to him like an over worried mother?
“Geng… Geng…”
“It’s gonna be alright, Siwonnie, just calm down…”
Alright? How can it be alright when he just lost the love of his life?
“Do you remember anything?”
He tried his best not to shot a dark look at Hyeyeon for such a stupid question. If he remembered? How could he not...
“What happened Siwon? We found the both of you sprawled on your house’s porch, unconscious…”
What happened?! No one helped Geng as he was dying, they killed him! Just because of their love, Geng got killed! Because of something as pure as love, one of this world’s most amazing people got killed! Tears started to well up in his eyes, he couldn’t tell them… Telling them was as if he would confirm it for real, as if he wouldn’t be able to escape reality anymore…
“They killed him… He tried to protect me… and they killed him…”
“Killed who? Geng?”
Yes Geng, who else?! Was Heechul THAT stupid?
“Siwonnie… He isn’t dead… I told you we found the both of you unconscious… Doctors said you were knocked out by a rock thrown at your head… You have bandages, you idiot, don’t wonder why!”
Knocked out? Yes, but he wasn’t unconscious after that, wasn’t he? He saw Geng die with his own eyes!
That’s when he realised where he was. An hospital. How can they try to fool him by telling him that Geng wasn’t dead? Where they afraid that he would go kill some more of his neighbours? He would gladly do so… and they mentioned doctors… maybe he was treated for the traumatic shock of losing his beloved and causing a massacre…
“You got knocked out… and we believe that Kyungie tried to protect you…”
Yes, he did… and he died doing it! Siwon saw it happen! Suddenly, he started to cry once more. He felt Hyeyeon’s arms wrap up around his shoulders, holding him as he was about to fall sideways, down the hospital bed. He wanted his Han Geng to hold him…
“Siwon, please calm down… please…” she kept whispering to him while Hyukjae and Heechul were talking to each other in whispers.
“Siwon’s version doesn’t fit with what the police assumed…”
“He keeps on saying that Hankyung’s dead.”
“But remember when the doctors said even though he was knocked out, his cerebral activities were going frantic? What if he dreamt it all?....Maybe…
He couldn’t have dreamt it, come on! He couldn’t talk that Hyukjae went on with his theory.
“Maybe… when he got that rock on his forehead, he got knocked out for good… but his version about the neighbours killing Han Geng… he dreamt it? I mean, you saw Geng as much as I did, Heechul-sshi.”
“I saw him, yes.. but with his state… Siwonnie could have thought him dead in the panic of what happened…”
Geng… not dead? But he felt the lack of a pulse, he saw his closed up eyes, the unmoving chest, the absence of breathing… all that blood flowing from his cracked up skull…
“HE’S DEAD! STOP TRYING TO FOOL ME!”
He couldn’t take it anymore. He knew the truth, he knew it. He knew that they would never get married, that it was too late, and that his world was crumbling down with every second…
Then it came, the hard, stinging slap on his cheek, given full force to him by none other than his own friend ands colleague. Heechul looked utterly pissed, face red and fists on his hips while Hyeyeon seemed on the verge of tears, her husband holding her tightly.
“I TOLD YOU HE ISN’T DEAD!” shouted back the extraverted man. “YOU DREAMT IT ALL!”
He…dreamt it? How…? But it seemed… all so real? Before he could react, everything became all black and he lost consciousness, falling back into the pillows…
And he dreamed again…
He saw himself getting out of the house, Han Geng following closely as their neighbours were shouting at them. He saw the rock coming straight for him, he cannot dodge it, it’s too fast…
He felt himself falling on the ground, his head hitting the ground quite badly, and as everything became blurry, he heard the anguished cry of his lover…
“SHIYUAN!!”
Then everything went black…
“I dreamt it…”
It was the first thing that he said when he woke up. Now only Heechul was in the hospital room, a fashion magazine in his hands as he was checking on the other side of a curtain hiding the other occupant of the room. Siwon hadn’t realised he had been in a room for two patients before. He had no time to tell his friend to stop looking at the poor person who was probably sleeping if there was no answer at Heechul’s peering that the over-feminine man turned over to his “sick” friend, rolling his eyes.
“If course you dreamt it… Seriously, ‘kyung dying? You know he loves you too much to leave even if it’s inevitable.”
“…What do you mean?”
He had a bad feeling about Heechul’s sentence. Geng not leaving even if he had no choice but to leave? If he has no choice, how can he stay?
“You are incredibly lucky to be alright, Siwon. Probably because you’re strong and all…
Just that sentence and Siwon felt his heart stopping, his breath catching in his throat, his eyes getting blurry with tears of distress as he tried to control himself, to push back the dreaded realisation this declaration brought him.
Something happened to Geng.
Something bad.
“What is going on with Geng?”
“Siwon…”
“Where is he? If he’s not alright, why can’t I be with him?!”
“Siwon…”
“With his poor health, if he got worse, he could die anytime!”
“Siwon…”
“He needs me!”
“He’s… right… THERE!”
Heechul pointed out the curtain hiding the other occupant of the room… it is Geng?
“But… he hasn’t said anything..”
The healthy one sighed loudly while passing a hand in his face. He was fighting for something to say, Siwon knew him enough to know that much. However, the more one was searching, the other was panicking…
“He tried to protect you when you lost consciousness, we know that much by the way he was clutching at you when we found the both of you. He was trying to shield you from all those rocks they were throwing at you…”
“He did the same in my dream…”
“Did he receive a rock in his head in your dream?”
“Yes… it cracked his skull open…”
Wait.
If Geng’s skull was also broken but he didn’t die…
“What happened to his brain?”
He could feel his voice shake from the fear of the realisation. Nothing good comes from getting a huge blow in the head, especially when your health is always wavering like Geng’s did. Heechul sighed loudly and pulled out the curtain.
The Chinese man looked perfectly normal aside from the bandages around his head. He was looking toward the window and as Siwon took the time to watch his face, his heart dropped.
“Geng?”
He got out of his bed, carefully reaching for his lover, reaching for his face. What he had feared… it had been true. Geng wasn’t responding anymore… His eyes were empty aside from… aside from those tears, flowing non stop on his cheeks, trailing like a river running its course.
“Tell me it’s not what I think it is…”
He was begging Heechul, as if his colleague could change his lover’s fate. But Heechul was also teary, doing everything not to look into those empty eyes.
“…it is… vegetative state…. I’m so sorry, Siwonnie… They say his brain is way too damaged…”
“NO!” It was stronger than him that he was clutching Geng against him, the man still not moving was the Korean was crying his eyes out, holding him so strongly that the other would usually have complained that it was way too tight. He wondered what was worse… Geng dead or in this state.
“Siwon! Stop! You’ll hurt him!”
Heechul was shrieking as he was trying to stop his friend from choking the unmoving Chinese man who was completely oblivious of everything that was happening around him… to him.
“Get off me!”
“Don’t force me to put an injection up your ass to calm you down! Look, he’s crying because of you!”
Crying?
Siwon let go of his beloved in order to check if it was true. And it was. Those beautiful eyes were still empty of expression, but were full of tears, rolling on those too pale cheeks. The Korean wiped them away, shushing Geng down as if he would stop him from crying
“I’m sorry… I’m so, so, so sorry… I should have been the one to protect you… Stop crying, love… Please…”
But he knew that it was useless, that Geng couldn’t hear him anymore, and that even if he whispered sweet nothings, even if he rubbed his back or kissed his cheek, it wouldn’t change anything.
Days passed, with Siwon not wanting to leave his lover’s side. Geng was in the same state, and Siwon had been used to his tears by now. They still hurt him, but he was losing the war against them… even more now that he knew that his darling was most probably crying from pain.
Heechul had been trying to keep the business on track, but he was failing at it, he kept coming at the hospital, telling Siwon to act, to do something, that “Kyungie wouldn’t want you to throw everything aside for him”, but nothing could change the photographer’s mind, who spent his days caring for the one who wouldn’t do it on his own.
Every morning was the same: bathing then feeding… because even if the doctors talked about feeding tubes and wheelchairs, Siwon insisted on carrying Geng around in his arms as much as on spoon-feeding him. Geng would usually sleep after breakfast… Why, Siwon had no idea, but his eyes would automatically close near 10h… When he would wake up, it would be time for dinner, then the afternoon was spent with Siwon massaging the unmoving legs and arms. Even if he was told that he wouldn’t do anything, he kept on doing it, even more since Hyukjae had mentioned that if Geng had to wake up, he would want to be able to dance again…
“Siwon, seriously, he wouldn’t want you to do that!”
“He doesn’t have any consciousness of what I’m doing, so please leave me alone with what he wants!”
“Such a well established business… It’s almost a sin to let it crash like that…”
A sin…
Is it a sin to drop everything for your beloved one?
Well…. If it’s a sin to love that person to being with… why not pushing further?
The nurses had taken the habit to ask him to do things that they knew he would love to do for his boyfriend. He could pronounce the word fiancé without having an urge to throw up, the memory of their anniversary night coming back to him at full speed…
“Do you think he will recover?”
“Siwon-sshi… you already know the answer… Please do not ask me to say it out loud.”
Is it a sin to give up hopes that easily? Is it?
“Geng, don’t cry… Your medication will come soon… Your head will stop hurting…”
“Siwon, he cannot hear you.”
“Are you here to piss me off or to check on him, Heechul?”
“Yah, you ungrateful brat! I’m here to check on him, or course!”
“Then let me talk to him if I want to! What if he can hear me, huh?!”
Heechul sighed and without a word, left the room.
If it’s a sin to love another man… is it a worse sin when you don’t care about anything else but him? Geng was worth it anyway….
Was he?
“It’s been a month now.”
“I know, doctor…”
“It’s now considered persistent…”
“I know and in a year from now, it will be considered permanent…”
“Please do not give up, alright? Some people came back after seven years.”
“Those people didn’t spend their days crying because of the pain in their head.”
They couldn’t do anything for him… helping him to survive and wait for an improvement… or the opposite. Siwon knew he would wait forever.
He had started to lose weight as he had no appetite anymore. Geng slept a whole lot, it was scary… Siwon feared that he would go in a coma. The little interaction they had, it was precious to him. To hear the little sounds Geng made when he was being carried around, the moan from the comfort he felt when he was immersed in his bath, the way his eyes would sometimes follow Siwon across the room. They were the reason why Siwon kept fighting.
Since when is it a sin to fight for the one you one?
…Since that one is a man… and you’re also one.
“Siwon… at least help me to close everything if you don’t want to continue…”
“I can’t… I worked so hard…”
“Then come back to work. You’re killing yourself here and you’re killing your business… He’s not going to die because you leave him alone during the day…”
He was holding Geng’s limp hand, wondering what those eyes were seeing outside the window, what was so interesting that he kept looking intensely at it. He knew those eyes weren’t seeing nothing in truth, but he liked to think that they could see, that they could decipher what was going on.
“What would you do if you were at my place?”
Heechul’s face changed completely. He settled his eyes on Geng, something he was usually keeping himself from doing, before looking away with a loud sigh. He was fighting with himself, Siwon knew that much. Fighting between the answers from his heart and the ones from his head.
“I would let him go.”
“It’s a sin to kill someone, hyung”
“Well, it’s a sin to love him, no?”
Yes, both are sins…
One or the other, he would go to Hell… what for both? The same?
Then why not?
“Forgive me… please, please forgive me…”
He was holding Geng’s face in his hands, wiping his tears away, trying to look in those eyes, bloodshot from those constant tears. But the other was sobbing constantly; it has been three days and he wasn’t stopping… the doctors were saying that his head was probably throbbing too much for him to bear…
The idea of it was too much for Siwon to bear.
That is why he announced everyone that tonight…
Tonight…
Tonight, he would let Geng go.
“I want to keep you with me… but you are in pain and I can’t accept the idea that it will be like that for the rest of your existence… Don’t cry my lovely… please…”
But as Geng was still sobbing uncontrollably, he heard the muttering of the worried nurses. He had spent two months with them… two months of sleeping in the bed where he had woken up after that fateful evening. They all knew what he wanted to do, they all thought that two months was too early to give up, but they also all knew that Geng’s pain was worse than anything imaginable…
Those sobs were piercing into his heart and it was too much, suddenly. He climbed in the bed, something he had never let himself do since he had almost choked his lover in his embrace, and held the frail body close to his own. Geng’s head fell on his shoulder, at its rightful place and, as Siwon was kissing the hand where the engagement ring was still there, the sobs stopped suddenly. Wondering if something was wrong, Siwon looked down at Geng.
He was smiling.
“I want to stay with you forever”
Han Geng once told him that… it was before their lives took a very different turn. It was back when his biggest worry was the Chinese man having a fever or being too weak. Now, he was constantly weak, slowly dying from horrible migraines and completely dependant on Siwon, something he would never have accepted if he had his entire mind.
But as Siwon was holding him, as he was trying to calm Geng down, to love him to his best despite all the doubts in his mind, the other man was smiling.
“You knew I was thinking about letting you go… you sensed it…”
The smile wasn’t even wavering.
“Let’s make an unforgettable night together.”
This is not what Siwon had in mind when he said those words on their anniversary… He never not that he wouldn’t be able to forget that night because instead of making sweet love with his boyfriend, now fiancé, to celebrate their wish to get married… they both had seen their death coming right in front of them, only to escape with luck…and good friends.
Somehow he hoped that in Geng’s lost mind, that memory had disappeared…
“I want you to be by my side forever.”
They both wanted to stay with each other… Yes, he still wanted to keep his love with him, he wanted to hold him like that forever. Just like he had said that fateful night, Geng had to stay by his side… But is keeping him alive in his state the right thing?
Siwon didn’t know what to do anymore… Yet, as he was looking at Geng’s smile, the curving of those once soft and now chapped lips, the solution didn’t seemed as easy as he thought earlier in the day… Because despite the fact that the smile wasn’t reaching those eyes, who remained empty, there was something playing in his mind… A part of his illusions that he dreamed about when he got knocked out by this rock..
“Don’t worry, Shiyuan. Everything will be alright.”
As if Geng’s subsconscious had reached his…
He looked at everyone behind him. Heechul was crying, finally… Eunhyuk and Hyeyeon were holding each other tightly. Donghae was there too, without Jessica… All the nurses and doctors...
“I won’t do it. I can’t live without him.”
“Remember Shiyuan… I love-”
“You love me, I know… How can I forget?”
He had cried so hard when he told everyone about his final decision. Geng had been oblivious to everything, of course, as he was of everything… or so it seemed. Siwon had the deepest feeling that his love was still in there somehow, and that he had sensed Siwon’s faith wavering…
Siwon had resumed working soon after his decision to keep his soul mate alive. Geng had been placed in a specialised care center and since then, his headaches had been controlled... more or less. It wasn’t surprising to see him cry and smile at the same time now, and Siwon was used to it.
It’s been a year since that night, anyway.
“Happy anniversary, Han Geng, love of my life…”
Geng wasn’t looking at him but he didn’t care. With a smile the photographer fed a big spoon of cake to the other one who swallowed it too quickly, coughing in distress. Siwon had not the time to leave his chair that the chocolate had melted enough for the swallowing to be complete.
Siwon smiled. He had found his happiness despite Geng’s state. Surprisingly, he had found his happiness in spoon-feeding, bathing and wiping tears... Found his happiness in the fact that Geng wasn’t in a worse state… wasn’t in a coma. Siwon would never regret keeping him alive.
He absently touched the ring hanging loosely on the now too thin finger. Symbol of his love, symbol of their promise to be together forever.
Putting the cake away on the bedside table, he climbed into bed, holding Geng against him, careful of his head as it landed at its usual place… Siwon’s shoulder. When Geng was like that in his arms, everything seemed…normal. What was normality for them, anyway?
“Six years… and many, many more to come…”
Even when they will tell him that Geng had entered the Permanent Vegetative State and that his chances of recovery were smaller and smaller with each passing day, he wouldn’t regret keeping him by his side, because he had realised something when he had seen his beloved’s smile, ten months ago.
“I love you... Yes I do…”
Being in love with that man wasn’t a sin at all… it was love at its purest meaning.
Letting him die... maybe it wouldn’t have been a sin. He would have eased his suffering, after all…
But giving up on love? That is a real sin.
Siwon was too religious to commit a real sin, wasn’t he?