together, and that’s all that matters
Somehow, at the end of the world, you know you’ll find each other again.
Pairings: DB5K, Super Junior(15), 5HINee
Rated: R for dark content
~
You can’t say that you’re surprised when he finds you, huddled shivering in the ruins on the outskirts of what used to be your hometown. You’d left him with his family in Seoul, hoping he’d be safer there, but him being Shim Changmin and the baby of the group, of course he would’ve come after you sooner or later.
It brings a smile to your face despite the ashy gray of the war-torn sky when he comes to you in the early morning, his eyes solemn and wearied by time and everything that’s happened even though the youth of his face is still fresh. He curls up next to you on the flimsy excuse you have for a bed, no longer the cold reserved young man you once knew.
He’s long ago learned that everything he holds dear to him can be taken away without even a moment’s notice.
“Daddy,” he says quietly, so quietly that you think you’ve heard wrong, until he repeats it. “Daddy, my family’s gone.” He’s dry-eyed and his expression is carefully blank as usual, but his next words bring tears to both of your eyes. “You’re all I have left now.”
“Shh, baby,” you say, rolling over to hold him to your chest like you’ve only done a handful of times before, all of which were years upon lifetimes ago. “Don’t talk like that. We’ve still got the others, remember?”
Changmin looks away, his hair tickling your neck as he shifts in your arms. “Where are they? The others, we haven’t heard from them for years.”
“I know,” you sigh. “But don’t you still believe, Changminnie?”
He’s quiet for a long time after that, and you’re almost afraid when he answers you. “I’m not like Yoochun, hyung,” he says quietly. “But yes, I believe.”
You smile at him, trying to bring back the Changmin you remember-the baby who wasn’t so young after all, who’d always have a witty retort handy for anyone and everyone. “Then it’ll be all right. We’ll find them again, we always said we would.”
He nods, still not fully convinced, but he feels safe enough with you anyway and you know it. You hum quietly to him as the sun continues to rise, shining halfheartedly through the thick cloud cover that’s a result of all the nuclear fallout. If you close your eyes, you find that it’s just as if you’re back in the apartments you shared with him in Seoul or Beijing or Tokyo, singing him to sleep.
“Where is everyone?” he asks some time later, maybe around noon judging by the growling of his stomach. “Kyuhyun, Taemin, the rest of them...”
“I don’t know, baby,” you answer sadly. “Donghae...Donghae came here with me a few days ago.” You pause, swallowing your tears. “Hyukjae died last week from radiation sickness and Donghae wanted to come back here and say goodbye before...he...”
You stop. You can’t finish your sentence, but Changmin as always knows what you’re saying.
“Don’t be sad, hyung,” Changmin murmurs into your shoulder. “At least he’s with Hyukjae now.”
He always knows the right thing to say.
“We should look for the others,” he remarks later that evening, both of you warm with the shared body heat despite the chilling wind whistling through the empty land. “Where should we start?”
You’re not quite sure either, so in the end you both decide to start heading back north the next morning, hoping maybe you’ll meet someone you know on the way. You hitch a few rides here and there and still end up walking most of the day, and you’re almost sorry that Changmin’s old enough to suffer in silence, because you miss the sound of his voice.
You continue like this for a few days, and at dusk of the fourth day, you stop in what was probably once a fairly sizeable town. There’s a building that’s only been partially bombed out and still provides some shelter from the wind, and Changmin agrees that it’d be a good place to stay the night.
You’ve only taken a few steps into the shadowed interior when you hear something behind you, followed by the sound of a gun’s safety being flicked off. “Stop,” an immensely familiar voice says. “Who are you?”
You whip around, a name on your lips, but before you can speak the gun fires.
“Hyung!” Changmin cries out, and then there’s a pair of warm hands pushing you and making you stumble, the bullet drawing a line of bleeding pain as it grazes your shoulder.
“Hyung,” the other man says with a tone of awed shock, and then he’s at your side, nimble fingers tearing a strip from the side of his shirt to bind your wound.
“Yoochun,” you breathe out.
Yoochun smiles sheepishly. “Sorry hyung,” he says quietly, tying a tight knot in the makeshift bandage. “I couldn’t see who you were.”
Only then do you realize that Yoochun’s eyes are dull and milky; he’s almost completely blind.
A ragged cough draws your attention to the others in the shadows; Junsu, you note with relieved affection, Taemin (the source of the cough) and Minho, both looking so weak that you doubt they’ll survive much longer, and Sungmin, big brown eyes wide and out of place with his unhealthy appearance. He’s lost the baby fat he used to have and the bones of his face protrude from the skin in a way that even rivals Ryeowook’s features.
Kyuhyun returns not long after you settle in, and when he immediately goes to Sungmin and curls an arm around his waist, the familiar action takes away a little of your disoriented shock.
You stay up late with Yoochun after making the others go to sleep, listening as he tells you about everything that happened after you’d lost contact.
“Where is Jaejoong?” you ask before he says anything-the one question that’s most important to you, and you’re sorely disappointed when Yoochun shakes his head.
“I don’t know,” he says worriedly. “We haven’t heard from him since the war.”
He tells you about SHINee first, about your wonderful innocent dongsaengs. Not long after you’d left the company, you’d heard rumors of them getting into drugs, into crime, and you’d stopped listening to any news of them because you didn’t want to know what was going to happen to them.
“They were supposed to be the next us,” you say numbly, and Yoochun pats your knee.
“I think that was what cursed them,” he replies, voice shaking. “After our lawsuit, after you were fired from the company and Changmin defied everyone to follow you...you see what I mean?”
You listen to him talk, so numb from shock you can’t even feel anything anymore. The company had turned a blind eye when Taemin, baby Taemin that everyone had adored and respected, had started smoking-cigarettes, weed, almost anything that was given to him. Jonghyun and Jinki had taken up drinking afterwards, as a way to distance themselves from how their group was destroying itself.
“Minho says Jinki couldn’t stop himself from hurting the others when he was drunk,” Yoochun whispers, and you hold him as he cries.
Kibum and Minho had tried their best to salvage the group, but when Jonghyun had gotten into a car accident-drunk, naturally, two passengers and himself dead and one severely injured-the company had to declare that it was over.
Kyuhyun’s been awake this whole time, and now gets up, carefully slipping away from Sungmin’s sleeping form to join you and Yoochun. “It was terrible afterwards,” he remarks softly as he sits, drawing his knees up to his chest. “The company refused to tell the fans why they’d disbanded SHINee and it started so many rumors it might’ve been better if the company had actually come clean about it. Then the war started and Jinki and Kibum were killed in the bombings, and Taemin and Minho...” He shrugs helplessly, his gaze flickering towards his dongsaengs' sleeping forms.
You shake your head slowly, still disbelieving. “My God,” you whisper, glancing over to where Taemin and Minho are sleeping curled up against each other, the telltale rasp of Taemin’s breathing giving away how bad the situation had gotten before the company had let it go.
Kyuhyun sighs, staring off morosely into the distance. “You think they’ve got it bad, try Super Junior,” he says bitterly. “More of us just means there’s more to lose.”
You start feeling nauseous as Kyuhyun continues.
You remember Han Geng leaving first, of course; Donghee had gotten married and settled down and Kibum had left to pursue a career in acting. Youngwoon had been discharged from the army before you even left the company, but when Jungsu was killed in what was supposed to be a routine army drill, everything started falling apart.
“The company wanted Jongwoon to lead the group,” Kyuhyun explains, with as little feeling in his tone as always. “After Heechul he was the next oldest, but none of us wanted it. It wasn't that Jongwoon was a bad leader, far from it. It was just that Jungsu had never left Jongwoon in charge, it’d always been Youngwoon. The company didn’t listen to us even though we felt horrible about going against Jungsu’s decisions, especially after he was dead.”
Jongwoon was, in effect, only leader in name, and at home Youngwoon was the real leader. Even despite that, there was always a missing place in the Super Junior family that no one but Jungsu could quite have filled in, and Heechul took advantage of the opportunity to announce his departure, taking Siwon with him somewhere that everyone suspected was China.
“In the beginning, we kept getting letters from both of them,” Kyuhyun sighs. “But suddenly, the letters just stopped and no matter how hard Zhou Mi tried, he couldn’t find any trace of them. We were forced to accept that they were either dead or didn’t want us to find them, and had to move on with our careers.”
Hyukjae, with no one to dissuade him, started talk again about lawsuits. Even when Donghae refused to sue with him, he went through with filing a lawsuit, and left without a backward glance when the court ruled in his favor.
The rest of them had been in Japan with Zhou Mi and Henry when the war broke out. Jongwoon had been injured when the first bombs fell on Osaka, but managed to arrange for the remaining seven members to escape the war zone and return to Korea.
Sungmin is awake by now as well, and comes over to rest his head on Kyuhyun’s shoulder. “It was terrifying,” he says quietly when Kyuhyun falls silent, seemingly unable to continue. “Jongwoon wanted us all to leave, but Ryeowook flat-out refused to leave Jongwoon’s side until he died and of course Henry wouldn’t leave either of them.”
Youngwoon and Donghae had managed to get back to Korea, but Kyuhyun and Sungmin had lost contact with them in the chaos. They’d been traveling around the country ever since, hoping that someone could help them find the others.
There’s silence in the room after the story’s finished, no one able to find any more words, and as you lay down, you try to ignore the pain in your chest at how quickly and thoroughly all of their golden dreams had been broken. You sleep fitfully that night, dreaming of bombs and war and the hazel eyes of a man who refuses to speak to you no matter how much you plead with him.
The next few days pass in much the same fashion, the eight of you journeying by day and stopping for shelter by night. You lose track of the days that have passed, and only remember the last night you stay with them.
It’s utterly silent in the small shelter you’ve found when you wake up in the middle of the night, and barely have time to wonder why something sounds wrong before Minho jolts awake. “Taemin!”
Taemin’s stopped breathing.
Minho almost-but-not-quite breaks down, shaking Taemin’s shoulder roughly. “Taeminnie, wake up,” he pleads tearfully.
Junsu’s still asleep but the rest of them are awake now, Changmin watching the scene with big eyes widened in terror, his back against the wall of the room. You go to him and stroke his hair, letting Yoochun and Kyuhyun and Sungmin try to calm Minho down.
“We’ll stay with them,” Kyuhyun says quietly, after Minho’s fainted from shock. “I know you still need to find...someone."
You nod slightly, trying not to wake Changmin from where he’s fallen asleep again in your lap, his head on your shoulder. “Will you and Sungmin be all right?”
Kyuhyun offers you a small smile, full of the hope that you yourself still haven’t quite lost. “I would hope so, hyung.”
You part ways the next morning, Sungmin and Kyuhyun going off with Minho to find an appropriate final resting place for Taemin. Yoochun and Junsu stay with you, slowing you down a little with Junsu’s weak leg and all, but you don’t mind because you haven’t seen them in much too long.
“I’m worried for Junsu,” Yoochun confides in a whisper, his hand in yours so he doesn’t get lost. Changmin and Junsu are walking ahead of you, picking up their constant playfighting right where they’d left off all those years ago, even though Changmin’s supporting Junsu’s weight with every step they take. “He won’t admit it to me but I know he’s getting weaker. There was blood on his jacket where he was trying to hide his coughing.”
You glance ahead and listen to Changmin and Junsu continue to bicker like they’ve never been separated. Yoochun tugs at your sleeve when you don’t answer him, turning unseeing eyes to your face. “Hyung, tell me he’ll be all right,” he begs, like a lost child.
“Yoochunnie,” you say, carefully. “I...can’t promise anything. We’re all going to die, I just want to be with all of you when death does come.”
Yoochun nods like he understands, but as he turns away, you see tears gathering in his eyes, and the leader inside of you weeps with him.
It’s late in the afternoon by the time you reach the coast. There was probably something here before the war, but now nothing remains but rugged cliffs and sand and sapphire water that sparkles in the rare rays of sunlight peeking through the clouds. It’s perfect, and Changmin and Junsu laugh as they race each other to the surf, the sound music to your ears. You walk a little ways off, wanting some time to yourself.
You follow the curve of the cliffs, but make sure you can still hear the others in case they need you. There’s someone ahead of you clad in black, and you squint into the sunlight, trying to make out the man’s features.
“Jaejoongie!”
The others come rushing up behind you, having heard your shout, just as Jaejoong turns to face you, a look of utter disbelief crossing his face. You see his lips form your name, before he breaks into a run and crashes into you moments later, his slim body still fitting perfectly in your arms as he buries his face in your neck.
“Jaejoongie,” you whisper. “Jaejoongie, I missed you so much.”
He leans up to kiss you, I missed you too lear in his movements, and pushes you back slightly so you can sit with your back against the cliff face, Jaejoong in your lap.
“Jaejoongie,” you murmur again into his hair, after the others have left you two to your ‘alone time’, as Yoochun likes to put it. “Jaejoongie, won’t you talk to me?”
There’s a puff of warm air on your skin as Jaejoong sighs, pulling back slightly to search your eyes, before he pulls down the collar of his shirt, baring the vicious scars across his throat. You inhale sharply, lifting one hand from his waist to brush your fingers gently across the raised marks. “What happened, love?”
He casts his gaze downward again, shifting even closer against your chest. You feel his lips hesitantly brush the skin right under your jawline, against your pulse Cancer of the larynx, e mouths, trembling Yoochun doesn’t know.
You press your fingers gently into the small of his back, hoping to calm the racing heartbeat you can feel thudding against your chest. “Is this why you left them so suddenly?” you murmur. He nods, relaxing in your arms, and glances back at the others who are still playing in the water.
Later, when the sun’s almost at the horizon, all five of you are sprawled on the sand, passing the time catching up and just being with each other. Yoochun starts singing quietly when he senses more than sees the setting sun, his eyes on Junsu’s face, and it takes you a few long minutes to recognize the melody.
As much as the sun that rises above you, I’ll keep you safe, as much as you’ve waited for me...
Jaejoong smirks, shifting to press his lips to your throat again Tell Yoochun he’s being too sappy as usual.
You repeat the words dutifully, and Yoochun pretends to be highly offended, earning a soft giggle from Junsu and a smile from Changmin that their youngest tries his hardest to hide.
The clouds are starting to build up again, covering many of the stars that are twinkling merrily just as they’ve done for millions upon billions of years, but you look up at the sky and grin, pointing out to your members the five bright stars of Cassiopeia.
Jaejoong shakes his head like he’s disappointed that you’ve picked up Yoochun’s infamous greasiness, but smiles with a seemingly ethereal brightness, and as you’re being lulled asleep by the even breathing of your members beside you, you feel more complete than you ever have.
You know your journey has come to an end, as have the journeys of the four around you, but with them smiling by your side, you know that, step by step, you can face whatever’s waiting for you after this.
~
“As the leader, I’ll gather up all the members and start over again.” -U-Know Yunho
~
epilogue.
In another life, another world, everything is different.
Taemin stays young and beautiful and innocent, and dancing forever and always remains his life. Minho follows in Kyuhyun’s and Changmin’s footsteps-the best of the best, he jokingly calls them-and is the one constantly tormenting his elders (out of love though, not spite). Jonghyun admits to his fans, at his twenty-first birthday party, that he’s tried to drink before and hated it. Kibum is always the mother of the group, nagging and controlling but loving, too. And Jinki forever remains the kindest, most caring leader any boy band’s ever had.
SHINee lives up to their destiny, rising to international fame as the best dance group out there, whose songs top the charts in Japan and China and Taiwan. Seven long, fulfilling years after the release of their most popular album, the band breaks up but their friendships remain as they serve their time in the army and settle down with families and modest jobs.
Three months shy of two years after Han Geng first files his lawsuit, he takes it back and comes back to the Super Junior dorms, fine with suffering Heechul’s wrath (which turns into a bone-crushing hug in any case) if it means he can still dance on stage alongside his family. Kibum drops his acting career in time for the repackage of Super Junior’s sixth album, and Donghee splits his time between his wife and performing.
Jungsu returns from the army unscathed, and Youngwoon welcomes him home with open arms. Heechul has no reason and no opportunity to disappear to China with Siwon, and he shouts and lectures and threatens when he hears that Hyukjae’s considering a lawsuit. Donghae’s life and fate will always be intertwined with Hyukjae’s.
Zhou Mi moves to Korea to be closer to Super Junior and Henry follows suit just a few months later, a grin always on his face (chubby-cheeked even in adulthood) as he watches Ryeowook cling to Jongwoon like it’ll kill them to be separated. Kyuhyun and Sungmin vacation in New York City one summer and come back smiling as one, hidden papers and hidden promises enough for them.
Super Junior doesn’t last too long in the music industry after they begin to sing as fifteen again, being quickly overshadowed by the rising SHINee. They don’t mind so much because their peak was a while ago-at least it’ll get the public to stop following their every move-and willingly retire, but make sure to always keep in touch with the others.
The fact that Jaejoong punched you the first time he met you only seals your relationship with him, even more so when he confesses to you, years later, that you were the only one who he’d admit could beat him in a fistfight. Yoochun is introduced to you as ‘the kid attached to Jaejoong at the hip’ but you’re impressed enough by his talent to like him anyway.
You find that Junsu is bright and just as good at dancing as he is at singing (that is to say, very good), and you’re indebted to his family for taking you in when you were living by yourself in Seoul. Changmin, the last one you meet of the group you’ve been picked to lead, appears young and sweet, at least until he grows up just a little bit more and begins to talk back to all of you. (Far from irritating any of you, though, it only makes you laugh harder and love him even more.)
Years later, anyone else would say that you’d led your group to the top, but you disagree. You will always believe that DBSK is the five of you, that it’s your dancing and Jaejoong’s singing and Yoochun’s rapping and Junsu’s aegyo and Changmin’s wit, and only when the five of you are together are you complete.
Jaejoong and Yoochun and Junsu sue the company at the height of DBSK’s popularity. You love them all, and you want them to be happy, so you let them go, trying to make the best of the situation with Changmin, the only one you have left.
It makes you feel better and worse at the same time when the others begin to produce their own music, and Jaejoong seizes the opportunity to write song-letters to you, telling you how much he still loves you and how he wants to see you again. Changmin is forced to grow up, to lead the group as you often find yourself unable to.
Five, you think to yourself sometimes We were five once. Will we be five again?
Four years after they win the lawsuit, Jaejoong comes back.
Three months later, Yoochun hesitantly returns.
Two days afterwards, Junsu appears on your doorstep.
One look at Junsu and Changmin starts crying.
He blames the tears blurring his vision for the hug he gives Junsu instead of the punch you’d all been expecting. The rest of you pile in for a group hug and you grin as you roll away from the wrestling match that ensues.
I love you all.