[Fic] Ballad of the Moon : 11
Title: Ballad of the Moon
Pairing: Jaemin, Yoomin
Length: Chapter 11/?
Genre: fantasy, adventure, angst,drama
Disclaimer: idea based on goose-girl fairy tale ~
Summary: Changmin has no control over his life as he's forced to leave his home to become the escort of the Crown Prince in a faraway land. Before he can even reach his destination, he's betrayed by his own guard and barely escapes death, finding himself alone and forgotten in a dark forsaken land where magic is real and even the moon has deserted the sky.
A/N: oh my god jaemin! <3 hehehe
Previous Chapters: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten |
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(not used to adding pictures, sorry i just added it only now -0-; what do you think of this lovely poster ? made by toni_luv :) thank u so much ! <3)
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He was slowly dragged up out of dreams of drowning, trapped beneath the ice of a black lake that had frozen over thickly. His body was so excruciatingly cold it hurt. Struggling uselessly against the frigid waters that threw his body into shock, fingers clawing at the ice until they bled.
Sinking, dragged down, down, down as his body slowly froze, drowning until just before he was sure he was dying, he was suddenly waking up. But when he finally slipped into consciousness to find himself laying on hard safe ground, it was still so cold. Even before he became fully aware of the fact the icy lake had only been a dream, his body was already convulsing with shivers that shook his whole frame. Chilled to the bone, limbs gone numb as they were lost to plaguing cold.
It hurt to open his eyes, as if tears had frozen to his lashes, sticking them together with icy crystals. He blinked blearily up at the dim ceiling. Faint weak sunlight spilled through the tiny window high in the wall directly onto his face. And he remembered the floor he was laying on was that of his room.
Each moment he became more fully awake and he was just as equally confused. Something had happened...something had exploded. Something had hurt.
He began to remember it slowly in a jumble of broken images, severed and blanked out by flashes of heat. White hot across his eyes, blinding him and wiping out the image of Yoochun falling to the ground, looking up at him in panic before he could only remember white again.
He blinked, trying to recapture the image, to remember what had happened after that, but he couldn’t remember anything but Jaejoong. On fire. Everything had been on fire. He’d burned and pulsed waves of hot agony, searing his senses, a terrifying monster latching onto him. He remembered fighting as best he could, that now familiar force deep in his mind coming back to life. The one made of light that helped him escape Jaejoong’s minds spells.
Except that this time it hadn’t worked. This time he’d been so ready to try and use it to protect himself, but Jaejoong had never even tried to enter his mind. Jaejoong had forced himself physically upon his body. Kissed him. And it was where the memory blanked out again.
Exploding heat had twisted his mind and body into something he almost couldn’t recognize himself, fear churning everything into white hot nothing that scared him to death. Those same lips that had stolen away his voice. The same lips that spoke the words that cut his ears, seduced him, trapped him. Words that hurt.
And this time, too, pain was slowly growing more dominant in his mind as his brain struggled to alert him of what was wrong. He almost wished the numbing cold of the dream wouldn’t leave him because as feeling slowly returned to his body, it was a tingling sensation that inevitably melted into nothing but burning agony.
He was still trembling and shaking with the aftereffects of that cold clutching his chest so tight it literally hurt to breathe. Because now that he regained feeling it his body, it felt as if something heavy was pressing sharply down on his chest. Digging and biting into his skin.
He tried to clear his head, looking down to see what was crushing him. The first thing he saw was that his shirt was torn open, a ragged rip across the material that let him bare and exposed. And there, just where the sunlight fell across to illuminate his body, was a long shallow cut splitting open his skin.
He couldn’t remember how he had been hurt, couldn’t understand why he couldn’t feel any pain but just that incredibly heavy coldness, couldn’t quite believe his eyes at the almost surreal way the sun made it glow before his very eyes. Entranced, he lifted one hand slowly, reaching for it tentatively. As his fingertips brushed it, it seemed to bite him with a sharp sting of ice, numbing his fingers almost instantly, and he drew back in surprise.
His brain was slowly making the connection that the painful looking gash that cut through his chest was the same thing that made him feel so so cold. He couldn’t think around the coldness, panic growing as he stared at it uncomprehendingly. He couldn’t remember anything, never having been hurt in this fashion, and never ever having been left alone or unhealed after being cursed.
As he lay there slightly stunned, blood pumping quickly through his veins. It didn’t sseem real, but he couldn’t deny the very real light that seemed to dance around the edge of it, glowing and blurring the would be gruesome sight into something that didn’t seem to be part of him. The sun was lighting it, filling it, trying so hard to warm its icy bite.
He stared at the wound in wonder as ever so slowly it began to respond to the sun’s warmth. The faint glow along its edges grew stronger, brighter, stinging his eyes with its whiteness. Soon it was growing pleasantly warm, all thought of it being a very real cut through his skin forgotten as he lost himself in long minutes of silence, merely observing it quietly as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
Nothing else mattered but the wonderful feeling of the sun on his skin. The way the warmth spread through him like honey, lifting his heart inexplicably, making him feel contented and safe.
It lasted until the small stream of sunlight crept slowly away, the sun at last passing over the roof and vanishing from the window. Everything was thrown into wavering shadow as the light of the sun left, and in that single moment the light dancing along the expanse of the mark went out. It faded into an ugly dark red, layers of skin cut open and exposed, his body once more growing cold within seconds.
He continued to stare at it, unable to find the energy to so much as look away. Already doubting and trying to find an explanation for what must have been some strange magic working on its own just before his eyes moments before. It had felt so wonderful, something like an embrace that made all the things wrong in the world fade away. And he was now once more cast back into reality which was cold and dull and dead.
He stared at the place the wound was, even until after he could no longer quite make it out in the deepening darkness. He could feel it consciously now, the coldness once again sinking into him from that point, spreading through his body and making his chest feel tight and heavy. Yet the sweet feeling still lingered, reassuring and calming him enough to simply lay there and wait for the cold to reach a bearable level. Waiting for his body to find its strength and energy again.
The room that had always been so deafeningly, frustratingly quiet and empty, filled with nothing but him, now seemed somehow changed and different. A sweet gentle magic had found its way in, had lit him up, had seemed to be healing him. He was sure of it now, and somehow he couldn’t seem able to take his mind off of it.
And even if it was part of a curse, something Jaejoong had used to repair the damage done, he still thought it intriguing, beautiful. Something so different than his usual magic yet still somehow so similar to the man himself. But just the thought of Jaejoong alone threatened to unleash all the barely suppressed emotions that accompanied it, and was enough for him to want to forget about it. He quickly shoved away the strange longing feeling of wanting to feel it again, of wanting to see the sun glowing on his own body, of never wanting that feeling to stop.
He shook his head slowly, at long last turning his eyes away to sweep across the blackness filling the room instead. All magic was wrong and evil, he knew that fully well, especially since the sweet touches were nothing but a temporary balm to veil the horror of true intentions. The ugly mark itself a clear indication of the curse thrown at him. In the end, even the false beauty of that peaceful magic hurt him as it reminded him just how dismal his reality was, and this was most likely just what Jaejoong had intended. Anything beautiful here was just the same like that. An ugly lie.
Everything was dark and quiet. Like always the silence pressed into his ears, making his thoughts too loud, too real. His body ached, and now that he wasn’t distracted by the lingering magic, he became aware of the way his shoulders and neck were throbbingly hot. He tried to move slightly and winced as pain flared up instantly, his skin feeling so raw and burnt.
He looked down at himself again, trying to see through the dark. The light was insufficient to make it out clearly, but his shoulders seemed to be slightly darker than the rest of his skin. But he couldn’t deny the smell, the one that turned his stomach sickeningly. Flesh charred and burned open. And it was his own.
He struggled to move again, grimacing as just even moving his arms seemed to hurt the burns, moaning silently as he finally managed to sit up. Ever so carefully, he reached up to brush gingerly at the place his neck hurt. His fingers came away sticky. Burned and bloody, his body mangled and marked, through he couldn’t really remember much more than Jaejoong pinning him down.
He bit down on a broken sigh, trying to stay calm and push all the anxiety and pain away once more now that it had surfaced when he was beaten down and weak. Feelings that were unwanted and pathetic. It hurt terribly. And he was so unbelievably scared. But he could’t let Jaejoong win. He wouldn’t ever let him have the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to him. Gotten him so badly he almost couldn’t repress the fear this time.
He was completely shaken by the ferocity and pure violence Jaejoong had attacked him with. Nothing like the curses he usually so calmly planned and carried out, nothing like his usual calculating movements, the controlled experiments with that unchanging mask of a face.
No, it had been raw and real. Eyes alive and screaming. The hands that burned him full of emotional anger. The voice that usually sang sultry quiet notes rising so loud it had crushed his ears and deafened him. The voice he didn’t recognize, the one shocking him with powerful gusts of mine- mine- you’re mine!.
It seemed ridiculous, nearly impossible that those words had come from the icy emotionless man. But he could remember just enough that he didn’t think he could ever forget the look on his face as he’d yelled them into his face. An expression that bound him. Words that meant he’d never be free again. And again, he was struggling to deny the fear crawling up his throat once more, breath hitching and eyes squeezing closed.
It took a long time for him to calm down enough until his breath passed unhindered and easy. Another long uncountable time for him to slowly struggle to his feet, shoulders screaming in protest. Three steps across the small space until his stretched out searching hands met the material of the door.
He needed out. A breath of fresh air, the vastness of night enveloping him and giving a valid reason for that horrid depressing feeling of being so small and insignificant, unimportant and forgotten. Because when faced with the grandeur of nature, it was okay to feel such things. Here in the small room they suffocated him and threatened to make him curl into himself until he felt like he would disappear.
Not only that, but he still couldn’t destroy the almost wild crazy hope that today would be the day it would appear at last. On a day he wanted, needed it so badly. A nightly vigil that had begun the day he’d left home, the way he’d watch the deep black velvet sky and try to remember how the moon rose, how it looked lighting everything white-silver. Every night he waited and watched, hoping for something that never came.
By now, the absence of the moon was almost a strange sort of comfort to him. He rationalized that it was impossible for the moon to vanish from the heavens...meaning this life was not real, meaning it was all just a dream or fantasy that felt longer than life. But he didn’t know why he couldn’t just wake up from it.
Even so, he still found himself wanting to see it, as if the moon would be able to break the spell, shatter the nightmare apart and set him free. Freeing him, freeing the whole cursed land. Bring him back to his real life, his home. His Yunho-
His fingers clutched tightly around the door handle, whole body going still as his mind promptly went blank. It was locked. Locked...as it hadn’t been for countless weeks. Almost in disbelief he tried to turn it again, rattling it uselessly, before suddenly pushing hard and wrenching at it with all the strength he could gather. It just couldn’t be locked! Not now...not now when he needed so desperately to get out, the need and desire striking him with a nearly physical force at just the idea that it was now denied him.
With both hands still wrapped tightly around the handle, Changmin stood as if petrified before the solidly unmoving door. Disbelief was only too quickly plunging into panicked dread, because he’d gotten so used to the small freedom of being able to go outside almost as he wished. He’d gotten used to something that wasn’t his right anymore, something he’d almost been starting to take for granted again like a fool.
He’d known ever since the first time he’d found it unlocked, the very next day after he’d made the attempt to escape and been caught like an animal, that it wasn’t an accident. Ever since the Sorcerer started disappearing during the day, leaving Jaejoong behind to watch him, something had changed.
He hadn’t been sure if the man was taunting him with the lure of the sun and sky, daring him to try to run again, or mocking him with a false sense of freedom, reminding him only too clearly that he was a prisoner, a slave and that he would never truly be able to leave.
Changmin wasn’t stupid, nor had the other done a very good job of concealing himself if he’d even tried to at all. He’d felt the eyes following him, unable to avoid them for a single moment no matter how far away he walked. He’d seen the way Jaejoong merely stood there like a shadow, like something that didn’t even exist, yet somehow always remaining eerily in view.
It freaked him out because he knew the man wasn’t watching him merely to ensure he didn’t escape. He wasn’t guarding or monitoring, no, he was just watching him. Studying him like some sort of sick twisted hunter playing with the prey that he knew couldn’t escape him.
Just as he would do during the dead of the night when he’d suffocate Changmin’s small prison of a room with his presence, never moving nor speaking or doing anything but just looking at him. Daily and nightly, Changmin always felt hunted, always so cornered and watched, always able to feel eyes on him but not able to see from where, and it was wearing down on his mental stability.
He knew that even if Jaejoong didn’t follow him outside every day, he wouldn’t have tried to run again. He knew Jaejoong wouldn’t unlock the door unless there was something else there to trap him, obviously trusting to whatever magic he’d cast to keep him safely prisoner. He knew full well he couldn't run or escape the magic surrounding the place, just as he could no longer escape the man himself, just as he knew that now Jaejoong, not the house, was the truth of what he couldn’t run away from.
He hadn’t been able to consciously piece it together until now. But with the words mine still lingering in his ears, echoing softly from the heart of the darkness itself, the door formidable and shut before him, it was only too painfully obvious.
Jaejoong would never let him go. Wanted him for something. And he couldn’t even bear to imagine what it could be for fear of stumbling on a truth he didn’t want to know or acknowledge.
For even if the past few weeks had been filled with as much light and sun as the first month had been despair and darkness, he didn’t think he could ever get used to the spells, the lack of control, the pain, being a puppet to the magic words and songs his mind still had trouble understanding.
The man was still too mysterious and frightening even after all these days. Each time the hood fell to pool around his shoulders to reveal the pale face, he was now constantly shrouded in the sourceless light, the unearthly glow Changmin had come to associate as the manifestation of his powers, a whiteness so pale it was glowing translucence. All soft and smudged on the edges. Each time he fell victim to his magic, or his songs, it made the other glow more brightly, fierce and terrifying in his surreal beauty.
He soon used it to gauge the strength of Jaejoong’s spells, or to what extent he was being yet again drained of energy and turned into a weak cowering mess. The brighter it glowed, the worse he felt. It guessed the light must be the magic powers shrouding him, filling him, an actual part of him.
Somehow, as dangerous as he was, Changmin still found it achingly beautiful...and fragile, and somehow removed from everything around him. Lovely, yes, but inherently unnatural, wrong. Something that shouldn’t even exist. Like an unexplained bending of nature to accommodate the rare mutation. Not that he was able to understand or explain the reality of magic in the first place, but he couldn’t help but try to categorize with what he knew and believed.
All at the same time, Jaejoong was enchanting, literally, and he seemed fully aware of it. Every movement was graceful and purposeful, every word and soft song from those curving lips wrapping him more firmly in the paralyzing cocoon he found himself in whenever Jaejoong was looking at him. Even as he hated it, feared it, even as he fought it as often as he could, it felt more real than anything else.
It was slowly becoming his reality, and the way seeing the face beneath that black hood forced him into a daze, compelled him to stare and stare, unable to see anything but the man before him was slowly making him forget everything and anything else. Forgetting what normal people looked like. Forgetting what was once important to him, forgetting the faces of the people who gave him the hope and strength to carry on.
He knew the other abused the power he held over him, and it scared him that recently it seemed to go deeper than that. The fleeting rampant emotions he sometimes caught caged behind his eyes so intense and too raw. He knew he was helpless against it, that fighting back only seemed to encourage and ignite the other further. He knew Jaejoong was waiting for him to give in, to finally give up, and he was already starting to come to accept the fact that that moment may be closer than the magician knew.
Moreover, that cold impassive mask had been slipping more often, a feral light in his eyes something Changmin couldn’t understand, something he didn’t want to think about much less look at one more time. It reminded him too much of the dark glint so often sparking from the Black Sorcerer’s eyes, and he never let himself forget that they were of the same blood. They were both just as evil, even if Jaejoong didn’t radiate that terrifying pressure that always had him nearly blacking out the way his father’s mere presence did.
It wasn’t lost on Changmin how Jaejoong seemed to nearly always be the one to perform the magic spells, horrible nasty things that hurt, torture or near death, things that had him wishing he could die, ending in nothing but more pain and tears. He’d never cried so much in his life, and each tear seemed to rip away at his pride that much more. Not that he had much of anything left, but he still hated the way black eyes would follow each stubborn drop dragged out of him. The same way it focused greedily on drops of red blood they drew from him time and again.
If not physical torture, it would be the dreaded sick feeling of his mind being manipulated and invaded rudely. They could make him do anything, they could take anything. And with each occurrence, the slowly manifesting feelings of horror and hate would fester and bubble like ugly thick tar coating his insides. Unobstructed, pure mind numbing hatred for the cruel manipulation, for being treated like nothing but a body to be exploited and used. He was sure now that Jaejoong was just as bad if not worse than his father, and the cruelty was just buried beneath cold nothingness, hidden under the hood if not hidden behind the beautiful ivory mask of his face.
That lack of emotion or reaction would freeze his heart in his chest at the apparent inability to care one way or another as he suffered and bled before his eyes. He didn’t seem human. And he wondered if magicians were actually human at all. He wasn’t sure if that empty facade was any better than the sick enjoyment that shone in his father’s eyes, as neither spelled anything good for him.
Up until today, he’d futilely tried to comfort himself with the idea that Jaejoong didn’t necessarily seem to enjoy hurting him, not with the way he allowed him a bit of freedom, and not to mention the odd occurrences when he’d envelope him with that soft gentle calm, absence of any feeling that he’d caught him with the very first day he’d been taken as their slave. It would happen during some of the more nasty experiments, spells that had thrown Changmin’s body into shock, panic or pain making him hyperventilate or spasm too horribly for them to gauge the effects of the spell accurately.
He supposed it wouldn’t help them to cause him to lose his mind or else to damage him too severely, but he bitterly thought that would only be true until he was no longer of any use. He knew someday they would let the magic make short work of him until he was finally and at long last dead. Or that was what he secretly wished for. Because with the way Jaejoong continued to shadow him, watching him time after time, he was sure he’d never escape even in death.
Drowning in the charcoal black eyes was a swooping dancing moment where he lost himself completely, each time returning to himself and he felt smaller, as if some small part of him had been stolen away. Or destroyed.
There wouldn’t be much of him left soon enough. He was still trying to come to terms with the growing certainty that this wouldn’t end in simple death for him. That scared him more than the pain or torture, the fact that his very soul was what Jaejoong seemed to desire so strongly. The fact that Jaejoong could take it away from him at any time, the fact that he would be helpless to fight it, would have to give it up. And he was terrified. He wasn’t ready to die like that.
He didn’t like to dwell on any of it for long, because he couldn’t justify or rationalize the way he’d calm down and accept everything whenever he heard the sweet sad tones of Jaejoong’s voice. Or the way those same ebony eyes now haunted him in his dreams just as often as Yoochun did. He knew he was bewitched, but that didn’t make the feelings any less real.
Somehow he’d come full circle again, and he shuddered as he willed the draining cold thoughts away, focusing instead on the sweet warmth that he’d now found with just the name alone: Yoochun.
Yoochun...Yoochun who was all gentle smiles and kind eyes. So sweet and beautiful it hurt somewhere deep down in his chest. Because he wanted everything about the man to be real, wanted to believe in his appearance so badly, but was scared to even give the thought a chance lest he be taken away from him, too. Lest Yoochun be broken and violated, dirtied and crushed, just like him. And there was no way for him to know what had happened to Yoochun after Jaejoong had taken Changmin away.
His hands trembled, and he snatched them away from the metal of the handle warmed by his hands. He didn’t want to think about what could have happened, didn’t want to imagine what curse they would have used on him. What his body would look like trampled, lacerated and bloodied...he stumbled halfway across the room, limbs starting to go numb as he couldn’t get enough air to breathe.
And worst of all, it would all be his fault. Yoochun had come there to find him, and there was no way for him to even hope for mercy, not with the way Jaejoong had so thoroughly punished Changmin himself.
Finding his way back to his bed, Changmin sank down onto it, unable to lie down comfortably with his shoulders throbbing and burning like they were on fire. He huddled awkwardly, the icy coldness clutching to his chest seeming to sink deeper into his skin as he closed his eyes to the black pit of the room, to the remorse and the guilt, to the worry and the way his heart sank and sank with nothing there to stop the dread curling around his whole being.
Breathing deeply and forcing the cold despair away, swallowing the sickening regret, he tried to think instead of the way Yoochun’s hands had been so amazingly warm. He tried to remember exactly how his eyes had seemed to dance, so alive and spirited, so beautifully real. Even if he never left this room again, even if he never saw the striking man again, he would keep those few moments as something preciously his own. A glimpse and reminder of what true freedom was, and it nearly broke his heart, his spirit.
As much as Jaejoong took everything else from him, he still was able to find glimmers of safety or warmth within his memories and dreams. His heart constricted now at the realization that if only for one gloriously sunny afternoon, Yoochun had become just that, someone real that he could remember and no longer merely dream about.
Yet someone that would remain just a memory like his brother, like his mother. Someone that would never see the way his shoulders shook with repressed sobs, never see the way he was so horribly alone. Never see that when he cried, his eyes no longer had any tears to give.
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Three days later and Changmin was a pathetic heap shivering beneath the threadbare blanket. Three days at the end of which he’d hardly been able to lift himself from the bed. The burning heat of the ugly burns curling around his shoulders grown far stronger than the heat of the small pale chunk of sunlight he now followed across the room with sunken feverish eyes.
The first day, he’d managed to drag himself into its pale illumination only to reveal the nauseating sight of large red boils that were already beginning to fester. The single glance alone had him down on his knees, heaves twisting his stomach painfully until his body emptied the meager contents of his stomach onto the floor.
He’d sunk down moments later to press his flushed cheek to the cold dirty floor, fingers searching pathetically for something to cling to as he slowly regained his breath. It only took a single blink of weary eyes now facing the window to suddenly remember what the sunlight had done to him the day before.
He almost thought it hadn’t really happened, just part of another dream or else a figment of his own imagination which was steadily getting wilder, more crazed. But he still couldn’t deny or forget the unnatural way the wound didn’t actually hurt, merely chilling him, a jolt of cold stinging his fingers with every accidental brush against it. Something cursed he struggled to forget about, preferring to focus on the burns that were something his mind knew, something he knew would heal with time.
But from the moment he shifted closer, turning his body to catch the light, he couldn’t resist its soft beckoning call and was lost once again. The next few hours he’d forgotten all about the pain and the doubts, as the sun glowed against the cold mark, reflected white like the pureness of the sun glinting off snow, delightful and lighting a spark within him like a shimmer he could feel ripple through his whole body.
And after the sunlight had slowly passed, he’d rolled over slowly, sated and content, slumped over awkwardly with his cheek resting on the floor until the dazed happy bliss brought by the magical moment had finally faded away. He had noticed distractedly that the wound now seemed a little smaller, slowly closing a little more in on itself, but that wasn’t as important as the small spark of heat that now seemed lodged in his chest.
Because it felt like part of the sun had been captured within him, fighting away the lingering cold that was already fading into a bearable chill he could ignore for the fire burning his shoulders.
The night had been long and dark, a slight fever making everything melt and stretch grotesquely into nightmares and yawning black holes that plunged out all light and blinded him. He knew the next time he woke that the burns were getting infected, and that Jaejoong was not going to come in and heal him. That the magic healing of the sun couldn’t be something of Jaejoong’s doing, but he was too out of it and in pain to really care to understand what that could mean.
The second day and he’d only been able to gather enough strength to crawl clumsily from the bed to where the sun slipped quietly into his room, inviting and fleeing in its silent presence. An impersonal offer of comfort for his body that was now growing too weak, throat dry and parched and begging for water, each movement and he had to pause until the spinning of the room calmed into a more manageable tilt.
The glowing magical brilliance of the sun on the cursed spot this time brought tears to his eyes as the feeling was now starting to remind him of the way he felt seeing the moon reflected in Yunho’s eyes. A silver coin dancing across the surface of the moonlit lake.
Once more lost in the darkness of the room, he’d been in too much pain and despair to do anything more than drop heavily back to the floor. He couldn’t bear the thought of the impending darkness of the night, inescapable excruciatingly long hours of dark and cold that lay before him, loath to let the feeling of the magic slip away with the sun, even as this time it left his skin smooth and whole in its wake.
Sweat broke out on his forehead as he only managed to climb onto the bed after the third try, his shoulders just burning until he couldn’t even see anymore, unbearable in their unrelenting agony.
He wasn’t sure if the world had finally stopped spinning or if he just couldn’t see it anymore through the fuzzy cottony lightness filling his head - he’d been unable to open his eyes lest the way the world flipped him in circles throw his stomach into painful dry heaves.
The second night and he couldn’t see anything but black. There was no sound but his own ragged broken breaths, no color but the red stinging heat behind his eyes, no nightly visits with Jaejoong staring at him through the dark. He was so alone.
Nothing but just him and his pain. Nothing to deny or invalidate the way he was now isolated and forgotten. Hunger gnawed at him as he twisted and turned pathetically where he lay, no strength to as much as open his eyes, as the sun passed the horizon of the third day.
Three excruciating days later, and the sound of the lock rattling in the door jarred loudly against his sensitive ears. He moaned, trying to hide himself from the sound, trying to move away to hide himself from what would most likely come through the door, but he couldn’t do more than turn his head weakly away to stare at the wall before his face.
He listened as if half in a dream, the sound of the door swinging open sounding much too far away, echoing oddly in his dizzy head. He could feel him enter, even without turning to see it with his own eyes.
Never had he let Jaejoong walk in on him laying down. Never had he allowed himself to be found that way, helpless, submissive, and vulnerable. But now he could do nothing more than screw his eyes closed and fervently wish the other was just an apparition. That he would just for once go away and let him die just like this. He didn’t even want to be healed anymore.
He listened to the way footsteps crossed the space tentatively, slowly. Then a pause in which all thoughts began to swirl and condense into a low aching throb at the base of his neck. Jaejoong was trying to get in, but in that moment Changmin hadn’t the slightest desire to fight him off.
Not because he was giving in, but in his pained delirium he felt nothing but loathing disgust at the very idea of using that light in his mind to block Jaejoong out. That even having it, being conscious of it and almost able to use it was making him more like Jaejoong than he’d realized, turning into the very thing he hated and despised.
So he waited, headache growing into a sharp pulse through the center of his skull, making it hard to think and hard to react to the hands that suddenly tore the blanket away from his body.
Then cold hands were curling around his arm, pulling at him, and he was too exhausted to be able to resist, rolling over onto his back and shutting his eyes so that the wouldn’t have to see the man he’d been free of for those three agonizing days.
Hands were pulling at his shredded shirt, tearing it open until cool air swept across him. A gasp from the other and he couldn’t resist letting his eyes peel open at last.
But whatever emotion had caused the sound was already wiped clean from his face, and Jaejoong was simply staring down at him with the same empty yet sharp expression as always. His eyes were so dark, like two black endless holes boring through his head, and Changmin shivered, shrinking away from the sight that was too realistic even while knowing it to be part of his own delusional paranoia.
Jaejoong continued to stare at him, eyes raking over his face, the mangled burns scarring his skin, the expanse of his naked torso. He didn’t let anything show, and Changmin didn’t know if he was admiring his work or looking for something else. He didn’t care, struggling to even keep his eyes open against the heavy pull of pure exhaustion, his body too weak to give him anything.
His muscles seized up suddenly as an icy cold touch pressed against his chest. His eyes flew open in reaction to catch the way Jaejoong snapped his hand back to himself, staring at Changmin with wide eyes. It was as if the touch had given him a charged shock, though one made entirely of ice, and Changmin began to tremble as his body remembered only too well the crushing bone chilling cold he’d woken to days prior.
He didn’t know where the energy came from, didn’t even consciously think about moving, but found himself suddenly pushing up, scuttling backwards across the bed to just distance himself as far as possible from that horrid touch. The wall met his back, blocking his escape any further, and he pressed himself against it firmly, gasping for air as both hands clutched at the frozen knot only just now finally melting into his body heat.
Jaejoong watched him without a sound. His own hands were clenched tightly into fists, and Changmin knew that the other had felt it, too. He couldn’t understand why it looked as if Jaejoong hadn’t expected it nor intended for it to happen, because one rule he’d had beaten into him over and over was that nothing Jaejoong ever did was an accident.
The other took a shaky breath and had Changmin not been so on edge and tense, eyes fixed unblinkingly on every single aspect of the other, he would have missed the minute way Jaejoong’s body seemed to be shaking as well.
What was going on? Why were the hands that once burned him now so cold?
Jaejoong seemed to be thinking, hesitating, eyes continually studying Changmin’s chest as if he could see something there. Changmin felt uncomfortable and exposed before that gaze, wrapping his arms around himself to hide from those prying unnerving eyes. His brain was still sluggish and muddled but it was only too easy to make the connection, to remember the ugly wound that was now no longer there.
Was Jaejoong looking for it? Could he somehow see traces of what it had done to him? Did he know how the sun had made it glow? Did he know that the sun had healed him? He didn’t understand.
He was slowly regaining his body heat and with it came a sense of himself, dragged forcefully out of the muffling hands of fatigue as the intensity of the situation called for his attention. His body was already going on autopilot as he tensed, ready to be attacked somehow, ready to give up all thought and be led by instincts.
It was quiet and still as neither of them moved. All of a few heartbeats before suddenly Jaejoong was surging forwards, crawling onto the bed and coming towards him.
Without meaning to, without his wanting to, he could instantly feel the pressure in his head of the strange power coming to life, urging him to fight, ready to come into action even as he struggled to suppress it.
Jaejoong’s hands reached for him. “How did you do it?” A rushed whisper coming before the split second when their eyes met and Changmin just knew it was going to hurt, that he would once more be forced under the power of the other.
No pause to wait for an answer before hands took hold of his wrists. They were cold, freezing his skin and already turning his arms numb as Jaejoong held on tightly, easily overpowering his attempt to twist out of his grasp. Weak from malnutrition, pain, and exhaustion there was only so much he could do, but he refused to let the other manhandle him, not understanding why the other was being so physical rather than trying to take over his mind like usual.
They grappled with each other, Changmin slowly loosing all feeling in his arms as the cold seeped through his veins, and he jerked his body wildly, finally managing to knee Jaejoong in the ribs.
The blow knocked the air out of him with a surprised huff, and he curled forward reflexively, tugging down on Changmin’s arms and dragging them together as his body pitched forward into Changmin.
His face crashed against Changmin’s collar bone, body falling against him as he hadn’t released Changmin’s hands to catch himself, and the small sound that filled the room was caught somewhere between surprise and something uncannily like fear.
The moment Jaejoong pressed against him it was as if he were plunged into icy water, breath catching and air freezing in his throat. Before he could even comprehend it or try to push the other off, Changmin’s body spasmed as suddenly heat was churning up from deep inside him, flooding his body and pressing up through his skin to the surface.
Heat pulsed out of him in waves, combating the cold and eating it up greedily. From freezing to burning up all in a matter of seconds and for a moment they were both too stunned to even react.
Changmin couldn’t control it, didn’t know what was happening or what horrid magic was now coursing through his body, but Jaejoong was suddenly latching onto him, fingers slipping away from his arms to curl his arms tightly around Changmin’s waist instead. Pulling him flush against himself as his face turned to press intimately into Changmin’s neck.
He was soaking up the heat, seeming to draw it out of Changmin’s body and into himself. Just like he’d done many countless times before, but never like this. Never had Changmin’s body offered it up in such a gushing steady flow, never had Jaejoong clung to him like this, and he felt dizzy as if it were blood leaving his system rather than the heat that seemed to pour from his very core.
Jaejoong’s arms tightened around him, holding him prisoner against himself as Changmin’s vision swam, body unresponsive as each wave of heat churned through him then was torn almost physically away, filling up the gaping endless coldness that was Jaejoong.
Changmin tried to stop it, to move away, to do anything, but he could feel himself fading, body gone weak and slumping as the flowing exchange didn’t stop. Too much, too much too fast, draining him of everything, even after Jaejoong’s icy skin began to warm up against him, even after the short cool breaths of air gusting across his neck became thickly hot.
Blackness began to cloud over his eyes, sponging away all color, and he was unable to feel his body any longer, nothing but the terrifying sensation of himself getting sucked out. There was a muted ringing in his ears which muffled the soft breathy moan that ran along the skin of his neck.
He felt so small and weak, as if he were shrinking, becoming transparent nothing. Letting himself fade away as suddenly there was nothing else to give and the blinding hot fire within him was abruptly and horribly extinguished. He felt his heart labor heavily, too slow and unbearably hard. One more struggled attempt, painful and suffocating as it thumped slowly once more. And then it stopped.
And he was sinking, unable to feel or hear anything but the soft breathy sigh of free that was alive and swirling around him, floating through his whole body to lift him up and carry him gently away.
*******
Jaejoong lay panting against Changmin’s body, eyes fallen closed as he could do nothing but just feel, slowly coming down from the intense mind-blowing pleasure of being overtaken by warm heat, filled to the brim body and soul with nothing but pure bliss.
Each breath was too short, catching in his chest that was trying to remember how to breathe air once more rather than blinding energy. He tried to slow his heart beat, slowly recovering the feeling of his physical body, still tingling and so gloriously alive with the sensation.
Nothing felt more satisfying and perfect than regaining himself in that moment. Sated and warm. He couldn’t bear to move or even open his eyes, savoring the feeling, breathing out such a blessed sigh of relief at the absence of that hard cold thing that had sat so heavy and ugly deep within him for the past few days.
He almost couldn’t believe it was really gone. Changmin had melted it...destroyed it as he filled him up with golden power, banishing the frozen dead coldness that had sunk so heavily into his bones, filling him with life once more and he clutched at the body still wrapped in his arms.
It was really gone. He was himself again. Safe and whole once more. He felt strong and alive, even despite the fact that his powers were still bound tightly by the spell of his father. He didn’t need them now since everything was restored. He had connected and touched Changmin’s energy without it...he’d been able to drain Changmin without it...the cold sinister nothing had risen up the moment he’d just made contact with Changmin’s skin and stabbed deep into Changmin’s center, forcing the other to literally break open, spilling out everything directly into Jaejoong.
And his eyes suddenly blinked open in shock as he realized what had happened. None of it had been under his control. None of it had been his power or even him in any sense of the word. He had done nothing. No. Through him, the thing had torn Changmin open, forced its way to try and steal his warmth, and then been strangled and burned to nothing as Changmin’s power reacted, raging and tearing it to pieces like a wild force.
He quickly pulled back slightly, looking at Changmin with his heart in his throat, the feeling of fear he hated so much making his heart suddenly pound painfully in his chest.
The unknown coldness had attacked again even though he’d struggled to fight it away for days, three insufferably long horrible days in which he’d avoided Changmin at all costs. Too scared to enter the room to be met with the stale coldness of death, only too easily able to imagine the sight of Changmin’s body torn open and rotting on the floor. Too scared to enter the room and have the thing overpower him once more, attacking and striking down wildly without him being able to control or stop it.
He’d been too scared of the strange way something deep within him seemed unable to do anything but call for Changmin. A gut wrenching longing to feel his warmth, an unbearable craving he’d never experienced before. Three days of telling himself he was just doing nothing as his father had instructed, three days of excuses and running away, three days in which he realized it was the longest he’d ever gone without seeing Changmin.
Three days that were so horribly cold. In which he began to lose himself. And Three days in which the world as he knew it crumpled as he realized Changmin had somehow become so terrifyingly important to him.
The relief at finding Changmin alive had only lasted as long as until he’d seen the horrible wound to be healed and gone from his body. Lasted as long as until merely touching him had caused the thing to suddenly rouse, expanding inside him and shooting through his body to sting Changmin with cold.
And he hadn’t even cared for a few minutes, swept away and not even thinking that he should stop it, because Changmin had been so warm, so deliciously hot and beckoning for him, made him go blind with the instinctive need to take it and have it get rid of the ice freezing him from the inside out. To take the heat that filled the empty coldness until he was whole once more.
Nothing mattered more than Changmin’s healing energy, and he’d taken it greedily, savage and primal. Something completing him and driving away that huge nothingness inside of him that threatened to suffocate and drown him in its vastness. Just touching Changmin and it had resonated deep within him, that the thing he’d lost, the thing he craved and needed to find completion was the golden heat of Changmin’s life energy.
There hadn’t been a moments hesitation nor question. He’d taken it. All of it. And beneath him now, Changmin’s body was cold. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Once again he’d attacked him, come back into himself to find Changmin looking dead and broken beneath him. Horridly like so many of the countless bodies he’d abused and broken, ravaged and murdered before he’d thrown them out like garbage to rot and decay behind the house.
And he wasn’t ready to see Changmin like that. Regret twined its fingers around his throat and squeezed, choking and suffocating him as he panicked. He should never have come in here. He was terrified of what he could now no longer feel, but somehow he just knew that it wasn’t gone or destroyed like he’d thought mere minutes before, just submerged and hidden again, suppressed by Changmin’s power.
But the energy would fade. The heat would leave him like it always did, and then he would be too weak to fight it off or keep it away. It would come back for him, take him over again, more strongly more completely, as he was unable to deny the way he felt a piece of himself lost each time it struck out. It stole something from him, part of his very self, and cast it away to melt into the cold nothingness.
It terrified him. He couldn’t understand it, didn’t know what it was. And he needed Changmin there to help keep it away, to keep him safe.
“Ch-Changmin-” It came out a hushed broken sounding whisper. The first time he ever dared to say the man’s name that wasn’t laced with the power of a spell.
Changmin didn’t respond. And Jaejoong’s hands shook as he reached for him. He was afraid of what would happen when they touched, afraid of things he couldn’t control. But he needed him.
His fingers brushed along Changmin’s cheek and he bit his lip as he waited for something powerful and unknown to crash through everything he thought was his own control.
But nothing came. Nothing but an aching sort of pain in his chest, something hard to identify or pinpoint exactly where and how it hurt. Somewhere deep within, where his heart was.
“Changmin.” He said again, unable to stop the way his fingers trembled against cool skin. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t be responsible for losing him like this. He pressed fingers into his neck, finding the ugly marks that he put there suddenly somehow terrifying and repulsive, seeking out the pulse the growing dread tight in his stomach said he wouldn’t find.
But it was there. Fainter than it had ever been before. And his body suddenly went weak, unable to hold himself up and not trying to fight it anymore. Sinking back down onto the unmoving form, he pressed his head against his chest to hear each infinitely slow, faint heart beat.
The sound was oddly calming, drawing him in like soft hands pressing against his body, a feeling so close and intimate that every thing else faded away all at once. The sound was soft yet steady, thumping into his head, thumping into his own chest that felt stuffy and tight.
None of the fierceness nor resistance he associated with Changmin, the fight he enjoyed and liked so much about him. Something fragile that made him seem so devastatingly human. The fact that if that small sound alone were to stop, then Changmin would be gone.
Jaejoong took a slow steadying breath, thrown off and slightly dizzy with the power of the sound. That something so faint and weak, so unreliable, could make life, could make Changmin, was starting to confuse him and conflicted with all he knew first hand about life and death.
The man was always so strong and alive. But here and now, the only thing keeping him there was that tiny weak beat. And the moment he thought of it as something amazingly rare and precious he shut the thought out. Realizing he’d lost himself to the sway of fragile humanness, he quickly shook the unnatural feelings away and sat up.
There was nothing more valuable than the energy and light that was Changmin’s, the only thing that Jaejoong cared about. Especially now as it seemed to be the only thing that could fight away the terror lurking inside of him.
“Changmin.” It was a command this time, drawing upon the energy soaring through his veins and seeming to envelop his whole being.
“Changmin.” He repeated the name, willing the golden energy to spill back across Changmin, to slip through the dull darkness filling him up, run along his veins with sweet light.
He wished so badly to just delve inside, to pull him out roughly so he’d have no choice but to listen to him and follow him out. He wanted to force the spark to rekindle in his eyes, to make him glow with the glaring brightness of anger and passion directed at him.
His arms moved almost of their own accord, finding their way around Changmin’s body once more, lifting him and drawing him close as he willed the warmth to find its way back to its giver.
Changmin sighed into his shoulder, a quiet sound that made his whole body go still, breath catching in his chest. The warmth filling him, spilling off him in waves to envelop Changmin drew them even closer together, each breath and Changmin’s chest rose to meet his own.
Jaejoong held his breath as he drew back slowly, just enough to look down into his face. Mere inches separated their faces and he watched entranced as eyelashes fluttered, Changmin’s lips parting slightly as another small sigh left his mouth to ghost across Jaejoong’s cheek.
Then his eyes were opening, blinking blearily as he searched for something. Found Jaejoong’s eyes instead. Locked gazes with his own, held him captivated with a gaze that was deep and soft.
The moment their eyes met, the moment he felt himself falling into the sweet warmth shining from their depths, he felt as if he were bathed in sunlight, something that made the world fade around him until nothing but Changmin existed before him.
And it was everything that he’d been seeking, everything the yawning empty void within him had been craving, everything that had already been placated and filled. And it was no longer about the feel of that missing element resonating within him, no, it was something infinitely more. Breathtaking and a faint ache growing deep within him.
Something that made it hard to breathe as he swore he could feel each beat of his own heart stuttering into life as it struggled to tell him a secret. And he felt the fate of the world depended on him understanding what it had to say.
**
Changmin didn’t know what it was that reached for him, catching him, finding him a midst the soft floating nothing and leading him from it into a warm embrace. It was even sweeter than the sun that had warmed him the last three days. It was heady and tingled through his whole body. Soft blooming sparkles and heat trickling down his spine as Jaejoong held him even closer yet, cradling him with surprisingly gentle hands.
He blinked his eyes open to find those ebony eyes looking directly at him, boring into him and watching him. Seeing nothing but him, yet they were never as he’d ever seen them before. Something hesitantly helpless was shining in their depths. Unsure and confused, what was once too cold and proud, now something like not knowing how. Something so incredibly human that Changmin found himself mesmerized with the change it brought to the face he’d come to fear.
The body pressed against his own was now so warm. The hands wrapped around his waist were steady and strong. A touch that didn’t hurt. Eyes that didn’t take. A voice that didn’t curse as a whisper of air danced across his face.
“Changmin.” Big black eyes never once leaving his own. Holding him captive with the new infinity broken open and glistening in their depths. “Changmin-ah.” A voice he almost didn’t recognize, that didn’t sound anything like Jaejoong. Saying his name in such a way that it almost didn't seem to be his own name any more. Such a way, as if it were something spellbinding, precious, something...he held dear.
He felt himself drawn into the dark gaze, falling into the feel of his name like the sun kissing skin. Like the warmth of eyes lit by candles, reaching across the dark to touch and hold him close. And he wanted to give into the sweet feeling, give into the feeling of being cared for, loved. It felt so incredibly wonderful, so real, and his body ached for it, his heart cried for it.
And he wanted it to stop.
*******
twelve (a)~
Pairing: Jaemin, Yoomin
Length: Chapter 11/?
Genre: fantasy, adventure, angst,drama
Disclaimer: idea based on goose-girl fairy tale ~
Summary: Changmin has no control over his life as he's forced to leave his home to become the escort of the Crown Prince in a faraway land. Before he can even reach his destination, he's betrayed by his own guard and barely escapes death, finding himself alone and forgotten in a dark forsaken land where magic is real and even the moon has deserted the sky.
A/N: oh my god jaemin! <3 hehehe
Previous Chapters: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten |
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(not used to adding pictures, sorry i just added it only now -0-; what do you think of this lovely poster ? made by toni_luv :) thank u so much ! <3)
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He was slowly dragged up out of dreams of drowning, trapped beneath the ice of a black lake that had frozen over thickly. His body was so excruciatingly cold it hurt. Struggling uselessly against the frigid waters that threw his body into shock, fingers clawing at the ice until they bled.
Sinking, dragged down, down, down as his body slowly froze, drowning until just before he was sure he was dying, he was suddenly waking up. But when he finally slipped into consciousness to find himself laying on hard safe ground, it was still so cold. Even before he became fully aware of the fact the icy lake had only been a dream, his body was already convulsing with shivers that shook his whole frame. Chilled to the bone, limbs gone numb as they were lost to plaguing cold.
It hurt to open his eyes, as if tears had frozen to his lashes, sticking them together with icy crystals. He blinked blearily up at the dim ceiling. Faint weak sunlight spilled through the tiny window high in the wall directly onto his face. And he remembered the floor he was laying on was that of his room.
Each moment he became more fully awake and he was just as equally confused. Something had happened...something had exploded. Something had hurt.
He began to remember it slowly in a jumble of broken images, severed and blanked out by flashes of heat. White hot across his eyes, blinding him and wiping out the image of Yoochun falling to the ground, looking up at him in panic before he could only remember white again.
He blinked, trying to recapture the image, to remember what had happened after that, but he couldn’t remember anything but Jaejoong. On fire. Everything had been on fire. He’d burned and pulsed waves of hot agony, searing his senses, a terrifying monster latching onto him. He remembered fighting as best he could, that now familiar force deep in his mind coming back to life. The one made of light that helped him escape Jaejoong’s minds spells.
Except that this time it hadn’t worked. This time he’d been so ready to try and use it to protect himself, but Jaejoong had never even tried to enter his mind. Jaejoong had forced himself physically upon his body. Kissed him. And it was where the memory blanked out again.
Exploding heat had twisted his mind and body into something he almost couldn’t recognize himself, fear churning everything into white hot nothing that scared him to death. Those same lips that had stolen away his voice. The same lips that spoke the words that cut his ears, seduced him, trapped him. Words that hurt.
And this time, too, pain was slowly growing more dominant in his mind as his brain struggled to alert him of what was wrong. He almost wished the numbing cold of the dream wouldn’t leave him because as feeling slowly returned to his body, it was a tingling sensation that inevitably melted into nothing but burning agony.
He was still trembling and shaking with the aftereffects of that cold clutching his chest so tight it literally hurt to breathe. Because now that he regained feeling it his body, it felt as if something heavy was pressing sharply down on his chest. Digging and biting into his skin.
He tried to clear his head, looking down to see what was crushing him. The first thing he saw was that his shirt was torn open, a ragged rip across the material that let him bare and exposed. And there, just where the sunlight fell across to illuminate his body, was a long shallow cut splitting open his skin.
He couldn’t remember how he had been hurt, couldn’t understand why he couldn’t feel any pain but just that incredibly heavy coldness, couldn’t quite believe his eyes at the almost surreal way the sun made it glow before his very eyes. Entranced, he lifted one hand slowly, reaching for it tentatively. As his fingertips brushed it, it seemed to bite him with a sharp sting of ice, numbing his fingers almost instantly, and he drew back in surprise.
His brain was slowly making the connection that the painful looking gash that cut through his chest was the same thing that made him feel so so cold. He couldn’t think around the coldness, panic growing as he stared at it uncomprehendingly. He couldn’t remember anything, never having been hurt in this fashion, and never ever having been left alone or unhealed after being cursed.
As he lay there slightly stunned, blood pumping quickly through his veins. It didn’t sseem real, but he couldn’t deny the very real light that seemed to dance around the edge of it, glowing and blurring the would be gruesome sight into something that didn’t seem to be part of him. The sun was lighting it, filling it, trying so hard to warm its icy bite.
He stared at the wound in wonder as ever so slowly it began to respond to the sun’s warmth. The faint glow along its edges grew stronger, brighter, stinging his eyes with its whiteness. Soon it was growing pleasantly warm, all thought of it being a very real cut through his skin forgotten as he lost himself in long minutes of silence, merely observing it quietly as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
Nothing else mattered but the wonderful feeling of the sun on his skin. The way the warmth spread through him like honey, lifting his heart inexplicably, making him feel contented and safe.
It lasted until the small stream of sunlight crept slowly away, the sun at last passing over the roof and vanishing from the window. Everything was thrown into wavering shadow as the light of the sun left, and in that single moment the light dancing along the expanse of the mark went out. It faded into an ugly dark red, layers of skin cut open and exposed, his body once more growing cold within seconds.
He continued to stare at it, unable to find the energy to so much as look away. Already doubting and trying to find an explanation for what must have been some strange magic working on its own just before his eyes moments before. It had felt so wonderful, something like an embrace that made all the things wrong in the world fade away. And he was now once more cast back into reality which was cold and dull and dead.
He stared at the place the wound was, even until after he could no longer quite make it out in the deepening darkness. He could feel it consciously now, the coldness once again sinking into him from that point, spreading through his body and making his chest feel tight and heavy. Yet the sweet feeling still lingered, reassuring and calming him enough to simply lay there and wait for the cold to reach a bearable level. Waiting for his body to find its strength and energy again.
The room that had always been so deafeningly, frustratingly quiet and empty, filled with nothing but him, now seemed somehow changed and different. A sweet gentle magic had found its way in, had lit him up, had seemed to be healing him. He was sure of it now, and somehow he couldn’t seem able to take his mind off of it.
And even if it was part of a curse, something Jaejoong had used to repair the damage done, he still thought it intriguing, beautiful. Something so different than his usual magic yet still somehow so similar to the man himself. But just the thought of Jaejoong alone threatened to unleash all the barely suppressed emotions that accompanied it, and was enough for him to want to forget about it. He quickly shoved away the strange longing feeling of wanting to feel it again, of wanting to see the sun glowing on his own body, of never wanting that feeling to stop.
He shook his head slowly, at long last turning his eyes away to sweep across the blackness filling the room instead. All magic was wrong and evil, he knew that fully well, especially since the sweet touches were nothing but a temporary balm to veil the horror of true intentions. The ugly mark itself a clear indication of the curse thrown at him. In the end, even the false beauty of that peaceful magic hurt him as it reminded him just how dismal his reality was, and this was most likely just what Jaejoong had intended. Anything beautiful here was just the same like that. An ugly lie.
Everything was dark and quiet. Like always the silence pressed into his ears, making his thoughts too loud, too real. His body ached, and now that he wasn’t distracted by the lingering magic, he became aware of the way his shoulders and neck were throbbingly hot. He tried to move slightly and winced as pain flared up instantly, his skin feeling so raw and burnt.
He looked down at himself again, trying to see through the dark. The light was insufficient to make it out clearly, but his shoulders seemed to be slightly darker than the rest of his skin. But he couldn’t deny the smell, the one that turned his stomach sickeningly. Flesh charred and burned open. And it was his own.
He struggled to move again, grimacing as just even moving his arms seemed to hurt the burns, moaning silently as he finally managed to sit up. Ever so carefully, he reached up to brush gingerly at the place his neck hurt. His fingers came away sticky. Burned and bloody, his body mangled and marked, through he couldn’t really remember much more than Jaejoong pinning him down.
He bit down on a broken sigh, trying to stay calm and push all the anxiety and pain away once more now that it had surfaced when he was beaten down and weak. Feelings that were unwanted and pathetic. It hurt terribly. And he was so unbelievably scared. But he could’t let Jaejoong win. He wouldn’t ever let him have the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to him. Gotten him so badly he almost couldn’t repress the fear this time.
He was completely shaken by the ferocity and pure violence Jaejoong had attacked him with. Nothing like the curses he usually so calmly planned and carried out, nothing like his usual calculating movements, the controlled experiments with that unchanging mask of a face.
No, it had been raw and real. Eyes alive and screaming. The hands that burned him full of emotional anger. The voice that usually sang sultry quiet notes rising so loud it had crushed his ears and deafened him. The voice he didn’t recognize, the one shocking him with powerful gusts of mine- mine- you’re mine!.
It seemed ridiculous, nearly impossible that those words had come from the icy emotionless man. But he could remember just enough that he didn’t think he could ever forget the look on his face as he’d yelled them into his face. An expression that bound him. Words that meant he’d never be free again. And again, he was struggling to deny the fear crawling up his throat once more, breath hitching and eyes squeezing closed.
It took a long time for him to calm down enough until his breath passed unhindered and easy. Another long uncountable time for him to slowly struggle to his feet, shoulders screaming in protest. Three steps across the small space until his stretched out searching hands met the material of the door.
He needed out. A breath of fresh air, the vastness of night enveloping him and giving a valid reason for that horrid depressing feeling of being so small and insignificant, unimportant and forgotten. Because when faced with the grandeur of nature, it was okay to feel such things. Here in the small room they suffocated him and threatened to make him curl into himself until he felt like he would disappear.
Not only that, but he still couldn’t destroy the almost wild crazy hope that today would be the day it would appear at last. On a day he wanted, needed it so badly. A nightly vigil that had begun the day he’d left home, the way he’d watch the deep black velvet sky and try to remember how the moon rose, how it looked lighting everything white-silver. Every night he waited and watched, hoping for something that never came.
By now, the absence of the moon was almost a strange sort of comfort to him. He rationalized that it was impossible for the moon to vanish from the heavens...meaning this life was not real, meaning it was all just a dream or fantasy that felt longer than life. But he didn’t know why he couldn’t just wake up from it.
Even so, he still found himself wanting to see it, as if the moon would be able to break the spell, shatter the nightmare apart and set him free. Freeing him, freeing the whole cursed land. Bring him back to his real life, his home. His Yunho-
His fingers clutched tightly around the door handle, whole body going still as his mind promptly went blank. It was locked. Locked...as it hadn’t been for countless weeks. Almost in disbelief he tried to turn it again, rattling it uselessly, before suddenly pushing hard and wrenching at it with all the strength he could gather. It just couldn’t be locked! Not now...not now when he needed so desperately to get out, the need and desire striking him with a nearly physical force at just the idea that it was now denied him.
With both hands still wrapped tightly around the handle, Changmin stood as if petrified before the solidly unmoving door. Disbelief was only too quickly plunging into panicked dread, because he’d gotten so used to the small freedom of being able to go outside almost as he wished. He’d gotten used to something that wasn’t his right anymore, something he’d almost been starting to take for granted again like a fool.
He’d known ever since the first time he’d found it unlocked, the very next day after he’d made the attempt to escape and been caught like an animal, that it wasn’t an accident. Ever since the Sorcerer started disappearing during the day, leaving Jaejoong behind to watch him, something had changed.
He hadn’t been sure if the man was taunting him with the lure of the sun and sky, daring him to try to run again, or mocking him with a false sense of freedom, reminding him only too clearly that he was a prisoner, a slave and that he would never truly be able to leave.
Changmin wasn’t stupid, nor had the other done a very good job of concealing himself if he’d even tried to at all. He’d felt the eyes following him, unable to avoid them for a single moment no matter how far away he walked. He’d seen the way Jaejoong merely stood there like a shadow, like something that didn’t even exist, yet somehow always remaining eerily in view.
It freaked him out because he knew the man wasn’t watching him merely to ensure he didn’t escape. He wasn’t guarding or monitoring, no, he was just watching him. Studying him like some sort of sick twisted hunter playing with the prey that he knew couldn’t escape him.
Just as he would do during the dead of the night when he’d suffocate Changmin’s small prison of a room with his presence, never moving nor speaking or doing anything but just looking at him. Daily and nightly, Changmin always felt hunted, always so cornered and watched, always able to feel eyes on him but not able to see from where, and it was wearing down on his mental stability.
He knew that even if Jaejoong didn’t follow him outside every day, he wouldn’t have tried to run again. He knew Jaejoong wouldn’t unlock the door unless there was something else there to trap him, obviously trusting to whatever magic he’d cast to keep him safely prisoner. He knew full well he couldn't run or escape the magic surrounding the place, just as he could no longer escape the man himself, just as he knew that now Jaejoong, not the house, was the truth of what he couldn’t run away from.
He hadn’t been able to consciously piece it together until now. But with the words mine still lingering in his ears, echoing softly from the heart of the darkness itself, the door formidable and shut before him, it was only too painfully obvious.
Jaejoong would never let him go. Wanted him for something. And he couldn’t even bear to imagine what it could be for fear of stumbling on a truth he didn’t want to know or acknowledge.
For even if the past few weeks had been filled with as much light and sun as the first month had been despair and darkness, he didn’t think he could ever get used to the spells, the lack of control, the pain, being a puppet to the magic words and songs his mind still had trouble understanding.
The man was still too mysterious and frightening even after all these days. Each time the hood fell to pool around his shoulders to reveal the pale face, he was now constantly shrouded in the sourceless light, the unearthly glow Changmin had come to associate as the manifestation of his powers, a whiteness so pale it was glowing translucence. All soft and smudged on the edges. Each time he fell victim to his magic, or his songs, it made the other glow more brightly, fierce and terrifying in his surreal beauty.
He soon used it to gauge the strength of Jaejoong’s spells, or to what extent he was being yet again drained of energy and turned into a weak cowering mess. The brighter it glowed, the worse he felt. It guessed the light must be the magic powers shrouding him, filling him, an actual part of him.
Somehow, as dangerous as he was, Changmin still found it achingly beautiful...and fragile, and somehow removed from everything around him. Lovely, yes, but inherently unnatural, wrong. Something that shouldn’t even exist. Like an unexplained bending of nature to accommodate the rare mutation. Not that he was able to understand or explain the reality of magic in the first place, but he couldn’t help but try to categorize with what he knew and believed.
All at the same time, Jaejoong was enchanting, literally, and he seemed fully aware of it. Every movement was graceful and purposeful, every word and soft song from those curving lips wrapping him more firmly in the paralyzing cocoon he found himself in whenever Jaejoong was looking at him. Even as he hated it, feared it, even as he fought it as often as he could, it felt more real than anything else.
It was slowly becoming his reality, and the way seeing the face beneath that black hood forced him into a daze, compelled him to stare and stare, unable to see anything but the man before him was slowly making him forget everything and anything else. Forgetting what normal people looked like. Forgetting what was once important to him, forgetting the faces of the people who gave him the hope and strength to carry on.
He knew the other abused the power he held over him, and it scared him that recently it seemed to go deeper than that. The fleeting rampant emotions he sometimes caught caged behind his eyes so intense and too raw. He knew he was helpless against it, that fighting back only seemed to encourage and ignite the other further. He knew Jaejoong was waiting for him to give in, to finally give up, and he was already starting to come to accept the fact that that moment may be closer than the magician knew.
Moreover, that cold impassive mask had been slipping more often, a feral light in his eyes something Changmin couldn’t understand, something he didn’t want to think about much less look at one more time. It reminded him too much of the dark glint so often sparking from the Black Sorcerer’s eyes, and he never let himself forget that they were of the same blood. They were both just as evil, even if Jaejoong didn’t radiate that terrifying pressure that always had him nearly blacking out the way his father’s mere presence did.
It wasn’t lost on Changmin how Jaejoong seemed to nearly always be the one to perform the magic spells, horrible nasty things that hurt, torture or near death, things that had him wishing he could die, ending in nothing but more pain and tears. He’d never cried so much in his life, and each tear seemed to rip away at his pride that much more. Not that he had much of anything left, but he still hated the way black eyes would follow each stubborn drop dragged out of him. The same way it focused greedily on drops of red blood they drew from him time and again.
If not physical torture, it would be the dreaded sick feeling of his mind being manipulated and invaded rudely. They could make him do anything, they could take anything. And with each occurrence, the slowly manifesting feelings of horror and hate would fester and bubble like ugly thick tar coating his insides. Unobstructed, pure mind numbing hatred for the cruel manipulation, for being treated like nothing but a body to be exploited and used. He was sure now that Jaejoong was just as bad if not worse than his father, and the cruelty was just buried beneath cold nothingness, hidden under the hood if not hidden behind the beautiful ivory mask of his face.
That lack of emotion or reaction would freeze his heart in his chest at the apparent inability to care one way or another as he suffered and bled before his eyes. He didn’t seem human. And he wondered if magicians were actually human at all. He wasn’t sure if that empty facade was any better than the sick enjoyment that shone in his father’s eyes, as neither spelled anything good for him.
Up until today, he’d futilely tried to comfort himself with the idea that Jaejoong didn’t necessarily seem to enjoy hurting him, not with the way he allowed him a bit of freedom, and not to mention the odd occurrences when he’d envelope him with that soft gentle calm, absence of any feeling that he’d caught him with the very first day he’d been taken as their slave. It would happen during some of the more nasty experiments, spells that had thrown Changmin’s body into shock, panic or pain making him hyperventilate or spasm too horribly for them to gauge the effects of the spell accurately.
He supposed it wouldn’t help them to cause him to lose his mind or else to damage him too severely, but he bitterly thought that would only be true until he was no longer of any use. He knew someday they would let the magic make short work of him until he was finally and at long last dead. Or that was what he secretly wished for. Because with the way Jaejoong continued to shadow him, watching him time after time, he was sure he’d never escape even in death.
Drowning in the charcoal black eyes was a swooping dancing moment where he lost himself completely, each time returning to himself and he felt smaller, as if some small part of him had been stolen away. Or destroyed.
There wouldn’t be much of him left soon enough. He was still trying to come to terms with the growing certainty that this wouldn’t end in simple death for him. That scared him more than the pain or torture, the fact that his very soul was what Jaejoong seemed to desire so strongly. The fact that Jaejoong could take it away from him at any time, the fact that he would be helpless to fight it, would have to give it up. And he was terrified. He wasn’t ready to die like that.
He didn’t like to dwell on any of it for long, because he couldn’t justify or rationalize the way he’d calm down and accept everything whenever he heard the sweet sad tones of Jaejoong’s voice. Or the way those same ebony eyes now haunted him in his dreams just as often as Yoochun did. He knew he was bewitched, but that didn’t make the feelings any less real.
Somehow he’d come full circle again, and he shuddered as he willed the draining cold thoughts away, focusing instead on the sweet warmth that he’d now found with just the name alone: Yoochun.
Yoochun...Yoochun who was all gentle smiles and kind eyes. So sweet and beautiful it hurt somewhere deep down in his chest. Because he wanted everything about the man to be real, wanted to believe in his appearance so badly, but was scared to even give the thought a chance lest he be taken away from him, too. Lest Yoochun be broken and violated, dirtied and crushed, just like him. And there was no way for him to know what had happened to Yoochun after Jaejoong had taken Changmin away.
His hands trembled, and he snatched them away from the metal of the handle warmed by his hands. He didn’t want to think about what could have happened, didn’t want to imagine what curse they would have used on him. What his body would look like trampled, lacerated and bloodied...he stumbled halfway across the room, limbs starting to go numb as he couldn’t get enough air to breathe.
And worst of all, it would all be his fault. Yoochun had come there to find him, and there was no way for him to even hope for mercy, not with the way Jaejoong had so thoroughly punished Changmin himself.
Finding his way back to his bed, Changmin sank down onto it, unable to lie down comfortably with his shoulders throbbing and burning like they were on fire. He huddled awkwardly, the icy coldness clutching to his chest seeming to sink deeper into his skin as he closed his eyes to the black pit of the room, to the remorse and the guilt, to the worry and the way his heart sank and sank with nothing there to stop the dread curling around his whole being.
Breathing deeply and forcing the cold despair away, swallowing the sickening regret, he tried to think instead of the way Yoochun’s hands had been so amazingly warm. He tried to remember exactly how his eyes had seemed to dance, so alive and spirited, so beautifully real. Even if he never left this room again, even if he never saw the striking man again, he would keep those few moments as something preciously his own. A glimpse and reminder of what true freedom was, and it nearly broke his heart, his spirit.
As much as Jaejoong took everything else from him, he still was able to find glimmers of safety or warmth within his memories and dreams. His heart constricted now at the realization that if only for one gloriously sunny afternoon, Yoochun had become just that, someone real that he could remember and no longer merely dream about.
Yet someone that would remain just a memory like his brother, like his mother. Someone that would never see the way his shoulders shook with repressed sobs, never see the way he was so horribly alone. Never see that when he cried, his eyes no longer had any tears to give.
**
Three days later and Changmin was a pathetic heap shivering beneath the threadbare blanket. Three days at the end of which he’d hardly been able to lift himself from the bed. The burning heat of the ugly burns curling around his shoulders grown far stronger than the heat of the small pale chunk of sunlight he now followed across the room with sunken feverish eyes.
The first day, he’d managed to drag himself into its pale illumination only to reveal the nauseating sight of large red boils that were already beginning to fester. The single glance alone had him down on his knees, heaves twisting his stomach painfully until his body emptied the meager contents of his stomach onto the floor.
He’d sunk down moments later to press his flushed cheek to the cold dirty floor, fingers searching pathetically for something to cling to as he slowly regained his breath. It only took a single blink of weary eyes now facing the window to suddenly remember what the sunlight had done to him the day before.
He almost thought it hadn’t really happened, just part of another dream or else a figment of his own imagination which was steadily getting wilder, more crazed. But he still couldn’t deny or forget the unnatural way the wound didn’t actually hurt, merely chilling him, a jolt of cold stinging his fingers with every accidental brush against it. Something cursed he struggled to forget about, preferring to focus on the burns that were something his mind knew, something he knew would heal with time.
But from the moment he shifted closer, turning his body to catch the light, he couldn’t resist its soft beckoning call and was lost once again. The next few hours he’d forgotten all about the pain and the doubts, as the sun glowed against the cold mark, reflected white like the pureness of the sun glinting off snow, delightful and lighting a spark within him like a shimmer he could feel ripple through his whole body.
And after the sunlight had slowly passed, he’d rolled over slowly, sated and content, slumped over awkwardly with his cheek resting on the floor until the dazed happy bliss brought by the magical moment had finally faded away. He had noticed distractedly that the wound now seemed a little smaller, slowly closing a little more in on itself, but that wasn’t as important as the small spark of heat that now seemed lodged in his chest.
Because it felt like part of the sun had been captured within him, fighting away the lingering cold that was already fading into a bearable chill he could ignore for the fire burning his shoulders.
The night had been long and dark, a slight fever making everything melt and stretch grotesquely into nightmares and yawning black holes that plunged out all light and blinded him. He knew the next time he woke that the burns were getting infected, and that Jaejoong was not going to come in and heal him. That the magic healing of the sun couldn’t be something of Jaejoong’s doing, but he was too out of it and in pain to really care to understand what that could mean.
The second day and he’d only been able to gather enough strength to crawl clumsily from the bed to where the sun slipped quietly into his room, inviting and fleeing in its silent presence. An impersonal offer of comfort for his body that was now growing too weak, throat dry and parched and begging for water, each movement and he had to pause until the spinning of the room calmed into a more manageable tilt.
The glowing magical brilliance of the sun on the cursed spot this time brought tears to his eyes as the feeling was now starting to remind him of the way he felt seeing the moon reflected in Yunho’s eyes. A silver coin dancing across the surface of the moonlit lake.
Once more lost in the darkness of the room, he’d been in too much pain and despair to do anything more than drop heavily back to the floor. He couldn’t bear the thought of the impending darkness of the night, inescapable excruciatingly long hours of dark and cold that lay before him, loath to let the feeling of the magic slip away with the sun, even as this time it left his skin smooth and whole in its wake.
Sweat broke out on his forehead as he only managed to climb onto the bed after the third try, his shoulders just burning until he couldn’t even see anymore, unbearable in their unrelenting agony.
He wasn’t sure if the world had finally stopped spinning or if he just couldn’t see it anymore through the fuzzy cottony lightness filling his head - he’d been unable to open his eyes lest the way the world flipped him in circles throw his stomach into painful dry heaves.
The second night and he couldn’t see anything but black. There was no sound but his own ragged broken breaths, no color but the red stinging heat behind his eyes, no nightly visits with Jaejoong staring at him through the dark. He was so alone.
Nothing but just him and his pain. Nothing to deny or invalidate the way he was now isolated and forgotten. Hunger gnawed at him as he twisted and turned pathetically where he lay, no strength to as much as open his eyes, as the sun passed the horizon of the third day.
Three excruciating days later, and the sound of the lock rattling in the door jarred loudly against his sensitive ears. He moaned, trying to hide himself from the sound, trying to move away to hide himself from what would most likely come through the door, but he couldn’t do more than turn his head weakly away to stare at the wall before his face.
He listened as if half in a dream, the sound of the door swinging open sounding much too far away, echoing oddly in his dizzy head. He could feel him enter, even without turning to see it with his own eyes.
Never had he let Jaejoong walk in on him laying down. Never had he allowed himself to be found that way, helpless, submissive, and vulnerable. But now he could do nothing more than screw his eyes closed and fervently wish the other was just an apparition. That he would just for once go away and let him die just like this. He didn’t even want to be healed anymore.
He listened to the way footsteps crossed the space tentatively, slowly. Then a pause in which all thoughts began to swirl and condense into a low aching throb at the base of his neck. Jaejoong was trying to get in, but in that moment Changmin hadn’t the slightest desire to fight him off.
Not because he was giving in, but in his pained delirium he felt nothing but loathing disgust at the very idea of using that light in his mind to block Jaejoong out. That even having it, being conscious of it and almost able to use it was making him more like Jaejoong than he’d realized, turning into the very thing he hated and despised.
So he waited, headache growing into a sharp pulse through the center of his skull, making it hard to think and hard to react to the hands that suddenly tore the blanket away from his body.
Then cold hands were curling around his arm, pulling at him, and he was too exhausted to be able to resist, rolling over onto his back and shutting his eyes so that the wouldn’t have to see the man he’d been free of for those three agonizing days.
Hands were pulling at his shredded shirt, tearing it open until cool air swept across him. A gasp from the other and he couldn’t resist letting his eyes peel open at last.
But whatever emotion had caused the sound was already wiped clean from his face, and Jaejoong was simply staring down at him with the same empty yet sharp expression as always. His eyes were so dark, like two black endless holes boring through his head, and Changmin shivered, shrinking away from the sight that was too realistic even while knowing it to be part of his own delusional paranoia.
Jaejoong continued to stare at him, eyes raking over his face, the mangled burns scarring his skin, the expanse of his naked torso. He didn’t let anything show, and Changmin didn’t know if he was admiring his work or looking for something else. He didn’t care, struggling to even keep his eyes open against the heavy pull of pure exhaustion, his body too weak to give him anything.
His muscles seized up suddenly as an icy cold touch pressed against his chest. His eyes flew open in reaction to catch the way Jaejoong snapped his hand back to himself, staring at Changmin with wide eyes. It was as if the touch had given him a charged shock, though one made entirely of ice, and Changmin began to tremble as his body remembered only too well the crushing bone chilling cold he’d woken to days prior.
He didn’t know where the energy came from, didn’t even consciously think about moving, but found himself suddenly pushing up, scuttling backwards across the bed to just distance himself as far as possible from that horrid touch. The wall met his back, blocking his escape any further, and he pressed himself against it firmly, gasping for air as both hands clutched at the frozen knot only just now finally melting into his body heat.
Jaejoong watched him without a sound. His own hands were clenched tightly into fists, and Changmin knew that the other had felt it, too. He couldn’t understand why it looked as if Jaejoong hadn’t expected it nor intended for it to happen, because one rule he’d had beaten into him over and over was that nothing Jaejoong ever did was an accident.
The other took a shaky breath and had Changmin not been so on edge and tense, eyes fixed unblinkingly on every single aspect of the other, he would have missed the minute way Jaejoong’s body seemed to be shaking as well.
What was going on? Why were the hands that once burned him now so cold?
Jaejoong seemed to be thinking, hesitating, eyes continually studying Changmin’s chest as if he could see something there. Changmin felt uncomfortable and exposed before that gaze, wrapping his arms around himself to hide from those prying unnerving eyes. His brain was still sluggish and muddled but it was only too easy to make the connection, to remember the ugly wound that was now no longer there.
Was Jaejoong looking for it? Could he somehow see traces of what it had done to him? Did he know how the sun had made it glow? Did he know that the sun had healed him? He didn’t understand.
He was slowly regaining his body heat and with it came a sense of himself, dragged forcefully out of the muffling hands of fatigue as the intensity of the situation called for his attention. His body was already going on autopilot as he tensed, ready to be attacked somehow, ready to give up all thought and be led by instincts.
It was quiet and still as neither of them moved. All of a few heartbeats before suddenly Jaejoong was surging forwards, crawling onto the bed and coming towards him.
Without meaning to, without his wanting to, he could instantly feel the pressure in his head of the strange power coming to life, urging him to fight, ready to come into action even as he struggled to suppress it.
Jaejoong’s hands reached for him. “How did you do it?” A rushed whisper coming before the split second when their eyes met and Changmin just knew it was going to hurt, that he would once more be forced under the power of the other.
No pause to wait for an answer before hands took hold of his wrists. They were cold, freezing his skin and already turning his arms numb as Jaejoong held on tightly, easily overpowering his attempt to twist out of his grasp. Weak from malnutrition, pain, and exhaustion there was only so much he could do, but he refused to let the other manhandle him, not understanding why the other was being so physical rather than trying to take over his mind like usual.
They grappled with each other, Changmin slowly loosing all feeling in his arms as the cold seeped through his veins, and he jerked his body wildly, finally managing to knee Jaejoong in the ribs.
The blow knocked the air out of him with a surprised huff, and he curled forward reflexively, tugging down on Changmin’s arms and dragging them together as his body pitched forward into Changmin.
His face crashed against Changmin’s collar bone, body falling against him as he hadn’t released Changmin’s hands to catch himself, and the small sound that filled the room was caught somewhere between surprise and something uncannily like fear.
The moment Jaejoong pressed against him it was as if he were plunged into icy water, breath catching and air freezing in his throat. Before he could even comprehend it or try to push the other off, Changmin’s body spasmed as suddenly heat was churning up from deep inside him, flooding his body and pressing up through his skin to the surface.
Heat pulsed out of him in waves, combating the cold and eating it up greedily. From freezing to burning up all in a matter of seconds and for a moment they were both too stunned to even react.
Changmin couldn’t control it, didn’t know what was happening or what horrid magic was now coursing through his body, but Jaejoong was suddenly latching onto him, fingers slipping away from his arms to curl his arms tightly around Changmin’s waist instead. Pulling him flush against himself as his face turned to press intimately into Changmin’s neck.
He was soaking up the heat, seeming to draw it out of Changmin’s body and into himself. Just like he’d done many countless times before, but never like this. Never had Changmin’s body offered it up in such a gushing steady flow, never had Jaejoong clung to him like this, and he felt dizzy as if it were blood leaving his system rather than the heat that seemed to pour from his very core.
Jaejoong’s arms tightened around him, holding him prisoner against himself as Changmin’s vision swam, body unresponsive as each wave of heat churned through him then was torn almost physically away, filling up the gaping endless coldness that was Jaejoong.
Changmin tried to stop it, to move away, to do anything, but he could feel himself fading, body gone weak and slumping as the flowing exchange didn’t stop. Too much, too much too fast, draining him of everything, even after Jaejoong’s icy skin began to warm up against him, even after the short cool breaths of air gusting across his neck became thickly hot.
Blackness began to cloud over his eyes, sponging away all color, and he was unable to feel his body any longer, nothing but the terrifying sensation of himself getting sucked out. There was a muted ringing in his ears which muffled the soft breathy moan that ran along the skin of his neck.
He felt so small and weak, as if he were shrinking, becoming transparent nothing. Letting himself fade away as suddenly there was nothing else to give and the blinding hot fire within him was abruptly and horribly extinguished. He felt his heart labor heavily, too slow and unbearably hard. One more struggled attempt, painful and suffocating as it thumped slowly once more. And then it stopped.
And he was sinking, unable to feel or hear anything but the soft breathy sigh of free that was alive and swirling around him, floating through his whole body to lift him up and carry him gently away.
*******
Jaejoong lay panting against Changmin’s body, eyes fallen closed as he could do nothing but just feel, slowly coming down from the intense mind-blowing pleasure of being overtaken by warm heat, filled to the brim body and soul with nothing but pure bliss.
Each breath was too short, catching in his chest that was trying to remember how to breathe air once more rather than blinding energy. He tried to slow his heart beat, slowly recovering the feeling of his physical body, still tingling and so gloriously alive with the sensation.
Nothing felt more satisfying and perfect than regaining himself in that moment. Sated and warm. He couldn’t bear to move or even open his eyes, savoring the feeling, breathing out such a blessed sigh of relief at the absence of that hard cold thing that had sat so heavy and ugly deep within him for the past few days.
He almost couldn’t believe it was really gone. Changmin had melted it...destroyed it as he filled him up with golden power, banishing the frozen dead coldness that had sunk so heavily into his bones, filling him with life once more and he clutched at the body still wrapped in his arms.
It was really gone. He was himself again. Safe and whole once more. He felt strong and alive, even despite the fact that his powers were still bound tightly by the spell of his father. He didn’t need them now since everything was restored. He had connected and touched Changmin’s energy without it...he’d been able to drain Changmin without it...the cold sinister nothing had risen up the moment he’d just made contact with Changmin’s skin and stabbed deep into Changmin’s center, forcing the other to literally break open, spilling out everything directly into Jaejoong.
And his eyes suddenly blinked open in shock as he realized what had happened. None of it had been under his control. None of it had been his power or even him in any sense of the word. He had done nothing. No. Through him, the thing had torn Changmin open, forced its way to try and steal his warmth, and then been strangled and burned to nothing as Changmin’s power reacted, raging and tearing it to pieces like a wild force.
He quickly pulled back slightly, looking at Changmin with his heart in his throat, the feeling of fear he hated so much making his heart suddenly pound painfully in his chest.
The unknown coldness had attacked again even though he’d struggled to fight it away for days, three insufferably long horrible days in which he’d avoided Changmin at all costs. Too scared to enter the room to be met with the stale coldness of death, only too easily able to imagine the sight of Changmin’s body torn open and rotting on the floor. Too scared to enter the room and have the thing overpower him once more, attacking and striking down wildly without him being able to control or stop it.
He’d been too scared of the strange way something deep within him seemed unable to do anything but call for Changmin. A gut wrenching longing to feel his warmth, an unbearable craving he’d never experienced before. Three days of telling himself he was just doing nothing as his father had instructed, three days of excuses and running away, three days in which he realized it was the longest he’d ever gone without seeing Changmin.
Three days that were so horribly cold. In which he began to lose himself. And Three days in which the world as he knew it crumpled as he realized Changmin had somehow become so terrifyingly important to him.
The relief at finding Changmin alive had only lasted as long as until he’d seen the horrible wound to be healed and gone from his body. Lasted as long as until merely touching him had caused the thing to suddenly rouse, expanding inside him and shooting through his body to sting Changmin with cold.
And he hadn’t even cared for a few minutes, swept away and not even thinking that he should stop it, because Changmin had been so warm, so deliciously hot and beckoning for him, made him go blind with the instinctive need to take it and have it get rid of the ice freezing him from the inside out. To take the heat that filled the empty coldness until he was whole once more.
Nothing mattered more than Changmin’s healing energy, and he’d taken it greedily, savage and primal. Something completing him and driving away that huge nothingness inside of him that threatened to suffocate and drown him in its vastness. Just touching Changmin and it had resonated deep within him, that the thing he’d lost, the thing he craved and needed to find completion was the golden heat of Changmin’s life energy.
There hadn’t been a moments hesitation nor question. He’d taken it. All of it. And beneath him now, Changmin’s body was cold. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Once again he’d attacked him, come back into himself to find Changmin looking dead and broken beneath him. Horridly like so many of the countless bodies he’d abused and broken, ravaged and murdered before he’d thrown them out like garbage to rot and decay behind the house.
And he wasn’t ready to see Changmin like that. Regret twined its fingers around his throat and squeezed, choking and suffocating him as he panicked. He should never have come in here. He was terrified of what he could now no longer feel, but somehow he just knew that it wasn’t gone or destroyed like he’d thought mere minutes before, just submerged and hidden again, suppressed by Changmin’s power.
But the energy would fade. The heat would leave him like it always did, and then he would be too weak to fight it off or keep it away. It would come back for him, take him over again, more strongly more completely, as he was unable to deny the way he felt a piece of himself lost each time it struck out. It stole something from him, part of his very self, and cast it away to melt into the cold nothingness.
It terrified him. He couldn’t understand it, didn’t know what it was. And he needed Changmin there to help keep it away, to keep him safe.
“Ch-Changmin-” It came out a hushed broken sounding whisper. The first time he ever dared to say the man’s name that wasn’t laced with the power of a spell.
Changmin didn’t respond. And Jaejoong’s hands shook as he reached for him. He was afraid of what would happen when they touched, afraid of things he couldn’t control. But he needed him.
His fingers brushed along Changmin’s cheek and he bit his lip as he waited for something powerful and unknown to crash through everything he thought was his own control.
But nothing came. Nothing but an aching sort of pain in his chest, something hard to identify or pinpoint exactly where and how it hurt. Somewhere deep within, where his heart was.
“Changmin.” He said again, unable to stop the way his fingers trembled against cool skin. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t be responsible for losing him like this. He pressed fingers into his neck, finding the ugly marks that he put there suddenly somehow terrifying and repulsive, seeking out the pulse the growing dread tight in his stomach said he wouldn’t find.
But it was there. Fainter than it had ever been before. And his body suddenly went weak, unable to hold himself up and not trying to fight it anymore. Sinking back down onto the unmoving form, he pressed his head against his chest to hear each infinitely slow, faint heart beat.
The sound was oddly calming, drawing him in like soft hands pressing against his body, a feeling so close and intimate that every thing else faded away all at once. The sound was soft yet steady, thumping into his head, thumping into his own chest that felt stuffy and tight.
None of the fierceness nor resistance he associated with Changmin, the fight he enjoyed and liked so much about him. Something fragile that made him seem so devastatingly human. The fact that if that small sound alone were to stop, then Changmin would be gone.
Jaejoong took a slow steadying breath, thrown off and slightly dizzy with the power of the sound. That something so faint and weak, so unreliable, could make life, could make Changmin, was starting to confuse him and conflicted with all he knew first hand about life and death.
The man was always so strong and alive. But here and now, the only thing keeping him there was that tiny weak beat. And the moment he thought of it as something amazingly rare and precious he shut the thought out. Realizing he’d lost himself to the sway of fragile humanness, he quickly shook the unnatural feelings away and sat up.
There was nothing more valuable than the energy and light that was Changmin’s, the only thing that Jaejoong cared about. Especially now as it seemed to be the only thing that could fight away the terror lurking inside of him.
“Changmin.” It was a command this time, drawing upon the energy soaring through his veins and seeming to envelop his whole being.
“Changmin.” He repeated the name, willing the golden energy to spill back across Changmin, to slip through the dull darkness filling him up, run along his veins with sweet light.
He wished so badly to just delve inside, to pull him out roughly so he’d have no choice but to listen to him and follow him out. He wanted to force the spark to rekindle in his eyes, to make him glow with the glaring brightness of anger and passion directed at him.
His arms moved almost of their own accord, finding their way around Changmin’s body once more, lifting him and drawing him close as he willed the warmth to find its way back to its giver.
Changmin sighed into his shoulder, a quiet sound that made his whole body go still, breath catching in his chest. The warmth filling him, spilling off him in waves to envelop Changmin drew them even closer together, each breath and Changmin’s chest rose to meet his own.
Jaejoong held his breath as he drew back slowly, just enough to look down into his face. Mere inches separated their faces and he watched entranced as eyelashes fluttered, Changmin’s lips parting slightly as another small sigh left his mouth to ghost across Jaejoong’s cheek.
Then his eyes were opening, blinking blearily as he searched for something. Found Jaejoong’s eyes instead. Locked gazes with his own, held him captivated with a gaze that was deep and soft.
The moment their eyes met, the moment he felt himself falling into the sweet warmth shining from their depths, he felt as if he were bathed in sunlight, something that made the world fade around him until nothing but Changmin existed before him.
And it was everything that he’d been seeking, everything the yawning empty void within him had been craving, everything that had already been placated and filled. And it was no longer about the feel of that missing element resonating within him, no, it was something infinitely more. Breathtaking and a faint ache growing deep within him.
Something that made it hard to breathe as he swore he could feel each beat of his own heart stuttering into life as it struggled to tell him a secret. And he felt the fate of the world depended on him understanding what it had to say.
**
Changmin didn’t know what it was that reached for him, catching him, finding him a midst the soft floating nothing and leading him from it into a warm embrace. It was even sweeter than the sun that had warmed him the last three days. It was heady and tingled through his whole body. Soft blooming sparkles and heat trickling down his spine as Jaejoong held him even closer yet, cradling him with surprisingly gentle hands.
He blinked his eyes open to find those ebony eyes looking directly at him, boring into him and watching him. Seeing nothing but him, yet they were never as he’d ever seen them before. Something hesitantly helpless was shining in their depths. Unsure and confused, what was once too cold and proud, now something like not knowing how. Something so incredibly human that Changmin found himself mesmerized with the change it brought to the face he’d come to fear.
The body pressed against his own was now so warm. The hands wrapped around his waist were steady and strong. A touch that didn’t hurt. Eyes that didn’t take. A voice that didn’t curse as a whisper of air danced across his face.
“Changmin.” Big black eyes never once leaving his own. Holding him captive with the new infinity broken open and glistening in their depths. “Changmin-ah.” A voice he almost didn’t recognize, that didn’t sound anything like Jaejoong. Saying his name in such a way that it almost didn't seem to be his own name any more. Such a way, as if it were something spellbinding, precious, something...he held dear.
He felt himself drawn into the dark gaze, falling into the feel of his name like the sun kissing skin. Like the warmth of eyes lit by candles, reaching across the dark to touch and hold him close. And he wanted to give into the sweet feeling, give into the feeling of being cared for, loved. It felt so incredibly wonderful, so real, and his body ached for it, his heart cried for it.
And he wanted it to stop.
*******
twelve (a)~