Fic: Daybreak [DBSK]
Title: Daybreak
Author: verocity
Fandom: DBSK
Featuring: Changmin x Yunho
Rating: PG-13 for the cursing
Genre: Gen, Wartime AU
Warnings: Mentions of violence, nothing really graphic.
Wordcount: 4,600~
A/N: For isaofdoom, whose characters are so vibrant that I can't do them any justice. I hope you enjoy this remix/prequel of Seize the Day. Originally posted here.
Summary: There's no point, Changmin thinks, in getting to know someone in the middle of a war.
The news reached them just as Changmin was contemplating lobbing his last grenade over the blockade.
He knew it wasn't a smart move. He last heard gunfire three days ago, and even then the suppression wave wasn't as enthusiastic as he expected. Eight days into the fray and you grew into the habit of survival, of noting the little patterns today that helped make sure you'd notice them tomorrow. The last wave of gunfire against their camp had sounded… half-hearted.
After that, things got boring very quickly. Hence the grenade and the thoughtful contemplation.
"Most people would be happy not being shot at," Yunho whispered tensely as his eyes followed the short curve the grenade travelled being tossed between Changmin's hands. The pin was still there but that didn't reassure as much, not when the person holding it was prone to fits of insanity.
"You grow to miss it after a while," Changmin said wistfully. They say gunfire did wonders to the mind: increased alertness, gave a singularity to focus on that could be used as a bridge to enlightenment. Sadly, this bridge and the enlightenment it offered often went unnoticed as the mind being shot at tended to focus singularly on the fact that it was being shot at. Between choosing an instant of enlightenment and a lifetime of ignorance, Changmin - as many before him - chose the moment that lasted a lifetime.
Yunho rubbed his temples, clearly thinking no words would suffice that it took him eight days to realize he holed up with an adrenaline junky. He was wrong, of course, but getting to know someone in the middle of a war was never a good idea. Especially when they were stationed to defend the front blockade.
"Hey guys?" Junsu's wheezy voice crackled from the handheld radio. "You did hear me, right? You guys still alive out there?"
"Copy that," Yunho said, loud and clear. Changmin rolled his eyes. Trust Yunho to play into the stereotypes. But maybe a different type of adrenaline could be blamed this time. Disbelief, then euphoria. "I guess you know what that means, right?" Yunho said to Changmin, eyes bright and only hinting at the exhaustion and, just a thin layer underneath, that this is it, this is really happening.
"Means we won't get to kill people anymore?" Changmin hazarded with exaggerated disappointment and pretend innocence. Not that he needed to pretend, not… here. Not anymore. "But I guess that means people won't be killing us, too," he admitted grudgingly.
"Both those things." Yunho carefully and very pointedly took the grenade from Changmin's hands. "But more than that, Changmin-ah, this means we get to go home."
"Right," Changmin muttered, resigned. Home. He supposed he should, anyway. That was what good sons were supposed to do.
After all, the war was over. That's usually a sign for people to go home.
Changmin's last thought as a soldier was that maybe he should have thrown that grenade after all.
* * *
As far as wars went, the brutality in this one wasn't a turn up for the books.
Sure, a lot of people died, but that happened all the time. A war where few people died wasn't a war, just civil unrest. The declaration of war was just a signal for times to come, but it only grew into a real war once the body count reached digits that made the record keepers of history start using percentages. In those terms, this war hand only been a squabble.
Of course, it also depended on perspective. Here, there was no ‘us versus them', no ‘let's show these foreign devils who's boss'. That would have been much more glorious and definitely worth a proud page in history textbooks to come. The body count wouldn't have been so tragic then, what with being split between two sides and the demarcation clearly seen.
But civil wars took on different tones. There were no lines. Battle happened in the streets right within the city. Only one side took all the losses and no matter how you look at it that side was yours.
"It'll get better." Yunho's optimism had no place in Changmin's acerbic commentary of how the world worked, but Changmin had never learned to keep Yunho out.
They were the last ones to leave camp. Leaving was the only option. There was no way this city would rise from the ashes because that was practically all that was left. The violence here had been particularly active. Noteworthy. People wouldn't come back here to pick up the pieces of their lives, but maybe one day they'd come back to build a monument. Or maybe a cenotaph.
Definitely not something happy.
"What should we do?" Yunho asked. Changmin watched him disassemble a gun and wrap the parts neatly in dry cloth. It could have been symbolic, but Changmin knew the true symbol for times to come was the other gun in Yunho's hip holster. He was an optimist, not an idiot.
"A good son would go home," Changmin said blankly, as if by rote.
Yunho raised an eyebrow at him. "Which is why I ask again: what should we do?"
Something at the back of Changmin's head finally snagged his attention. "I just told you what I'm going to do. Also, I don't know where you're getting all this we stuff."
Yunho contrived to look hurt, but eight days of seeing him pout under gunfire did wonders for desensitizing Changmin. The thing about Yunho, Changmin had learned during their first night guarding the blockade, was that the man was crazily transparent. True, resilient, brave, determined, optimistic, all those wonderful things… but he was also so damn easy to read.
"Don't you have a family to go home to?" Changmin asked sternly.
Yunho's bark of laughter implied more that his words. "At my age? I'm not that much older than you, you know."
Changmin had learned to aim with his words before he learned to fire a gun, and his marksmanship was never one to dismiss. "Parents and siblings are as much a family as a wife and kids."
The playfulness on Yunho's face dulled as he added more stuff to his pack. Spare fatigues and scarce rations had never received so much attention. He mumbled something that got lost with his breath.
The quiet stretched for the rest of the short afternoon. Changmin took it as a good thing, something he earned after eight days of-after eight days. Just because the sound of gunfire had stopped didn't meant he needed to fill this new silence with Yunho's chatter.
Changmin didn't think about it much, but when he did it was like he'd thought about it all the time: getting to know someone in the middle of a war wasn't a good idea. People weren't who they were during times of struggle. They weren't who they were in times of peace and it didn't do to grow attached to someone who could be his bullet shield tomorrow. He'd much prefer to get to know them after things quieted down because at the very least that meant all that effort wouldn't have gone to waste.
The only other survivors from their platoon - three of them - were happy to leg it the moment they finished packing and Changmin was glad to see them go. He met them under duress; he didn't care for who they were afterwards.
Somehow, he didn't know what to do with the one person who fell under both categories, plus one more besides those.
* * *
One more night in the fire station they'd turned into headquarters - it wouldn't hurt, right? Not when the place was already safely barricaded in and he knew all the emergency exits. It was much safer than being on the road at night and the train station was more than an hour away on foot. This part of the city was deserted - thanks to all those barricades and booby traps - but the roads might not be. People weren't in the mood to be friendly yet. Much less so at night.
A head start at dawn was the plan, and he didn't begrudge Yunho for knowing a good idea when he heard one.
Still, there was no need for all this proximity.
"We're not under fire. We don't exactly need to defend each other anymore," Changmin said as Yunho flopped comfortably (as much as he can) on the cot. Their shared cot that Changmin was planning to sleep on alone. His attempts at indicating the cot across the room was met with no success.
"I'm a creature of habit," Yunho told him as if it were obvious, as if Changmin should already have known.
Changmin readied to protest once more, but a quick review of their current position spoke a very important point. "Yeah, whatever. Don't wake me up is all I ask," Changmin grumbled as he gripped his gun under the pillow.
He hoped he wouldn't have to use it anymore, but in case the hostile elements still roaming the city decided to barge in here, Yunho could shield him from the line of fire and Changmin would have a split second to draw his gun. Once before, that had made all the difference.
* * *
He still didn't sleep all that well - and judging by the lack of snores neither did Yunho. The sounds of artillery had been replaced by an eerie ringing silence. The sudden lack of something to pay attention to made him pay attention to everything else, and half-awake he couldn't be sure if it was just all in his head or if that faint flapping was some awning that got loose in the wind.
Yunho's breathing seemed as good as any to focus on. Steady, rhythmic… not so much asleep as recuperating and forestalling the exhaustion.
* * *
Any plans for after the war? Yunho had asked him on their first day hiding behind the blockade. Changmin just stared at him then. Of course he had plans for after the war, but that didn't mean he had to share anything with his designated partner. No need to waste time one someone he might not see afterwards, so why bother?
I'm planning on taking up law, Yunho kept speaking, undeterred. No one was firing at them, and as far as he was concerned they were just manning a well-constructed line of defence. Their blockade was guarding the main street, which was the most obvious path to their headquarters, which was reason enough for no one to take it seriously. The armed forces rigged the roads thoroughly and the rebel forces knew it. Manning the blockade was just another layer of redundancy. Nobody in their right mind would pass through here.
So you're one of those people, Changmin had retorted, making Yunho's kind of people sound like a disease. Dramatically challenged and hopelessly optimistic.
How'd you guess?
You're surrounded by lawlessness. And you're thinking of taking up law. And if I ask you why, you'll say some bullshit like you'll do everything you can to stop these kinds of things from happening ever again.
Yunho laughed at that, and the jarring imagery set the irony in stark contrast. Wow, have you already met me before? Am I just that easy to read?
Changmin just rolled his eyes at him, having written Yunho off as not an idiot after all but instead as an overgrown child. But there were more important matters to think about. Like how the wind whistling through deserted alleys distorted every other sound in the vicinity. An ambush could be sneaking in and he'd hear them only when they're already too near.
Not that they were sitting ducks, far from it in fact. They weren't the best-armed of the troops but they were far from being the bottom rank. Their squad captain had faith in Changmin's impeccable aim and Yunho's innate resourcefulness. Enough faith, in fact, to use them in a gambit. The network of alleys were thickest here along the main road and on the very first night their squadron laid traps on them all... but their squadron was small and traps can be outsmarted. They needed people to man the blockade who would do well even by themselves. Changmin saw his assignment as proof of his talent, and begrudgingly he extended the recognition to Yunho.
The only means of contact they had left was a tinny radio that had seen better days, through which they learned the bigger picture. The captain had made their mission very clear: the city may have been deserted but that doesn't mean it's already been taken by rebellious hands. Neither was it worthless despite having no strategic military value. This was civil war. The rules were different in a rebellion. It was important for the morale of the people to know that the city stood strong, that it hasn't yet fallen. Decision-makers, those wizened derelicts who commanded the battle in their boardrooms, would count not the number of lives lost but how quickly the war reshaped the map. It was imperative that the map remained unchanged.
This isn't a war when you think about it, Yunho said after a swig from their canteen. This is a competition of facades. Which side can pretend that they're unbeatable? Which side can maintain the sympathy of the people? That was when Changmin decided that Yunho had no place in politics. He was too… naïve.
Changmin opened his mouth to reply, a scathing retort just to burst that happily academic bubble, when the back of Yunho's head erupted in a mess of blood and grey matter.
* * *
Changmin didn't jerk awake to a sitting position and cover his face in trembling hands. That was dramatically juvenile. He was no child, no delicate maiden that needed attention, his body was much too controlled for that.
But his shoulders tensed and his breath hitched sharply and his eyes flew wide in the dark seeing nothing. Less than a second later Yunho's hand - large, calloused, real - was pressing comforting circles against the muscles of Changmin's back, and he was murmuring in a voice pitched perfectly low to be soothing. "Hey," he was saying, "it's okay. Whatever it is, it's just a dream. We're still alive."
It's a testament to how often this happened in the past few days that Changmin quickly got over the embarrassment.
"Apparently," Changmin huffed, fingering the comforting smoothness of metal beneath his pillow. "Go back to sleep."
"That's the plan," Yunho muttered softly. His voice betrayed the fact that he hadn't been asleep at all and it wasn't hard to figure out why.
"I'll keep guard this time," Changmin said with as much authority as he could. He drew his gun and, navigating only by touch, made his way to sit just beside the door.
Yunho's breathing grew slightly irregular in minutes. Not enough to actually be sleeping, but definitely enough to no longer be awake. But that was all Changmin knew. What felt like minutes later, he was being shaken awake by a bleary eyed Yunho in the faint grey morning sunlight that seeped through boarded windows.
"Some guard you are," Yunho teased. Changmin smiled inwardly at the gruffness in his voice, meaning that Yunho did at least get some sleep. That meant he trusted Changmin enough to actually stay awake and stand guard, and Changmin didn't know how he felt about not living up to that trust despite the war being (hard as it was to believe) declared over the day before. "We should get going."
Whatever Changmin meant to say in response was lost in his mumbling.
Yunho would have laughed - his lips twitched upwards at the corners - but the night wasn't that restful. "I'll make us some coffee. Yoochun swore he'd leave us some of that foul stuff left."
Back in training, Yunho once created a small explosive using nothing more than a lemon, some copper wiring, and an alkaline battery. Figuring out how to make coffee with their remaining supplies probably won't be much of a challenge.
The first step back to normalcy was preparing breakfast.
Their supplies, though not generous, were at least sufficient for a squadron when carefully calculated and mindfully rationed. There had only been five of them by the end, and the other three left the two of them a fair share of the spoils. Three packs of instant noodles and a can of mackerel was a feast. Those meals were never enough for the moment, but they were trying to make them enough to matter.
Yunho saw what he was doing and grinned. "Hey, it's our last day here. We might as well indulge."
Changmin stared at him and conceded the point. He added a fourth pack of noodles to the pot.
* * *
They hefted their backpacks and stared out the door in shared hesitation.
"How sure are we that the city has been deserted?" Changmin asked, aiming for mildly concerned and hitting slightly constipated.
Yunho hummed thoughtfully. "You know, come to think of it the last human activity I heard outside of our squadron was days ago. Three days? Four?"
Four, Changmin said in his head.
"After that, we were just... waiting."
"Maybe we just snapped? Admit it, the captain was the only one keeping the whole squadron together. Everything fell apart when he-" Yunho glared warningly at him but Changmin already had momentum "got himself blown up."
Yunho just shook his head and moved on, just like he always did whenever Changmin showed his irreverence.
The dismissal stung more today. "Hey," Changmin called after Yunho as they took their first few steps outside. "I meant..."
"No, it's okay," Yunho said with a shrug. He waited for Changmin to catch up to him. "That's who you are, right? You're just being true to yourself."
His own words, repeated back to him in a tone of learned helplessness. He shouldn't be and he'd never been before, but Changmin felt embarrassed. "Yeah, it's who I am. We live in the age of individuality, don't we?"
"Where do we go now?" Yunho asked as he surveyed damaged buildings and the complete absence of life. "We could go to the evacuation center and make contact with the squadron there. Get clean-up assignments."
"Whatever you want to do with your life has nothing to do with me," Changmin reminded Yunho. "It's over. We don't know if we won or lost, we're not important enough to know this early. So why care for anything?"
Against all expectations, the cynicism inspired a bark of laughter from. Yunho grinned at him. "Are you so displaced by this sudden change in lifestyle that you're looking for solace in apathy?"
"No, think about it," Changmin insisted. "The war's over. So what if we change leadership? Whoever occupies the top office doesn't change the momentum. The corrupt are corrupt and together they're infinitely more powerful than the individual righteous who can't agree enough to band together. History steamrolls over everything. Individual lives may change but the bigger picture is still the same."
"It's amazing how you choose to be so depressed in a moment of celebration."
"Are we celebrating? You call this a celebration?" Changmin pointed at the empty road they were following. The eerie quiet persisted. The wind carried the faint smell of gunpowder.
"Baseless sentiment isn't always useless," Yunho answered. As always, Changmin ignored him when the discussion entered rhetorics.
"To answer your earlier question: I might go home. You are free to go wherever you want."
They didn't talk much beyond that, for some reason. Changmin busied himself with recalling his orientation days in camp, trying to deduce the fastest way home. They could commandeer a car. But that would arouse unwanted attention this early when after the war. Civilian life still hadn't picked up, probably wouldn't for another few days. Everyone would be favouring the status quo - unstable as it may be - until official announcements are made about what's to come.
No doubt the other squadrons are being marshalled back to the capital in groups. Their platoon probably would have been as well, had more than a tenth of them survived. By the radio silence from the past few days, Changmin inferred that they'd been written off. The city held but the men were mostly dead. Too bad. Life goes on.
No word about a troop of soldiers that dwindled in number each day. No word about two unharnessed talents who guarded a blockade for the duration of this short war, two young men whose lives could have ended days before the war did. No stories told about Yunho spotting a glint of metal in one of the second floor windows and firing blindly at the general direction, just in time for the gunman to flinch at the last crucial moment, for the bullet to hit the barricade just an inch from Changmin's ear. Just enough time for Changmin to align his rifle without looking through the scope and firing a single shot that ended it there.
No word about the nightmares that changed every night, not knowing when they were going to stop.
Stories like these had no place in the world outside of war, especially if the people you were shooting at were your own.
No wonder the other three were in such a hurry to be on their way. They had a clean slate. A once in a lifetime chance to start anew. Who would question the integrity of three young soldiers who fought in the war and just wanted to leave these troubled times behind them? Jaejoong might finally get the chance to set up the small-town dumpling shop he'd always wanted.
Changmin didn't care, though he wished him the best of luck despite all the distance and anonymity. They hadn't gotten to know each other. Or strictly speaking, they didn't have much time to get to know each other and Changmin didn't even put in any effort. It wasn't a good time to get to know anyone.
"Thinking about what you want to do when you get home?" Yunho asked over the clanking of tin and metal in their backpacks.
"Not really. Just thinking happy thoughts. In general."
"Like?"
"Thinking of all the food I'll finally get to eat. No more military provisions. Eating my own meals at my own pace."
"Indeed, all the ramen you can eat," Yunho teased. Eight days was enough to get to know Changmin very well.
"And don't you forget it." They lapsed into silence, as uncomfortable as the weight on their backs, but it wasn't anything they couldn't bear. They'd borne enough between the two of them. "Still thinking of studying law?" Changmin asked, surprising both of them.
Yunho was just glad for the interest, never mind the small talk. "Now more than ever. Or maybe political science, that's as good a choice as any to change the world."
Here it was again, this talk of changing the world. Too many people have said the same thing, and the only things that changed were the people who said them. The world itself lived on. There were still wars, still famine, still pestilence... Changmin didn't begrudge them death, but at least they should have lowered the numbers.
Maybe if he extended his personal philosophy, it was never a good time to get to know anyone.
So why was he getting to know Yunho now? He thought about it for a while.
Maybe it's because Yunho was the only one who knew who Changmin was during the war. He was the only one who could prove that the past eight days weren't merely clouded memories. That at some point, they did save each other's lives.
Maybe after the war was a good time to get to know the people you could have gotten to know during.
* * *
They reached the train station at noon, not that they needed their watches to tell the time. The scorching heat was all too obvious a clue. Changmin wasn't desensitized, per se; he just cared even less.
"The train should be here in an hour," Yunho reminded him. Transportation schedules were among the many details drilled into them during orientation. You just never knew when these things came in handy. "Are you ready to leave behind the home you knew?"
"This will never be home," Changmin snapped, but Yunho just laughed at him.
"It's as good a place as any for me," Yunho said lightly as he waited for Changmin's general irritableness to die down. Although it was a given that moderately irritated was Changmin's ground state of existence.
"What do you mean?" Changmin asked because those words were as loaded as the guns they kept in their holsters.
Yunho's smile turned less warm, more chiding. "Come on, Changmin-ah, you didn't really think I'm going back to the capital to study law, right?"
"Who cares what you study?" Changmin reasoned out. "We just lived through a war. Nobody would blame you if you changed interests. You just have to go home and figure it all out again."
"No home for me to go to, sadly," Yunho said wistfully. Changmin had no idea how he could be so casual.
"Did you..." lose them? Changmin wanted to ask. The words just didn't come out.
"Nothing so dramatic," Yunho told him. "I just don't think the home I knew will welcome me back."
"So you're... what, thinking of holing up here and building a life from scratch?"
Yunho shrugged. "It's as good an idea as any. That's what the country should do, right? That's what the government wants to happen? Nobody can forget about the past few days, but the smart thing to do would be to learn our lessons and rebuild. I just thought, why not do some rebuilding of my own?"
"That's stupid."
"I can tear down the barricades, maybe patch up a few houses. There'll definitely be food in some of the groceries. The city was evacuated too quickly for looters to clean up. Besides, people don't change. Give it a few days and they'll be flocking back to the city to pick up the pieces even if the government would rather keep everyone away from the borders for a while."
"That's stupid and you're being stupid," Changmin repeated. It wasn't every day that he was reduced to such childlike rhetoric. "I won't let you do it."
Yunho quirked an eyebrow at him. "You have different plans, Changmin-ah?"
"No, I don't have plans," Changmin gritted out, his tone conveying in every syllable that Yunho was indeed an idiot after all. "But my lack of plans is billions of times better than your stupid, stupid one. I don't care if you're older, I'm telling you what we're going to do and that's this: when that train comes, we're both getting on. And we're both going to figure out something. And we're both going to build a life somewhere in the middle of civilization, not some stupid warzone too dangerous to hazard alone."
"I thought you were going home?"
"I thought so too. But you know what? I can build a home wherever I go. And I'm not going to let someone who stuck beside me under gunfire to build a desolate life for himself. So that's what we're going to do, okay? We'll get on that train and we'll figure something out."
Yunho grinned at him. Somehow, this time looked different compared to every other one he gave before. And Changmin... he just wondered why he stuck himself with someone who he got to know during the war.
A train ride awaited, and the war was over. Nightmares to be revisited only at night, no longer the reality of each waking day.
Naively, so they thought.
Author: verocity
Fandom: DBSK
Featuring: Changmin x Yunho
Rating: PG-13 for the cursing
Genre: Gen, Wartime AU
Warnings: Mentions of violence, nothing really graphic.
Wordcount: 4,600~
A/N: For isaofdoom, whose characters are so vibrant that I can't do them any justice. I hope you enjoy this remix/prequel of Seize the Day. Originally posted here.
Summary: There's no point, Changmin thinks, in getting to know someone in the middle of a war.
The news reached them just as Changmin was contemplating lobbing his last grenade over the blockade.
He knew it wasn't a smart move. He last heard gunfire three days ago, and even then the suppression wave wasn't as enthusiastic as he expected. Eight days into the fray and you grew into the habit of survival, of noting the little patterns today that helped make sure you'd notice them tomorrow. The last wave of gunfire against their camp had sounded… half-hearted.
After that, things got boring very quickly. Hence the grenade and the thoughtful contemplation.
"Most people would be happy not being shot at," Yunho whispered tensely as his eyes followed the short curve the grenade travelled being tossed between Changmin's hands. The pin was still there but that didn't reassure as much, not when the person holding it was prone to fits of insanity.
"You grow to miss it after a while," Changmin said wistfully. They say gunfire did wonders to the mind: increased alertness, gave a singularity to focus on that could be used as a bridge to enlightenment. Sadly, this bridge and the enlightenment it offered often went unnoticed as the mind being shot at tended to focus singularly on the fact that it was being shot at. Between choosing an instant of enlightenment and a lifetime of ignorance, Changmin - as many before him - chose the moment that lasted a lifetime.
Yunho rubbed his temples, clearly thinking no words would suffice that it took him eight days to realize he holed up with an adrenaline junky. He was wrong, of course, but getting to know someone in the middle of a war was never a good idea. Especially when they were stationed to defend the front blockade.
"Hey guys?" Junsu's wheezy voice crackled from the handheld radio. "You did hear me, right? You guys still alive out there?"
"Copy that," Yunho said, loud and clear. Changmin rolled his eyes. Trust Yunho to play into the stereotypes. But maybe a different type of adrenaline could be blamed this time. Disbelief, then euphoria. "I guess you know what that means, right?" Yunho said to Changmin, eyes bright and only hinting at the exhaustion and, just a thin layer underneath, that this is it, this is really happening.
"Means we won't get to kill people anymore?" Changmin hazarded with exaggerated disappointment and pretend innocence. Not that he needed to pretend, not… here. Not anymore. "But I guess that means people won't be killing us, too," he admitted grudgingly.
"Both those things." Yunho carefully and very pointedly took the grenade from Changmin's hands. "But more than that, Changmin-ah, this means we get to go home."
"Right," Changmin muttered, resigned. Home. He supposed he should, anyway. That was what good sons were supposed to do.
After all, the war was over. That's usually a sign for people to go home.
Changmin's last thought as a soldier was that maybe he should have thrown that grenade after all.
* * *
As far as wars went, the brutality in this one wasn't a turn up for the books.
Sure, a lot of people died, but that happened all the time. A war where few people died wasn't a war, just civil unrest. The declaration of war was just a signal for times to come, but it only grew into a real war once the body count reached digits that made the record keepers of history start using percentages. In those terms, this war hand only been a squabble.
Of course, it also depended on perspective. Here, there was no ‘us versus them', no ‘let's show these foreign devils who's boss'. That would have been much more glorious and definitely worth a proud page in history textbooks to come. The body count wouldn't have been so tragic then, what with being split between two sides and the demarcation clearly seen.
But civil wars took on different tones. There were no lines. Battle happened in the streets right within the city. Only one side took all the losses and no matter how you look at it that side was yours.
"It'll get better." Yunho's optimism had no place in Changmin's acerbic commentary of how the world worked, but Changmin had never learned to keep Yunho out.
They were the last ones to leave camp. Leaving was the only option. There was no way this city would rise from the ashes because that was practically all that was left. The violence here had been particularly active. Noteworthy. People wouldn't come back here to pick up the pieces of their lives, but maybe one day they'd come back to build a monument. Or maybe a cenotaph.
Definitely not something happy.
"What should we do?" Yunho asked. Changmin watched him disassemble a gun and wrap the parts neatly in dry cloth. It could have been symbolic, but Changmin knew the true symbol for times to come was the other gun in Yunho's hip holster. He was an optimist, not an idiot.
"A good son would go home," Changmin said blankly, as if by rote.
Yunho raised an eyebrow at him. "Which is why I ask again: what should we do?"
Something at the back of Changmin's head finally snagged his attention. "I just told you what I'm going to do. Also, I don't know where you're getting all this we stuff."
Yunho contrived to look hurt, but eight days of seeing him pout under gunfire did wonders for desensitizing Changmin. The thing about Yunho, Changmin had learned during their first night guarding the blockade, was that the man was crazily transparent. True, resilient, brave, determined, optimistic, all those wonderful things… but he was also so damn easy to read.
"Don't you have a family to go home to?" Changmin asked sternly.
Yunho's bark of laughter implied more that his words. "At my age? I'm not that much older than you, you know."
Changmin had learned to aim with his words before he learned to fire a gun, and his marksmanship was never one to dismiss. "Parents and siblings are as much a family as a wife and kids."
The playfulness on Yunho's face dulled as he added more stuff to his pack. Spare fatigues and scarce rations had never received so much attention. He mumbled something that got lost with his breath.
The quiet stretched for the rest of the short afternoon. Changmin took it as a good thing, something he earned after eight days of-after eight days. Just because the sound of gunfire had stopped didn't meant he needed to fill this new silence with Yunho's chatter.
Changmin didn't think about it much, but when he did it was like he'd thought about it all the time: getting to know someone in the middle of a war wasn't a good idea. People weren't who they were during times of struggle. They weren't who they were in times of peace and it didn't do to grow attached to someone who could be his bullet shield tomorrow. He'd much prefer to get to know them after things quieted down because at the very least that meant all that effort wouldn't have gone to waste.
The only other survivors from their platoon - three of them - were happy to leg it the moment they finished packing and Changmin was glad to see them go. He met them under duress; he didn't care for who they were afterwards.
Somehow, he didn't know what to do with the one person who fell under both categories, plus one more besides those.
* * *
One more night in the fire station they'd turned into headquarters - it wouldn't hurt, right? Not when the place was already safely barricaded in and he knew all the emergency exits. It was much safer than being on the road at night and the train station was more than an hour away on foot. This part of the city was deserted - thanks to all those barricades and booby traps - but the roads might not be. People weren't in the mood to be friendly yet. Much less so at night.
A head start at dawn was the plan, and he didn't begrudge Yunho for knowing a good idea when he heard one.
Still, there was no need for all this proximity.
"We're not under fire. We don't exactly need to defend each other anymore," Changmin said as Yunho flopped comfortably (as much as he can) on the cot. Their shared cot that Changmin was planning to sleep on alone. His attempts at indicating the cot across the room was met with no success.
"I'm a creature of habit," Yunho told him as if it were obvious, as if Changmin should already have known.
Changmin readied to protest once more, but a quick review of their current position spoke a very important point. "Yeah, whatever. Don't wake me up is all I ask," Changmin grumbled as he gripped his gun under the pillow.
He hoped he wouldn't have to use it anymore, but in case the hostile elements still roaming the city decided to barge in here, Yunho could shield him from the line of fire and Changmin would have a split second to draw his gun. Once before, that had made all the difference.
* * *
He still didn't sleep all that well - and judging by the lack of snores neither did Yunho. The sounds of artillery had been replaced by an eerie ringing silence. The sudden lack of something to pay attention to made him pay attention to everything else, and half-awake he couldn't be sure if it was just all in his head or if that faint flapping was some awning that got loose in the wind.
Yunho's breathing seemed as good as any to focus on. Steady, rhythmic… not so much asleep as recuperating and forestalling the exhaustion.
* * *
Any plans for after the war? Yunho had asked him on their first day hiding behind the blockade. Changmin just stared at him then. Of course he had plans for after the war, but that didn't mean he had to share anything with his designated partner. No need to waste time one someone he might not see afterwards, so why bother?
I'm planning on taking up law, Yunho kept speaking, undeterred. No one was firing at them, and as far as he was concerned they were just manning a well-constructed line of defence. Their blockade was guarding the main street, which was the most obvious path to their headquarters, which was reason enough for no one to take it seriously. The armed forces rigged the roads thoroughly and the rebel forces knew it. Manning the blockade was just another layer of redundancy. Nobody in their right mind would pass through here.
So you're one of those people, Changmin had retorted, making Yunho's kind of people sound like a disease. Dramatically challenged and hopelessly optimistic.
How'd you guess?
You're surrounded by lawlessness. And you're thinking of taking up law. And if I ask you why, you'll say some bullshit like you'll do everything you can to stop these kinds of things from happening ever again.
Yunho laughed at that, and the jarring imagery set the irony in stark contrast. Wow, have you already met me before? Am I just that easy to read?
Changmin just rolled his eyes at him, having written Yunho off as not an idiot after all but instead as an overgrown child. But there were more important matters to think about. Like how the wind whistling through deserted alleys distorted every other sound in the vicinity. An ambush could be sneaking in and he'd hear them only when they're already too near.
Not that they were sitting ducks, far from it in fact. They weren't the best-armed of the troops but they were far from being the bottom rank. Their squad captain had faith in Changmin's impeccable aim and Yunho's innate resourcefulness. Enough faith, in fact, to use them in a gambit. The network of alleys were thickest here along the main road and on the very first night their squadron laid traps on them all... but their squadron was small and traps can be outsmarted. They needed people to man the blockade who would do well even by themselves. Changmin saw his assignment as proof of his talent, and begrudgingly he extended the recognition to Yunho.
The only means of contact they had left was a tinny radio that had seen better days, through which they learned the bigger picture. The captain had made their mission very clear: the city may have been deserted but that doesn't mean it's already been taken by rebellious hands. Neither was it worthless despite having no strategic military value. This was civil war. The rules were different in a rebellion. It was important for the morale of the people to know that the city stood strong, that it hasn't yet fallen. Decision-makers, those wizened derelicts who commanded the battle in their boardrooms, would count not the number of lives lost but how quickly the war reshaped the map. It was imperative that the map remained unchanged.
This isn't a war when you think about it, Yunho said after a swig from their canteen. This is a competition of facades. Which side can pretend that they're unbeatable? Which side can maintain the sympathy of the people? That was when Changmin decided that Yunho had no place in politics. He was too… naïve.
Changmin opened his mouth to reply, a scathing retort just to burst that happily academic bubble, when the back of Yunho's head erupted in a mess of blood and grey matter.
* * *
Changmin didn't jerk awake to a sitting position and cover his face in trembling hands. That was dramatically juvenile. He was no child, no delicate maiden that needed attention, his body was much too controlled for that.
But his shoulders tensed and his breath hitched sharply and his eyes flew wide in the dark seeing nothing. Less than a second later Yunho's hand - large, calloused, real - was pressing comforting circles against the muscles of Changmin's back, and he was murmuring in a voice pitched perfectly low to be soothing. "Hey," he was saying, "it's okay. Whatever it is, it's just a dream. We're still alive."
It's a testament to how often this happened in the past few days that Changmin quickly got over the embarrassment.
"Apparently," Changmin huffed, fingering the comforting smoothness of metal beneath his pillow. "Go back to sleep."
"That's the plan," Yunho muttered softly. His voice betrayed the fact that he hadn't been asleep at all and it wasn't hard to figure out why.
"I'll keep guard this time," Changmin said with as much authority as he could. He drew his gun and, navigating only by touch, made his way to sit just beside the door.
Yunho's breathing grew slightly irregular in minutes. Not enough to actually be sleeping, but definitely enough to no longer be awake. But that was all Changmin knew. What felt like minutes later, he was being shaken awake by a bleary eyed Yunho in the faint grey morning sunlight that seeped through boarded windows.
"Some guard you are," Yunho teased. Changmin smiled inwardly at the gruffness in his voice, meaning that Yunho did at least get some sleep. That meant he trusted Changmin enough to actually stay awake and stand guard, and Changmin didn't know how he felt about not living up to that trust despite the war being (hard as it was to believe) declared over the day before. "We should get going."
Whatever Changmin meant to say in response was lost in his mumbling.
Yunho would have laughed - his lips twitched upwards at the corners - but the night wasn't that restful. "I'll make us some coffee. Yoochun swore he'd leave us some of that foul stuff left."
Back in training, Yunho once created a small explosive using nothing more than a lemon, some copper wiring, and an alkaline battery. Figuring out how to make coffee with their remaining supplies probably won't be much of a challenge.
The first step back to normalcy was preparing breakfast.
Their supplies, though not generous, were at least sufficient for a squadron when carefully calculated and mindfully rationed. There had only been five of them by the end, and the other three left the two of them a fair share of the spoils. Three packs of instant noodles and a can of mackerel was a feast. Those meals were never enough for the moment, but they were trying to make them enough to matter.
Yunho saw what he was doing and grinned. "Hey, it's our last day here. We might as well indulge."
Changmin stared at him and conceded the point. He added a fourth pack of noodles to the pot.
* * *
They hefted their backpacks and stared out the door in shared hesitation.
"How sure are we that the city has been deserted?" Changmin asked, aiming for mildly concerned and hitting slightly constipated.
Yunho hummed thoughtfully. "You know, come to think of it the last human activity I heard outside of our squadron was days ago. Three days? Four?"
Four, Changmin said in his head.
"After that, we were just... waiting."
"Maybe we just snapped? Admit it, the captain was the only one keeping the whole squadron together. Everything fell apart when he-" Yunho glared warningly at him but Changmin already had momentum "got himself blown up."
Yunho just shook his head and moved on, just like he always did whenever Changmin showed his irreverence.
The dismissal stung more today. "Hey," Changmin called after Yunho as they took their first few steps outside. "I meant..."
"No, it's okay," Yunho said with a shrug. He waited for Changmin to catch up to him. "That's who you are, right? You're just being true to yourself."
His own words, repeated back to him in a tone of learned helplessness. He shouldn't be and he'd never been before, but Changmin felt embarrassed. "Yeah, it's who I am. We live in the age of individuality, don't we?"
"Where do we go now?" Yunho asked as he surveyed damaged buildings and the complete absence of life. "We could go to the evacuation center and make contact with the squadron there. Get clean-up assignments."
"Whatever you want to do with your life has nothing to do with me," Changmin reminded Yunho. "It's over. We don't know if we won or lost, we're not important enough to know this early. So why care for anything?"
Against all expectations, the cynicism inspired a bark of laughter from. Yunho grinned at him. "Are you so displaced by this sudden change in lifestyle that you're looking for solace in apathy?"
"No, think about it," Changmin insisted. "The war's over. So what if we change leadership? Whoever occupies the top office doesn't change the momentum. The corrupt are corrupt and together they're infinitely more powerful than the individual righteous who can't agree enough to band together. History steamrolls over everything. Individual lives may change but the bigger picture is still the same."
"It's amazing how you choose to be so depressed in a moment of celebration."
"Are we celebrating? You call this a celebration?" Changmin pointed at the empty road they were following. The eerie quiet persisted. The wind carried the faint smell of gunpowder.
"Baseless sentiment isn't always useless," Yunho answered. As always, Changmin ignored him when the discussion entered rhetorics.
"To answer your earlier question: I might go home. You are free to go wherever you want."
They didn't talk much beyond that, for some reason. Changmin busied himself with recalling his orientation days in camp, trying to deduce the fastest way home. They could commandeer a car. But that would arouse unwanted attention this early when after the war. Civilian life still hadn't picked up, probably wouldn't for another few days. Everyone would be favouring the status quo - unstable as it may be - until official announcements are made about what's to come.
No doubt the other squadrons are being marshalled back to the capital in groups. Their platoon probably would have been as well, had more than a tenth of them survived. By the radio silence from the past few days, Changmin inferred that they'd been written off. The city held but the men were mostly dead. Too bad. Life goes on.
No word about a troop of soldiers that dwindled in number each day. No word about two unharnessed talents who guarded a blockade for the duration of this short war, two young men whose lives could have ended days before the war did. No stories told about Yunho spotting a glint of metal in one of the second floor windows and firing blindly at the general direction, just in time for the gunman to flinch at the last crucial moment, for the bullet to hit the barricade just an inch from Changmin's ear. Just enough time for Changmin to align his rifle without looking through the scope and firing a single shot that ended it there.
No word about the nightmares that changed every night, not knowing when they were going to stop.
Stories like these had no place in the world outside of war, especially if the people you were shooting at were your own.
No wonder the other three were in such a hurry to be on their way. They had a clean slate. A once in a lifetime chance to start anew. Who would question the integrity of three young soldiers who fought in the war and just wanted to leave these troubled times behind them? Jaejoong might finally get the chance to set up the small-town dumpling shop he'd always wanted.
Changmin didn't care, though he wished him the best of luck despite all the distance and anonymity. They hadn't gotten to know each other. Or strictly speaking, they didn't have much time to get to know each other and Changmin didn't even put in any effort. It wasn't a good time to get to know anyone.
"Thinking about what you want to do when you get home?" Yunho asked over the clanking of tin and metal in their backpacks.
"Not really. Just thinking happy thoughts. In general."
"Like?"
"Thinking of all the food I'll finally get to eat. No more military provisions. Eating my own meals at my own pace."
"Indeed, all the ramen you can eat," Yunho teased. Eight days was enough to get to know Changmin very well.
"And don't you forget it." They lapsed into silence, as uncomfortable as the weight on their backs, but it wasn't anything they couldn't bear. They'd borne enough between the two of them. "Still thinking of studying law?" Changmin asked, surprising both of them.
Yunho was just glad for the interest, never mind the small talk. "Now more than ever. Or maybe political science, that's as good a choice as any to change the world."
Here it was again, this talk of changing the world. Too many people have said the same thing, and the only things that changed were the people who said them. The world itself lived on. There were still wars, still famine, still pestilence... Changmin didn't begrudge them death, but at least they should have lowered the numbers.
Maybe if he extended his personal philosophy, it was never a good time to get to know anyone.
So why was he getting to know Yunho now? He thought about it for a while.
Maybe it's because Yunho was the only one who knew who Changmin was during the war. He was the only one who could prove that the past eight days weren't merely clouded memories. That at some point, they did save each other's lives.
Maybe after the war was a good time to get to know the people you could have gotten to know during.
* * *
They reached the train station at noon, not that they needed their watches to tell the time. The scorching heat was all too obvious a clue. Changmin wasn't desensitized, per se; he just cared even less.
"The train should be here in an hour," Yunho reminded him. Transportation schedules were among the many details drilled into them during orientation. You just never knew when these things came in handy. "Are you ready to leave behind the home you knew?"
"This will never be home," Changmin snapped, but Yunho just laughed at him.
"It's as good a place as any for me," Yunho said lightly as he waited for Changmin's general irritableness to die down. Although it was a given that moderately irritated was Changmin's ground state of existence.
"What do you mean?" Changmin asked because those words were as loaded as the guns they kept in their holsters.
Yunho's smile turned less warm, more chiding. "Come on, Changmin-ah, you didn't really think I'm going back to the capital to study law, right?"
"Who cares what you study?" Changmin reasoned out. "We just lived through a war. Nobody would blame you if you changed interests. You just have to go home and figure it all out again."
"No home for me to go to, sadly," Yunho said wistfully. Changmin had no idea how he could be so casual.
"Did you..." lose them? Changmin wanted to ask. The words just didn't come out.
"Nothing so dramatic," Yunho told him. "I just don't think the home I knew will welcome me back."
"So you're... what, thinking of holing up here and building a life from scratch?"
Yunho shrugged. "It's as good an idea as any. That's what the country should do, right? That's what the government wants to happen? Nobody can forget about the past few days, but the smart thing to do would be to learn our lessons and rebuild. I just thought, why not do some rebuilding of my own?"
"That's stupid."
"I can tear down the barricades, maybe patch up a few houses. There'll definitely be food in some of the groceries. The city was evacuated too quickly for looters to clean up. Besides, people don't change. Give it a few days and they'll be flocking back to the city to pick up the pieces even if the government would rather keep everyone away from the borders for a while."
"That's stupid and you're being stupid," Changmin repeated. It wasn't every day that he was reduced to such childlike rhetoric. "I won't let you do it."
Yunho quirked an eyebrow at him. "You have different plans, Changmin-ah?"
"No, I don't have plans," Changmin gritted out, his tone conveying in every syllable that Yunho was indeed an idiot after all. "But my lack of plans is billions of times better than your stupid, stupid one. I don't care if you're older, I'm telling you what we're going to do and that's this: when that train comes, we're both getting on. And we're both going to figure out something. And we're both going to build a life somewhere in the middle of civilization, not some stupid warzone too dangerous to hazard alone."
"I thought you were going home?"
"I thought so too. But you know what? I can build a home wherever I go. And I'm not going to let someone who stuck beside me under gunfire to build a desolate life for himself. So that's what we're going to do, okay? We'll get on that train and we'll figure something out."
Yunho grinned at him. Somehow, this time looked different compared to every other one he gave before. And Changmin... he just wondered why he stuck himself with someone who he got to know during the war.
A train ride awaited, and the war was over. Nightmares to be revisited only at night, no longer the reality of each waking day.
Naively, so they thought.