we were young gods (part two)

[twicefolds]

part one


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we were young gods

23.  Jaejoong thought the buildings in their world had been big - all roughly cut walls and rusty iron accents like fangs encasing corners and sticking out above alleyways. The skyscraper - hours away from home - is made from something different altogether - secrets, silence and reflective glass, the large door opened to a crisp, perfectly geometrical marble lobby. They’re greeted by a smiling group of people with perfectly buttoned collars, bleached white shirts and polished cuff links.

They have become gods for a reason. This city is under siege. They must protect this city, they must rescue others from the oppression of the enemies. They are gods, but they are not the only ones. They must fight. In return, they will be cared for.

(“Glorified foot soldiers,” Yoochun will later spit, mouth curling at the edges with fury, and Yunho will look at him with troubled eyes and say, “Chun, that’s not true-”)

“It’s going to be hard,” they say. “Everyone is new at some point and you’re not used to being gods. We want you to think of us as a family.”

Yunho bows and thanks them politely, as though he’s been doing this all his life. Junsu smiles angelically and the noonas croon. Yoochun is quiet. Changmin is even quieter. Jaejoong wants to run.

Their shared apartment is clean, airy and bigger than both apartments in their old home combined. They will move up into larger, prettier apartments if they are successful and gain more land, and we can tell the five of you are something special, one of them says with an empty, courteous smile.

They’re given three days to adjust to their new surroundings and (unsuccessfully) to living with each other. On the second day, Jaejoong cooks for them, and the homesickness wears off just a little.

On the third day, a jovial-looking man with a ruddy complexion and twinkling eyes knocks on their door.

“Well then,” he says, giving them an appraising look. “It’s time you learnt how to kill.”

24.  ‘It’s okay,’ the trainer tells them, giving the mannequin a playful punch on the shoulder. It jerks and wobbles to the right. ‘These aren’t humans. They’re programmed to attack you when they’re switched on. Knives and your powers only. You are gods; you shouldn't need anything else. See the indicator bar on its chest? When that turns red, it will be dead. Remember. Red.’

Yunho kills the mannequin instantly with the pile of sand and dirt provided for him, thrown on the mannequin with the force of a landslide. The red glow of the indicator bar can be seen, even beneath the settling dust.

“Very powerful,” the trainer says slowly, appraising the damage as a curator would a fine art piece, “but not terribly subtle, Yunho-sshi. We will need to work on that in the future.”

When Yunho returns the antechamber they’re all waiting in, his eyes are empty and his face is blank and solemn.

The mannequin manages to stab Yoochun twice on the arm before he can conjure enough wind to push it away. He’s sweating and his eyes have a wild, panicked look to them; all the grace Jaejoong has come to associate with Yoochun has seemingly evaporated in a room full of dead air and fear.

The trainer calmly asks Yoochun what is wrong. He does not comment on the blood seeping from the wounds.

Yoochun very quietly asks whether killing is the best way, and wouldn’t it be better to capture the enemies instead of erase them?

The trainer smiles, but his eyes remain shrewd, calculating, predatory. “The key is to remember that they’re not human. None of the enemies you are fighting are really humans like us.”

Jaejoong sees Yoochun swallow. The grip on his knife tightens. The mannequin springs to life, comes hurtling towards Yoochun, Yoochun raises an arm, and the mannequin leaps into the air, spinning and jerking as a hurricane whips through the room.

A cry is building in Jaejoong’s throat as Yoochun - unaffected by the gale that’s pinning the trainer to the wall - approaches the spinning mannequin, grabs it by the neck.

The knife flashes silver. The indicator flashes red. Jaejoong realises the cry that’s dying in his throat is ‘don’t’.

25. Changmin quietly and calmly creates a bubble of water around the mannequin’s head, drowning it with almost prodigal elegance. Surrounded by the swirling tendrils of liquid, he's almost an illusion made of distorted lines, broad swathes of colour, and a pair of angry eyes.

Jaejoong fails. After an hour of dodging and running, the trainer finally says ‘stop’. Blackness swallows Jaejoong’s vision immediately, and he’s only brutally jerked out of unconsciousness by the pain wrecking havoc through his muscles.

To everyone’s surprise, Junsu fails as well.

He apologises repeatedly to the trainer, and the trainer shrugs. “Obviously we didn’t expect you all to be able to pass the first time around. Elemental powers are not that rare - we’ve had them before - but, with some more work, you’ll succeed at killing.”

26. “Jaejoong-sshi, you can't keep dodging forever,” Sangjun-hyung says patiently as the mannequin shudders to a stop, turning limp with a clatter of plastic and metal.

Jaejoong can't find his breath through the iron ball of exhaustion in his throat. He can only look up at his trainer, all eyes.

"Time." There's no change in Sangjun-hyung’s tone, nothing to indicate any sort of frustration at the wasted 2 hours of training. Jaejoong is grateful, at least, that their training sessions were separated into private lessons, after he’d failed to kill the first time around.

“We'll get there eventually,” Sangjin-hyung says as they part in the hallway, squeezing Jaejoong’s shoulder before he leaves in the opposite direction.

The fingers leave bruises on Jaejoong's shoulders, the only physical hint of the warning in his words.

27. Their first mission is a late afternoon ambush on an intelligence camp near the edge of the city, where abandoned phonelines and crumbling houses degenerate into weeds and snaking vines. They’re part of a company of eleven other soldiers, a reliable source informs them there was a grand total of six men inside, and Jaejoong is expecting that they will be shafted to one of the side entrances, poised to observe instead of act.

“Though some people might learn faster when they need to be good,” the commander tells them, a slight sneer curling at the edges of his lips as he looks down at Jaejoong and Junsu.

They get the six men they expected. What they’re not expecting are the bullets that hit the two soldiers who kick down the door directly through the head. No one should be rich enough to afford a handgun. As the other soldiers in their company scramble for cover, Changmin sends a jet of water at the man holding a handgun, but there is a responding blast of water from one of the enemies, and the forces cancel out in midair. Yoochun is throwing blasts of wind at them, the planes of his face stiff with concentration, but it slows the soldiers as well as the enemies as they duck to avoid the gale. Yunho takes the chance to throw a knife at the shooter, Yoochun hurls a blast of wind at the knife as it flies through the air and it catches the shooter on the left shoulder. The man stumbles for a moment, blood splattering the old bricks and plants, before he points the gun in their direction.

The terror that’s hot in Jaejoong’s veins seizes him, he lets out a yell, feels a sudden spark of electricity, and the man doubles over as though hit by an invisible fist, the gun flying from his hand. Changmin and Yunho have trapped the other water-god to the muddy ground; Yunho pulls him under the earth, face pained.

No one notices the second shooter taking aim at them from behind until Junsu sets him alight, a look of horror on his face as the man screams, dropping the gun to claw at his head. He’s dead before he hits the ground.

Their new apartment is two floors above their old one. Junsu is praised even by the stern-faced commander. No one has ever burned a man to death, and Junsu should be proud of what he has managed to do for the city.

During the night, Junsu will crawl into Jaejoong’s bed and curl into the small of Jaejoong’s back, shaking as he bites back the sobs and swallows them down his throat. It feels, enormously, like a loss of innocence.

28. Their next few missions blur together as they invade compounds and chase rebels through the wilderness beyond the city. Yunho and Changmin figure out how to make muddy landslides - all the more lethal in the mountains - and, with Yoochun’s help, Junsu’s able to set fire to people halfway across the barren field. The commanders praise them openly, calling them prodigies, calling them geniuses, commending the quality of their teamwork.

There are rewards, too. They’re invited out into the rainbow-coloured lights of expensive restaurants, raucous laughter from higher-ups, and beautiful girls with glittering eyes, long eyelashes and multicoloured hair.

Jaejoong can injure and trap, but he still can’t kill. So Jaejoong trains, and trains, and trains.

They change apartments, moving up levels so often that Jaejoong’s belongings have all grown to fit in one, easy-to-move bag that he lugs up the elevator. And they would already be almost at the top, if Jaejoong would stop dragging them down, Sangjun-hyung says pointedly. Jaejoong manages to smile at him.

29. Jaejoong wakes to a muffled scream that night, not far from the foot of his bed.

The colourful neon lights shining cheerily outside bathe the struggling woman on the floor and Yunho who is crouched, seiza position, next to her, in blue, purple and red. The colours of a bruise. The window is open, the curtains rippling. Yunho has a hand raised above the woman’s chest, a combination of dirt and rock snaking around her arms, almost like liquid. The woman jerks. A jagged knife falls from her hand, glinting silver.

Yunho’s hand becomes a fist and Jaejoong hears the crack of bone four times, like gunshots.

“Please just leave us alone,” Yunho says, and only in his desperate voice, close to tears, does Jaejoong hear the Yunho he knows.

The woman wordlessly flings herself at the knife. Yunho grabs her left hand before she can grab hold of the handle, barely holding back a choked sob. “I don’t want to kill you.”

Jaejoong doesn’t know how, but he can see a trembling smile struggle to form on the assassin’s face. When she speaks, her voice is sandpapered with resignation. “I don’t want to kill you either.”

Jaejoong feels more than sees what happens next. The shift of space, drawn in by the lick of flame that runs along the woman’s arms (weaker than anything Junsu has ever produced but fire, nonetheless). A raised finger, pointing to Yoochun’s sleeping form. The engulfing, impenetrable wave of earth that snakes up from the ground, lashes onto the flames, extinguishes everything.

The woman stills. Yunho reaches forward and gently, gently, closes her blank, staring eyes. Lets out a shuddering breath and looks to the ceiling for answers.

And because Jaejoong is a coward and scared and sad and angry and he can’t stop shaking, he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep.

30.   Trapping the mannequin comes easily to Jaejoong, like he knew it would be, deep in the corner of his mind. The tiles of the walls are slightly distorted, bending at the edges, and the air trembles as though viewing the scene through a haze of heat. Jaejoong pinches the space a little tighter with his fingers, feeling the hard shape of the mannequin, a mass of cords, plastic, metal and sparks of electricity, in his palm. It’s suspended in midair, arms and legs still waving pointlessly, and Jaejoong thinks of a puppet. He could make it dance, if he wanted to…if he could make the spaces around it shift just right…

The space above the mannequin gathers, compresses, becomes a barrier against Jaejoong’s palm. You don’t need clouds to make lightning.

“Good work Jaejoong,” Sangjun-hyung’s voice seems to come from a long way away. “Now kill it.”

Yunho, Jaejoong thinks with closed eyes, pushing down on the barrier. Yunho is not allowed to shoulder all of this alone.

He sees the flash behind his eyelids. Hears the whip-like crack. The air smells like it’s burning.

Red.

31.   Slowly, the whispers of the five of them begin to spread. It starts out as a conspiratorial hiss that Hyukjae tells Junsu about when he’s able to call (not often, but at least they’re allowed to take calls now) - ‘did you know those five will trap you before the battle even begins? The fire god, his is the strongest flame we know right now. He and the wind god can set fire to commanders from the air before you even see them. The earth god will make the ground under your feet give way, even through rock. If you want any chance of winning, battle them in a desert. The water god’s even worse. One scream from him and you’ll be knee deep in water from whatever source there is and at his mercy.’

They all laugh at the unnecessarily dramatic tone, Changmin jokes they should be known as the ‘gods of the east’, and they all smother him with bear hugs and kissy faces to punish him for how lame that is because, to Changmin, that’s worse than punching him.

It’s from these rumours, however, that Jaejoong finally finds a word to define what he is. ‘The sky god. He can bring the power of the sky down on you and you’ll be dead before you can take your final breath.’

32.  Their next mission is an invasion of a seaside town, supposedly a meeting place for local conspirators. It’s a small operation - they’re only accompanied by two lieutenants and a commander - and the moment they step foot on the main street, their enemies - a group of beefy-looking middle aged men - prostrate themselves at Jaejoong’s feet and surrender. The commander and lieutenants lead the men away and award them with the afternoon off in the town. As they’re walking through the main road, it’s the first time Jaejoong has ever seen the look of awe on the residents’ faces as they peer cautiously from their windows and doors, fingers shyly gripping the doorframe.

The beach near the town is the most beautiful place Jaejoong has ever seen, full of sheer cliffs of ghostly rock like chalk, broad beaches, and bright blue waves lapping against the shore.

In the dusky glow of the afternoon, they have a water fight (Changmin pisses everyone off by cheating despite being told not to), Jaejoong and Yoochun try to part the sea, Junsu gets sand shoved down his shirt and other unmentionable places, and Jaejoong kisses Yunho as the sun slides down the horizon.

For a moment, they all forget.

33.  Two enemy groups surrender to them upon seeing their faces, and a third surrenders after Changmin surrounds them with water and Jaejoong has their leader pinned to the ground on his knees.

Jaejoong knows they shouldn’t get used to being able to avoid fighting or killing, but he’s still young and it’s easy to forget when the wonders of the newly conquered cities are opened for exploration. They wander through European cafes pretending to speak the language, explore the small backlit street stalls during humid nights in unfamiliar cities, buy cheap clothes pinned onto walls in tiny stalls, and they go to see the ocean.

Small moments of happiness stolen between endless nights of travelling and following orders: Changmin gets his first kiss stolen by Jaejoong and earns his second one after successfully picking up a pretty girl at a bar with Yoochun’s guidance, an unspoken agreement goes around that Junsu will be teased the most because he can take it, and Yunho kisses Jaejoong this time, his face soft and illuminated by the lights of the Seine.

34.  When they get back to their apartment, their new mission is already waiting in a pristine envelope on Yunho’s bed. Eight months in a country they’ve never heard of, acting as soldiers and leaders, and lessons to begin learning the language starts tomorrow morning.

35.  There are no surrenders or easy battles in the new country. The enemies fight back with steely, unwavering determination, and there are days when the mad, frantic push and pull of killing and surviving seems never ending.

Soldiers they greet in the morning and have drinks with after hours sometimes come back with half a leg and trauma in their eyes. Many don't return at all.

Jaejoong measures the days with accomplishments. A victory against a gang on the outskirts of the city, in an obstacle course of chain link fences, barbed wire and empty aluminium petrol tanks. A silent battle amidst the yawning metal grid of the gigantic city in the first of the winter chill that bites at their skin. The moment Changmin and Yoochun create a blizzard and turn the battle around. When they no longer need to yell each other’s names to communicate. There are other gods like them from both sides of the war, but none of them work like the five of them do.

He prefers not to remember the losses and what happens after them.

Then, one battle, the commander orders the bombs to be dropped. None of them are prepared for the force of the explosions that follow. The air reeks of death. The commander’s triumphant laugh scares Jaejoong more than all their past battles have.

When they return to the middle of the deserted village square, there is a dead enemy soldier at the commander’s feet and, beside the soldier, a girl begging for mercy. She looks so young.

The commander doesn’t spare her a second glance. He looks around, eyes hard, face stern. “Changmin. Take care of her.”

Changmin makes a small, choked sound at the back of his throat.

“Hyung,” he says, and his eyes plead, flicker to the girl’s face, then back. Before we became gods, before any…all of this, Changmin… Jaejoong thinks suddenly, Changmin has little sisters.

The trainer’s eyes are like river stones. Flat, hard, sharp. Promising consequences. “Junsu then.”

“No,” Changmin says. I’ll do it goes unspoken.

He lowers the sphere of water on the girl’s head like a gift, a baptism from which she never resurfaces. Changmin is crying.

36. Jaejoong’s staring blankly out at the rainstorm, illuminating unfamiliar city lights (smaller and dimmer now that they’re so high up in this apartment), when Changmin sits down and lays a head on Jaejoong’s shoulder. Physical contact with Changmin is rare. Physical contact initiated by Changmin is even rarer. Part of Jaejoong wants to lean over and give him a hug, another part is panicking and wondering what would Yunho do? He settles on the part that tells him to just sit in companionable silence, until Changmin finally breathes, his shoulders slumping, defeated and tired, but inhaling, exhaling and time finally moves.

“You didn’t have to kill her yourself,” Jaejoong murmurs, tucking a stray lock of hair behind the maknae’s ears.

When Changmin talks, his voice is soft, sad and scratchy at the edges.

“Drowning isn’t any easier than burning or asphyxiation or landslides. It just looks the least painful to the one who’s not dying.” Changmin takes a shuddering breath. “It’s a selfish reason, nothing more.”

37.  Hyukjae calls them the following night. “We’re all gods now.”

“All of you?” Junsu asks.

“Thirteen of us,” Hyukjae’s laughs sound relieved. They can all hear it, even though Junsu hasn’t turned on the speaker. “Geng’s been given a new name - you have to call him Hankyung now. Heechul-hyung keeps forgetting. There are some new guys with us but they’re pretty cool. There’s so many of us we’re sharing two rooms. Great, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Junsu’s voice has gone quiet. “You guys take care. We’ll be cheering you on.”

When he lowers the phone, Jaejoong knows they’re all thinking the same thing. It’s time you learnt how to kill.

38.   The next battle they win is huge and unprecedented, and they’re rocketed to the very top of a ritzy hotel in the heart of the city that very night. They’re allowed a day of rest before going to a formal dinner and ceremony tomorrow night as guests of honour with the important commanders, generals, and the president. When Jaejoong comes out of the shower, the room is full but still.

Changmin's hair is still half wet - his face is sickly pallid and he's staring up at the ceiling, intricate with carvings, taking breaths like he's still drowning in the memories of the carnage.

Yoochun is leaning against Changmin, trembling quietly with dry eyes. Junsu is leaning against Changmin's other side. The space where their arms meet is steaming just a bit. The shadows under Junsu's eyes are the darkest Jaejoong's ever seen them. Yunho's sitting cross legged, facing them, his mouth and eyes tight and strained.

As tired as Jaejoong is, something feels like it inflates inside him as he closes the door behind him, like tapping into a hidden reservoir of strength. Speaking is beyond all of them so Jaejoong wordlessly towels Changmin off, making sure every inch of the maknae is dry. Changmin's hands are clammy. Junsu gets up with Changmin as though their arms have become attached, and Jaejoong ends up helping both of them into Changmin’s bed. Even with the two of them, the bed is too big and they look, for a second, like small children huddled together against the cold.

Yoochun joins them, despite Jaejoong's best efforts to tug Yoochun to his own bed. It annoys Jaejoong enough for him to rasp, “If Junsu burns the blanket, it’s your fault.” Yoochun nods and buries his head into Changmin’s back as Jaejoong dims the lights.

And finally Jaejoong approaches Yunho, but his knees give way before he can make it, so he ends up kneeling face to face with Yunho instead.

He manages to mumble, “Sorry”, before Yunho leans forward and pulls Jaejoong into a hug. And Heechul would never let him live it down, but it feels for a second like the only real thing in this world of hazy cigarette smoke, booming club music and empty words which become beautiful through half-lowered eyelids. There's something fierce and protective about Yunho's hug, and he holds Jaejoong as though afraid to let go. Jaejoong hugs him back, closing his eyes, drinking in the other’s presence. Yunho buries his face in Jaejoong's shoulder and, when they finally pull apart, Jaejoong pretends not to notice Yunho's eyes are wet.

39.  They spend the evening in uncomfortable, perfectly pressed suits which are scratchy at the neck and cuffs. Out in the battlefield, they are powerful. In this lavish room of crystal chandeliers, expensive clothes and dainty food with foreign names, they are little more than the ice sculptures at the back of the room, or the bright flowers placed in the corners.

“Yes, very valuable assets,” the commander is saying to the strategy geneal, his stern eyes slightly glazed with drink. The smile he attempts in their direction is still more of a sneer. “We’ll have them conquering even more.”

Changmin leans so that he’s almost shoulder to shoulder with Yoochun, the gap between him and the interested party of officials as wide as he dares to make it. Under the table, Yunho holds Jaejoong’s hand, though his gaze never wavers from the delighted VIPs who are making his acquaintance from across the table.

The dinner bleeds effortlessly into dark, smoky clubs full of powerful, leery men and glitter-eyed girls with long hair, sharp fingernails and honeyed smiles. Yunho navigates deftly among them like an experienced captain during a storm, Junsu beside him with shrewd eyes hidden by a blinding smile. Protecting the rest of them who are not as good at this when, really, they are the ones who should be protected.

40.  When they come back from the party, Jaejoong and Yunho are summoned to the general’s office and told to ‘cut down on the inappropriate conduct’. Yunho doesn’t speak to Jaejoong for a week in his effort to obey, eyes full of fear and jawline set as he shrugs himself out of Jaejoong's unconscious touches, hands tense in his effort to hold himself back.

Yoochun murmurs reassurances in Jaejoong's ears at night in their shared bedroom, offering soft hugs and comforting  through Jaejoong's fingers to numb the sting of rejection. It's for us. The commanding officer doesn't like you and we're on tenderhooks until we can win the next battle.

When they finally begin talking again, something’s broken in the spaces between them.

41.  They win the next battle when the lightning Jaejoong draws down sets the place on fire and Junsu is ordered to spread it. Jaejoong spends the three days of the rest they are rewarded having nightmares about storms.

Yoochun is the one helps Jaejoong breathe again.

42.  “They’re sending a bunch of us down south,” Geng - Hankyung - says. Even his voice sounds exhausted. “Back to my old hometown.”

“Is that good?” Jaejoong whispers. The custom here is to sleep on the ground in the new place they’re staying and Jaejoong has to whisper so he doesn’t wake Yoochun and Yunho sleeping on either side of him.

There is such a long silence on the other end of the line that Jaejoong almost thinks Hankyung’s fallen asleep.

“I’m so tired, hyung,” Hankyung says finally. His voice teeters on the edge of defeat. Begging for an answer Jaejoong doesn’t have.

Jaejoong closes his eyes. “I know.”

43.  The next mission only requires Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu. It’s in a small town isolated from the city by a wide, grey river. It’s filled with patchwork blanket farmland, houses with ancient wooden rafters overgrown by ivy, and a gaggle of skinny boys ready to defend it to their death.

“If you surrender now, there does not need to be any loss of life,” Yoochun says.

The tallest of the bunch steps up to them defiantly, his chin tilted high with arrogance, even though he barely reaches Junsu’s nose.

“We won’t let you!” His voice is in the awkward process of breaking; a discordant jumble of thickening vocal chords mixed with the remnants of childhood. His knees are dark, and the hand holding the metal shovel is calloused. It’s so very obvious he’s terrified and helpless.

Jaejoong realises how the callouses lining his own palm have softened. Somewhere, along the way, they’ve stopped using knives. The brutal physicality of killing feels fuzzy and cushioned with time.

Junsu doesn’t even blink as he sets fire to the boy.

Jaejoong doesn’t speak to Junsu for a week. Even though their apartment is cleaned, with every wrinkle in the bedsheet set in place and every surface free of dust, a lingering smell of smoke clings to the fibres of everything.

44.  Yoochun sneaks out to drink. Junsu throws, “You can’t be selfish like this!” angrily at Yoochun’s face like a punch.

45.  Changmin says quietly he’s worked out how to make floods. They’re forced to detonate another landmine when the commander threatens one of their own soldiers.

Jaejoong throws up as they’re walking through the carnage. Yoochun only shudders and closes his eyes.

46.  They return to their own city for a week after the eight month mission ends. The next one is for a year and four months.

47.  It’s been two years since Jaejoong last saw Yunho dance.

48.  Jaejoong can’t remember how to sing.

49.  “We need to stop doing this,” Jaejoong says. He can barely see the city lights below from the height of their apartment. They haven’t wandered through the city as them for years.

He’s standing next to Yunho and so he can feel it when Yunho stiffens, and turns to look at him.

“We can’t,” Yunho murmurs. He has an old man’s eyes, an albatross of responsibility draped around his shoulders, weighing him down. Jaejoong reads the reasons, etched one by one in the worried frown on Yunho face. They’re too powerful. There are too many risks. We could lose someone.

I could lose you, Jaejoong thinks. The space between their arms is wide and refusing to close. Maybe I’ve lost you already.

Jaejoong looks at Yunho’s face, lit harshly pale by the moonlight. There are lines he’s never seen around Yunho’s eyes, mouth and forehead. They will have to go and fight again in fifty-three minutes. One day soon, they will die.

Jaejoong says, “Why not?”, and Yunho’s frown deepens.

50.  It’s a hot, sweltering night when a company of soldiers return from a mission with five spies gagged and bound on the back of the truck.

The commander calls for Yoochun and Changmin to ‘help with the interrogation process’.

Yoochun returns with a bruise on his forehead, in one of his terrible, incoherent rages. He destroys the blanket and the cupboard by the side of his bed, then curls into the corner of the room, shaking, choking, crying, and the only word Jaejoong can make out is ‘torture’, repeated over and over.

When Jaejoong and Junsu finally manage to get Yoochun calm enough to put him to bed, Yoochun refuses to sleep next to the cold, unresponsive Changmin who has been staring at the wall the entire time.

Jaejoong is close enough to catch the glare Yoochun shoots in Changmin’s direction and the soft, bitter laugh carrying a breath of ‘puppet’.

Changmin’s eyes flicker.

“Yoochun, stop it,” Yunho says sharply.

Junsu shoots Yunho a glare that Jaejoong’s never seen before. “Is it right that he’s just tortured these people?”

Yunho’s gaze shifts to Junsu, and his expression is stern. “That doesn’t give him the right to call Min that. Min didn’t want it any more than Yoochun did.”

“We didn’t become gods for this,” Jaejoong says quietly.

Yunho rounds on Jaejoong. “And what did you expect?” his voice is bitter. “They helped us become this powerful, they’re demanding us to give in return, we’re soldiers. Did you think we would come away from this with clean hands?”

“Not this,” Jaejoong counters, his voice cracking. Yoochun lets out a dry sob, and Jaejoong can see the purple-red bruises on the necks of the spies, their wild and sightless eyes as the water covers them over and over…

“We can’t defy them openly like this,” Yunho is saying, his eyes tight the way they are when he’s forcing himself to speak calmly. “There are too many people depending on us. This has to be slow, it has to be gradual, we can’t-”

“They’ll make us do it again,” Yoochun yells. Half his voice is muffled by the pillow, but Jaejoong can hear the terror.

“Do you know what the consequences of refusing would have been?” Changmin snaps, voice trembling with barely suppressed rage. “If we both refused? Do you know what they’re capable of? I did it for us because you didn’t think!”

Yoochun shakes his head, burying his face into the pillow, grabbing Jaejoong’s hands in a deathgrip. Changmin lets out a hissing profanity and walks towards the door, but it’s locked as it always is during the night. There’s nothing to do except sit on the opposite end of the room, unable to escape each other’s presences, like every other argument they’ve had.

51.  “We need to stop doing this,” Jaejoong says.

The general looks at Jaejoong thoughtfully. Jaejoong can’t read his eyes - they’ve become flat and washed out with time, like a print exposed too long for the sun. All the reds are pinks and the blues are cyans, and what Jaejoong once believed was fairness is amusement.

“Funny you’re the fourth person to ask this of me today,” he says, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “But Jaejoong-sshi. You know that’s impossible.”

“Okay,” Jaejoong says, heart thudding to his throat. “We’ll stop anyway.”

Jaejoong returns to their room. They’re back home, due to leave tomorrow morning at 4am. Yoochun and Changmin are sitting on opposite ends of the room. They haven’t spoken more than short, clipped sentences to each other in more days than Jaejoong wants to remember. Junsu is missing Junho - Jaejoong can tell by the way he’s curled in on himself. Yunho is standing by the window, absently tracing over the list of missions that have been printed on the walls. For a moment, Jaejoong doesn’t recognise any of them.

When it all ends and Jaejoong is plagued by sleepless nights, he will go over that moment again, and again, and again. If he had sat down next to Changmin, if he had wondered more about who the fourth person was, if he had gone over, ignored the forbidden and the taboo, and hugged Yunho, if he had said, ‘We need to talk’.

What Jaejoong does is lie down on his bed and close his eyes. Drifting off into sleep, still taking the presences of the other four for granted.

He wakes up the next day to a locked room. They’re not allowed to leave, and Yunho and Changmin are gone.

52.  “Are you ready to stop?” the speaker in the corner of the room asks.

Jaejoong presses against the door with all the power he has in his body. He wants to pray, but he doesn’t know who to pray to. Let this work. We will get out and storm the building. We’ll grab Yunho and Changmin and we will run and get out of here. The five of us together. The five of us.

Yoochun is concentrating on the middle of the door, a compressed hurricane in the palm of his hand. It makes a sound like a chainsaw digging through wood except, of course, it can’t be wood because the same hurricane would have lacerated a man to pieces in seconds, but the door does not break.

Junsu is working on the lock. There is sweat running down his face, which tells Jaejoong the fire would have melted everything in this room except for the lock.

When Jaejoong finally steps away from the door, blackness swallows his vision and, for a complete, dizzying minute, he thinks he’s gone blind.

His vision is slowly pieced back into focus from squares of nonsensical colour into Yoochun and Junsu’s faces, heavy with despair. They’re beyond hungry and beyond tired, and the immortality in their veins won’t even let them sink into death.

53.  “Are you ready to stop?” the speaker asks. The sunlight reaches their window, the light a bloody red.

Junsu says, “There’s a way out.”

Jaejoong hasn’t eaten in three days. He can barely muster the energy to ask, “What?”

Instead of replying, Junsu goes over to the window, silent, stiff and emotionless. There is a burst of flame that singes the window. Junsu gives the glass a push, the glass gives way, and there is a rush of cold air from outside.

“Why didn’t you do this earlier?” Yoochun rasps.

Junsu’s voice finally breaks. “If we jump, we won’t be gods anymore.”

54.  “Are you ready to stop?” the speaker demands.

The air from the window is sweet, welcoming and smells like freedom. Miscellaneous thoughts are running through Jaejoong’s mind. Yunho doesn’t know how to make that bulgogi sauce Changmin loves. Mudslides aren’t effective against wind gods. Changmin asked me to make dinner that night but I was too tired. They are the strongest of all of us. Yoochun borrowed Changmin’s hairbrush and forgot to return it and now Changmin won’t have a hairbrush. I love them. Who’s going to sing cheesy songs in nonsensical languages when Yoochun’s gone? Junsu didn’t get to say goodbye to Hyukjae. Yunho never lets himself cry in front of Changmin. They’re never going to forgive us.

Jaejoong can’t recognise himself in the mirror.

“Ready?” Junsu says, taking Jaejoong and Yoochun’s hands in his own. A flare of warmth. The last time.

Jaejoong isn’t ready.

“Three, two-”

He isn’t ready, but this is their only-

“One.”

They jump.