[fic] Beautiful thing...beautiful you - chapter 8
Title: Beautiful Thing...Beautiful You
Pairing(s): Yoomin, (Yunjae later)
Length: Chapter 8/?
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: violence,
Genre: AU, drama, angst, sci-fi
Summary: On one ordinary day like all others, Yoochun rescues an injured man. But the other is not quite what he seems to be. And was their meeting really a coincidence?
A/N: i'm not sure where the inspiration came from after over a year of writers block for this :S but after rereading the whole thing i finally got back into it :D even if not much happens in this chapter.....:3
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 |
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**
***
Everything was hazy, as if his eyes were wrapped in film or submerged under water. Sounds were all far away, echoing hollowly in his ears, leaving him floating, dipping and bobbing on a surface of nothing.
He wasn’t really there, halfway between dreams and reality. He wouldn’t have even noticed the group that had just entered the room until a low hiss of disapproval came from the bed beside him.
His eyes slid over to where the group of white scientists were huddled around a tall figure, one with a small body cradled in its arms. The form, a woman, was laid upon a bed lining the other side of the room, and she was promptly cut off from view as the doctors clustered closer, a blur of tools and machines.
Yoochun was sickly reminded of the first time he was hooked up every time a new person was laid to rest. Inescapable, as no one ever was released unless they were dead, overused and bled dry. Shriveled and sucked of their very life. It had only happened once since he’d been there, but the sight of that one small body which had been carried unceremoniously from the room with the words ‘toss it’ burned like a brand in his memory. Haunted him throughout dizzy hours of consciousness and plagued dark fitful nightmares.
The cyborg who’d carried in the new prisoner was already turning away, heading back towards the door and Yoochun got a brief glimpse of a strong jaw line and a high nose. Beside him, a low muttered string of foul curses were streaming unchecked from Jaejoong’s mouth.
Catching a few of the choice words, Yoochun realized with slowly dawning coldness that it wasn’t just any robot, but another of those hunter cyborgs. The ones that were too human to be trusted, too robotic to be safe. Another one that was made like his Changmin.
From Jaejoong’s reaction he concluded that it must be the very model that had hunted and captured Jaejoong himself. The one he’d assumed was named Yunho, with the way the name fell between the biting harsh curses. Yunho who Jaejoong hated with every fiber of his being. Yunho who Jaejoong unknowingly wept over in his sleep. Yunho who’d just brought in a girl who looked to be hardly more than a child.
He closed his eyes quickly, struggling to shut the sound of Jaejoong out as well, because the low tone was making him anxious. He felt dangerously sick again, even though he’d been plagued by a constant queasy feeling since he’d gotten here.
It was only inevitable to feel so wretched as he was restrained in a dark dirty laboratory, surrounded with horrific scenes of people in a perpetual state of torture. Sick and rotting in their bonds, veins popping and unhealthily blue as their blood was forcefully overdrawn time and time again.
The lightheaded sick feeling was probably mostly due to his own blood loss, as well as due to the method with which they took it from him. He felt thin to the point of his muscles withering against his bones, a bone heavy fatigue that left him weak and shaky, never able to recover from each extraction of blood. Never able to relax or truly rest with the lights always on, with the machines always connected and counting his life away one beep at a time. Never a whole self.
He felt he was quickly becoming a shadow of a person, a mere skeleton with unnaturally large orbs of pained anguished eyes if the man beside him was anything to go by. And no doubt the haunted hopeless look had overtaken his own face as well.
Too wrapped up in his own miserable self, it took Jaejoong repeating his name twice before he heard the man calling him. Turning his head slightly, he found the other pinning him with eyes sharp with an unnaturally feverish glint.
Yoochun’s heart constricted, shocked by the feral expression, the way the shallow white skin pulled across the nearly skeletal face in a horrid dead way. It was almost painful to witness such emotion on such a desecrated face. He found he couldn’t speak even as Jaejoong called his name again, begging him for a response, reaching out helplessly for human contact.
Another moment of panic rocking through as it all became too much, and Yoochun’s chest ached for the conflicted emotions tearing through him. The aversion to the sight before him, the sick guilt at feeling such a way when he himself was hardly better.
Jaejoong didn’t seem to care, or else he was too far gone to notice.
“Yoochun-” He croaked again. Continuing only when Yoochun finally forced himself the slightest of nods. “Please talk to me... I need to...just listen to me, please-?”
So pathetic and broken, begging him, and Yoochun forced himself to focus, to hold Jaejoong’s pleading eyes. Urged him silently to continue, as the other seemed hardly capable of withholding the dirty secrets fighting to spill forth.
“I can’t remember what it’s like anymore. I don’t even know if it is real. It is real, isn’t it?”
His voice grew smaller with each word he spoke, like a child seeking for an answer they couldn’t even fathom. Or else an answer they were afraid to hear for fear of it being wrong, of it being confirmed right.
“What’s not real?” Yoochun prodded gently, sensing the other needed guidance to even articulate what was killing him from the inside out.
“H-home.” Jaejoong croaked, dragging a shuddering breath before repeating the single word. More gently, reverently, wistfully. “Home.”
“Where...where is your home?” His eyes burned as he saw the small spark that lit the other’s eyes with the mention of the single word. Memories and feelings he couldn’t even guess at painting and coloring the word into something beautiful, missed, and treasured. He’d never had a place he’d called home, and he felt the emptiness of that as a hole in his very center, a long unfilled longing more strong than ever as Jaejoong spoke again and slowly drew breathtaking expanses of a white city in the clouds far away.
A floating island with great rivers crossing its soft green surface. Spewing off the edges in magnificent white pluming sprays of waterfalls. Water that cascaded off into infinite blue skies and fell down down down into sparkling misty rainbows and golden water drops.
It sounded like a fairy tale land. One that thrived off of the soft coolness of aloe plant and the beaded dew that sparkled daily like miniature gems off of emerald tree boughs bent softly to dabble leafy fingers into quietly rushing waters.
A land of peace and contentment, honoring beauty and worshiping the water that gave them both life and livlihood. The rivers that caused the greenery to thrive and the people to smile. The same rivers that made Jaejoong weep in longing, in remembrance, in loss, as he told Yoochun that his soul could only be freed from the clutches of death so long as his body be given to the river after the rites of passing had been complete.
He was babbling now, tears coursing down his cheeks, voice trembling with each word uttered as he lamented his fate, the way he’d been condemned to rot in hell, his soul to fester in agony as he was to be denied the true passage. How he feared death all the more as he knew he would be unable to find the peace he’d been promised since birth.
Yoochun watched quietly, enraptured with the glassy sheen to those obsidian eyes, listened with fascination to the way the man was connected to something so much bigger than himself. Heard with wonderment the way having real roots, having beliefs and a history with other people, with a land, could mean having a desirable future. A future that included death in such a beautiful, meaningful way.
And he didn’t know when tears had slipped from his own eyes as well, whether they were for Jaejoong and his loss or for himself and his gaping lack of anything remotely similar. He had nothing he could call home, nothing he missed in such a fashion. Nothing he’d looked forward to, especially nothing he’d wished for after death.
Now with death clouding the edge of every living moment, he realized he’d only ever been waiting for and dreading the time when everything would just stop. When everything would cease to exist in the dreary horror of his life now, and be plunged into unending darkness instead. He had thought that was all there was. Had thought that would be better than his life. But it was so meaningless in the face of all that Jaejoong confided in him then.
And he wished he could lay himself in one of those rivers. Even if he didn’t deserve it. Even if he were not fit to receive such a passing. He wished he could have it. Tears dribbling down his chin as he knew it was impossible, impossible as the wish to even just see such a beautiful place once before he closed his eyes forever.
For now, it was almost calming in a way to even just imagine such a land.
It was quiet for a while as Jaejoong rode out the last of the heart rending emotions that slipped from his eyes. Like losing pieces of himself, each drop holding a precious memory and an even more sacred hope.
They stared at each other, weak and spent, sharing a stare as Yoochun now felt he shared a part of Jaejoong’s heart. And he wanted to thank him, to tell him he’d keep it safely, treasure it forever deep within himself. Wanted to ask him to show him his home one day. Wanted to ask him if he could lay in the river together with him when their time finally came.
Instead he found himself blurting something else entirely. Something he needed to know with a soft burning ache. One that he could comprehend more than floating islands. One that he held dear as it concerned the only being he’d ever felt like he could find that feeling Jaejoong described as ‘home’ together with. Changmin. So he let the name spill forth.
“Yunho. Who is Yunho?”
Jaejoong stilled, his whole body going quiet as his eyes fell slowly closed. He breathed shallowly for a long slow minute before he opened them again. Looking over at Yoochun with a sorrow that went almost as deep as the loss of his home.
“Yunho...was my lover.”
Yoochun’s lips parted in a silent expression of surprise. Jaejoong’s face softened slightly as his eyes went dark and distant, as if watching memories from far away, seeing something long ago that was still dear to him, untainted and lovely.
“We met in highschool. Typical teenage love story. He was such an idiot...always tripping over himself and words. Unable to keep himself in once piece, but the way he held my hand centered my world. And the look in his eyes as we promised forever...”
He faded off as a small sad smile graced his face, cheeks still wet with previously shed sorrow and Yoochun thought he looked beautiful. Broken and beautiful. And his heart ached.
“What happened...?” He whispered, almost afraid to break the memories so carefully displayed as if made of crystal. But his words shattered them like harsh steel to glass. Jaejoong’s face hardened and his eyes went dead.
“He died.” He swallowed with an effort, the harsh lines to his face tightening as anger slowly took over the grief. “I even went to his funeral. Performed the rites...watched him float away taking my heart and soul with him.” He sucked in a rattling breath, eyes rimmed red and raw. “He died. Fucking left me broken and alone. Then out of nowhere...one day he came back.”
He’d been glaring into empty air while he spoke, but now turned his burning gaze onto Yoochun once again.
“He appeared before me, whole and perfect, and alive, and I fucking let him come close.” He shook his head slightly in pained regret as his own mistake. “I was stupid with grief, thought it a hallucination, thought it was a miracle, a blessing, an answer to all my prayers...I was stupid...So stupid. It was impossible for him to come back from the dead. I should have turned him away. Should have run and hid...Should have known it too good to be true...Because when he kissed me...everything went wrong. It hurt...felt like dying...dying over and over...because then I woke up here.”
Yoochun felt an echoing pull of pain at the words, the disbelief and betrayal surging within him in response mirrored clearly on Jaejoong’s sculpted features, though his own heart was full of none of the ugly hate that now twisted Jaejoong’s whole being nearly inhuman.
“He betrayed me. Twice. He died, left me behind, and then he came back to kill me. He’s a monster.”
“No-” Yoochun broke in harshly, everything about the glamorous beautiful trail the story had been weaving straining and fraying near the point of ripping and breaking as Jaejoong attacked the very person he’d said he’d loved. And Yoochun was terrified that he’d be caught up in the web of the man’s conviction, the truth he believed so fiercely.
“No.” Yoochun repeated as Jaejoong glared at him with those dark eyes. “He’s not-it’s not his fault...” He shook his head. “It’s them. They turned him into that. They used him and forced him to do that to you...to me...” He shook his head again in denial even as Jaejoong smiled at him sadly.
“Yoochun.” He said calm and steady, capturing him as anger bled into a pity so potent it turned his stomach with the realization that he was scrabbling to convince himself and not the other. “You poor fool. You care not for a person but a programmed machine. He’s not who you think-want him to be. Your Changmin is dead. That body, face, is nothing but a mutated copy, a weapon fashioned for the war.” He shook his head slowly, eyes soft but not sorry as he rammed the words painfully into Yoochun’s skull. “You stupid...stupid, beautiful thing...I know how you feel. What you’re thinking.” Then softer, as if trying to ease the pain harsh words already cut open. “Trust me...believe me when I say you need to let go. Let him go. Let yourself go...”
It was hard to swallow around the painful lump lodged in his throat. Yoochun turned his head away to face the wall, unable to see the look on that face, biting his lip roughly in an attempt to keep it from trembling.
“You’re wrong.” He choked, watching the dirt caked cracks in the broken plaster waver and blur before his eyes. “You’re wrong.” Closing his eyes as hot tears tumbled over the edges once again.
Behind him Jaejoong’s voice was thin and waspish, bitter. “Don’t trust anything those fucking machines say or do. It can’t do anything but follow its damn programming...you’ve seen it with your own eyes so stop lying to yourself.”
Yoochun wished he could block out that voice, cover his ears so he didn’t have to hear the poison those words were sinking into his only precious memories. He couldn’t believe it. Regardless of all the truths facing him now, he just knew what he’d seen, what he’d shared, it couldn’t be a lie. It had been so real. Changmin had been so real. Sweet...honest...beautiful and real. The only thing he was sure of, if he was sure of anything that had ever happened in his dismal life.
Changmin couldn’t have lied to him even if he’d tried. He couldn’t have acted, not with the way he’d truly lost his memories. He couldn’t have faked that or fabricated any of it. It was all too realistic, not to mention the moment the device within him activated too starkly painful and horrible to be constructed
He couldn’t believe it false for the life of him. Not the fear, the vulnerable fragility and the care he’d seen in those eyes. Not the desperate plea for him to leave, to run, the urge to protect, and the dying of hope as it all went wrong and the world crumbled around them.
It couldn’t have been a lie. It broke his heart, twisted sharp pain clawing at his gut, but there was no other way to justify how he’d ended up in this room. No other way to explain how he’d ended up strapped to a bed with his life slowly bleeding away.
It broke his heart, but he miserably continued to tell himself that Jaejoong’s words were all lies even when he now knew he was the one lying to himself.
**
tbc ~
cialisgeneric.co
Pairing(s): Yoomin, (Yunjae later)
Length: Chapter 8/?
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: violence,
Genre: AU, drama, angst, sci-fi
Summary: On one ordinary day like all others, Yoochun rescues an injured man. But the other is not quite what he seems to be. And was their meeting really a coincidence?
A/N: i'm not sure where the inspiration came from after over a year of writers block for this :S but after rereading the whole thing i finally got back into it :D even if not much happens in this chapter.....:3
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 |
**
**
***
Everything was hazy, as if his eyes were wrapped in film or submerged under water. Sounds were all far away, echoing hollowly in his ears, leaving him floating, dipping and bobbing on a surface of nothing.
He wasn’t really there, halfway between dreams and reality. He wouldn’t have even noticed the group that had just entered the room until a low hiss of disapproval came from the bed beside him.
His eyes slid over to where the group of white scientists were huddled around a tall figure, one with a small body cradled in its arms. The form, a woman, was laid upon a bed lining the other side of the room, and she was promptly cut off from view as the doctors clustered closer, a blur of tools and machines.
Yoochun was sickly reminded of the first time he was hooked up every time a new person was laid to rest. Inescapable, as no one ever was released unless they were dead, overused and bled dry. Shriveled and sucked of their very life. It had only happened once since he’d been there, but the sight of that one small body which had been carried unceremoniously from the room with the words ‘toss it’ burned like a brand in his memory. Haunted him throughout dizzy hours of consciousness and plagued dark fitful nightmares.
The cyborg who’d carried in the new prisoner was already turning away, heading back towards the door and Yoochun got a brief glimpse of a strong jaw line and a high nose. Beside him, a low muttered string of foul curses were streaming unchecked from Jaejoong’s mouth.
Catching a few of the choice words, Yoochun realized with slowly dawning coldness that it wasn’t just any robot, but another of those hunter cyborgs. The ones that were too human to be trusted, too robotic to be safe. Another one that was made like his Changmin.
From Jaejoong’s reaction he concluded that it must be the very model that had hunted and captured Jaejoong himself. The one he’d assumed was named Yunho, with the way the name fell between the biting harsh curses. Yunho who Jaejoong hated with every fiber of his being. Yunho who Jaejoong unknowingly wept over in his sleep. Yunho who’d just brought in a girl who looked to be hardly more than a child.
He closed his eyes quickly, struggling to shut the sound of Jaejoong out as well, because the low tone was making him anxious. He felt dangerously sick again, even though he’d been plagued by a constant queasy feeling since he’d gotten here.
It was only inevitable to feel so wretched as he was restrained in a dark dirty laboratory, surrounded with horrific scenes of people in a perpetual state of torture. Sick and rotting in their bonds, veins popping and unhealthily blue as their blood was forcefully overdrawn time and time again.
The lightheaded sick feeling was probably mostly due to his own blood loss, as well as due to the method with which they took it from him. He felt thin to the point of his muscles withering against his bones, a bone heavy fatigue that left him weak and shaky, never able to recover from each extraction of blood. Never able to relax or truly rest with the lights always on, with the machines always connected and counting his life away one beep at a time. Never a whole self.
He felt he was quickly becoming a shadow of a person, a mere skeleton with unnaturally large orbs of pained anguished eyes if the man beside him was anything to go by. And no doubt the haunted hopeless look had overtaken his own face as well.
Too wrapped up in his own miserable self, it took Jaejoong repeating his name twice before he heard the man calling him. Turning his head slightly, he found the other pinning him with eyes sharp with an unnaturally feverish glint.
Yoochun’s heart constricted, shocked by the feral expression, the way the shallow white skin pulled across the nearly skeletal face in a horrid dead way. It was almost painful to witness such emotion on such a desecrated face. He found he couldn’t speak even as Jaejoong called his name again, begging him for a response, reaching out helplessly for human contact.
Another moment of panic rocking through as it all became too much, and Yoochun’s chest ached for the conflicted emotions tearing through him. The aversion to the sight before him, the sick guilt at feeling such a way when he himself was hardly better.
Jaejoong didn’t seem to care, or else he was too far gone to notice.
“Yoochun-” He croaked again. Continuing only when Yoochun finally forced himself the slightest of nods. “Please talk to me... I need to...just listen to me, please-?”
So pathetic and broken, begging him, and Yoochun forced himself to focus, to hold Jaejoong’s pleading eyes. Urged him silently to continue, as the other seemed hardly capable of withholding the dirty secrets fighting to spill forth.
“I can’t remember what it’s like anymore. I don’t even know if it is real. It is real, isn’t it?”
His voice grew smaller with each word he spoke, like a child seeking for an answer they couldn’t even fathom. Or else an answer they were afraid to hear for fear of it being wrong, of it being confirmed right.
“What’s not real?” Yoochun prodded gently, sensing the other needed guidance to even articulate what was killing him from the inside out.
“H-home.” Jaejoong croaked, dragging a shuddering breath before repeating the single word. More gently, reverently, wistfully. “Home.”
“Where...where is your home?” His eyes burned as he saw the small spark that lit the other’s eyes with the mention of the single word. Memories and feelings he couldn’t even guess at painting and coloring the word into something beautiful, missed, and treasured. He’d never had a place he’d called home, and he felt the emptiness of that as a hole in his very center, a long unfilled longing more strong than ever as Jaejoong spoke again and slowly drew breathtaking expanses of a white city in the clouds far away.
A floating island with great rivers crossing its soft green surface. Spewing off the edges in magnificent white pluming sprays of waterfalls. Water that cascaded off into infinite blue skies and fell down down down into sparkling misty rainbows and golden water drops.
It sounded like a fairy tale land. One that thrived off of the soft coolness of aloe plant and the beaded dew that sparkled daily like miniature gems off of emerald tree boughs bent softly to dabble leafy fingers into quietly rushing waters.
A land of peace and contentment, honoring beauty and worshiping the water that gave them both life and livlihood. The rivers that caused the greenery to thrive and the people to smile. The same rivers that made Jaejoong weep in longing, in remembrance, in loss, as he told Yoochun that his soul could only be freed from the clutches of death so long as his body be given to the river after the rites of passing had been complete.
He was babbling now, tears coursing down his cheeks, voice trembling with each word uttered as he lamented his fate, the way he’d been condemned to rot in hell, his soul to fester in agony as he was to be denied the true passage. How he feared death all the more as he knew he would be unable to find the peace he’d been promised since birth.
Yoochun watched quietly, enraptured with the glassy sheen to those obsidian eyes, listened with fascination to the way the man was connected to something so much bigger than himself. Heard with wonderment the way having real roots, having beliefs and a history with other people, with a land, could mean having a desirable future. A future that included death in such a beautiful, meaningful way.
And he didn’t know when tears had slipped from his own eyes as well, whether they were for Jaejoong and his loss or for himself and his gaping lack of anything remotely similar. He had nothing he could call home, nothing he missed in such a fashion. Nothing he’d looked forward to, especially nothing he’d wished for after death.
Now with death clouding the edge of every living moment, he realized he’d only ever been waiting for and dreading the time when everything would just stop. When everything would cease to exist in the dreary horror of his life now, and be plunged into unending darkness instead. He had thought that was all there was. Had thought that would be better than his life. But it was so meaningless in the face of all that Jaejoong confided in him then.
And he wished he could lay himself in one of those rivers. Even if he didn’t deserve it. Even if he were not fit to receive such a passing. He wished he could have it. Tears dribbling down his chin as he knew it was impossible, impossible as the wish to even just see such a beautiful place once before he closed his eyes forever.
For now, it was almost calming in a way to even just imagine such a land.
It was quiet for a while as Jaejoong rode out the last of the heart rending emotions that slipped from his eyes. Like losing pieces of himself, each drop holding a precious memory and an even more sacred hope.
They stared at each other, weak and spent, sharing a stare as Yoochun now felt he shared a part of Jaejoong’s heart. And he wanted to thank him, to tell him he’d keep it safely, treasure it forever deep within himself. Wanted to ask him to show him his home one day. Wanted to ask him if he could lay in the river together with him when their time finally came.
Instead he found himself blurting something else entirely. Something he needed to know with a soft burning ache. One that he could comprehend more than floating islands. One that he held dear as it concerned the only being he’d ever felt like he could find that feeling Jaejoong described as ‘home’ together with. Changmin. So he let the name spill forth.
“Yunho. Who is Yunho?”
Jaejoong stilled, his whole body going quiet as his eyes fell slowly closed. He breathed shallowly for a long slow minute before he opened them again. Looking over at Yoochun with a sorrow that went almost as deep as the loss of his home.
“Yunho...was my lover.”
Yoochun’s lips parted in a silent expression of surprise. Jaejoong’s face softened slightly as his eyes went dark and distant, as if watching memories from far away, seeing something long ago that was still dear to him, untainted and lovely.
“We met in highschool. Typical teenage love story. He was such an idiot...always tripping over himself and words. Unable to keep himself in once piece, but the way he held my hand centered my world. And the look in his eyes as we promised forever...”
He faded off as a small sad smile graced his face, cheeks still wet with previously shed sorrow and Yoochun thought he looked beautiful. Broken and beautiful. And his heart ached.
“What happened...?” He whispered, almost afraid to break the memories so carefully displayed as if made of crystal. But his words shattered them like harsh steel to glass. Jaejoong’s face hardened and his eyes went dead.
“He died.” He swallowed with an effort, the harsh lines to his face tightening as anger slowly took over the grief. “I even went to his funeral. Performed the rites...watched him float away taking my heart and soul with him.” He sucked in a rattling breath, eyes rimmed red and raw. “He died. Fucking left me broken and alone. Then out of nowhere...one day he came back.”
He’d been glaring into empty air while he spoke, but now turned his burning gaze onto Yoochun once again.
“He appeared before me, whole and perfect, and alive, and I fucking let him come close.” He shook his head slightly in pained regret as his own mistake. “I was stupid with grief, thought it a hallucination, thought it was a miracle, a blessing, an answer to all my prayers...I was stupid...So stupid. It was impossible for him to come back from the dead. I should have turned him away. Should have run and hid...Should have known it too good to be true...Because when he kissed me...everything went wrong. It hurt...felt like dying...dying over and over...because then I woke up here.”
Yoochun felt an echoing pull of pain at the words, the disbelief and betrayal surging within him in response mirrored clearly on Jaejoong’s sculpted features, though his own heart was full of none of the ugly hate that now twisted Jaejoong’s whole being nearly inhuman.
“He betrayed me. Twice. He died, left me behind, and then he came back to kill me. He’s a monster.”
“No-” Yoochun broke in harshly, everything about the glamorous beautiful trail the story had been weaving straining and fraying near the point of ripping and breaking as Jaejoong attacked the very person he’d said he’d loved. And Yoochun was terrified that he’d be caught up in the web of the man’s conviction, the truth he believed so fiercely.
“No.” Yoochun repeated as Jaejoong glared at him with those dark eyes. “He’s not-it’s not his fault...” He shook his head. “It’s them. They turned him into that. They used him and forced him to do that to you...to me...” He shook his head again in denial even as Jaejoong smiled at him sadly.
“Yoochun.” He said calm and steady, capturing him as anger bled into a pity so potent it turned his stomach with the realization that he was scrabbling to convince himself and not the other. “You poor fool. You care not for a person but a programmed machine. He’s not who you think-want him to be. Your Changmin is dead. That body, face, is nothing but a mutated copy, a weapon fashioned for the war.” He shook his head slowly, eyes soft but not sorry as he rammed the words painfully into Yoochun’s skull. “You stupid...stupid, beautiful thing...I know how you feel. What you’re thinking.” Then softer, as if trying to ease the pain harsh words already cut open. “Trust me...believe me when I say you need to let go. Let him go. Let yourself go...”
It was hard to swallow around the painful lump lodged in his throat. Yoochun turned his head away to face the wall, unable to see the look on that face, biting his lip roughly in an attempt to keep it from trembling.
“You’re wrong.” He choked, watching the dirt caked cracks in the broken plaster waver and blur before his eyes. “You’re wrong.” Closing his eyes as hot tears tumbled over the edges once again.
Behind him Jaejoong’s voice was thin and waspish, bitter. “Don’t trust anything those fucking machines say or do. It can’t do anything but follow its damn programming...you’ve seen it with your own eyes so stop lying to yourself.”
Yoochun wished he could block out that voice, cover his ears so he didn’t have to hear the poison those words were sinking into his only precious memories. He couldn’t believe it. Regardless of all the truths facing him now, he just knew what he’d seen, what he’d shared, it couldn’t be a lie. It had been so real. Changmin had been so real. Sweet...honest...beautiful and real. The only thing he was sure of, if he was sure of anything that had ever happened in his dismal life.
Changmin couldn’t have lied to him even if he’d tried. He couldn’t have acted, not with the way he’d truly lost his memories. He couldn’t have faked that or fabricated any of it. It was all too realistic, not to mention the moment the device within him activated too starkly painful and horrible to be constructed
He couldn’t believe it false for the life of him. Not the fear, the vulnerable fragility and the care he’d seen in those eyes. Not the desperate plea for him to leave, to run, the urge to protect, and the dying of hope as it all went wrong and the world crumbled around them.
It couldn’t have been a lie. It broke his heart, twisted sharp pain clawing at his gut, but there was no other way to justify how he’d ended up in this room. No other way to explain how he’d ended up strapped to a bed with his life slowly bleeding away.
It broke his heart, but he miserably continued to tell himself that Jaejoong’s words were all lies even when he now knew he was the one lying to himself.
**
tbc ~
cialisgeneric.co