City (e)Scape8/?
Title: City (e)Scape
Progress: 8/?
Pairing: To be decided
Rating: PG-13 ~ NC-17
Warnings: Graphic violence, blood/gore, sexual situations (more to be added)
Summary: In a grisly future, healers and hunters are bred for the specific purpose of keeping order for THEM. But when IT starts to revolt and draft wary healers and hunters to create its own army, it’s obvious that someone is on the inside. Jonghyun and Kibum, the child prodigies of THEM are out to settle the score and find out what really happened - even at the sake of their own loyalty.
A/N: Title is a play on the term ‘cityscape’, which is basically ‘the view of the city’; it’s about wanting to break free from the norm, to escape the life you’re born into, to find yourself and others and do what you want to do with your own life.
[ Prologue] [ 1] [ 2] [ 3] [ 4] [ 5] [ 6] [ 7]
--
It was the kind of parched that no matter how many times you got up to re-fill your glass with water, no matter how hard you tried to swish it around before it went down, there was still that one part of your throat dry as ever, untouched by the liquid. It was the kind of parched where your stomach was full but your throat was still thick, gummy, achy.
Kibum had gotten up out of the bed he was sharing with two other men seven times already that night, and when he was contemplating the eighth, an arm slung around his waist from somewhere and kept him in place. And he was tired, it was the kind of tired that even though you were exhausted and wanted to do nothing but sleep, it was too much of an effort to keep your eyelids shut.
And so Kibum was staring up at the ceiling of the abandoned pawn shop, eyes glistening with moisture that he wished upon his throat instead, watching the shadows dance across the rafters through the window.
“Kibummie…” the owner of the arm that was resting possessively around the healer’s waist turned out to be Jinki. “Sleep… it’s late.”
He wanted to have a snarky comeback, something like ‘I didn’t know villains had a bed time’, but he kept it to himself. He couldn’t talk like that to Jinki, the man that he had confided in thousands of times before about things as small as wanting to know why he couldn’t spice up their drab assassin uniform to things as big as wondering if he and Jonghyun were in the right place. Jinki was the closest thing to a father-figure Kibum and Jonghyun ever had, he was a brother and a comrade but this…
Jinki had basically outed himself as the founder of IT and Kibum couldn’t find it in his heart to hate the man. He could never hate Jinki.
“I’m thirsty,” was how Kibum responded instead, his voice absent of the usual haughty edge, his voice not coming out as frigid as he wanted it to, his voice breaking, the will of his fight slowly, audibly dying.
He feels Jinki shift next to him and his eyes are open so he sees the older man prop himself up on his elbow and move his possessive arm so that a possessive - kind - hand could gently swipe fingers down the line of Kibum’s jaw.
And it was silence like this where no words spoke volumes; it was silence like this when he felt Minho shift on his other side that Kibum finally started to realize that he was the bad guy, that he was the one in the wrong the whole time. It’s a mind-blowing, self-destructive feeling, once he realizes that, and a shuddery breath racked his lungs before his eyes finally closed, letting loose hot tears, the moisture that he still wished was in his throat, to strengthen his voice, make it sound less weak.
--
The morning came and it was unforgiving. Kibum opened his eyes and only got an eyeful of dark hair, mussed hair and tanned skin - his back ached from being on his side for the majority of the night and his legs were tangled with two other pairs and he didn’t want to be awake. He didn’t want to be awake because the Sun wasn’t awake - it hadn’t been awake for a thousand years - and for once in his life he wanted to feel the warmth on his cheeks, feel the kisses of sunshine first thing in the morning, and be teased out of bed with the promise of sunglasses and shady trees.
He felt Jinki’s breath puffing warmly on the back of his neck and his eyes fluttered a bit at the sensation; it was familiar, it was comforting. He used to always wake up with Jonghyun’s breath on his neck.
But Jonghyun was…
His heart clenched.
They said Taemin was going to bring him back but Kibum knew nothing of inter-dimensional traveling, even when it came to healers. It seemed ridiculous. Jonghyun was dead, THEY killed him, Kibum had felt their connection break the instant the bullet hit Jonghyun’s skull.
Kibum had felt the breath be stolen from his lungs, his vision had gone black - and he would have passed out, had it not been for Jinki’s shouts, his commands for Taemin to lock and load, get ready for a trip because he was going to be gone for a while. He would have passed out, had it not been for Minho’s arms encircling his body and keeping him upright, one big hand cradling the back of Kibum’s head as the healer cried out in agony, tears streaming down his face, his body weakened with the devastation.
Jonghyun was dead.
Tears started anew in Kibum’s eyes and he gave a shaky inhale, closing his eyes for a second before glancing at the sleeping Minho, who looked so much more at peace, more his age with his features all smoothed out and the hard lines replaced with soft curves. Kibum’s heart ached, too many things had happened.
Jonghyun was dead, Kibum was a bad guy, Jinki and Minho and Taemin were the good guys and well let’s face it, everyone knows the good guys always win in the end.
“Kibum…”
Minho spoke, and Kibum hadn’t even noticed he was awake. Kibum blinked and a few more tears fell, spilling over the bridge of his nose and over his temple to soak into the pillow under his head. A hand reached up, a thumb gently wiping away the tears and Kibum wanted to fight back, wanted to tell Minho to fuck himself - he knew that this early in the morning with their senses impaired by sleep he could get away with murder, he could leave this place and Jinki’s far-fetched plans and Minho’s big eyes.
“Taemin will be back tomorrow.” Minho’s voice was soft and still low and Kibum hadn’t known that Minho had a nice bone in his body when it came to Jonghyun but when news of the hunter’s death spread, Minho had finally enacted human emotion as he held Kibum, wiped his tears, and promised to avenge his death.
“I can’t feel him anymore, Minho,” Kibum whispered back, his bottom lip trembling and his eyes and sinuses stinging from the hot tears that were threatening to spill forth. “Our link is gone…”
“Shhh,” Minho pressed his forehead to Kibum’s, his arms wrapping around the healer’s slender waist.
From behind Jinki’s arms also wrapped around Kibum and he just let himself get enveloped in their embrace, let himself crumble again before them as he clutched onto each other their hands and spilled his remorse for his fallen companion.
His one true partner for life.
--
All Jonghyun knew was that Taemin had very long, slender, pretty legs. He knew the healer had lovely hands, alluring oceanic eyes and pretty hair - what he didn’t know, however, was how they had gotten into this top-notch party with all these higher-ups and Taemin on his arm as a date.
Er, Taeyeon.
It wasn’t hard for the healer to cross-dress and homo’s weren’t going to be allowed into a V.I.P party, so Taemin had explained patiently that they needed to get in and get out as quick as possible.
While creating as much mayhem as they could in the meantime.
And they had, people were screaming and smoke bombs were deploying and bullets were shooting through the air, Jonghyun and Taemin behind a flipped table as they pressed their backs to it and reloaded their ammunition.
“Are you sure he’s here?” Jonghyun hissed as he loaded his clip and swung his arm around, shooting blindly, just trying to scare the Innocents out and make sure that the soldiers and diplomats stayed.
“In the purple tux, right?” Taemin said simply, shrugging and turning a blinding smile towards Jonghyun. The elegant black cocktail dress on his body was slipping off of one shoulder, exposing the skin, his legs hiked up and uncaring of flashing anyone his underwear as he braced his high-heeled feet against the floor.
Jonghyun tore his gaze away from Taemin to chance a peek from behind the table, scanning the crowd and instantly finding THEIR leader, in a purple tux and being ushered as quickly as possible to the nearest exit.
“Oh no you don’t,” Jonghyun mumbled, eyes narrowing as he grabbed the edge of the flipped table and hauled himself over it, making a break through the crowd of struggling Innocents and THEIR soldiers.
The commotion suddenly stopped and a dozen guns loaded and locked onto Jonghyun - he froze in his stride and raised his hands, dropping his gun to the floor and lacing his fingers behind his head, smirking ruefully.
“Aish, I can’t catch a break.”
”You!” THEIR leader spat out, pointing a stubby finger at Jonghyun. “I put a bullet through your head and buried your body!”
“Oh, you buried it? How thoughtful, I didn’t think you cared~”
The leader growled and stalked forth, jabbing his fat finger into Jonghyun’s chest, making one of the buttons on the hunter’s blazer poke into his skin. He barely flinched.
“You’re a traitor!” the man spewed, hatred spitting from his lips and landing on Jonghyun’s cheek.
Jonghyun closed an eye, his lip twitching downwards in disgust at the feeling of the man’s saliva dripping down his cheek.
“I think you should be careful as to who your point your finger at, Sir,” Jonghyun said slowly, opening his eye and looking down his nose at the portly, angry man.
“Shoot him!! Kill him now!!” the man shrieked, turning around and walking away from Jonghyun. “Put so many holes in his fucking body that not even God himself can put him back together!”
Jonghyun smirked, “There is no God. Trust me, I was dead.”
Before the man could turn around and ask Jonghyun just what he meant, explosions riddled the last high-class building left in the world, rocking its core. The windows exploded, glass shattered everywhere; soldiers let stray bullets fly but they were all knocked down with precision shots to their heads and torsos as two figures flew in through the broken windows on ropes.
“About fucking time,” Jonghyun called out as Minho landed and put a bullet through a soldier’s face in response, glancing up and smirking at the smaller hunter. Jonghyun just grumbled as he picked up his own fallen gun, “show-off…”, and then ran out into the corridor to follow THEIR leader.
Jinki faltered for a second, watching Jonghyun leave, obviously not wanting anything else happen to the hunter - bringing him back from the dead would only work once, God forbid anything happen to him again, not for sake of reviving the world, but Jinki knew he couldn’t handle Kibum’s wrath if Jonghyun died again.
Minho and Taemin seemed to have everything under control, though, Minho holding up a soldier by the armpits while Taemin proceeded to meticulously shoot off each of his toes individually, smiling prettily and asking if his dress suited his body type, and every time the soldier groaned in pain and agony Taemin frowned at the lack of compliments, and shot off another toe.
So Jinki bolted after Jonghyun, following him out into the crumbling corridor. The building had another five minutes to stand, he estimated, as he flew down a flight of steps, feet barely touching the ground as he wound down to the third level, where he could sense Jonghyun.
He skidded to a stop just before a corner, though, and peeked around.
Jonghyun had THEIR leader pinned up against a wall by his neck; the man was making useless pleas for Jonghyun to let him go, offer him immunity and high-ranking in THEIR standings, make him someone important.
“You’re the most pathetic creature I’ve ever seen,” Jonghyun growled, tightening his grip on the man’s throat. The leader’s eyes were bulging and his face was starting to turn purple, veins threatening to split the surface of skin. “You do nothing but brainwash and create despair for the people of this world.” He shook his hand - the man’s head knocked back against the wall, dazing him. “You deserve the most painful death anyone can give to you, a thousand times over.”
The man looked well beyond frightened; the front of his pants was darkened with urine, snot was running down his upper lip but it seemed his tears were all dried out.
“P-Please, Bling, I never - you were a good soldier! You can do so much more! We - you and I - we can create a new empire! A better one!”
Jonghyun snarled for a second, and the man visibly recoiled. The hunter calmed himself down, though, and the smile that stretched over his features was the most dangerous smile that Jinki had ever seen - it made shudders run down his spine as he watched Jonghyun lean in close to the man’s ear, speaking so low Jinki could barely hear him.
“I have a name, Sir. Do you know what it is?”
The man shook his head, looking like he was about to add another humiliating bodily function to the ones he’d already had.
“Be sure to tell your God, when you get there…” Jonghyun slowly relinquished his grip on the man’s throat. “… that Jonghyun sent you.”
Jinki had never been so scared of someone in his life than in that moment, when he saw Jonghyun press the barrel of his glock to the man’s head and smear the wall with his brains.
--
Kibum sat up from lounging on the bed when he felt their energy approach the pawn shop, his eyes trained on the door. There were only two of them - shouldn’t three have returned? He stood up, carefully, wondering if someone was planning an ambush, as he picked up his gun from the bedside table and turned off the safety, ready to just blast whoever came in through the door.
“Fuck, ow, will you stop it? My skin is delicate.”
The gun clattered to the floor when the door opened and Jonghyun and Minho stepped inside, Minho’s hands being batted away by an angry Jonghyun, since Minho had been trying to make sure that Jonghyun was real and not an apparition by pinching whatever exposed skin he could find.
The sound of the weapon hitting the ground made both hunters look at Kibum, who was frozen on the spot, his jaw slightly agape, eyes wide and starting to glisten.
And maybe it could have been more cinematic, Jonghyun’s return, but really it couldn’t have been any better, Kibum sagging to the floor and Jonghyun catching him just in time, enveloping him in a tight embrace.
Jonghyun’s nose nuzzled into Kibum’s neck and Kibum clutched onto his partner, his knuckles turning white against the fabric of Jonghyun’s leather jacket, his chest heaving and his body weak from the sobs that he had been able to stop just hours ago. But they were fresh and Jonghyun was real - he was tangible - he was here and Kibum could hold onto him. Kibum’s hands moved to Jonghyun’s head, his fingers skimming over the skull, as if searching for that bullet wound, but upon feeling only soft hair and a smooth, flawless scalp, Kibum let out a sob and just clutched onto Jonghyun that much tighter.
“He’s dead,” Jonghyun whispered against Kibum’s neck, and Kibum didn’t need to ask to know who was dead, who Jonghyun killed. “We’re free.”
Kibum took his first breath in a long time, felt that vice unclamp from around his lungs, and he inhaled deeply, smelling the leather of Jonghyun’s jacket, the dust from his hair, the gun powder on his hands.
It smelled wonderful.
--
The city was in upheaval with THEIR leader dead, THEIR headquarters destroyed, and half of THEIR army had fled the area, going into hiding upon a mysterious pep-talk from Minho and Taemin. But the city was alive, more alive than it had ever been and Jinki explained that this was the first step they needed to take to fixing the Earth, this was the first step they needed to take to make a complete recovery.
The first step was complete, and now the five were in the pawn shop, lounging around and enjoying decent food and better drinks, for once feeling like nothing was wrong in the world - because things were starting to get right. Jonghyun was still a bit bitter towards Minho (could so much testosterone exist in a room and not catch something on fire?), both Jonghyun and Kibum were a bit wary towards the three, but all in all as they sat on the floor with a few bottles of wine and a basket full of Kibum’s home-made bread, things were ok.
Jonghyun and Kibum were sitting so close to one another that Kibum might as well be in the hunter’s lap; Minho was sitting across from them, Jinki and Taemin on either side of him as they made a little circle off on a spot of the floor that didn’t have any of Jinki’s chalk doodles on it. They were laughing and joking, and Kibum looked at Jinki, his smile small and his eyes questioning.
“Can I ask you something, Jinki…?” the healer asked, and for once his voice sounded a bit meek.
“Sure,” Jinki said, always good-natured with his eye-smile and contagious grin.
“We found a photo album in the laboratories,” Kibum said, and Jinki stiffened a bit. “You were in a lot of the photos…”
“Jinki hyung is in a lot of photos,” Taemin piped up. “He worked in those labs.”
Kibum looked at Jinki, who was looking at Taemin, like his biggest secret had just been exposed. It was obviously a delicate topic - the three of them must be trying to hide it.
“Taemin,” Kibum said carefully. “Cameras haven’t been around in over five hundred years.”
A draft blew through the pawn shop and Jonghyun’s arm around Kibum’s shoulder tightened, when Minho’s dark eyes flickered from the cuddling pair down to the floor and back up again towards the oldest man in the group.
“Jinki, they didn’t know?”
Jinki bit his lip and shook his head.
“Were we supposed to?” Jonghyun asked, sitting up a bit straighter as Jinki shrunk back.
“No one with THEM could know, it would have ruined everything,” Jinki said, chewing his lower lip. He glanced up and looked at both Kibum and Jonghyun with the most honest eyes they’d ever been struck with, “I wanted to tell you, but you were Chosen, I couldn’t let anything get in the way. If you two had found out then maybe… maybe you would have stopped us.” He slumped a bit, and Kibum felt a bit bad.
“Jinki, I didn’t say it was a bad thing that you hid it from us…” Kibum scooted away from Jonghyun and over to Jinki. “I just wanted to… Make sure. That what we were seeing was real, that you - …” his voice dropped down to a whisper. “That you’re a chimera.”
“Chimera?” Jonghyun echoed.
“Don’t be slow zombie-boy,” Kibum punched Jonghyun in the thigh, making the hunter flinch and rub his leg. “I just wanna know,” the healer turned his attention back to Jinki, “how it’s possible.”
Jinki closed his eyes and licked his lips, letting out a breath.
“I was born on December fourteenth, in the year nineteen-eighty-nine. Things were… so beautiful then, you guys, I can’t even properly describe it.” He got a faraway look in his eyes, as he started to tell the tale of his two-thousand year existence.
--
November, 2012
New flashes and bulletins of ‘the coming of the end of the world’, ‘Armageddon’, and various other deathly and scary words were all the rage at this time of year, in this year in particular. Anyone who had a media, anyone who had any sort of worldly knowledge knew about the prediction from the ancients, the prediction that spoke of the demise of the world on 12-21-2012. At the time, half the world believed it, the other half thought it to be pish-posh.
Jinki, at twenty-two years old just the previous week, was in the latter half of the group, thinking that it was all just a way to try and raise taxes and make the people trust their government more. The world was fine, global warming might have been an issue but death and destruction and the end of a planet?
Please.
He was a student at Yonsei University, in South Korea. He was going to graduate from there and then head to America for bigger and greater education in physics; he was going to change the world with a science that he had started to develop. He didn’t tell anyone about his dreams, yet, about his visions - they would surely think him delusional, lock him up, never give him the chance to live out his life and discover what he wanted to.
It was a heavy burden to keep, all those formulas and equations floating around in his head; he started a diary, a thick book with paper that had no lines, drawing out algorithms and matrices and writing down every thought in relation. He hung out with his friends, he smiled for the camera, he tried to keep his life in order even as he did complex experiments in the privacy of his two-bedroom ranch-style house located on the outskirts of the city.
One of those experiments changed his life forever.
He had been mixing simple chemicals at first, an alchemy circle drawn out on the floorboards of his guest room, where he had removed the carpet and sealed the windows with black plastic. He had an ancient text book open on his table, glasses perched at the end of his nose so he could read the book when he needed to as well as see what he was mixing in his near-sighted vision.
He set down the mixture and went to flip the page in the book - his elbow knocked into a powerful mixture of what he had been told by a local (eccentric) Shaman was aloe, red berries and goat urine but upon reflecting on that night, those definitely weren’t the contents of that bowl. Because when the liquid hit his beaker, and when his beaker hit his alchemy circle, he knew that goat piss wasn’t the explanation for the wild purple light, the lightning that seemed to form and crash in the room, and it definitely wasn’t the explanation for Jinki waking up on the morning of December 12th, 2012, with a headache from hell and the worst case of cottonmouth he had ever experienced.
And when Jinki stumbled out into the world… everything had changed.
A predicted (scientific) solar flare had hit the Earth and singed everything, destroyed everything in its path. People were screaming in the street, their bodies on fire or burned with acid, some of them running in a pitifully human attempt to flee and stay alive, others lying on the ground, ready to accept their fate.
Jinki had wandered around in a daze that day, until a helicopter came and rescued him. He was stripped of his clothes and given new ones - he kept his old ones, though, they reminded him of home, of what was familiar, not this strange, white, underground world that he had been brought into.
It was years later that Jinki started to notice that he wasn’t aging. At thirty-six there was not a sign of a wrinkle, or grey hair, or balding patch. He was still as young and virile as he had been when he was twenty-two, and it took him another five years to make the connection.
It took him another two years to gather up his old clothes, stained with the strange mixture the Shaman had given him, and start to form a scientific research party.
He had gone to the surface, once. He had managed to successfully recreate that specific mixture with alternative ingredients, and he had gone up to the surface, wondering if it could regenerate the Earth as it had him. So he had drawn an alchemy circle in the dirt of what used to have been a wheat field, and dropped the liquid on it.
He waited another hundred years; people were dying, not living.
He went to re-master the solution, to look for a different alchemic circle.
And he had finally discovered it, five hundred years later, the way to make humans resilient to the Sun’s harmful rays, immune to the desolate Earth that they now inhabited. And the government… well, they always wanted what wasn’t theirs, didn’t they? So they had taken Jinki into custody, demanding his aid for their ‘cause’, a cause that would end the silly trifles of the leaderless people, a cause that would be for the greater good.
Looking back on it, Jinki shouldn’t have been so naïve.
--
Thus the healers and the hunters were created, the government divided into factions, and as Jinki relayed the story to Jonghyun, Kibum, Minho and Taemin, it was clear exactly how this whole mess even started.
“It was my fault,” Jinki said presently, slumping and staring at the aged wood of the floor. “If I hadn’t developed that concoction, it wouldn’t have divided the people.”
Kibum and Jonghyun were silent, stunned at the story. Taemin and Minho looked like they had heard it before, but nonetheless seemed somber; Kibum took Jinki’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“If it weren’t for you figuring out that mixture, then we wouldn’t be here now,” Kibum whispered, smiling lightly. “Yeah, the world went to shit and things are a bit crazy but if you messed it up then you can make it right, right?”
Jinki looked up, his eyes watery and his long bangs covering his face. Everyone was smiling at him warmly; Taemin was beaming, Minho was a bit more subtle, Jonghyun was smiling but looked a bit irritated that Kibum was so close to Jinki, and Kibum…
Kibum laced their fingers and knocked his forehead against Jinki’s.
“You’re a screw-up, but you’re a genius, too. You can fix this.”
Jinki felt his heart lift in elation that he hadn’t felt in over a hundred years.
“You can fix us.”
[ Chapter 9 --->]
Progress: 8/?
Pairing: To be decided
Rating: PG-13 ~ NC-17
Warnings: Graphic violence, blood/gore, sexual situations (more to be added)
Summary: In a grisly future, healers and hunters are bred for the specific purpose of keeping order for THEM. But when IT starts to revolt and draft wary healers and hunters to create its own army, it’s obvious that someone is on the inside. Jonghyun and Kibum, the child prodigies of THEM are out to settle the score and find out what really happened - even at the sake of their own loyalty.
A/N: Title is a play on the term ‘cityscape’, which is basically ‘the view of the city’; it’s about wanting to break free from the norm, to escape the life you’re born into, to find yourself and others and do what you want to do with your own life.
[ Prologue] [ 1] [ 2] [ 3] [ 4] [ 5] [ 6] [ 7]
--
It was the kind of parched that no matter how many times you got up to re-fill your glass with water, no matter how hard you tried to swish it around before it went down, there was still that one part of your throat dry as ever, untouched by the liquid. It was the kind of parched where your stomach was full but your throat was still thick, gummy, achy.
Kibum had gotten up out of the bed he was sharing with two other men seven times already that night, and when he was contemplating the eighth, an arm slung around his waist from somewhere and kept him in place. And he was tired, it was the kind of tired that even though you were exhausted and wanted to do nothing but sleep, it was too much of an effort to keep your eyelids shut.
And so Kibum was staring up at the ceiling of the abandoned pawn shop, eyes glistening with moisture that he wished upon his throat instead, watching the shadows dance across the rafters through the window.
“Kibummie…” the owner of the arm that was resting possessively around the healer’s waist turned out to be Jinki. “Sleep… it’s late.”
He wanted to have a snarky comeback, something like ‘I didn’t know villains had a bed time’, but he kept it to himself. He couldn’t talk like that to Jinki, the man that he had confided in thousands of times before about things as small as wanting to know why he couldn’t spice up their drab assassin uniform to things as big as wondering if he and Jonghyun were in the right place. Jinki was the closest thing to a father-figure Kibum and Jonghyun ever had, he was a brother and a comrade but this…
Jinki had basically outed himself as the founder of IT and Kibum couldn’t find it in his heart to hate the man. He could never hate Jinki.
“I’m thirsty,” was how Kibum responded instead, his voice absent of the usual haughty edge, his voice not coming out as frigid as he wanted it to, his voice breaking, the will of his fight slowly, audibly dying.
He feels Jinki shift next to him and his eyes are open so he sees the older man prop himself up on his elbow and move his possessive arm so that a possessive - kind - hand could gently swipe fingers down the line of Kibum’s jaw.
And it was silence like this where no words spoke volumes; it was silence like this when he felt Minho shift on his other side that Kibum finally started to realize that he was the bad guy, that he was the one in the wrong the whole time. It’s a mind-blowing, self-destructive feeling, once he realizes that, and a shuddery breath racked his lungs before his eyes finally closed, letting loose hot tears, the moisture that he still wished was in his throat, to strengthen his voice, make it sound less weak.
--
The morning came and it was unforgiving. Kibum opened his eyes and only got an eyeful of dark hair, mussed hair and tanned skin - his back ached from being on his side for the majority of the night and his legs were tangled with two other pairs and he didn’t want to be awake. He didn’t want to be awake because the Sun wasn’t awake - it hadn’t been awake for a thousand years - and for once in his life he wanted to feel the warmth on his cheeks, feel the kisses of sunshine first thing in the morning, and be teased out of bed with the promise of sunglasses and shady trees.
He felt Jinki’s breath puffing warmly on the back of his neck and his eyes fluttered a bit at the sensation; it was familiar, it was comforting. He used to always wake up with Jonghyun’s breath on his neck.
But Jonghyun was…
His heart clenched.
They said Taemin was going to bring him back but Kibum knew nothing of inter-dimensional traveling, even when it came to healers. It seemed ridiculous. Jonghyun was dead, THEY killed him, Kibum had felt their connection break the instant the bullet hit Jonghyun’s skull.
Kibum had felt the breath be stolen from his lungs, his vision had gone black - and he would have passed out, had it not been for Jinki’s shouts, his commands for Taemin to lock and load, get ready for a trip because he was going to be gone for a while. He would have passed out, had it not been for Minho’s arms encircling his body and keeping him upright, one big hand cradling the back of Kibum’s head as the healer cried out in agony, tears streaming down his face, his body weakened with the devastation.
Jonghyun was dead.
Tears started anew in Kibum’s eyes and he gave a shaky inhale, closing his eyes for a second before glancing at the sleeping Minho, who looked so much more at peace, more his age with his features all smoothed out and the hard lines replaced with soft curves. Kibum’s heart ached, too many things had happened.
Jonghyun was dead, Kibum was a bad guy, Jinki and Minho and Taemin were the good guys and well let’s face it, everyone knows the good guys always win in the end.
“Kibum…”
Minho spoke, and Kibum hadn’t even noticed he was awake. Kibum blinked and a few more tears fell, spilling over the bridge of his nose and over his temple to soak into the pillow under his head. A hand reached up, a thumb gently wiping away the tears and Kibum wanted to fight back, wanted to tell Minho to fuck himself - he knew that this early in the morning with their senses impaired by sleep he could get away with murder, he could leave this place and Jinki’s far-fetched plans and Minho’s big eyes.
“Taemin will be back tomorrow.” Minho’s voice was soft and still low and Kibum hadn’t known that Minho had a nice bone in his body when it came to Jonghyun but when news of the hunter’s death spread, Minho had finally enacted human emotion as he held Kibum, wiped his tears, and promised to avenge his death.
“I can’t feel him anymore, Minho,” Kibum whispered back, his bottom lip trembling and his eyes and sinuses stinging from the hot tears that were threatening to spill forth. “Our link is gone…”
“Shhh,” Minho pressed his forehead to Kibum’s, his arms wrapping around the healer’s slender waist.
From behind Jinki’s arms also wrapped around Kibum and he just let himself get enveloped in their embrace, let himself crumble again before them as he clutched onto each other their hands and spilled his remorse for his fallen companion.
His one true partner for life.
--
All Jonghyun knew was that Taemin had very long, slender, pretty legs. He knew the healer had lovely hands, alluring oceanic eyes and pretty hair - what he didn’t know, however, was how they had gotten into this top-notch party with all these higher-ups and Taemin on his arm as a date.
Er, Taeyeon.
It wasn’t hard for the healer to cross-dress and homo’s weren’t going to be allowed into a V.I.P party, so Taemin had explained patiently that they needed to get in and get out as quick as possible.
While creating as much mayhem as they could in the meantime.
And they had, people were screaming and smoke bombs were deploying and bullets were shooting through the air, Jonghyun and Taemin behind a flipped table as they pressed their backs to it and reloaded their ammunition.
“Are you sure he’s here?” Jonghyun hissed as he loaded his clip and swung his arm around, shooting blindly, just trying to scare the Innocents out and make sure that the soldiers and diplomats stayed.
“In the purple tux, right?” Taemin said simply, shrugging and turning a blinding smile towards Jonghyun. The elegant black cocktail dress on his body was slipping off of one shoulder, exposing the skin, his legs hiked up and uncaring of flashing anyone his underwear as he braced his high-heeled feet against the floor.
Jonghyun tore his gaze away from Taemin to chance a peek from behind the table, scanning the crowd and instantly finding THEIR leader, in a purple tux and being ushered as quickly as possible to the nearest exit.
“Oh no you don’t,” Jonghyun mumbled, eyes narrowing as he grabbed the edge of the flipped table and hauled himself over it, making a break through the crowd of struggling Innocents and THEIR soldiers.
The commotion suddenly stopped and a dozen guns loaded and locked onto Jonghyun - he froze in his stride and raised his hands, dropping his gun to the floor and lacing his fingers behind his head, smirking ruefully.
“Aish, I can’t catch a break.”
”You!” THEIR leader spat out, pointing a stubby finger at Jonghyun. “I put a bullet through your head and buried your body!”
“Oh, you buried it? How thoughtful, I didn’t think you cared~”
The leader growled and stalked forth, jabbing his fat finger into Jonghyun’s chest, making one of the buttons on the hunter’s blazer poke into his skin. He barely flinched.
“You’re a traitor!” the man spewed, hatred spitting from his lips and landing on Jonghyun’s cheek.
Jonghyun closed an eye, his lip twitching downwards in disgust at the feeling of the man’s saliva dripping down his cheek.
“I think you should be careful as to who your point your finger at, Sir,” Jonghyun said slowly, opening his eye and looking down his nose at the portly, angry man.
“Shoot him!! Kill him now!!” the man shrieked, turning around and walking away from Jonghyun. “Put so many holes in his fucking body that not even God himself can put him back together!”
Jonghyun smirked, “There is no God. Trust me, I was dead.”
Before the man could turn around and ask Jonghyun just what he meant, explosions riddled the last high-class building left in the world, rocking its core. The windows exploded, glass shattered everywhere; soldiers let stray bullets fly but they were all knocked down with precision shots to their heads and torsos as two figures flew in through the broken windows on ropes.
“About fucking time,” Jonghyun called out as Minho landed and put a bullet through a soldier’s face in response, glancing up and smirking at the smaller hunter. Jonghyun just grumbled as he picked up his own fallen gun, “show-off…”, and then ran out into the corridor to follow THEIR leader.
Jinki faltered for a second, watching Jonghyun leave, obviously not wanting anything else happen to the hunter - bringing him back from the dead would only work once, God forbid anything happen to him again, not for sake of reviving the world, but Jinki knew he couldn’t handle Kibum’s wrath if Jonghyun died again.
Minho and Taemin seemed to have everything under control, though, Minho holding up a soldier by the armpits while Taemin proceeded to meticulously shoot off each of his toes individually, smiling prettily and asking if his dress suited his body type, and every time the soldier groaned in pain and agony Taemin frowned at the lack of compliments, and shot off another toe.
So Jinki bolted after Jonghyun, following him out into the crumbling corridor. The building had another five minutes to stand, he estimated, as he flew down a flight of steps, feet barely touching the ground as he wound down to the third level, where he could sense Jonghyun.
He skidded to a stop just before a corner, though, and peeked around.
Jonghyun had THEIR leader pinned up against a wall by his neck; the man was making useless pleas for Jonghyun to let him go, offer him immunity and high-ranking in THEIR standings, make him someone important.
“You’re the most pathetic creature I’ve ever seen,” Jonghyun growled, tightening his grip on the man’s throat. The leader’s eyes were bulging and his face was starting to turn purple, veins threatening to split the surface of skin. “You do nothing but brainwash and create despair for the people of this world.” He shook his hand - the man’s head knocked back against the wall, dazing him. “You deserve the most painful death anyone can give to you, a thousand times over.”
The man looked well beyond frightened; the front of his pants was darkened with urine, snot was running down his upper lip but it seemed his tears were all dried out.
“P-Please, Bling, I never - you were a good soldier! You can do so much more! We - you and I - we can create a new empire! A better one!”
Jonghyun snarled for a second, and the man visibly recoiled. The hunter calmed himself down, though, and the smile that stretched over his features was the most dangerous smile that Jinki had ever seen - it made shudders run down his spine as he watched Jonghyun lean in close to the man’s ear, speaking so low Jinki could barely hear him.
“I have a name, Sir. Do you know what it is?”
The man shook his head, looking like he was about to add another humiliating bodily function to the ones he’d already had.
“Be sure to tell your God, when you get there…” Jonghyun slowly relinquished his grip on the man’s throat. “… that Jonghyun sent you.”
Jinki had never been so scared of someone in his life than in that moment, when he saw Jonghyun press the barrel of his glock to the man’s head and smear the wall with his brains.
--
Kibum sat up from lounging on the bed when he felt their energy approach the pawn shop, his eyes trained on the door. There were only two of them - shouldn’t three have returned? He stood up, carefully, wondering if someone was planning an ambush, as he picked up his gun from the bedside table and turned off the safety, ready to just blast whoever came in through the door.
“Fuck, ow, will you stop it? My skin is delicate.”
The gun clattered to the floor when the door opened and Jonghyun and Minho stepped inside, Minho’s hands being batted away by an angry Jonghyun, since Minho had been trying to make sure that Jonghyun was real and not an apparition by pinching whatever exposed skin he could find.
The sound of the weapon hitting the ground made both hunters look at Kibum, who was frozen on the spot, his jaw slightly agape, eyes wide and starting to glisten.
And maybe it could have been more cinematic, Jonghyun’s return, but really it couldn’t have been any better, Kibum sagging to the floor and Jonghyun catching him just in time, enveloping him in a tight embrace.
Jonghyun’s nose nuzzled into Kibum’s neck and Kibum clutched onto his partner, his knuckles turning white against the fabric of Jonghyun’s leather jacket, his chest heaving and his body weak from the sobs that he had been able to stop just hours ago. But they were fresh and Jonghyun was real - he was tangible - he was here and Kibum could hold onto him. Kibum’s hands moved to Jonghyun’s head, his fingers skimming over the skull, as if searching for that bullet wound, but upon feeling only soft hair and a smooth, flawless scalp, Kibum let out a sob and just clutched onto Jonghyun that much tighter.
“He’s dead,” Jonghyun whispered against Kibum’s neck, and Kibum didn’t need to ask to know who was dead, who Jonghyun killed. “We’re free.”
Kibum took his first breath in a long time, felt that vice unclamp from around his lungs, and he inhaled deeply, smelling the leather of Jonghyun’s jacket, the dust from his hair, the gun powder on his hands.
It smelled wonderful.
--
The city was in upheaval with THEIR leader dead, THEIR headquarters destroyed, and half of THEIR army had fled the area, going into hiding upon a mysterious pep-talk from Minho and Taemin. But the city was alive, more alive than it had ever been and Jinki explained that this was the first step they needed to take to fixing the Earth, this was the first step they needed to take to make a complete recovery.
The first step was complete, and now the five were in the pawn shop, lounging around and enjoying decent food and better drinks, for once feeling like nothing was wrong in the world - because things were starting to get right. Jonghyun was still a bit bitter towards Minho (could so much testosterone exist in a room and not catch something on fire?), both Jonghyun and Kibum were a bit wary towards the three, but all in all as they sat on the floor with a few bottles of wine and a basket full of Kibum’s home-made bread, things were ok.
Jonghyun and Kibum were sitting so close to one another that Kibum might as well be in the hunter’s lap; Minho was sitting across from them, Jinki and Taemin on either side of him as they made a little circle off on a spot of the floor that didn’t have any of Jinki’s chalk doodles on it. They were laughing and joking, and Kibum looked at Jinki, his smile small and his eyes questioning.
“Can I ask you something, Jinki…?” the healer asked, and for once his voice sounded a bit meek.
“Sure,” Jinki said, always good-natured with his eye-smile and contagious grin.
“We found a photo album in the laboratories,” Kibum said, and Jinki stiffened a bit. “You were in a lot of the photos…”
“Jinki hyung is in a lot of photos,” Taemin piped up. “He worked in those labs.”
Kibum looked at Jinki, who was looking at Taemin, like his biggest secret had just been exposed. It was obviously a delicate topic - the three of them must be trying to hide it.
“Taemin,” Kibum said carefully. “Cameras haven’t been around in over five hundred years.”
A draft blew through the pawn shop and Jonghyun’s arm around Kibum’s shoulder tightened, when Minho’s dark eyes flickered from the cuddling pair down to the floor and back up again towards the oldest man in the group.
“Jinki, they didn’t know?”
Jinki bit his lip and shook his head.
“Were we supposed to?” Jonghyun asked, sitting up a bit straighter as Jinki shrunk back.
“No one with THEM could know, it would have ruined everything,” Jinki said, chewing his lower lip. He glanced up and looked at both Kibum and Jonghyun with the most honest eyes they’d ever been struck with, “I wanted to tell you, but you were Chosen, I couldn’t let anything get in the way. If you two had found out then maybe… maybe you would have stopped us.” He slumped a bit, and Kibum felt a bit bad.
“Jinki, I didn’t say it was a bad thing that you hid it from us…” Kibum scooted away from Jonghyun and over to Jinki. “I just wanted to… Make sure. That what we were seeing was real, that you - …” his voice dropped down to a whisper. “That you’re a chimera.”
“Chimera?” Jonghyun echoed.
“Don’t be slow zombie-boy,” Kibum punched Jonghyun in the thigh, making the hunter flinch and rub his leg. “I just wanna know,” the healer turned his attention back to Jinki, “how it’s possible.”
Jinki closed his eyes and licked his lips, letting out a breath.
“I was born on December fourteenth, in the year nineteen-eighty-nine. Things were… so beautiful then, you guys, I can’t even properly describe it.” He got a faraway look in his eyes, as he started to tell the tale of his two-thousand year existence.
--
November, 2012
New flashes and bulletins of ‘the coming of the end of the world’, ‘Armageddon’, and various other deathly and scary words were all the rage at this time of year, in this year in particular. Anyone who had a media, anyone who had any sort of worldly knowledge knew about the prediction from the ancients, the prediction that spoke of the demise of the world on 12-21-2012. At the time, half the world believed it, the other half thought it to be pish-posh.
Jinki, at twenty-two years old just the previous week, was in the latter half of the group, thinking that it was all just a way to try and raise taxes and make the people trust their government more. The world was fine, global warming might have been an issue but death and destruction and the end of a planet?
Please.
He was a student at Yonsei University, in South Korea. He was going to graduate from there and then head to America for bigger and greater education in physics; he was going to change the world with a science that he had started to develop. He didn’t tell anyone about his dreams, yet, about his visions - they would surely think him delusional, lock him up, never give him the chance to live out his life and discover what he wanted to.
It was a heavy burden to keep, all those formulas and equations floating around in his head; he started a diary, a thick book with paper that had no lines, drawing out algorithms and matrices and writing down every thought in relation. He hung out with his friends, he smiled for the camera, he tried to keep his life in order even as he did complex experiments in the privacy of his two-bedroom ranch-style house located on the outskirts of the city.
One of those experiments changed his life forever.
He had been mixing simple chemicals at first, an alchemy circle drawn out on the floorboards of his guest room, where he had removed the carpet and sealed the windows with black plastic. He had an ancient text book open on his table, glasses perched at the end of his nose so he could read the book when he needed to as well as see what he was mixing in his near-sighted vision.
He set down the mixture and went to flip the page in the book - his elbow knocked into a powerful mixture of what he had been told by a local (eccentric) Shaman was aloe, red berries and goat urine but upon reflecting on that night, those definitely weren’t the contents of that bowl. Because when the liquid hit his beaker, and when his beaker hit his alchemy circle, he knew that goat piss wasn’t the explanation for the wild purple light, the lightning that seemed to form and crash in the room, and it definitely wasn’t the explanation for Jinki waking up on the morning of December 12th, 2012, with a headache from hell and the worst case of cottonmouth he had ever experienced.
And when Jinki stumbled out into the world… everything had changed.
A predicted (scientific) solar flare had hit the Earth and singed everything, destroyed everything in its path. People were screaming in the street, their bodies on fire or burned with acid, some of them running in a pitifully human attempt to flee and stay alive, others lying on the ground, ready to accept their fate.
Jinki had wandered around in a daze that day, until a helicopter came and rescued him. He was stripped of his clothes and given new ones - he kept his old ones, though, they reminded him of home, of what was familiar, not this strange, white, underground world that he had been brought into.
It was years later that Jinki started to notice that he wasn’t aging. At thirty-six there was not a sign of a wrinkle, or grey hair, or balding patch. He was still as young and virile as he had been when he was twenty-two, and it took him another five years to make the connection.
It took him another two years to gather up his old clothes, stained with the strange mixture the Shaman had given him, and start to form a scientific research party.
He had gone to the surface, once. He had managed to successfully recreate that specific mixture with alternative ingredients, and he had gone up to the surface, wondering if it could regenerate the Earth as it had him. So he had drawn an alchemy circle in the dirt of what used to have been a wheat field, and dropped the liquid on it.
He waited another hundred years; people were dying, not living.
He went to re-master the solution, to look for a different alchemic circle.
And he had finally discovered it, five hundred years later, the way to make humans resilient to the Sun’s harmful rays, immune to the desolate Earth that they now inhabited. And the government… well, they always wanted what wasn’t theirs, didn’t they? So they had taken Jinki into custody, demanding his aid for their ‘cause’, a cause that would end the silly trifles of the leaderless people, a cause that would be for the greater good.
Looking back on it, Jinki shouldn’t have been so naïve.
--
Thus the healers and the hunters were created, the government divided into factions, and as Jinki relayed the story to Jonghyun, Kibum, Minho and Taemin, it was clear exactly how this whole mess even started.
“It was my fault,” Jinki said presently, slumping and staring at the aged wood of the floor. “If I hadn’t developed that concoction, it wouldn’t have divided the people.”
Kibum and Jonghyun were silent, stunned at the story. Taemin and Minho looked like they had heard it before, but nonetheless seemed somber; Kibum took Jinki’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“If it weren’t for you figuring out that mixture, then we wouldn’t be here now,” Kibum whispered, smiling lightly. “Yeah, the world went to shit and things are a bit crazy but if you messed it up then you can make it right, right?”
Jinki looked up, his eyes watery and his long bangs covering his face. Everyone was smiling at him warmly; Taemin was beaming, Minho was a bit more subtle, Jonghyun was smiling but looked a bit irritated that Kibum was so close to Jinki, and Kibum…
Kibum laced their fingers and knocked his forehead against Jinki’s.
“You’re a screw-up, but you’re a genius, too. You can fix this.”
Jinki felt his heart lift in elation that he hadn’t felt in over a hundred years.
“You can fix us.”
[ Chapter 9 --->]