#2 - For Everyone, from your mixup partner!
Title: ember and ash
For: Everyone!
Pairing/Focus: CNU/Gongchan
Rating: R
Word Count: 6300~
Summary: Legends say Prodigals are descended from devils, but Chanshik feels far from a mighty demon lord. Every day is a struggle against the strict theocracy ruling the Holy Capitol and its underground twin. Chanshik and Dongwoo fight the same fight, but on different fronts and with different methods.
Notes/Warnings: Implied violence and death.
”When god died,” Chanshik’s mother used to tell him when putting him to bed, smoothing the blanket over his shoulders, “all angels fell from the sky. Those who fell in the ocean became mermen, those who fell on the ground became humen, and those who fell a bit further than all the others, they became demen. We might have our differences, and we might not look all the same. But we’ve all grown from a single race, and we’re all equal, no matter how far you happened to fall.” She would stroke his cheek with the back of her hand, her smooth claws clicking together as they slid over his skin. “Never forget that, Chanshik. We’re all equal. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
Chanshik glides through the dark underground streets, past backyards and down narrow alleys, the small flames of the gas lamps on house walls and corner posts swaying and flickering when he sweeps by. The all-embracing stone ceiling, looming high up in the dark over the house shingles and far below the human feet hurrying over the Capitol streets, is gradually sinking down over him, forcing the houses smaller and poorer and dirtier as he goes. A child in rags and with three-fifths of a doll clutched between its black nails stands pressed against the rough tunnel wall, nearly melting into the dirt and murky greyness. Chanshik passes it without looking. Chanshik probes deeper and deeper into the southern outskirts of Hells Below, feeling the tunnels shrinking around him until he can stretch up and touch the rock with his hand.
He stops by a patch of wood infused in the stone, knocking three times on a rickety door. After a moment it cracks open, and a pale face sticks out under the straining door chain. Chanshik turns a tad, so the light from the chandelier on the wall falls on his face. He’s let in and lead through an inconspicuous kitchen into a small back room. The woman mumbles a prayer over her candle, and the big, old dresser on the far wall turns into a door. Chanshik thanks her and enters.
Narrow, uneven tunnels. Hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women. Nods and quiet greetings. A blueprint and some maps on a table. Pick-axes and shovels. Small boxes of dynamite. Weapons. Chanshik glides deeper in.
November 1st
Chanshik slips through the small door leading out to the audience balcony hanging over the back of the court room, closing it gently behind him. Some of the people scattered over the three rows turn yellow eyes at him, and then look back down. Chanshik takes a seat near the wall.
At the other end of the room, the three judges sit perched on their big podiums, sprawling their well-fed bodies in their chairs, gazing out over the scene in their gigantic, powder-white wigs. The white of their priest collars shine like blinding, square gems against their black robes.
Before them, on the right side, sit two human men with straight backs and high heads. On the left, the accused, a Prodigal man - bent and crooked, with a dirty coat and a bush of tangled dark hair around his head, either staring hard down into the floor or wildly flicking his head and eyes around the room, only lingering for longer moments on the man by his side, currently standing up and talking in a low, steady voice. Chanshik instantly recognizes the broad, hunched backside of the attorney. Would recognize it anywhere.
He’s a calm man, even in court. A bit slow-spoken perhaps, and prone to glance down at his papers a bit too often, but eloquent. He has a black, plain coat and his hair is combed back and tied neatly together at the neck. He makes no wide gestures or long walks over the floor, only standing steadily by his client, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the heavy gazes of the judges or the sharp retorts of his opponent. He looks like he feels like he belongs. He looks like he has decided to make this a place for him.
The judges leave to deliberate. A hushed web of mumbles rise over the almost exclusively Prodigal audience on the balcony. Half despite himself, Chanshik feels that his muscles has tensed and his fingers clenched together. The Prodigal attorney has sat down again and keeps rearranging his papers, switching between flipping through them and tapping the edge of the bunch against the table to even it out. He talks quietly to his client who is twitching in his seat.
Eventually the judges come back, and stroll lazily to their seats. The head judge clears his throat, effectively slamming silence all over the room, and half-reluctantly reads the verdict from his paper. Immediately the mumble rises again. The human lawyer shoots to his feet, starting to protest, but the judge only shrugs one shoulder at him and slams his gavel against its block. The accused Prodigal man is on his feet as well, blabbering things to nobody in particular and repeatedly slamming his attorney on the shoulder. The attorney smiles at him and squeezes his shoulder back, clumsily patting his papers together with the other hand.
When he has fit them all into folders in his briefcase, he turns and sets his eyes on Chanshik up on the balcony. Chanshik, whose muscles had relaxed again, feels his heart speeding up a bit once more. Only if he concentrates can he pick up the tiny, almost unnoticeable, nod to the left that is given him.
He finds him in an empty corridor on the third floor, standing in a dark corner and rubbing his eyes under his spectacles. Chanshik wonders how long they had to sit in that bright court room, and whether they got any break from it.
“Hey, Mister Second Prodigal Lawyer Ever,” Chanshik mumbles, sneaking up close behind him and putting his hands on Dongwoo’s waist. “You did well.”
Dongwoo whips around, grinning but swatting Chanshik’s hands off him. “You came to watch me?”
“I came to watch the case,” Chanshik says. “Everybody’s talking about it.”
“It’s ridiculous that it became a case in the first place,” Dongwoo says, glancing down the hall. “Had that man been human…”
“I know,” Chanshik says. “But you cleared him. He’s free to go.”
Dongwoo purses his lips, still looking down at the end of the corridor. “He’s just one man. One out of hundreds.”
He’s like that; concerned. Wants to save everyone, take care of everyone. Would want to sweep in and collect all Prodigals unjustly put in the Inquisition houses and prisons, gather them up in his long arms and buy a farm somewhere and let them run free over the meadows, dig little burrows in the ground, if he only could. Nothing bothers him more than injustices. He always wanted to study law, even when Prodigals were still prohibited from attending universities. A lot has happened since then, but it’s still a human world.
Dongwoo files down his black nails to the finger, and his pointy Prodigal teeth into a straight even line. He hides his yellow eyes behind his thick spectacles. His face and features are oddly soft for his kind. Chanshik supposes he benefits from that. His skin is pale with a dirty hue to it, a thin ashy sheen darkening to an angry black at the ends of his fingertips. He dusts them with white powder on special occasions. Like today. Chanshik can see sweeps of white on his black coat.
Chanshik is his opposite, just sharp angles and edges; sharp face, sharp eyes, long hard teeth and long hard claws. Dongwoo’s hair is long and flowing and softly brown, Chanshik’s stark black and stiff over his forehead.
Dongwoo is a good man. He does what he needs to do, he walks the straight road, lives the just life. He just has trouble seeing the bigger picture.
Chanshik wants to touch him. He draws close to him again, catches his face in his hands, makes Dongwoo look at him and pulls Dongwoo’s smell into his nostrils.
“Can I come by later,” he asks in a low voice. “I’ll bring you meat.” His mouth seeks Dongwoo’s almost on its own, floats so close he can feel Dongwoo’s breath on his parted lips. Someone moves and they brush together for a moment, then Dongwoo pushes him away by the shoulders, hands soft but grip firm. Chanshik wants to lick the powder off his fingers.
By their nature, Prodigals are steered by their desires. But Dongwoo has to live in a human world.
“Today is not one of those days.” He picks up his briefcase, and gives Chanshik a gentle smile before he leaves.
In Sunday School, the Sister in her long black veil would read aloud to her Prodigal pupils out of the Scriptures. She read about god and the world and the prophets and all magnificent things magnificent humans had done through history. And sometimes she read about the ancestors of the wretched little children in her class, the Great Demon Lords, who had lived in their great kingdom of fire and darkness, far beneath the surface of the earth, until the human missionaries had shown them the light and offered them Salvation by accepting god’s grace. There was Ashmedai, Aztaroth, Israphel, Leliel, and the greatest of all, Lucifer, the Morning Star, the Bringer of Light, the first one to kneel before the Silver Cross. The benevolent humans absolved them all from their sins, and even dug a second city under the streets of the Holy Capitol for their Brothers to live in.
She read these parts in a dry, mechanical tone, like it was a chore she had been assigned and didn’t see the point of and tried to get over with quickly.
Chanshik spent long hours dreaming of the lost kingdom, the vast halls and tall pillars of the Deep Capital, once bustling with life and power, now gaping empty and eternally silent. In the backyard of the tenant building they lived in then, in one of the west tongues of Hells Below, Chanshik and his friends would dig little pits in the soil with spoons and scrap planks, making vivid pretend they were daring explorers, digging deep down into the earth on a glorious and adventurous quest to find the forgotten city.
Chanshik could see it all in his head, the towers and arches, the avenues and palaces. He could hear the echoes that would bounce between smooth and ragged rock as he would throw pebbles against the marble walls. He could feel the heat from the wide rivers of lava that would illuminate the caverns from below. There would be a great throne of shining metal and dark jewels, and Chanshik would mount it, and all Prodigals would descend into the earth, return to their rightful kingdom, and live in wealth and glory just as their ancestors had done.
They would have had a better house then. Chanshik’s father wouldn’t work so much, or be away all the time, or be so angry and tired when he came home. Mother wouldn’t have to scrub the floors of rich humans’ houses, or sigh so often when she counted the contents of her purse, or cry in the kitchen when she didn’t think Chanshik heard. Chanshik wouldn’t be scared of the big stone stairs leading up to the surface, wouldn’t be afraid of the humans who walked around up there.
Chanshik glides through the dark underground streets, the buried slums for the second class citizens. He crosses between the little islands of light in the dimness, soaking everything in a murky yellow glow. A human wouldn’t see much here, but Chanshik’s eyes are made for darkness. It’s miles better than the blinding white sun. The air is warm and heavy down here, thick with moist and smells, the thousands of smells of thousands of Prodigals living thousands of lives in one confined space. Every breath is somewhat like filtering water through gills.
Decaying buildings rise around him, bent sheds and crooked houses, leaning precariously out over the dirty streets or seeking support by each other, as if they’re drunken. Big leaking sewage pipes and big leaking gas lines serving the surface city hang over the streets and roofs and moving people. Murky little shops with dusty windows litter the first floors, opening out towards the sidewalks and offering beer and used clothes and hard rye bread. Above, candles glint through small bedroom windows. Vendors walk up and down with their wagons, selling knickknacks and grilled rats on sticks. Behind corners and in deep alleys women sell their bodies and beggars some peace of mind. This is the land of mine workers and factory slaves, housemaids and orphans, thieves and drunks and prostitutes.
It might have been elegant once. Long straight tunnels with carved gutters and smooth walls and ornate, pointed ceilings tell of wide, structured avenues, and pale chiseled pillars of old temples. But the walls are dented and missing chunks of stone, the pillars fallen and the altars missing, and through every piece of solid rock snakes the narrow, artless tunnels of someone wanting a pit or a house or a short-cut somewhere. Everywhere, walls has collapsed into wide caverns filled with squares and tenement buildings and the lethal holes leading down to deep systems of mines. The Church desperately tries to regulate expansion. Illegal tunnels can put you in the Inquisition’s labor camps for years.
Chanshik wipes sweat and grime off his forehead. He swings the axe above his head, thrusts it hard into the ground. He thinks about when he was a child, hacking coal in the Deep West mines. That labor made him feel exhausted, but this makes him feel strong. Hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women move around him, work beside him. Small holes are filled with powder, and they take cover. Wheel-barrel after wheel-barrel is filled with rocks and gravel and rolled away. Bit by bit do they eat their way through the earth under the city, souther and souther, closer and closer.
November 3rd
In the morning, Chanshik receives a telegram. It’s three letters long: 7pm.
He writes a note to himself to remember to go out and buy meat.
He’s still afraid, Chanshik realizes when he stands on the platform splitting the stone staircase in two and twisting it around itself, peering up at the veil of light falling on the steps above him, thickening and thickening the higher he looks. The surface is a world he has never managed to claim. He always had an image of Dongwoo as the meeker of the two, yet it’s Dongwoo who is one of the few Prodigals to live above ground, it’s Dongwoo who has carved himself a place in the sun, among the humans, grown to belong there by sheer determination, while Chanshik still crawls around under his protective stone roof. He never got used to the way people look at him up there. Human people. The different air and the different smells. Human smells. The light, prickling his skin and stinging his eyes, blurring details and colors.
He’s not a boy anymore, though. Chanshik crosses the line between light and shadow on the floor in front of him and climbs the rest of the stairs. He resists the urge to raise his hand to shield his eyes from the stark rays of sun when he comes up on the ground level platform. The human air is cold and dry and empty. A woman catches sight of him and quickly gathers up her two little children and hurries down the street. Chanshik turns and heads in the opposite direction.
The Dongwoo who opens the door is a different Dongwoo from the one in the court room two days ago.
“Bad day?” Chanshik asks.
Dongwoo only nods.
Dongwoo’s not rushing; his movements are not quick and his grip is not hard, but it’s clear he’s not intending them to have dinner. He pulls Chanshik close to him in the middle of the parlor, grasping his neck, kissing him so fiercely Chanshik starts gasping. He grips Dongwoo back, pulls him in by the waist, pulls the ribbon from his hair, setting it free. His mouth seeks Dongwoo’s hands. He takes one of them in his own and kisses it, licks over the edge of Dongwoo’s nails, savoring his naked black fingers. Dongwoo grunts and holds him in place, runs his tongue over the sharp tips of Chanshik’s teeth, as if to feel them. Slowly but surely he stumbles them towards his bedroom.
Sometimes he’s gentle, eyes curved, hands soft, stroking Chanshik’s sharp cheekbones, melting through his hair and over his neck and shoulders, mouth warm, pressing light kisses to his lips and over his body.
Sometimes he’s rough and desperate, eyes dark and hard, hands clenched; scratches faint lines over Chanshik’s skin with his short fingernails, bites him with his dull useless teeth. Today is one of those days.
He’s not threatening, it’s not that. Dongwoo is probably incapable of being threatening. It’s not like he wouldn’t stop if Chanshik told him to. It might have been amusing if not for the force and fire in his eyes and muscles, if Chanshik hadn’t known what lies behind it, what hardens Dongwoo so.
Chanshik spreads out and takes everything, everything that’s been held in, everything ugly and impure and uncontrolled, all the rage and all the desire, everything Dongwoo needs out of his body and smeared off on someone else. Chanshik takes everything, absorbs it into himself, so Dongwoo won’t have to carry it.
It’s always been like this, ever since they were young. Dongwoo pushing and pulling, steering, holding back, controlling himself, only letting out steam in carefully measured portions. He’s not one to deny his nature. He knows what he needs and when he needs it. He does what has to be done, he does what he needs to do. Prodigals are emotional, passionate creatures, but Dongwoo has to live in a rational human world.
Chanshik follows him everywhere, accepts all the rejections, is never hurt by the hands pushing him away, and is always coming when he calls, always ready for him, always wanting him. Always taking everything that’s been held back.
Afterwards they lie together in Dongwoo’s sheets, and Chanshik studies his dim bedroom. The tall ceiling, the heavy furniture, the ornate wall papers, and the thick curtains covering the high windows to block out all light. There’s still some tint of twilight seeping in between the cracks where fabric meets wall.
“Move back to Hells Below,” Chanshik begs him, even though he knows it’s no use. It’s not like him to beg, but he can’t help himself. “This is no place for you. For any of us.” He toys with some of Dongwoo’s hair between his fingers, and Dongwoo shifts against him, but doesn’t say anything. “Move in with me,” Chanshik adds, in a quieter voice.
“My work is here,” Dongwoo says gently. “My life is here. You know what I’m working for. We have to work. We have to work hard, if things are going to change.”
“No, we have to fight,” Chanshik says, fingers tightening in Dongwoo’s hair. “We have to fight hard, strike hard, strike them all down. Then things will change.”
“Violence only breeds violence,” Dongwoo says, like he has said it a hundred times and doesn’t expect the message to sink in, but doesn’t particularly mind that.
They lie quiet for a while, skin on skin, feeling each other.
“We should go find the old demon kingdom,” Chanshik whispers into his ear, feeling sentimental and romantic. “We should all dig far down into the earth and find the Deep Capital and live there for the rest of our lives, and it would be just like a thousand years ago.”
Dongwoo shifts again, and Chanshik thinks that he smiles. “But then we’d never feel the wind in our hair again. Or see the stars in the night sky.” He moves his hand over Chanshik’s stomach under the covers, stroking softly. “It’s so vast. The sky. Bigger than the biggest cavern. Isn’t there something nice about that?”
Chanshik falls quiet, staring up into the ceiling and feeling himself frown.
“I didn’t know you believed in things like that anyway,” Dongwoo adds when Chanshik doesn’t say anything, looking up at him. “Angels and demons, gods and underground cities, I don’t know… Some say we’re all descended from apes.”
Chanshik lies silent for a while, thinking about his words. Maybe they’ve evolved from something, and maybe they’re in the process of evolving into something else. Chanshik feels far from a mighty demon lord. The blood is thinning out, they’re not what they used to be. The more time Dongwoo spends in the human world, the more human does he grow. Maybe he doesn’t belong underground anymore. Maybe their race will split in two branches; surface Prodigals and underground Prodigals. Or they’re all drawing further and further away from the caverns and the darkness and the depths, maybe they will all be carved in line with the narrow human form, maybe they will all long for the wind and the night sky.
“I don’t,” Chanshik says, “believe in things like that.” He lost that ability a long time ago.
When he wakes up, Dongwoo is gone. Chanshik finds him in his study, bathed and dressed. He stands bent over a thick stack of papers on his desk, deep in troubled thought. Chanshik watches him for a moment, thinking that before long he will stiffen like that and his back will be hunched for good.
“I guess we’ll take that dinner another time,” he says, coming up behind and pressing his mouth and nose against Dongwoo’s shoulder, smelling the shirt cotton and the soap and the body underneath.
“Mm,” Dongwoo only mumbles, and Chanshik makes to leave. He’s just reaching for the doorknob when Dongwoo calls him back.
“I know what you’re doing, you and your friends,” Dongwoo says calmly, still bent over his papers and not looking up. “Don’t think I don’t know.”
Chanshik’s hand squeezes the cold knob. “Aren’t you gonna ask me not to?”
“Would it change anything?” Dongwoo asks back. He straightens his back finally, peering at Chanshik over the room with a tentative grin on his lips. "Mister Big Prodigal Inventor," he drawls, "isn't that a bit crude a project for you?"
"Hey," Chanshik grins tightly back, "it might not be sophisticated, but it sure as hell is effective." He pushes the door open and lets it gently fall shut.
He buys a paper off a street vendor before slithering back down into the catacombs protecting him from the bright morning sun. There are five pages on tomorrow’s great spectacle; the Grand Opening of Parliament. The Archbishop, all his higher priests and ministers as well as the entire House of Lay and House of Clergy will assemble in White Chapel for the ceremony. The entire ruling class will be gathered in one place, and the Inquisition has ordered maximum security and shut off the main streets around the Chapel.
On the second to last page there is a small note on a Prodigal suffrage activist meeting at South Square being dispersed by the Inquisition because of impiety and public indecency. Chanshik shakes his head to himself. They all have such trouble seeing the bigger picture.
“You can change the world, Chanshik,” Dongwoo used to say, when they were sitting in some deep corner of the library or had snuck into each other’s dorm beds or climbed up on the University’s main building roof and crossed with light feet over to the far end where the building wall met the cavern wall and there was a little ledge where you could sit with your back to the rock and look out over the wide stripes of tin and the patches of light and shadow scattered over the cavern ceiling and nobody could see you. “If you use your talents right. If you work hard enough.”
They were both there on scholarships. There was only one seat of higher education in Hells Below back then and the tuition fees were more than most families could handle. Either way, Dongwoo’s parents were in prison and Chanshik’s were dead. Despite being a few years apart they ended up in the same grade, because Dongwoo didn’t get his applications granted until he was 21. Chanshik was offered his spot when the council saw the successes of his "Spinning Jimmy".
When Chanshik was still working in the mines after classes at the West Prodigal Public School he constructed a new wash plant, a system of spinning drums, that would minimize ore waste by 65%. His supervisor urged him to get it patented. The priests at the patent office took one long look at him from up on their high oak desks, flipped lazily through his thick folder of notes and sketches and promptly deemed the project close to useless, but were still gracious enough to sign him a contract with the lowest royalty rate. Then they took his invention and let it revolutionize the mining industry, taking the profit for themselves.
Chanshik still fumes when thinking about it. The royalties are enough for him to live off, and he got a few more patents after that, but it’s nowhere near what he should have earned. He could have bought up a couple of mines, invested in new and improved technology, given the Prodigal workers fair salaries and conditions and helped them organize against the Church. He could have done a lot of things. (Instead he’s sitting deep in the deepest tunnels of Hells Below, with hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women, digging a chamber under White Chapel.)
“You’re going to change the world as well,” Chanshik would whisper back. “You’re going to bring justice to everyone. You’re going to clear the Inquisition house of Prodigals.”
Dongwoo would laugh then. “Not all of them are innocent, Chanshik.”
Dongwoo adored him, like a mix between a peculiarity and a puppy, and Chanshik basked in that adoration. Dongwoo was always the first person he wanted to show his new ideas. Dongwoo would carefully study his messy notes and cluttered drawings and hum and nod and say that he didn’t fully understand it, but that he was sure it was going to be great. Then come back a couple of days later with some profound comment or a strange question, something Chanshik had never thought about before but made perfect sense. They were both Thinkers, still are, but where Chanshik was more function and material and mechanics, Dongwoo was feelings and thoughts and nature. He often made changes to his projects after hearing what Dongwoo had to say.
Chanshik understood feelings as well, as good as anything, but everything seemed to somehow map itself out like a cross-section sketch to him; gears and function, cause and consequence. Where Dongwoo was meek, was soft and careful, Chanshik could be ruthless pragmatism. He was aware of that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Dongwoo regularly reminded him of it.
Dongwoo’s dreams and idealism, his late night whispers of everything they should do together but couldn’t because Prodigals one way or another weren’t allowed (this list grew longer and longer the deeper he got into his law textbooks), drove Chanshik on, spurred and inspired him. He believed in Dongwoo. He was young and in love and wanted to please Dongwoo in any way he could, wanted Dongwoo to be happy. And he already carried so much inside of him, so many hard and bitter things. He might not change the world. But he was going to do things, big things.
“One day,” Dongwoo used to say, “things will change.”
November 5th
Chanshik wakes up with every nerve and muscle in his body ready and tense. It’s early and he probably hasn’t slept enough, but he can’t sleep, and he feels completely rested. His mind feels focused and clear.
Halfway through his breakfast, there is a knock on his door. He opens it to find a broad, hunched backside, clad in a plain black coat. A tail of soft brown hair hangs down over the collar, tied together with a black ribbon. Dongwoo spins around. Chanshik grins.
“Look who has braced himself and crawled down into the darkness.”
Dongwoo lets it slide. “I only have a couple of minutes, I’m on my way to work.”
“Okay.”
Dongwoo stands weighing back and forth on his feet. First he looks at Chanshik, then doesn’t look at Chanshik at all, instead glancing around the room like it’s his first time there and he’s about to compliment something. He opens his mouth a couple of times, but immediately closes it again.
“Yes?” Chanshik asks.
He moves then, grabs Chanshik and draws him close to him like he needs to touch him. He catches Chanshik’s face in his hands, pulls Chanshik’s smell into his nose and kisses him softly.
"We should go find the ocean," Dongwoo whispers into his ear, holding him close. "I've never seen the ocean. I bet it's nice. We should go far east and find some windy little village and live there for the rest of our lives, and it would be like nothing before."
"You know Prodigals aren't allowed to leave the Capitol," Chanshik says, separating from him.
"I'm a man of law," Dongwoo says, back unusually straight. "I can change the law. We can change the law. If we work hard enough."
"It's not men of law who change the law," Chanshik says, cocking a brow at him. "It's the clergy."
Dongwoo smiles faintly, and sighs.
"You came here only to tell me you want to see the ocean?" Chanshik asks him.
"No," Dongwoo says. He weighs back and forth again for a moment. "Is it too late to ask you not to?"
"Do you really want to?" Chanshik asks back.
Dongwoo sighs again. "I don't know."
Soon after Dongwoo leaves, Chanshik pulls on his boots and leaves as well. He feels restless and prickly in his legs. He knows where he's going, but he's not sure why he's going there.
Down a side alley from one of the busy main streets, Chanshik pulls a heavy oak door, fastened in the stone wall by a tightly fit frame, open, and slips through a short shaft. The room is carved directly into the rock, unlike most of the buildings of Hells Below. It's small, softly lit in a warm yellow glow, the stone walls curved gently and arching up over his head like a womb. A couple of wooden benches with stiff backs cut over the floor in even lines. Some dog-eared copies of holy scriptures clutter the seats and crevices in the walls. In the front a miserable wooden Christ hangs from his cross, blood-red tendrils of paint frozen in the process of running down his forehead from his thorned crown.
Chanshik sits down in the middle bench, feeling odd. He hasn't set foot in a church in years. His parents never cared much for priests and wooden men on crosses. Chanshik has never really believed in any god. He's alone save from an old Prodigal woman sitting across the aisle, praying quietly to herself. Chanshik tries to feel if that's what he came here to do. But it doesn't seem to come to him, so he gives that up.
There are faint paintings in the ceiling, he realizes after a while. Chanshik squints and tries to work out the shapes. The lines are wide and sweeping, bold curves and soft angles. They’re women, he realizes after another while. Big, luscious female bodies cover the church ceiling, wide thighs and buttocks, heavy breasts and plump bellies, long flowing sweeps of hair.
Chanshik looks at the smooth worn rock embracing him, wondering how old this cavern might be. Maybe it was here before Hells Below was built, maybe even before the Great Conversion. What did the Prodigals worship then? Who were they? Broken mighty demon lords trying to hold on to something from their old lives, from all they left behind, or just a plain little kind of people, half ape and half mole, digging pits in the ground. Perhaps Chanshik’s ancestors gathered here, honoring their female deities. Then the human priests came along and showed them the light and smacked up a crucifix in the pagan temple.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” The woman says suddenly, stirring him from his thoughts. She had seen him staring up into the ceiling. Chanshik quickly pulls himself up in his seat. “These paintings were made long ago by one of the Saint Missionaries who brought Salvation to the Prodigal people.” She points a bony finger up towards the swirls. “It’s a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.”
“Oh,” Chanshik says.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” she continues, peering at him with her pale yellow eyes. She’s old, he notes, maybe 120 years, but she still looks strong. “Don’t often come to Holy Ground?”
“No,” Chanshik admits.
“So what brings you here on this fine a day,” she muses, eyes thinning out with her sharp-toothed grin. “Something important ahead of you?”
“Yes,” Chanshik admits once more, stiffly.
“Ah,” she sits back again, arms folded over the front of her skirts. “The chapel is a good place to gather your courage. Collect strength. Draw power. Ask for help… or for forgiveness.” She sighs gently to herself. “God has helped me through many hard moments. He is always there. He always listens. He watches over all of us. Things might be rough at times but God will do right by every creature. We will all get our justice in the end.” She looks over to Chanshik again, fixes him tightly with her gaze. “I trust in God. I trust in the Church.”
“The Church?” Chanshik echoes flatly.
“Yes. Without the Church we’d be nothing,” she tells him. “We’d all be brutes and boors, digging in the mud. The Church is what holds us together in these times of troubles, ties us together despite our differences. The humans, and the Prodigals. We might be the Lost Son, we might be the Sinful Son, and we have done evil, but we came back, and we repented. God loves all his children, God accepts us regardless of what we have done, and so does our human brother. He took us in, he showed us the right way of life, and he forgave us for our sins. He forgave us for our heritage. He soiled his hands to wash our dirtied bodies. We can only hope to ever be as good as him.”
“We need to keep together,” she insists. “We need to help each other. That is the only way.”
Chanshik leaves on shaky legs. He hurries back to his quarters. The big clock on the town hall tower at Ironspill Square is approaching midday. He’s late.
Chanshik runs through the dark underground streets, past the bent sheds and crooked houses, breathing in the hot humid air and the smells of metal and steam and Prodigal bodies, listening to the sounds of his steps echoing through the ragged tunnels and running his fingers over the rock to feel the ragged tunnel walls, feeling the all-embracing stone ceiling curve over him like a mother’s hug. All the things he loves, all where he belongs.
He hammers on the rickety door, flies through the dirty kitchen and down the narrow shafts. The cavern is ready, low but wide. All over, pillars of stone and wood hold up the floor of the basement under White Chapel. Around him, hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women are emptying the last bags and boxes of black, grainy gunpowder. The cavern is filled to the brim. Above them, the entire upper clergy is gathering in the shining White Chapel halls.
“You made it,” someone says, putting a hand on Chanshik’s shoulder, someone with hard lines in his face and hard calluses in his hands, someone with force and fire in his eyes and in his muscles and Chanshik knows, knows what has hardened him so.
But there are some beginnings of a smile tugging bravely at the rigid stiffness around the man’s mouth, taking on the project of softening up years’ worth of solidity. A woman passes quietly by him. She seems to move with an ease she didn’t have yesterday, her muscles softer, her limbs more relaxed.
They all pull back, behind a curve in the tunnel, a big wall of rock jutting out.
“This is the day,” someone says, in a low but formal tone. “This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. This is the day when things will change.”
“Would you like to do the honors, Inventor Gong?” Things are pushes into his hands, the end of a long fuse in one and a box of matches in the other.
Distantly, Dongwoo’s words echo through his head, fleeting shreds of is this the way and blood on your hands and not all of them deserve to die. Hollowly, his own words echo back, like from the other side; this isn’t about me and this is for all of us and if I don’t do it, someone else will. Under it all, he hears, reluctantly, frantically, what he whispered into Dongwoo’s ear when they were lying together in Dongwoo’s bed the other day and he was sure Dongwoo had fallen asleep; I’ve never killed anyone before.
This, another voice inside him says, a clear, rational voice, one that sounds just like him but he isn’t sure is his, is what we call Cold Feet.
Chanshik squeezes the fuse in one hand and the box in the other.
One day, he will take Dongwoo to the ocean.
(A/N: Credit to "Wicked Gentlemen" by Ginn Hale on which the AU of this fic is based, and also to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 which was a great inspiration.)
For: Everyone!
Pairing/Focus: CNU/Gongchan
Rating: R
Word Count: 6300~
Summary: Legends say Prodigals are descended from devils, but Chanshik feels far from a mighty demon lord. Every day is a struggle against the strict theocracy ruling the Holy Capitol and its underground twin. Chanshik and Dongwoo fight the same fight, but on different fronts and with different methods.
Notes/Warnings: Implied violence and death.
”When god died,” Chanshik’s mother used to tell him when putting him to bed, smoothing the blanket over his shoulders, “all angels fell from the sky. Those who fell in the ocean became mermen, those who fell on the ground became humen, and those who fell a bit further than all the others, they became demen. We might have our differences, and we might not look all the same. But we’ve all grown from a single race, and we’re all equal, no matter how far you happened to fall.” She would stroke his cheek with the back of her hand, her smooth claws clicking together as they slid over his skin. “Never forget that, Chanshik. We’re all equal. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
Chanshik glides through the dark underground streets, past backyards and down narrow alleys, the small flames of the gas lamps on house walls and corner posts swaying and flickering when he sweeps by. The all-embracing stone ceiling, looming high up in the dark over the house shingles and far below the human feet hurrying over the Capitol streets, is gradually sinking down over him, forcing the houses smaller and poorer and dirtier as he goes. A child in rags and with three-fifths of a doll clutched between its black nails stands pressed against the rough tunnel wall, nearly melting into the dirt and murky greyness. Chanshik passes it without looking. Chanshik probes deeper and deeper into the southern outskirts of Hells Below, feeling the tunnels shrinking around him until he can stretch up and touch the rock with his hand.
He stops by a patch of wood infused in the stone, knocking three times on a rickety door. After a moment it cracks open, and a pale face sticks out under the straining door chain. Chanshik turns a tad, so the light from the chandelier on the wall falls on his face. He’s let in and lead through an inconspicuous kitchen into a small back room. The woman mumbles a prayer over her candle, and the big, old dresser on the far wall turns into a door. Chanshik thanks her and enters.
Narrow, uneven tunnels. Hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women. Nods and quiet greetings. A blueprint and some maps on a table. Pick-axes and shovels. Small boxes of dynamite. Weapons. Chanshik glides deeper in.
November 1st
Chanshik slips through the small door leading out to the audience balcony hanging over the back of the court room, closing it gently behind him. Some of the people scattered over the three rows turn yellow eyes at him, and then look back down. Chanshik takes a seat near the wall.
At the other end of the room, the three judges sit perched on their big podiums, sprawling their well-fed bodies in their chairs, gazing out over the scene in their gigantic, powder-white wigs. The white of their priest collars shine like blinding, square gems against their black robes.
Before them, on the right side, sit two human men with straight backs and high heads. On the left, the accused, a Prodigal man - bent and crooked, with a dirty coat and a bush of tangled dark hair around his head, either staring hard down into the floor or wildly flicking his head and eyes around the room, only lingering for longer moments on the man by his side, currently standing up and talking in a low, steady voice. Chanshik instantly recognizes the broad, hunched backside of the attorney. Would recognize it anywhere.
He’s a calm man, even in court. A bit slow-spoken perhaps, and prone to glance down at his papers a bit too often, but eloquent. He has a black, plain coat and his hair is combed back and tied neatly together at the neck. He makes no wide gestures or long walks over the floor, only standing steadily by his client, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the heavy gazes of the judges or the sharp retorts of his opponent. He looks like he feels like he belongs. He looks like he has decided to make this a place for him.
The judges leave to deliberate. A hushed web of mumbles rise over the almost exclusively Prodigal audience on the balcony. Half despite himself, Chanshik feels that his muscles has tensed and his fingers clenched together. The Prodigal attorney has sat down again and keeps rearranging his papers, switching between flipping through them and tapping the edge of the bunch against the table to even it out. He talks quietly to his client who is twitching in his seat.
Eventually the judges come back, and stroll lazily to their seats. The head judge clears his throat, effectively slamming silence all over the room, and half-reluctantly reads the verdict from his paper. Immediately the mumble rises again. The human lawyer shoots to his feet, starting to protest, but the judge only shrugs one shoulder at him and slams his gavel against its block. The accused Prodigal man is on his feet as well, blabbering things to nobody in particular and repeatedly slamming his attorney on the shoulder. The attorney smiles at him and squeezes his shoulder back, clumsily patting his papers together with the other hand.
When he has fit them all into folders in his briefcase, he turns and sets his eyes on Chanshik up on the balcony. Chanshik, whose muscles had relaxed again, feels his heart speeding up a bit once more. Only if he concentrates can he pick up the tiny, almost unnoticeable, nod to the left that is given him.
He finds him in an empty corridor on the third floor, standing in a dark corner and rubbing his eyes under his spectacles. Chanshik wonders how long they had to sit in that bright court room, and whether they got any break from it.
“Hey, Mister Second Prodigal Lawyer Ever,” Chanshik mumbles, sneaking up close behind him and putting his hands on Dongwoo’s waist. “You did well.”
Dongwoo whips around, grinning but swatting Chanshik’s hands off him. “You came to watch me?”
“I came to watch the case,” Chanshik says. “Everybody’s talking about it.”
“It’s ridiculous that it became a case in the first place,” Dongwoo says, glancing down the hall. “Had that man been human…”
“I know,” Chanshik says. “But you cleared him. He’s free to go.”
Dongwoo purses his lips, still looking down at the end of the corridor. “He’s just one man. One out of hundreds.”
He’s like that; concerned. Wants to save everyone, take care of everyone. Would want to sweep in and collect all Prodigals unjustly put in the Inquisition houses and prisons, gather them up in his long arms and buy a farm somewhere and let them run free over the meadows, dig little burrows in the ground, if he only could. Nothing bothers him more than injustices. He always wanted to study law, even when Prodigals were still prohibited from attending universities. A lot has happened since then, but it’s still a human world.
Dongwoo files down his black nails to the finger, and his pointy Prodigal teeth into a straight even line. He hides his yellow eyes behind his thick spectacles. His face and features are oddly soft for his kind. Chanshik supposes he benefits from that. His skin is pale with a dirty hue to it, a thin ashy sheen darkening to an angry black at the ends of his fingertips. He dusts them with white powder on special occasions. Like today. Chanshik can see sweeps of white on his black coat.
Chanshik is his opposite, just sharp angles and edges; sharp face, sharp eyes, long hard teeth and long hard claws. Dongwoo’s hair is long and flowing and softly brown, Chanshik’s stark black and stiff over his forehead.
Dongwoo is a good man. He does what he needs to do, he walks the straight road, lives the just life. He just has trouble seeing the bigger picture.
Chanshik wants to touch him. He draws close to him again, catches his face in his hands, makes Dongwoo look at him and pulls Dongwoo’s smell into his nostrils.
“Can I come by later,” he asks in a low voice. “I’ll bring you meat.” His mouth seeks Dongwoo’s almost on its own, floats so close he can feel Dongwoo’s breath on his parted lips. Someone moves and they brush together for a moment, then Dongwoo pushes him away by the shoulders, hands soft but grip firm. Chanshik wants to lick the powder off his fingers.
By their nature, Prodigals are steered by their desires. But Dongwoo has to live in a human world.
“Today is not one of those days.” He picks up his briefcase, and gives Chanshik a gentle smile before he leaves.
In Sunday School, the Sister in her long black veil would read aloud to her Prodigal pupils out of the Scriptures. She read about god and the world and the prophets and all magnificent things magnificent humans had done through history. And sometimes she read about the ancestors of the wretched little children in her class, the Great Demon Lords, who had lived in their great kingdom of fire and darkness, far beneath the surface of the earth, until the human missionaries had shown them the light and offered them Salvation by accepting god’s grace. There was Ashmedai, Aztaroth, Israphel, Leliel, and the greatest of all, Lucifer, the Morning Star, the Bringer of Light, the first one to kneel before the Silver Cross. The benevolent humans absolved them all from their sins, and even dug a second city under the streets of the Holy Capitol for their Brothers to live in.
She read these parts in a dry, mechanical tone, like it was a chore she had been assigned and didn’t see the point of and tried to get over with quickly.
Chanshik spent long hours dreaming of the lost kingdom, the vast halls and tall pillars of the Deep Capital, once bustling with life and power, now gaping empty and eternally silent. In the backyard of the tenant building they lived in then, in one of the west tongues of Hells Below, Chanshik and his friends would dig little pits in the soil with spoons and scrap planks, making vivid pretend they were daring explorers, digging deep down into the earth on a glorious and adventurous quest to find the forgotten city.
Chanshik could see it all in his head, the towers and arches, the avenues and palaces. He could hear the echoes that would bounce between smooth and ragged rock as he would throw pebbles against the marble walls. He could feel the heat from the wide rivers of lava that would illuminate the caverns from below. There would be a great throne of shining metal and dark jewels, and Chanshik would mount it, and all Prodigals would descend into the earth, return to their rightful kingdom, and live in wealth and glory just as their ancestors had done.
They would have had a better house then. Chanshik’s father wouldn’t work so much, or be away all the time, or be so angry and tired when he came home. Mother wouldn’t have to scrub the floors of rich humans’ houses, or sigh so often when she counted the contents of her purse, or cry in the kitchen when she didn’t think Chanshik heard. Chanshik wouldn’t be scared of the big stone stairs leading up to the surface, wouldn’t be afraid of the humans who walked around up there.
Chanshik glides through the dark underground streets, the buried slums for the second class citizens. He crosses between the little islands of light in the dimness, soaking everything in a murky yellow glow. A human wouldn’t see much here, but Chanshik’s eyes are made for darkness. It’s miles better than the blinding white sun. The air is warm and heavy down here, thick with moist and smells, the thousands of smells of thousands of Prodigals living thousands of lives in one confined space. Every breath is somewhat like filtering water through gills.
Decaying buildings rise around him, bent sheds and crooked houses, leaning precariously out over the dirty streets or seeking support by each other, as if they’re drunken. Big leaking sewage pipes and big leaking gas lines serving the surface city hang over the streets and roofs and moving people. Murky little shops with dusty windows litter the first floors, opening out towards the sidewalks and offering beer and used clothes and hard rye bread. Above, candles glint through small bedroom windows. Vendors walk up and down with their wagons, selling knickknacks and grilled rats on sticks. Behind corners and in deep alleys women sell their bodies and beggars some peace of mind. This is the land of mine workers and factory slaves, housemaids and orphans, thieves and drunks and prostitutes.
It might have been elegant once. Long straight tunnels with carved gutters and smooth walls and ornate, pointed ceilings tell of wide, structured avenues, and pale chiseled pillars of old temples. But the walls are dented and missing chunks of stone, the pillars fallen and the altars missing, and through every piece of solid rock snakes the narrow, artless tunnels of someone wanting a pit or a house or a short-cut somewhere. Everywhere, walls has collapsed into wide caverns filled with squares and tenement buildings and the lethal holes leading down to deep systems of mines. The Church desperately tries to regulate expansion. Illegal tunnels can put you in the Inquisition’s labor camps for years.
Chanshik wipes sweat and grime off his forehead. He swings the axe above his head, thrusts it hard into the ground. He thinks about when he was a child, hacking coal in the Deep West mines. That labor made him feel exhausted, but this makes him feel strong. Hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women move around him, work beside him. Small holes are filled with powder, and they take cover. Wheel-barrel after wheel-barrel is filled with rocks and gravel and rolled away. Bit by bit do they eat their way through the earth under the city, souther and souther, closer and closer.
November 3rd
In the morning, Chanshik receives a telegram. It’s three letters long: 7pm.
He writes a note to himself to remember to go out and buy meat.
He’s still afraid, Chanshik realizes when he stands on the platform splitting the stone staircase in two and twisting it around itself, peering up at the veil of light falling on the steps above him, thickening and thickening the higher he looks. The surface is a world he has never managed to claim. He always had an image of Dongwoo as the meeker of the two, yet it’s Dongwoo who is one of the few Prodigals to live above ground, it’s Dongwoo who has carved himself a place in the sun, among the humans, grown to belong there by sheer determination, while Chanshik still crawls around under his protective stone roof. He never got used to the way people look at him up there. Human people. The different air and the different smells. Human smells. The light, prickling his skin and stinging his eyes, blurring details and colors.
He’s not a boy anymore, though. Chanshik crosses the line between light and shadow on the floor in front of him and climbs the rest of the stairs. He resists the urge to raise his hand to shield his eyes from the stark rays of sun when he comes up on the ground level platform. The human air is cold and dry and empty. A woman catches sight of him and quickly gathers up her two little children and hurries down the street. Chanshik turns and heads in the opposite direction.
The Dongwoo who opens the door is a different Dongwoo from the one in the court room two days ago.
“Bad day?” Chanshik asks.
Dongwoo only nods.
Dongwoo’s not rushing; his movements are not quick and his grip is not hard, but it’s clear he’s not intending them to have dinner. He pulls Chanshik close to him in the middle of the parlor, grasping his neck, kissing him so fiercely Chanshik starts gasping. He grips Dongwoo back, pulls him in by the waist, pulls the ribbon from his hair, setting it free. His mouth seeks Dongwoo’s hands. He takes one of them in his own and kisses it, licks over the edge of Dongwoo’s nails, savoring his naked black fingers. Dongwoo grunts and holds him in place, runs his tongue over the sharp tips of Chanshik’s teeth, as if to feel them. Slowly but surely he stumbles them towards his bedroom.
Sometimes he’s gentle, eyes curved, hands soft, stroking Chanshik’s sharp cheekbones, melting through his hair and over his neck and shoulders, mouth warm, pressing light kisses to his lips and over his body.
Sometimes he’s rough and desperate, eyes dark and hard, hands clenched; scratches faint lines over Chanshik’s skin with his short fingernails, bites him with his dull useless teeth. Today is one of those days.
He’s not threatening, it’s not that. Dongwoo is probably incapable of being threatening. It’s not like he wouldn’t stop if Chanshik told him to. It might have been amusing if not for the force and fire in his eyes and muscles, if Chanshik hadn’t known what lies behind it, what hardens Dongwoo so.
Chanshik spreads out and takes everything, everything that’s been held in, everything ugly and impure and uncontrolled, all the rage and all the desire, everything Dongwoo needs out of his body and smeared off on someone else. Chanshik takes everything, absorbs it into himself, so Dongwoo won’t have to carry it.
It’s always been like this, ever since they were young. Dongwoo pushing and pulling, steering, holding back, controlling himself, only letting out steam in carefully measured portions. He’s not one to deny his nature. He knows what he needs and when he needs it. He does what has to be done, he does what he needs to do. Prodigals are emotional, passionate creatures, but Dongwoo has to live in a rational human world.
Chanshik follows him everywhere, accepts all the rejections, is never hurt by the hands pushing him away, and is always coming when he calls, always ready for him, always wanting him. Always taking everything that’s been held back.
Afterwards they lie together in Dongwoo’s sheets, and Chanshik studies his dim bedroom. The tall ceiling, the heavy furniture, the ornate wall papers, and the thick curtains covering the high windows to block out all light. There’s still some tint of twilight seeping in between the cracks where fabric meets wall.
“Move back to Hells Below,” Chanshik begs him, even though he knows it’s no use. It’s not like him to beg, but he can’t help himself. “This is no place for you. For any of us.” He toys with some of Dongwoo’s hair between his fingers, and Dongwoo shifts against him, but doesn’t say anything. “Move in with me,” Chanshik adds, in a quieter voice.
“My work is here,” Dongwoo says gently. “My life is here. You know what I’m working for. We have to work. We have to work hard, if things are going to change.”
“No, we have to fight,” Chanshik says, fingers tightening in Dongwoo’s hair. “We have to fight hard, strike hard, strike them all down. Then things will change.”
“Violence only breeds violence,” Dongwoo says, like he has said it a hundred times and doesn’t expect the message to sink in, but doesn’t particularly mind that.
They lie quiet for a while, skin on skin, feeling each other.
“We should go find the old demon kingdom,” Chanshik whispers into his ear, feeling sentimental and romantic. “We should all dig far down into the earth and find the Deep Capital and live there for the rest of our lives, and it would be just like a thousand years ago.”
Dongwoo shifts again, and Chanshik thinks that he smiles. “But then we’d never feel the wind in our hair again. Or see the stars in the night sky.” He moves his hand over Chanshik’s stomach under the covers, stroking softly. “It’s so vast. The sky. Bigger than the biggest cavern. Isn’t there something nice about that?”
Chanshik falls quiet, staring up into the ceiling and feeling himself frown.
“I didn’t know you believed in things like that anyway,” Dongwoo adds when Chanshik doesn’t say anything, looking up at him. “Angels and demons, gods and underground cities, I don’t know… Some say we’re all descended from apes.”
Chanshik lies silent for a while, thinking about his words. Maybe they’ve evolved from something, and maybe they’re in the process of evolving into something else. Chanshik feels far from a mighty demon lord. The blood is thinning out, they’re not what they used to be. The more time Dongwoo spends in the human world, the more human does he grow. Maybe he doesn’t belong underground anymore. Maybe their race will split in two branches; surface Prodigals and underground Prodigals. Or they’re all drawing further and further away from the caverns and the darkness and the depths, maybe they will all be carved in line with the narrow human form, maybe they will all long for the wind and the night sky.
“I don’t,” Chanshik says, “believe in things like that.” He lost that ability a long time ago.
When he wakes up, Dongwoo is gone. Chanshik finds him in his study, bathed and dressed. He stands bent over a thick stack of papers on his desk, deep in troubled thought. Chanshik watches him for a moment, thinking that before long he will stiffen like that and his back will be hunched for good.
“I guess we’ll take that dinner another time,” he says, coming up behind and pressing his mouth and nose against Dongwoo’s shoulder, smelling the shirt cotton and the soap and the body underneath.
“Mm,” Dongwoo only mumbles, and Chanshik makes to leave. He’s just reaching for the doorknob when Dongwoo calls him back.
“I know what you’re doing, you and your friends,” Dongwoo says calmly, still bent over his papers and not looking up. “Don’t think I don’t know.”
Chanshik’s hand squeezes the cold knob. “Aren’t you gonna ask me not to?”
“Would it change anything?” Dongwoo asks back. He straightens his back finally, peering at Chanshik over the room with a tentative grin on his lips. "Mister Big Prodigal Inventor," he drawls, "isn't that a bit crude a project for you?"
"Hey," Chanshik grins tightly back, "it might not be sophisticated, but it sure as hell is effective." He pushes the door open and lets it gently fall shut.
He buys a paper off a street vendor before slithering back down into the catacombs protecting him from the bright morning sun. There are five pages on tomorrow’s great spectacle; the Grand Opening of Parliament. The Archbishop, all his higher priests and ministers as well as the entire House of Lay and House of Clergy will assemble in White Chapel for the ceremony. The entire ruling class will be gathered in one place, and the Inquisition has ordered maximum security and shut off the main streets around the Chapel.
On the second to last page there is a small note on a Prodigal suffrage activist meeting at South Square being dispersed by the Inquisition because of impiety and public indecency. Chanshik shakes his head to himself. They all have such trouble seeing the bigger picture.
“You can change the world, Chanshik,” Dongwoo used to say, when they were sitting in some deep corner of the library or had snuck into each other’s dorm beds or climbed up on the University’s main building roof and crossed with light feet over to the far end where the building wall met the cavern wall and there was a little ledge where you could sit with your back to the rock and look out over the wide stripes of tin and the patches of light and shadow scattered over the cavern ceiling and nobody could see you. “If you use your talents right. If you work hard enough.”
They were both there on scholarships. There was only one seat of higher education in Hells Below back then and the tuition fees were more than most families could handle. Either way, Dongwoo’s parents were in prison and Chanshik’s were dead. Despite being a few years apart they ended up in the same grade, because Dongwoo didn’t get his applications granted until he was 21. Chanshik was offered his spot when the council saw the successes of his "Spinning Jimmy".
When Chanshik was still working in the mines after classes at the West Prodigal Public School he constructed a new wash plant, a system of spinning drums, that would minimize ore waste by 65%. His supervisor urged him to get it patented. The priests at the patent office took one long look at him from up on their high oak desks, flipped lazily through his thick folder of notes and sketches and promptly deemed the project close to useless, but were still gracious enough to sign him a contract with the lowest royalty rate. Then they took his invention and let it revolutionize the mining industry, taking the profit for themselves.
Chanshik still fumes when thinking about it. The royalties are enough for him to live off, and he got a few more patents after that, but it’s nowhere near what he should have earned. He could have bought up a couple of mines, invested in new and improved technology, given the Prodigal workers fair salaries and conditions and helped them organize against the Church. He could have done a lot of things. (Instead he’s sitting deep in the deepest tunnels of Hells Below, with hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women, digging a chamber under White Chapel.)
“You’re going to change the world as well,” Chanshik would whisper back. “You’re going to bring justice to everyone. You’re going to clear the Inquisition house of Prodigals.”
Dongwoo would laugh then. “Not all of them are innocent, Chanshik.”
Dongwoo adored him, like a mix between a peculiarity and a puppy, and Chanshik basked in that adoration. Dongwoo was always the first person he wanted to show his new ideas. Dongwoo would carefully study his messy notes and cluttered drawings and hum and nod and say that he didn’t fully understand it, but that he was sure it was going to be great. Then come back a couple of days later with some profound comment or a strange question, something Chanshik had never thought about before but made perfect sense. They were both Thinkers, still are, but where Chanshik was more function and material and mechanics, Dongwoo was feelings and thoughts and nature. He often made changes to his projects after hearing what Dongwoo had to say.
Chanshik understood feelings as well, as good as anything, but everything seemed to somehow map itself out like a cross-section sketch to him; gears and function, cause and consequence. Where Dongwoo was meek, was soft and careful, Chanshik could be ruthless pragmatism. He was aware of that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Dongwoo regularly reminded him of it.
Dongwoo’s dreams and idealism, his late night whispers of everything they should do together but couldn’t because Prodigals one way or another weren’t allowed (this list grew longer and longer the deeper he got into his law textbooks), drove Chanshik on, spurred and inspired him. He believed in Dongwoo. He was young and in love and wanted to please Dongwoo in any way he could, wanted Dongwoo to be happy. And he already carried so much inside of him, so many hard and bitter things. He might not change the world. But he was going to do things, big things.
“One day,” Dongwoo used to say, “things will change.”
November 5th
Chanshik wakes up with every nerve and muscle in his body ready and tense. It’s early and he probably hasn’t slept enough, but he can’t sleep, and he feels completely rested. His mind feels focused and clear.
Halfway through his breakfast, there is a knock on his door. He opens it to find a broad, hunched backside, clad in a plain black coat. A tail of soft brown hair hangs down over the collar, tied together with a black ribbon. Dongwoo spins around. Chanshik grins.
“Look who has braced himself and crawled down into the darkness.”
Dongwoo lets it slide. “I only have a couple of minutes, I’m on my way to work.”
“Okay.”
Dongwoo stands weighing back and forth on his feet. First he looks at Chanshik, then doesn’t look at Chanshik at all, instead glancing around the room like it’s his first time there and he’s about to compliment something. He opens his mouth a couple of times, but immediately closes it again.
“Yes?” Chanshik asks.
He moves then, grabs Chanshik and draws him close to him like he needs to touch him. He catches Chanshik’s face in his hands, pulls Chanshik’s smell into his nose and kisses him softly.
"We should go find the ocean," Dongwoo whispers into his ear, holding him close. "I've never seen the ocean. I bet it's nice. We should go far east and find some windy little village and live there for the rest of our lives, and it would be like nothing before."
"You know Prodigals aren't allowed to leave the Capitol," Chanshik says, separating from him.
"I'm a man of law," Dongwoo says, back unusually straight. "I can change the law. We can change the law. If we work hard enough."
"It's not men of law who change the law," Chanshik says, cocking a brow at him. "It's the clergy."
Dongwoo smiles faintly, and sighs.
"You came here only to tell me you want to see the ocean?" Chanshik asks him.
"No," Dongwoo says. He weighs back and forth again for a moment. "Is it too late to ask you not to?"
"Do you really want to?" Chanshik asks back.
Dongwoo sighs again. "I don't know."
Soon after Dongwoo leaves, Chanshik pulls on his boots and leaves as well. He feels restless and prickly in his legs. He knows where he's going, but he's not sure why he's going there.
Down a side alley from one of the busy main streets, Chanshik pulls a heavy oak door, fastened in the stone wall by a tightly fit frame, open, and slips through a short shaft. The room is carved directly into the rock, unlike most of the buildings of Hells Below. It's small, softly lit in a warm yellow glow, the stone walls curved gently and arching up over his head like a womb. A couple of wooden benches with stiff backs cut over the floor in even lines. Some dog-eared copies of holy scriptures clutter the seats and crevices in the walls. In the front a miserable wooden Christ hangs from his cross, blood-red tendrils of paint frozen in the process of running down his forehead from his thorned crown.
Chanshik sits down in the middle bench, feeling odd. He hasn't set foot in a church in years. His parents never cared much for priests and wooden men on crosses. Chanshik has never really believed in any god. He's alone save from an old Prodigal woman sitting across the aisle, praying quietly to herself. Chanshik tries to feel if that's what he came here to do. But it doesn't seem to come to him, so he gives that up.
There are faint paintings in the ceiling, he realizes after a while. Chanshik squints and tries to work out the shapes. The lines are wide and sweeping, bold curves and soft angles. They’re women, he realizes after another while. Big, luscious female bodies cover the church ceiling, wide thighs and buttocks, heavy breasts and plump bellies, long flowing sweeps of hair.
Chanshik looks at the smooth worn rock embracing him, wondering how old this cavern might be. Maybe it was here before Hells Below was built, maybe even before the Great Conversion. What did the Prodigals worship then? Who were they? Broken mighty demon lords trying to hold on to something from their old lives, from all they left behind, or just a plain little kind of people, half ape and half mole, digging pits in the ground. Perhaps Chanshik’s ancestors gathered here, honoring their female deities. Then the human priests came along and showed them the light and smacked up a crucifix in the pagan temple.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” The woman says suddenly, stirring him from his thoughts. She had seen him staring up into the ceiling. Chanshik quickly pulls himself up in his seat. “These paintings were made long ago by one of the Saint Missionaries who brought Salvation to the Prodigal people.” She points a bony finger up towards the swirls. “It’s a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.”
“Oh,” Chanshik says.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” she continues, peering at him with her pale yellow eyes. She’s old, he notes, maybe 120 years, but she still looks strong. “Don’t often come to Holy Ground?”
“No,” Chanshik admits.
“So what brings you here on this fine a day,” she muses, eyes thinning out with her sharp-toothed grin. “Something important ahead of you?”
“Yes,” Chanshik admits once more, stiffly.
“Ah,” she sits back again, arms folded over the front of her skirts. “The chapel is a good place to gather your courage. Collect strength. Draw power. Ask for help… or for forgiveness.” She sighs gently to herself. “God has helped me through many hard moments. He is always there. He always listens. He watches over all of us. Things might be rough at times but God will do right by every creature. We will all get our justice in the end.” She looks over to Chanshik again, fixes him tightly with her gaze. “I trust in God. I trust in the Church.”
“The Church?” Chanshik echoes flatly.
“Yes. Without the Church we’d be nothing,” she tells him. “We’d all be brutes and boors, digging in the mud. The Church is what holds us together in these times of troubles, ties us together despite our differences. The humans, and the Prodigals. We might be the Lost Son, we might be the Sinful Son, and we have done evil, but we came back, and we repented. God loves all his children, God accepts us regardless of what we have done, and so does our human brother. He took us in, he showed us the right way of life, and he forgave us for our sins. He forgave us for our heritage. He soiled his hands to wash our dirtied bodies. We can only hope to ever be as good as him.”
“We need to keep together,” she insists. “We need to help each other. That is the only way.”
Chanshik leaves on shaky legs. He hurries back to his quarters. The big clock on the town hall tower at Ironspill Square is approaching midday. He’s late.
Chanshik runs through the dark underground streets, past the bent sheds and crooked houses, breathing in the hot humid air and the smells of metal and steam and Prodigal bodies, listening to the sounds of his steps echoing through the ragged tunnels and running his fingers over the rock to feel the ragged tunnel walls, feeling the all-embracing stone ceiling curve over him like a mother’s hug. All the things he loves, all where he belongs.
He hammers on the rickety door, flies through the dirty kitchen and down the narrow shafts. The cavern is ready, low but wide. All over, pillars of stone and wood hold up the floor of the basement under White Chapel. Around him, hard-faced men and stiff-limbed women are emptying the last bags and boxes of black, grainy gunpowder. The cavern is filled to the brim. Above them, the entire upper clergy is gathering in the shining White Chapel halls.
“You made it,” someone says, putting a hand on Chanshik’s shoulder, someone with hard lines in his face and hard calluses in his hands, someone with force and fire in his eyes and in his muscles and Chanshik knows, knows what has hardened him so.
But there are some beginnings of a smile tugging bravely at the rigid stiffness around the man’s mouth, taking on the project of softening up years’ worth of solidity. A woman passes quietly by him. She seems to move with an ease she didn’t have yesterday, her muscles softer, her limbs more relaxed.
They all pull back, behind a curve in the tunnel, a big wall of rock jutting out.
“This is the day,” someone says, in a low but formal tone. “This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. This is the day when things will change.”
“Would you like to do the honors, Inventor Gong?” Things are pushes into his hands, the end of a long fuse in one and a box of matches in the other.
Distantly, Dongwoo’s words echo through his head, fleeting shreds of is this the way and blood on your hands and not all of them deserve to die. Hollowly, his own words echo back, like from the other side; this isn’t about me and this is for all of us and if I don’t do it, someone else will. Under it all, he hears, reluctantly, frantically, what he whispered into Dongwoo’s ear when they were lying together in Dongwoo’s bed the other day and he was sure Dongwoo had fallen asleep; I’ve never killed anyone before.
This, another voice inside him says, a clear, rational voice, one that sounds just like him but he isn’t sure is his, is what we call Cold Feet.
Chanshik squeezes the fuse in one hand and the box in the other.
One day, he will take Dongwoo to the ocean.
(A/N: Credit to "Wicked Gentlemen" by Ginn Hale on which the AU of this fic is based, and also to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 which was a great inspiration.)