What You Can't See - Part 1 of 7

[ink_river10]

Title: What You Can’t See - Part 1 of 7
Author: Ink_River10
Pairing: HanChul (other side pairings to come)
Rating: R
Genre: Angst
Warnings: Angst! Mentions of non con, violence
Disclaimer: I don't own Super Junior and this fic (sadly) makes me no money
Summary: Heechul and Hankyung go through a life changing event that scars them forever.
Author's Note: I began this fic on August 14th and it has consumed my life ever since. I know I have been away from LJ for a long time, and it was due to me having two separate jobs to support myself and therefore no free time to write. But now I have only one job and while I am seriously poor, I DO have more time to write! I hope you enjoy this very angsty fic. It is dedicated to my wonderful friend arashi_nana as well as convicted_eyes. OK enough babbling, on to the fic!



Heechul

The water is dark, a rippling surface that reminds me of a mirror. But I don’t look in the mirror anymore. I don’t want to see my own face because it brings back too many bad memories.

I used to look in the mirror a lot. I used to think that I was the most handsome man in the world. I used to think I could have anything I wanted and still ask for more. I used to play with people, I used to have it all.

But I lost it, and there is no one to blame but myself. I don’t miss that life I had. No, to miss that would be even more selfish than I already am. I miss him. I miss Hankyung. I miss him so badly that even the thought of him makes my stomach clench and my throat to burn.

It’s been a little over five years since the accident that changed everything. Who I am now is not the same man I was that night. That night I had been drinking, and arguing with him over some petty thing I had said and done. I remember feeling guilty for getting drunk and letting someone else touch me while he was right there, and that guilty feeling had turned into my best defense weapon. Words.

I knew I had gone too far. I knew I had hurt him, and I knew even in the instant it came out of my mouth that I had made a mistake. I had uttered those words…. “Fine….if you don’t like the way I am, then leave!”

I saw the pain in his eyes. I felt the wave of sickening guilt rush through me and the alcohol I had consumed suddenly made everything spin. I heard him shout, telling me to watch the road and I knew he didn’t know how much I had had to drink. He would have never gotten in the car with me if he had known. I had hidden it. I’d lied to him and made him think I was okay to drive.

I turned to face him, to tell him I was sorry and that I didn’t mean it and that I loved him. But the words never left my mouth. The impact with the truck sent us flying. I happened so fast…in the blink of an eye the world became nothing but shattered glass and the horrible sound of crumpled metal as the car was tossed off the road like a child’s toy, spinning over twice before landing upright again. There was blood and pain and as soon as it stopped a deadly silence descended that still haunts my nightmares.

Then there was a bright spark of flame, and I started screaming past the pain because Hankyung was covered in blood, and I didn’t know if he was dead or not. All the words I had just said came back at me and I knew I was being punished, because I knew that the truth was that Hankyung was the only person in the whole world that I loved.

He was my best friend, and the only person I ever let myself fall in love with. And he was covered in blood and not moving. I struggled to get to him, fighting with the seatbelt as the fire got bigger, and the car turned into an inferno. But I couldn’t dislodge him. I was screaming until my throat was raw, begging him to forgive me, begging him to wake up and move because we were going to die. I knew we were going to die and I wanted to tell him the truth….that I loved him and I was sorry and I would never hurt him again.

I scraped my fingers raw trying to pull him away from the fire and broken glass, but I couldn’t even get out myself. The heat was so intense, and there was so much blood everywhere. I didn’t know if it was his or mine.

But then there were hands pulling me out even though I fought them. I didn’t even know that my arm and my foot were broken until later. The fire was so hot, and the smoke was so thick, I just screamed at them to get him out, I screamed and screamed and screamed while they tried to douse the fire but the smoke was eating everything.

And then they were pulling him out, there were sirens and red and blue lights, there were people shouting at me but everything was a blur and the smoke seemed to fill my lungs until I couldn’t breathe. My screams turned to retching coughs as they tried to pull me away and I wanted them to help him instead….but no one would listen.

And then the EMT’s were there, and they were around him, shouting orders, the ambulance was there, and they were taking him away. It wasn’t until they were lifting him up into the back of the ambulance that I passed out.

Five years.

My life is nothing like it was. I don’t go out anymore. I don’t party or flirt, or dance. I don’t live in a gorgeous apartment and spend money like its water. And I certainly don’t drink.

His family pressed charges. They had wanted us to break up for a long time, and I knew that all they knew was that I was hurting their son. Maybe they were right. When I think about it now, all I ever seemed to do was hurt him.

I was arrested, and the blood tests from the night of the accident proved I had been drunk. I was charged with driving while intoxicated and seriously injuring my passenger.

Hankyung was in a coma for five days. I spent those five nights in a jail cell, my arm and foot in a cast, wondering if he was going to die. All I wanted was to see him, even though it was impossible. I prayed to a God I had never believed in, begging him to let Hankyung live.

God answered my prayers, but in a twisted, horrible way. I didn’t find out he had awoken from the coma until almost a day after it happened, and I didn’t find out the truth of his injuries until a lawyer came and told me. I have nightmares about that conversation too.

“Your friend suffered multiple lacerations, broken ribs and the permanent loss of vision to his left eye due to retinal damage caused by the smoke.”

I remember sitting in that tiny, stuffy, horrible room knowing that I had almost killed the only person I loved. That I had caused him to permanently lose the vision in one eye. For the rest of his life, Hankyung would only see out of one eye…and it was my fault.

My requests to see him were denied. I was told he didn’t want to see me. That brought the pain to a whole new level and I knew those words I had said that night had come true. I had told him to leave and although he hadn’t died, he had left me. But wasn’t that what I deserved?

They set my bail far and above anything I could afford. I contacted a few of my remaining friends and asked them to take care of my cats and tell my family I was sorry. No one came to visit me. I don’t blame them. They were his friends too, and I had almost killed him. And my family….well….that they didn’t come to see me wasn’t a big surprise. They had disowned me long ago.

I was sentenced to three years in jail. When I was asked what I had to say for myself, I had nothing. I just remember being cold….so cold in that jail, so numb and horrified at what I had done that I knew that nothing I could say would make it better. Sorry wasn’t good enough. It would never be good enough.

Three years I spent in that hellhole, and it was the first time in my life that I wished I was ugly.

Night time was the worst. If I wasn’t waking up screaming from a nightmare, I was screaming from being raped.

I had no defense, nothing to protect myself. I wasn’t strong or knew a martial art like Hankyung. I didn’t have a way to make it stop other than my own nails, which I let grow to razor sharp, using them to claw and gouge my attackers until the guards immobilized me and cut them. When that last defense weapon was gone, I had nothing.

Time wasn’t on my side, and as the days turned into months and then a year, all I wanted to do was die. I wrote letters to Hankyung, telling him over and over that I was sorry, and that I loved him. But they were returned unopened. Every time a letter came back to me, it chipped away a little more at my will to live.

Deep down I didn’t blame him for hating me. I had nearly killed him. I had caused him to be blind in one eye. His life would never be the same and it was my fault. What was the point of continuing to live if at the end of this, he wouldn’t be there to forgive me? To tell me he loved me? As the hours dragged by endlessly, I realized that there was no point.

I tried to kill myself at the end of the second year. It took a long time to find something sharp enough. It didn’t take long to bleed. I remember feeling so relieved because I was finally finishing what the accident did not.

When I slid that metal over my wrists it felt like redemption. That somehow my blood was the price of everything I had ever done to him, and to the other people in my life I had hurt.

I don’t even remember it hurting. I just remember looking at the blood and hoping it would be enough.

But someone sounded an alarm, and then they were coming to drag me away, stuffing towels over my wrists to staunch the bleeding, and then giving me a drug to knock me out so I would stop fighting them.

When I woke up, I was in solitary confinement on suicide watch. They had stitched my wrists and put bandages over them I couldn’t remove. But I still have the scars.

In a way, being in solitary made things easier. The rapes stopped because I was alone at night. But with the threat of that gone, all I had in the silence were the voices in my head and the nightmares.

Still no one came to see me, and after a while, I stopped writing the letters to Hankyung, just because seeing them come back made the hole in my chest get bigger and emptier.

I don’t remember much of the last year. I think maybe that’s a good thing. My body healed from the rapes, but when they released me and I walked out of that jail, I was not the same person anymore.

What do you do when your life is over but you are still breathing?

I wanted to die but I just couldn’t seem to do it. I felt a cold and relentless numbness that took over everything. I moved like a robot on auto pilot. Any money I had before the accident was taken to pay my lawyers, leaving me penniless. I slept on the streets for almost a month before I found a job doing dishes at a coffee shop.

I didn’t talk to anyone unless they spoke to me. I did my job and saved every penny until I had enough to rent a tiny flat. No one knew where I was, not my family, or Hankyung’s family, none of our old friends….and not Hankyung himself. I left the jail and vanished into the city.

Oh I wanted to find him. Desperately, terribly I wanted to. I wanted to find him and get down on my hands and knees and tell him I was sorry even if he kicked me away and said he hated me. Why?

Because I still loved him. I was still hopelessly, stupidly in love with him. I always had been, even when I was that other Heechul….the one who hurt Hankyung and pushed him away. I’ve always loved him, and even after everything that has happened, I still have a glimmer of hope that someday, he might forgive me. And maybe someday…..maybe….he would love me again.

My life is simple, routine, and quiet. I get up at 6am (the old me used to sleep until noon) and shower, eat (If I have any food) and go to the coffee shop. I have been promoted from dishwasher to server, and I have made a friend. Someone who didn’t know the old me. Someone who takes me for who I am, and always has a kind smile on his face. His name is Kim Ryeowook, and today we are working together.

I like working with Wook, because he is kind, and patient. He has been showing me how to work the cappuccino machine. He trained me on the cash register, and how to take rapid fire orders. I owe him a lot, and yet I can only allow a small amount of emotion. I am too numb to do much else. I trust him enough to have told him I made a terrible mistake once, and that a part of my payment for that mistake was jail time.

I expected him to recoil when he heard me say it, but he did not. He just looked at me thoughtfully and asked why I said it was only part of the payment.

I told him it was because I would never stop paying for it.

It’s twelve thirty on a Friday, and the coffee shop is very busy. Ryeowook and I stand next to each other, each manning a cash register and taking order after order. In this job I have no time to stop and think, and this is a good thing. When I think too much, the pain creeps in, and the memories return of blood and shattered glass, of Hankyung unconscious in the car and being pinned down at night against my will.

But not now. Now is madness, with a thousand different kinds of caffeinated beverages and high society humans demanding them. I even recognize one or two from the clubs I used to go to, but none of them recognize me. Not anymore. I am not that man anymore. I serve them their coffee and they leave, jabbering on their cell phones about things they think are Very Important.

I have been running back and forth between the pastry case and the coffee machines, and trying so very hard not to mess up an order. When I hand the girl her cinnamon bun and half cream, two sugar, light whipped cream with a shot of chocolate coffee, she takes it, throws her money at me and dashes off.

The coins roll off the counter and onto the floor, and I don’t even stop to think, I bend down and pick them up because every penny not accounted for in this cash register comes out of my pocket, so I am careful not to mess up.

I stand up with the coins and put them carefully in the register, then look up at the next customer to take their order.

It’s him.

When I see him it is like a punch in the chest. All the air in my lungs squeezes out as I stare at him in shock. His hair is lighter now…almost blond. He is dressed in a leather jacket, a dark blue shirt and a pair of blue jeans. And his eyes…..

One is a familiar dark brown. The other is clouded, pale and unseeing.

There are tiny scars along his hands, and one near his jawline. He is staring at me, and the truth of what I have done to him is painfully evident. There is nowhere to escape…nowhere to run. I can’t move, and I can’t breathe, and he just stands there, watching me. Even with the scars and that pale, unseeing eye, he is still my Hankyung. Still absolutely handsome and strong.

The whole room tilts sideways and I think I am going to be sick. There is a coldness in the way he is looking at me, and he turns his face ever so slightly to the right, his good eye piercing me like a hawk.

“Coffee. Black.” He says flatly, and shoves a large travel mug at me.

Seconds tick by as I try desperately to get it together…to move or breathe or react somehow. But I can’t do anything because there is something horrible and huge blocking my throat and Hankyung is there…he’s right there in front of me.

Oh God I am so sorry

Then reality slams into me like a truck. There is no warmth, no forgiveness in the way he is looking at me. There is no patience, only a cold, distant sensation that he is looking at someone he finds distasteful. I don’t have a choice but to close my eyes, count to five and suck air into my lungs. I reach out and take the mug and the moment my fingers touch it, it feels like a door slamming in my face.

“Heechul-ah, are you okay?” Ryeowook’s worried voice comes somewhere to my right and I nod, gulping and swallowing and struggling to not scream and cry and run away away away away from this cold and distant Hankyung….the man whose life I ruined.

My hands are shaking, but I fill the mug with coffee and realize that he asked for it black. There is nothing else to add to it to give me time to get it together. I turn back, pushing the top onto the mug firmly. He is still standing there, his expression calm but cold. I hold it out to him and he takes it. I am feeling sick and slightly dizzy from the shock of seeing him, but there is nothing I can do about it.

He throws some change onto the counter and walks away without saying a word.

It takes every ounce of willpower I possess not to launch myself over the counter to stop him, to beg him to listen to me, to tell him I am sorry…. I’m so sorry…please listen to me…I love you…I love you I love you don’t leave…please forgive me…

But I can’t. And then he’s walking through the door, and out onto the street, and he’s gone.

There is nothing I can do. It’s over.

“Heechul-ah?” Ryeowook is asking, and I realize he’s shaking my arm, frowning and looking concerned, glancing from me to the door. “Who was that? Are you okay? What happened?”

And then I know that I don’t have a choice. The old Kim Heechul would have run away, hid himself away where no one could see him crying and think him weak. But I am not that man anymore, and I don’t deserve to cry.

“I’m fine.” I say, even though it’s an obvious lie.

I wipe my face and take a deep breath, because there are other customers now, and they want their coffee. There isn’t room for self pity. There isn’t time to acknowledge the pain in my chest and my heart, so I keep going. The hope that he might still love me or forgive me is gone, and I have to accept that now.

I am surprised when the words come out not sounding as strangled and hopeless as I feel.

“Can I help you?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hankyung

For the millionth time I curse Kim Heechul. I curse my inability to see anything to my left and I curse the hundreds of times I have stubbed my toe or tripped or failed a martial arts movement because I could only see out of one eye. I curse him for the job I lost due to the accident and loss of my eye because this is his fault, and yet I am stupid enough to still have feelings for him.

Donghae warned me. He told me that Heechul was working in a coffee shop downtown. He warned me so that I wouldn’t go there and what did I do? I went right over there and shoved my coffee cup in his face. I am angry at myself, and angry with him. Because he’s still so fucking beautiful and all the feelings that I thought I had erased for him have just come back like a jumbled mess of anger and hurt. I hate feeling this way.

Before the accident, things were bad between us. I was afraid of being alone, and at the same time I was afraid of staying with him. He was like this wild, feral thing that no one could tame. Free and beautiful and yes, even a little insane. He loved doing spontaneous things, like dancing all night and getting drunk until he was laughing at nothing, hanging out a window or kissing me breathless. I loved it and it scared me how wild he could be. How could I live the rest of my life with someone like that? Would he ever not be drunk or grabbing me to run off and go swimming at 2am?

He was drunk that night. How could I have been so stupid? I should have known he was drunk. I should have never gotten in that car. But why didn’t he tell me?

That was the question everyone asked. And those closest to me knew what I had been dealing with in those weeks leading up to the accident. How I had begun to doubt how he felt about me. To wonder if I was being used. To wonder if my mind and judgment was clouded by my infatuation with him and the most incredible sex of my life.

They had listened. They told me things I didn’t want to hear. They said it would hurt, but that I would find someone new. And eventually, I would forget him. But I knew that wasn’t true. I listened, but still I knew I would never forget.

I had always told myself that Heechul’s flirting didn’t mean anything…that he always came back to me. But it was so hard to ignore….so difficult not to go over and punch someone’s lights out because he let them touch him. And he got that mad gleam in his eye when he knew I was jealous. My jealousy was like a drug to him, because that was what he wanted. He wanted me twisted up in jealousy so much that I lost my control.

That was what he loved best, to see me tipped over the edge into the same kind of insanity that he lived in every day.

It was exhausting.

I was stupid then and I’m stupid now. I fell for his little game. I fell in love with him only to find out that he only loved himself. It took nearly dying for me to realize that.

I shove my hand in my pocket and stalk away, putting more distance between myself and the coffee shop where he works. It feels like my head is pounding with too many voices, now conflicting with each other.

Why did he look at me like that? I had expected him to try to beg me to forgive him, to promise he didn’t mean it, to tell me he still loved me and wanted me back. That was what he always did before when he made a mistake.

But no. He hadn’t done any of those things. In fact he just stared at me like I was a ghost.

I can hear Siwon’s voice in the back of my head; “Don’t do it, Hankyung. Don’t go over there. Don’t let him back in. He nearly killed you once! Isn’t that enough?”

I open the door to my flat and go inside. I don’t even realize I’m holding on to the mug until I see it clutched in my hand. The hand with the scars on it from the accident.

Damn you, Kim Heechul.

I met him through a friend nearly five years ago. I remember being astonished that any one person could be so gorgeous, no….beautiful…and be a man. But he was definitely a man. And when he kissed me and made me feel like I was kissing a hurricane, I knew I was lost.

We dated for almost a year before the accident. I could never figure him out. Sometimes he was hyper, laughing and full of joy, dancing around and playing with those cats of his. Other times he would be subdued, quiet, and withdrawn. Those were usually around the holidays. Other times he would snap at me and then relent, say he was sorry and I could see it in his eyes that he was.

And sometimes at night, he would hold on to me so tightly….like he was afraid I would leave him. It was those times I knew he was the most vulnerable…and maybe those were the times when he was really himself. That was how I fell in love with him. He needed me, and I needed him.

But now I don’t know. It was a never-ending whirlwind of emotions and sometimes I loved it and sometimes I didn’t. I never knew which Heechul I would be dealing with from one moment to the next.

Near the end, I did think about leaving him. I spoke to Siwon about it, and he encouraged me to. None of my friends liked him much….maybe it was because he was so possessive of me. Maybe it was because he was too much for anyone to handle except me. Too big, too bright, too loud, too bitchy. But those were the things that made him Heechul.

Maybe he knew it was coming…maybe he wanted to make me out to be the bad guy so he could make himself feel better, but we argued more in the weeks leading up to the accident than we ever had before. And yet at night he still held on to me so tightly, it made me wonder what was real and what was fake.

I never thought it would end this way.

I never thought I would wake up in a hospital room with my entire body in pain, covered in bruises and lacerations from the broken glass, my chest wrapped in bandages from the broken ribs, and the eyesight in my left eye gone forever.

I never even knew he was in jail until someone asked me if I wanted to see him.

I didn’t.

I tried to start over again. I couldn’t go back to work at the dojo because I couldn’t see to teach anymore. I had to find another job, and it didn’t pay as well. I had to scrape by with the help of my family and friends. I had to rebuild my life and learn to live half blind.

I had to forget him. I had to push him away from me and make him a bad memory.

I was doing fine until the letters began arriving. Marked all over with stamps from the jail alerting me that an inmate had sent me mail. I sent them back without reading them. I didn’t want to let him in again. I didn’t want to hear his begging and pleading for forgiveness. I didn’t think I could handle it.

After a while the letters stopped, and my life began to settle back into normalcy. Donghae tried to set me up on a date, but it was a miserable fail. Who wants a half-blind man covered in scars? No one does.

And then my father appeared one day, holding a letter from the courts. It was a notice that Heechul’s release date was approaching. He wanted to warn me. I listened and told him I was fine. I didn’t care. Heechul was a part of my old life and that life was over.

But when he was gone I stared at those papers for hours. The idea of seeing Heechul again made me both nervous and sick. What would we have to say to each other? But still I wondered, and waited.

His release date came and went without anything happening. For days I panicked that he would show up at my door, begging to talk to me. But he didn’t. In fact, he all but disappeared. No one seemed to know where he was or what was happening with him. And to be honest, most of my friends seemed as relieved as I felt.

Still, I wondered if he was okay. Stupid, right? Why care about the man that nearly got me killed?

And then Henry spotted him working in the coffee shop two blocks from my home. Just two blocks away. I walked by it, trying to look inside because I couldn’t stop myself. But I didn’t go in. I could only see him vaguely.

When Siwon and Donghae found out I had gone there, they told me not to go back again. They warned me not give in to the curiosity plaguing me night and day. But the fact that Heechul hadn’t contacted me in the three months since his release was….strange. Not like him at all. The Heechul I knew would beg for forgiveness, and maybe even cry if it suited his needs. And damn me but didn’t I always give in to him.

Not anymore.

I dump out the black coffee I ordered and watch it swirl down the sink. I have no idea why I let myself go there tonight. I have no idea why I let the sight of him affect me so much.

Did he recoil at my blind eye? At the scars? Yes, but not the same way he would have done before if he had seen someone disfigured like me. No…his reaction was because he knew it was his fault.

It is his fault I am like this. I can’t forget that.

I had seen his fingers shaking. I saw the way his co worker looked alarmed at the fact that Heechul was unable to move or speak. I saw him look at me in confusion and I realized that he had no idea who I was. No idea that my blind eye and scars were Heechul’s doing.

Hatred and confusion make me throw the mug across the room. I hear it hit the wall and bounce off, land on the carpet with a dull thud. I want to scream and throw things and curse the both of us to high heaven, but all I can do is put my head in my hands and wish I didn’t want to turn around and go back there right now and see him again.

To be continued…