The Teaser
A long time ago, I had foolishly asked a certain someone what they wanted, and gotten the response, "Random thought: Don't Don OR Sorry Sorry-style AU" which I then combined into one universe.
It became incredibly epic during the plot planning but I hadn't written anything down yet. Then, to make things even worse for myself, I promised five parts before the end of summer, and I always try to keep my word.
Pairing: Shihan
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
A/N: Plrz to be noticing the different spellings in names. They are not the same person. :D
In Shiwon’s world, everyone died.
Once, before the skies were perpetually filled with dark ominous clouds sliming about a malevolent sky, once, when tall regal buildings could almost reach out and touch the endlessly blue skies and were not beheaded broken shards of once mighty behemoths, once, before bombs and fires and believing it was just easier to submit than to resist, people yearned to live.
They would spend months, days, weeks, years, attempting to solve the riddle that was life and why we were placed on this earth. They strived for enlightenment, for peace, and to them, everything was a journey and life was but a mere compass.
This was before people would start to grumble that thinking was too difficult to do by one’s self, and that it was easier to just stop, and let someone else do it for them.
These were the days before the trice spun revolution had raped the earth of her products, the days before the Corp had absorbed every last bit of individualism away, and a time when humans had much greater purpose than to just breed and die.
This was many, many years before Shiwon had been born.
In wars, it is the victor that rewrites history. When the Corp had crushed every last sense of humanity left, all history books were burned.
There was no past before the Corp. There was no future beyond the Corp.
This is Shiwon’s world.
***
There are thirteen of them, a fatal catalyst number.
They said Eeteuk was the first, truth or aversion from it, nobody really knew, but they decided that because he is the first, he thus becomes their oldest, and their unequivocal leader.
That’s the thing about breeding. You breed too much or too often and the distaste of inbreeding occurs.
Inbreeding begets mutations and mutations begets variation.
Soon, you have humans who are able to stir the blanketed sleeping memories in their minds. They come, slow and creaky like a paraplegic pushed from their crutches and forced to walk, but sure enough they come. From there, you have humans who drip by drip are starting to think for themselves and objects who no longer believe they are objects. Being human is no longer the classification for those held back by drooling retardation.
Suddenly, you have parents who are frantic to sneak off their children, not offspring, out of the labs, desperate to give them a breath of freedom. They are hungry for the chance to let their children live a life dictated by choice, not command.
Very rarely do they ever succeed for they are often quickly gunned down or destroyed before they can even try to step foot anywhere outside the Corp’s dominion over their lives. But, for every mutation that tries, every parent that risks it, the gene of rebellion, of self, is sparked in other faulty subjects and gets passed down. It grows stronger with each new generation until one day, amidst the bleak clouds of their strife, one couple succeeds in their escape and their child is now special.
They teach him what they know, the tidbits of almost memory they can recall.
They teach him to speak, a small step into the parabola of language. They try to teach him all they can, as they run away from the efficient death mongers of the Corp and slipping on borrowed time.
Time only needs to blink once, twice, before young Eeteuk watches from the shadows when the bots find them. He watches as his parents, clear words like mother and father clutched tightly in his mouth like gleaming bits of treasure as Corp bots neatly and succinctly obliterate his parents in a set sequence of exploding flesh and the ground becomes slick, wet with the heavy rainfall of blood.
Though they are destroyed, they had succeeded in escaping and the others talk, as a babble of nonsense spreads in the labs amongst the faulty and quarantined objects.
“Unit 476 and 976 got their child out. Maybe we can too.”
Nobody is as lucky as Unit 476 and 976, who had gotten the opportunity to live with their child outside in the ruins. Every 2 units that try to escape together get slaughtered.
But the Corp bots are only programmed to kill pairs traveling together. They are pieces of machinery who fail at finding lone units hiding in corners and around shadows at the violent insistence of their parents.
Each single unit carries a vocal piece of information in their minds. “Go, find Eeteuk.” And so, one by one, each escaped single unit travels through the wastelands, each of them a living piece of rebellion and change.
***
They came to Eeteuk from all ages and all stages of life.
Some like Eunhyuk and Kangin seemed as though they had been with Eeteuk all their lives. Others find their way to him when they’re older. Like the way Yesung did when he staggered into their midst, one hand providing a cup of warmth as he tried to cover up the deliberate swirling lines of punishment on his left arm.
Eeteuk had gently pried away his hand, signaling for one of the others to bring a cool cloth to lay over the very livid shade of red Yesung’s skin had turned. It was burning hot to the touch, telling his story without words, about how the Corp had jammed hooks into his arm, only to rip it back out seconds later as they calmly brushed off the blood that had hemorrhaged out when there was no flesh to keep it inside, off their faces.
Nobody ever questioned the bodies were found slumped over in exhaustion on their doorstep, black hair dye sometimes starting to run at the ends from where their parents had tried to cover up their different toned hair that signaled a genetic mutation.
Everyone that had walked through their doors, even if they were on their hands and knees when they finally made it there, all carried the gene of rebellion made bitter with memories of sorrow. They were all told the same message.
They had to find Eeteuk and live.
***
Shiwon is on patrol when he sees him.
He strolls through the rumble of their world. The thin white noose that hangs limply around his neck matches the white shoes he wears to step indiscriminately on the fallen pieces of their civilization. His body is completely enwrapped in black, the dark material even managing to cover his hands, as well as the eye guards that he wears across his face.
He lets his hand linger on the wall next to him, completely unfazed as a rigged bomb - set off from when he first walks by - explodes behind him.
From this distance, Shiwon cannot tell who he is, if he is an added detail to the Corp’s intelligence or if he is a new addition to Eeteuk’s own, but he takes note of him and memorizes his form for his report to Eeteuk.
Upon returning home however, he finds the other man already there.
He stands when Shiwon enters the space, his eyes a dark color of brown with the eye guards vanished from when Shiwon saw him last. He immediately opens his mouth to say, “Siwon, what -” only to stop mid-sentence and restart with, “No. You are not he.”
It is during that same day that Hangeng disappears.
***
In Siwon’s world, everyone lives.
Immortality is an easy concoction to consume in the endless stream of black and white that made up their landscape. Most people end up killing themselves however, eager to face death rather than spend eternity in a sealed structure lined with rows and rows of straight edges and clean lines.
They never ask where they came from. They never ask what their purpose is. They just accept that they exist.
Some say that their world is confining, locked in a valley of white and black, as the all encompassing eye, heavily rimmed with kohl and weighted down with lashes watches them from a keyhole that they themselves cannot see through. They say the pupil of the eye is nothing but a swirling dot of madness and those who stare into it ultimately end up dead.
But this is their reality.
There is no questioning of anything that occurs before and after this. Things simply were. If you could not accept it, death was an easy, sterilized answer to your questions.
Everything always has two options, easily turn-able shades of Black or White. Yes or No. Exist or Don’t. Live or Die. Everything is orderly and controlled.
This is Siwon’s world.
It became incredibly epic during the plot planning but I hadn't written anything down yet. Then, to make things even worse for myself, I promised five parts before the end of summer, and I always try to keep my word.
Pairing: Shihan
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
A/N: Plrz to be noticing the different spellings in names. They are not the same person. :D
In Shiwon’s world, everyone died.
Once, before the skies were perpetually filled with dark ominous clouds sliming about a malevolent sky, once, when tall regal buildings could almost reach out and touch the endlessly blue skies and were not beheaded broken shards of once mighty behemoths, once, before bombs and fires and believing it was just easier to submit than to resist, people yearned to live.
They would spend months, days, weeks, years, attempting to solve the riddle that was life and why we were placed on this earth. They strived for enlightenment, for peace, and to them, everything was a journey and life was but a mere compass.
This was before people would start to grumble that thinking was too difficult to do by one’s self, and that it was easier to just stop, and let someone else do it for them.
These were the days before the trice spun revolution had raped the earth of her products, the days before the Corp had absorbed every last bit of individualism away, and a time when humans had much greater purpose than to just breed and die.
This was many, many years before Shiwon had been born.
In wars, it is the victor that rewrites history. When the Corp had crushed every last sense of humanity left, all history books were burned.
There was no past before the Corp. There was no future beyond the Corp.
This is Shiwon’s world.
***
There are thirteen of them, a fatal catalyst number.
They said Eeteuk was the first, truth or aversion from it, nobody really knew, but they decided that because he is the first, he thus becomes their oldest, and their unequivocal leader.
That’s the thing about breeding. You breed too much or too often and the distaste of inbreeding occurs.
Inbreeding begets mutations and mutations begets variation.
Soon, you have humans who are able to stir the blanketed sleeping memories in their minds. They come, slow and creaky like a paraplegic pushed from their crutches and forced to walk, but sure enough they come. From there, you have humans who drip by drip are starting to think for themselves and objects who no longer believe they are objects. Being human is no longer the classification for those held back by drooling retardation.
Suddenly, you have parents who are frantic to sneak off their children, not offspring, out of the labs, desperate to give them a breath of freedom. They are hungry for the chance to let their children live a life dictated by choice, not command.
Very rarely do they ever succeed for they are often quickly gunned down or destroyed before they can even try to step foot anywhere outside the Corp’s dominion over their lives. But, for every mutation that tries, every parent that risks it, the gene of rebellion, of self, is sparked in other faulty subjects and gets passed down. It grows stronger with each new generation until one day, amidst the bleak clouds of their strife, one couple succeeds in their escape and their child is now special.
They teach him what they know, the tidbits of almost memory they can recall.
They teach him to speak, a small step into the parabola of language. They try to teach him all they can, as they run away from the efficient death mongers of the Corp and slipping on borrowed time.
Time only needs to blink once, twice, before young Eeteuk watches from the shadows when the bots find them. He watches as his parents, clear words like mother and father clutched tightly in his mouth like gleaming bits of treasure as Corp bots neatly and succinctly obliterate his parents in a set sequence of exploding flesh and the ground becomes slick, wet with the heavy rainfall of blood.
Though they are destroyed, they had succeeded in escaping and the others talk, as a babble of nonsense spreads in the labs amongst the faulty and quarantined objects.
“Unit 476 and 976 got their child out. Maybe we can too.”
Nobody is as lucky as Unit 476 and 976, who had gotten the opportunity to live with their child outside in the ruins. Every 2 units that try to escape together get slaughtered.
But the Corp bots are only programmed to kill pairs traveling together. They are pieces of machinery who fail at finding lone units hiding in corners and around shadows at the violent insistence of their parents.
Each single unit carries a vocal piece of information in their minds. “Go, find Eeteuk.” And so, one by one, each escaped single unit travels through the wastelands, each of them a living piece of rebellion and change.
***
They came to Eeteuk from all ages and all stages of life.
Some like Eunhyuk and Kangin seemed as though they had been with Eeteuk all their lives. Others find their way to him when they’re older. Like the way Yesung did when he staggered into their midst, one hand providing a cup of warmth as he tried to cover up the deliberate swirling lines of punishment on his left arm.
Eeteuk had gently pried away his hand, signaling for one of the others to bring a cool cloth to lay over the very livid shade of red Yesung’s skin had turned. It was burning hot to the touch, telling his story without words, about how the Corp had jammed hooks into his arm, only to rip it back out seconds later as they calmly brushed off the blood that had hemorrhaged out when there was no flesh to keep it inside, off their faces.
Nobody ever questioned the bodies were found slumped over in exhaustion on their doorstep, black hair dye sometimes starting to run at the ends from where their parents had tried to cover up their different toned hair that signaled a genetic mutation.
Everyone that had walked through their doors, even if they were on their hands and knees when they finally made it there, all carried the gene of rebellion made bitter with memories of sorrow. They were all told the same message.
They had to find Eeteuk and live.
***
Shiwon is on patrol when he sees him.
He strolls through the rumble of their world. The thin white noose that hangs limply around his neck matches the white shoes he wears to step indiscriminately on the fallen pieces of their civilization. His body is completely enwrapped in black, the dark material even managing to cover his hands, as well as the eye guards that he wears across his face.
He lets his hand linger on the wall next to him, completely unfazed as a rigged bomb - set off from when he first walks by - explodes behind him.
From this distance, Shiwon cannot tell who he is, if he is an added detail to the Corp’s intelligence or if he is a new addition to Eeteuk’s own, but he takes note of him and memorizes his form for his report to Eeteuk.
Upon returning home however, he finds the other man already there.
He stands when Shiwon enters the space, his eyes a dark color of brown with the eye guards vanished from when Shiwon saw him last. He immediately opens his mouth to say, “Siwon, what -” only to stop mid-sentence and restart with, “No. You are not he.”
It is during that same day that Hangeng disappears.
***
In Siwon’s world, everyone lives.
Immortality is an easy concoction to consume in the endless stream of black and white that made up their landscape. Most people end up killing themselves however, eager to face death rather than spend eternity in a sealed structure lined with rows and rows of straight edges and clean lines.
They never ask where they came from. They never ask what their purpose is. They just accept that they exist.
Some say that their world is confining, locked in a valley of white and black, as the all encompassing eye, heavily rimmed with kohl and weighted down with lashes watches them from a keyhole that they themselves cannot see through. They say the pupil of the eye is nothing but a swirling dot of madness and those who stare into it ultimately end up dead.
But this is their reality.
There is no questioning of anything that occurs before and after this. Things simply were. If you could not accept it, death was an easy, sterilized answer to your questions.
Everything always has two options, easily turn-able shades of Black or White. Yes or No. Exist or Don’t. Live or Die. Everything is orderly and controlled.
This is Siwon’s world.