Abandon
Abandon
Title: Abandon
Characters: Lee Donghae, Lee Donghwa, Lee Hyukjae, Mr. and Mrs. Lee (Hae’s folks)
Pairing: friendship!EunHae
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst, slight!fluff
Warning: Death and lots of sad parts. ... And a tiiiiiny bit of fluff.
Summary: "He abandoned me. They all abandoned me."
Note: ... This was supposed to be a drabble. For that matter, this was also supposed to be part of a set. ... Now it’s kinda long, so I’m not too sure what I’ll do yet. Probably just ask my beta for her opinion.
Also. I fudged Donghae’s birth year. For a reason, obviously.
"~*~"
A young Lee Donghae stared at the gravestone in front of him, face a startled mask of confusion.
He didn’t quite know what was going on. The last thing he remembered with any clarity was sitting in the back seat of his father’s car, the two of them singing loudly along with the radio while his older brother, Donghwa, pretended to ignore them because they were being ‘silly’.
But Donghae knew his brother had found them amusing, perhaps even liked it. It was hard to say you didn’t like something because it was ‘silly’ when you couldn’t stop yourself from smiling.
And Donghae had been inches from prodding his brother in the side, more than ready to comment and expose the older boy’s secret when a flash of bright red, shocking and vibrant against the dull grey of the car’s interior, caught his attention.
Donghae had twisted in his seat for a better look, but whatever had been there was gone. Not even a moment later there was a loud crunch (a sound that had immediately reminded him of the time he and Donghwa were playing soccer in the house and the ball smacked into their grandmother’s pretty blue ceramic vase, toppling the item from the hall table onto the hardwood flooring).
And then...he was here.
To his right a young couple clutched each other, shoulders hunched in grief. Oddly enough, while silent tears had drifted down from the woman’s eyes, creating translucent black streaks down the plains of her face, it was the man that seemed to bear to worst of the grief. Sobs wracked his frame, shoulders shaking like the autumn leaves in the bitter wind.
Donghae did his utmost best not to stare at them, as he knew that it just wasn’t polite, but something, something far stronger that any force he could remember, suddenly compelled him to look. So he did.
Recognition flared. "Mom! Dad!"
But there was no response; the sobs continued as if Donghae hadn’t spoken.
"Mom, what’s the matter with Dad?"
Again, no response.
Donghae stumbled to their side, hands flailing in panic. He’d never seen his father cry, never knew that someone so strong could cry, but now he knew. Donghae knew now that no one was perfect, that everyone had a breaking point.
This was his father’s.
"I miss him," Donghae’s father whimpered after a moment, stopping Donghae dead in his tracks.
No.
A thought abruptly occurred to the brunette --where was Donghwa?
Donghae spun in a wide circle, panic rising and growing like a wildfire in a dry meadow. "Donghwa! Donghwa, where are you?!" But his brother was nowhere in sight, and the panic in his chest was so strong, so damn fierce (oh God, Donghwa, where’s my brother, oh God, where’s Donghwa?!) that he felt like he couldn’t breathe. And just as he was about to burst into tears, his father murmured something again and the sobs renewed in strength.
The panic subsided enough that Donghae could hear a string of words coming from his father’s mouth, a litany, a mantra. A single word over, and over, and over again.
Donghae, Donghae, Donghae...
In that short moment, the world sharpened at its edges, and the once-blank grave marker came into shocking focus.
Lee Donghae
Oct. 15, 1999 - Sept. 30, 2009
"Death is an eternal sleep
rest in peace, Donghae,
as our love rests with you."
Donghae barely had a moment’s notice to back away from the (his?) gravestone, to glance toward his (alive?) parents before the world around him faded to black.
"~*~"
When Donghae awoke again, the sun was low in the sky; night would be coming soon. Not only that, but his older sibling was there, too, right arm in a cast and sling, face a map of nasty scratches and colorful bruises.
The relief Donghae felt right then was painfully beautiful. Beautiful because Donghwa lived, painful because...Donghae didn’t.
Donghae spent the next hour memorizing his brother’s face, forcing the bruises and contusions, the scrapes and scratches, into his memories, forcing himself to remember these changes, because he has no idea how long this ‘life after life’ will last.
And the thought that he may be stuck like this, possibly indefinitely while the rest of his family ages, withers, and dies -- it’s just too much.
But the worst thing is when the trio decided to leave. Donghae tried to follow them only to be held fast, as if he were tethered to something.
Donghae shouted his dismay, crying for his parents to come back, to stay, begging for someone to keep him company in the long hours of the dark night, and then Donghwa turned around, eyes wide.
For a moment Donghae thought it was a fluke, but then his brother was shouting and screaming and struggling to escape their parent’s grasps. After a short delay, a familiar voice reached Donghae’s ears, sounding almost as if it were coming from underwater. "Stop! You gotta stop, Mom; Donghae’s back there! Please! Dad, he’s right back there! We can’t just leave him behind!!"
But their mother only thinned her lips, tugging Donghwa harshly as her husband sagged against the side of the van, head in his hands.
As soon as he was shoved into the car, Donghwa had clambered over the seats until he as at the back window. He pounded his fists against the glass, sobbing and hiccupping and begging their parents to stop and go grab Donghae. He was still staring at Donghae, eyes pools of agony, when their mother started the car and drove off.
That was when Donghae learned that the dead didn’t cry.
"~*~"
The dark didn’t scare him any more. either.
For as long as he could remember, the dark had always scared him to the point that if his closet light was not left on all night, Donghae wouldn’t be able to close his eyes, much less sleep.
But now... The dark didn’t seem quite so terrifying. Then again, when you were dead, not much did.
"~*~"
Donghae gritted his teeth, brown eyes narrowed on the slim gray stone that now symbolized his life, or lack thereof. As the days passed (and the fact that he could no longer remember whether it was Monday or Wednesday, or whether it was the 20th or the 25th, was not comforting in the least), Donghae came to hate the gravestone more than he’d hated anything in his entire life.
That stone represented everything -- everything he’d lost, everything he’d never have again.
And he hated it with a startling passion.
So it’s only natural that once day, after a long night of watching the stars shift in the sky, after watching Jupiter and Saturn dance and fly across the sky, after considering everything that there was left to consider, Donghae decided that it was about time to express his frustration.
And the gravestone, the definition of everything he wanted, everything he needed, was the prime suspect.
Donghae lost track of how many times he’d punched the marble stone (and he had punched it, because at first it had hurt, then it didn’t hurt at all, and the loss of pain actually hurt more than the feeling of his skin being cut open by the rough marble), but he knew it was a lot more than ten, but definitely less than a hundred.
He’d never been a violent child, never wanted to hit someone, never wished to see someone hurt, but right at this moment, he wanted to destroy, maim, kill -- anything to feel alive, to feel human. So he continued his assault, ignoring the fact that as his knuckles split open they immediately healed, ignoring the lack of actual bloodshed, ignoring the fact that he no longer felt neither pain nor numbness.
He just was.
Then there was an abrupt tug at his sleeve, and Donghae turned on his heel, fists clenched and raised, venomous words on the tip of his tongue. Then his eyes met another’s, and for a long, long moment he was lost.
"Who are you?" Donghae managed some time later, voice nothing more than a breathy whisper, arms limp at his sides.
"A friend."
Even though Donghae couldn’t remember ever meeting someone with such vibrantly red hair, there was something in the back of his mind, calmly agreeing that yes, he did know this person, even if he couldn’t quite remember them.
"My name’s Donghae."
"I know."
"~*~"
"He abandoned me," Donghae murmured, his voice a ghost of a whisper as he stared at the gravestone, his gravestone, and the browning flowers in the standard metal vase. "They all abandoned me."
The red-head gave him a pained smile, "It wasn’t their choice."
In the past couple days, the two of them had become decent friends. They did not run and play and goof off like most children their age, but Donghae was no longer so hellishly alone, and even his sense of time was returning. When the red-haired boy appeared from nowhere and tugged on Donghae’s shirt, instead of being the personal hell Donghae originally thought him to be, the boy had become a haven instead.
But instead of replying Donghae merely shook his head silently begging, pleading, hoping, wishing that this was all just a nightmare. But he knew the truth.
Death was not something you could simply wish away.
And while the border between life and death was shadowy and vague at best, it was still a barrier that could only be crossed from a single direction.
Life was life, death was death, and the one way to get from one to the other was to die.
After another moment of the sharp prickling at his eyes, Donghae tore his gaze from the flowers and the memory of his older brother being shoved into the car, ducked his head and began to silently cry.
The red-head merely sighed softly, gathering the brunette to his chest, holding him close as he murmured nonsensical words that neither of them would likely remember after things were said and done.
"~*~"
They’d been standing side by side for quite a while now, one watching a ladybug crawl up the side of the smooth granite rock, the other focused on a point in the not-so-far-but-still-so-very-far-away distance.
"You were there when the other car hit dad, Donghwa, and I." But it wasn’t a question; it was a statement. Donghae knew he’d seen the boy before, and he had. It had only been for a split second, just before his world was destroyed... But it was long enough. It was impossible to forget that shock of red hair.
Inquiry. The ever-so poisonous inquiry. The red-head knew this day would come, knew that it would come soon. And so the unnamed child, the harbinger of Death, merely nodded. "Yes."
Donghae tilted his head to the side, mentally working through the conversation, "And... You are a friend?"
"Yes." The red-head smiled. Or maybe he didn’t, because now whenever Donghae tried to look directly at the boy, his expression shifted, skin paled and darkened, contours and angles sharpening while becoming fuzzy all at the same time. The only thing that didn’t change was his hair, a loud, bright beacon in the proverbial darkness. Everything else, though, had to be observed from the corners of his eyes. It was frustrating, maddeningly so.
Donghae focused on the boy’s hair as he asked his next question, feeling the usual fuzziness abate somewhat. "What is your name?"
"... Hyukjae."
Donghae took another look at the boy, absently admiring the colorful strands. When he spoke again, it was with a fair measure of hesitance, almost as if he didn’t trust his words. "Hyukjae... If I go with you, will you abandon me, too?"
"I will never abandon you, Donghae." Hyukjae seemed to solidify then, everything coming to a rest, his expression no longer shifting and flighty like the hummingbirds of the Grandmother Lee’s flower garden. It slowed, coming to a gentle stop at a wide, sincere smile.
Donghae nodded slightly, content with the answer he’d been given. "Okay. I’m ready to go then, Hyukjae."
Hyukjae turned his back to the boy and began walking away. For a moment Donghae just stood there, arms limp at his sides, confused. When Hyukjae realized that he was not being followed, he paused and turned back around. "C’mon, Hae."
Donghae blinked sheepishly and hurried to the other’s side, murmuring an apology. Hyukjae merely smiled and resumed walking. A moment later, a small, pale hand wormed its way into his own, thin fingers twining around his. The grip, while belonging to that of a young child, felt like a vise on Hyukjae’s hand, a vise that only tightened as they left the cemetery. Hyukjae responded to the younger boy’s unspoken words then, a fierce promise in his voice -- "I will never abandon you, Donghae."
Donghae inched closer to Hyukjae as they left behind the only world he’d ever known -- his family, friends, life itself -- an oh-so faint smile on his lips. Thank you.