fic-DBSK-Hand in Hand-Chapter 8
Title: Hand in Hand: Chapter 8
Author: virdant
Length: 1,692 words; multi-part (8/9)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Tragedy, Angst, AU, Sci-fi
Pairing: JaeChun, YunChun, HoSu (HoMin, YooSu)
Summary: “Hero,” Changmin repeats, as if Jaejoong hadn’t said anything. “I’m actually… seeing you.”
Then suddenly, as if realizing where they are, he moves out of the way. “Come with me. Please,” he says, eyes never leaving Jaejoong’s face.
Warning: Disturbing Content.
Notes: For everybody who's been reading this. Thank you.
[Chapter 1] / [Chapter 2] / [Chapter 3] / [Chapter 4] / [Chapter 5] / [Chapter 6] / [Chapter 7]
Hand in Hand
Chapter 8
Yunho struggles to catch his breath; a floor above him, he can hear the patter of footsteps as guards-he’s not a guard, he’s not, he gave that up already-run, searching for them.
He glances beside him. In the dim darkness, he can barely make out the two figures huddled with him in the niche that Yunho threw them into. Junsu breaths softly, sharp shuddering gasps that Yunho can barely hear.
Jaejoong avoids Yunho’s gaze.
I told you, you don’t understand. The words are on the tip of Yunho’s tongue, but years of being a guard keeps the words in instead of out. Instead, he says, “I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” Junsu asks. Yunho flicks his gaze towards Junsu, who stares steadily at him. Jaejoong glances at Junsu, but avoids Yunho’s gaze when Yunho follows the twist and turn of Jaejoong’s head.
Jaejoong moves like an outsider, wary of guards lurking just behind. Yunho watches, and Jaejoong shudders a little, twitching slightly. He doesn’t take well to being noticed, Yunho realizes, and wonders why.
Jaejoong was meant to stand in the spotlight.
But Jaejoong hides, as if he weren’t himself but rather somebody else. As if in another world, he wouldn’t be so scared.
Yunho’s scared.
Terrified.
He no longer has the safety of the counsel.
“I’m not sure,” Yunho says carefully, because he’s not, even though he thinks that maybe he might know. It’s not a comforting thought, what he thinks might be true. It would mean betrayal and bitter melancholy forever and ever.
Jaejoong snorts. “You mean you didn’t jump at the last minute.”
Junsu blinks. “Didn’t jump?”
“Off the tracks,” Jaejoong explains, not kindly, but not unkindly either. “It’s your stop, but you don’t jump off the tracks because you’re scared. First-timers do it all the time.”
“What’re the tracks?”
Junsu doesn’t remember anything; Yunho swallows cold disgust at himself down deep, and nestles it into his stomach.
“They’re pathways, all over the city,” Jaejoong says, eyes distant. “They go everywhere, take you anywhere you’d go. They’re everywhere.” Jaejoong frowns. “How can you not know what the tracks are?”
“The city counsel,” Yunho answers for Junsu, to stave off guilt. He amends himself, because he’s not the type to slide responsibility onto another’s shoulders. “No. Me. I’m the reason Junsu doesn’t know what the tracks are.”
Junsu stares and stares.
“I’m the one that brought Junsu here. I’m the one that choked his voice out. I’m the reason for this.
“Me. Not the counsel.”
Jaejoong turns away from Yunho.
“I don’t… I am sorry. Really. I just.” Yunho wants Jaejoong to believe him. Wants Junsu to believe him too. Trapped in a dark room, with their knees almost touching, Yunho wants nothing more than to feel the reassurance of forgiveness.
“I”-Junsu begins.
Yunho hears footsteps draw closer. He knows these steps. Remembers them from his childhood.
“Run,” he rasps.
Jaejoong stares back.
“Run!” Yunho snaps, struggling to keep his voice low. “Don’t get caught again. Please.”
“Why should we trust you?” Jaejoong wants to say, and Yunho can see the words under shuttered eyelids and desperate worry.
“It’s not a trap?” Junsu asks carefully.
“No. Not a trap.” Yunho shifts slightly, and the three of them adjust positions until they face the trapdoor that Yunho pushed them through scant minutes ago. “Not a trap. Just. Run.”
“Please don’t,” Shim Changmin says as the door opens a notch and bright light floods the storage room. “I’d have to call the guards then.”
Yunho stares at Shim Changmin. Where? How? It’s… it’s Changmin. Changmin’s here to help them.
Changmin ignores Yunho and Junsu for staring at Kim Jaejoong.
“You must be…” he pauses, as if he can’t believe his eyes. “Hero.”
Jaejoong shakes his head in bewilderment. “You have the wrong person.”
“Hero,” Changmin repeats, as if Jaejoong hadn’t said anything. “I’m actually… seeing you.”
Then suddenly, as if realizing where they are, he moves out of the way. “Come with me. Please,” he says, eyes never leaving Jaejoong’s face.
Jaejoong glances at Junsu.
“Go on,” Yunho whispers in encouragement. He trusts Changmin.
Jaejoong takes Junsu’s hand and steps out of darkness into the brightness of the city counsel.
*
“I never thought,” Changmin said excitedly, rummaging through a stack of projector-notes. His search proves futile, and he moves towards another stack.
His office, formerly pristine and organized, lies under an explosion of metal chips scattered around, all projecting their data. Yunho picks up one to see lines of code, written in a language he can’t understand, all circular symbols. It’s not Commek.
Junsu peeks at it, avoiding Yunho’s gaze. “I know that,” he says finally, after studying it for a while.
Jaejoong stares at the mess around him, as if uncertain what’s going on.
“Ha!” Changmin exclaims, pulling out a thick disk. He manipulates it, touching buttons and working the projector until it reveals a face unmistakably Jaejoong’s.
“That’s!”
“You,” Changmin says with smug certainty. He offers the disk to Jaejoong, who takes it carefully.
In etched Commek along the edge, the disk reads Hero.
Jaejoong throat works as he swallows. “I don’t understand,” he says. He puts it down carefully on another pile of chips. “I. My name is Jaejoong. Kim Jaejoong.”
Changmin nods. “And you live outside the city, or at least you do now. You used to live in the city. Seven years ago, you were run off the tracks while playing touch-glow-tag, weren’t you?”
Jaejoong nods.
“Suffered from-” Changmin rattles off a long complicated term.
Jaejoong nods slowly. “How do you know?”
“What is that?” Yunho breaks in.
Junsu studies his hands.
Jaejoong glances at Yunho before turning to Changmin.
“A knee injury,” Changmin says.
“How do you know?” Jaejoong repeats.
Changmin picks up the disk. “It’s all on here, Hero.”
Jaejoong straightens. “My name is Kim Jaejoong.” Jaejoong looks stronger, all fierce determination.
“Hero,” Changmin corrects with a shrug and an almost smile. “Kim Jaejoong is dead.”
*
“They operated on you too?” Junsu asks softly. Changmin is gone, to supervise guards as they bring in more people from the city.
Yunho frowns. “They operated on you?”
“Do you think that implants are just bumps set in skin? They’re connected: to the spinal cord, to the mind, to the entire body.” Junsu stares distantly, running a finger along scar tissue on his throat. “They set it wherever they want and run wires through you until you’re all threaded up, wire that tell you want to do: what to think, what to dream, and there’s nothing left of you to scream.”
In the distance, Yunho hears a ragged scream. He jolts slightly, and Jaejoong shudders a miniscule shudder.
Junsu doesn’t bat an eye. “He’ll survive,” Junsu says calmly. “Changmin will ensure that.” A bitter laugh. “Changmin always keeps people alive. Even when they don’t want to live.” Yunho thinks that perhaps Junsu’s speaking from experience.
Jaejoong stares at the disk held in his hands. Hero, Yunho reads.
“I need to know,” Jaejoong says softly, “who Yoochun was. Is,” he corrects himself.
Junsu doesn’t say anything.
“Maybe there’s a disk on him too,” Yunho suggests, moving towards the piles of data chips. “Maybe we can find something. Yoochun right?”
Jaejoong pauses. “Micky.”
Both Junsu and Yunho look up.
“Micky?” Junsu asks in a tiny voice.
“Micky?” Yunho repeats.
Jaejoong nods, and Yunho can feel his world collapsing around him. It’s Jaejoong that Micky turned to? Jaejoong that Micky whispered secrets and promises to?
“I don’t understand,” Junsu says. “My Micky?”
“He’s not yours!” Jaejoong snaps. “You thought he wasn’t real, remember?”
Yunho can only stare, remembering.
*
Joining the guard.
The knife digging into his elbow. “This won’t hurt a bit,” a voice says, and with a click, he can see a glow of something that hadn’t existed before embedded in his elbow. “It’ll do you good,” the voice says, low and husky.
It hurts like fucking hell.
“You liar,” Yunho manages to rasp.
“You’re lucky,” the voice says, “that I’m doing this and not that little genius the counsel has wrapped around their finger.”
“Probably wouldn’t be as painful if it were a genius doing it instead of you,” Yunho hisses. White hot pain throbbing in his elbow and bright yellow pain tingling up his spine from the operation.
Cold hands wrap around his fingers. “You’ll thank me for this, one day. When the bells chime twelve, you’ll thank me.”
Yunho snarls, “What bells? Who the hell are you anyways?” but then the pull of anesthesia-Yunho can hear the click of a syringe-tugs him under with only the colors of pain and a last whisper of: “Call me Micky.”
*
Once. Ringing over the city in a series of tolls.
“Micky,” Yunho says suddenly, scant days ago, looking away from the old woman hobbling out of the city.
You’ll thank me for this, one day. When the bells chime twelve, you’ll thank me.
Yunho stares at the empty gap where metal was before.
He saw people after their implants had been ripped out. He saw Kim Junsu once, three years ago, lying still as the dead as scientists pulled away a globe of metal from his throat, metal wires trailing out of it like a grotesque spider. He watched, neutralizer in hand in case Kim Junsu, subject no. 091001, rebel, moved against orders. He watched scientists trim away wires, spicing edges together.
He doesn’t think that Junsu was aware when he arched above the dissection table, screaming silently, because they had just taken away his voice.
(And Yunho thinks: his memory of rebellion also.)
You’ll thank me for this, one day. When the bells chime twelve, you’ll thank me.
Ding dong.
Yunho remembers everything, even the memories that he once thought he forgot.
Even the memories that Shim Changmin wrote programs to destroy three and a half years ago.
You’re lucky that I’m doing this and not that little genius the counsel has wrapped around their finger.
I am, Yunho thinks.
“Thank you, Micky,” he whispers as a boy with the red glow of the implant walks out of the city undeterred.
TBC [Chapter 9]
One more chapter left. This was slow writing, and I'm so behind on school. D: Anyways, things should be getting clearer and clearer, and I think I've sucessfully managed to tie up at least two plot threads that have been dangling. Expect chapter 9 up sometime next week probably. And edits to be made along the entire piece to make it much more cohesive because I was an idiot and wrote without an outline.
Author: virdant
Length: 1,692 words; multi-part (8/9)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Tragedy, Angst, AU, Sci-fi
Pairing: JaeChun, YunChun, HoSu (HoMin, YooSu)
Summary: “Hero,” Changmin repeats, as if Jaejoong hadn’t said anything. “I’m actually… seeing you.”
Then suddenly, as if realizing where they are, he moves out of the way. “Come with me. Please,” he says, eyes never leaving Jaejoong’s face.
Warning: Disturbing Content.
Notes: For everybody who's been reading this. Thank you.
[Chapter 1] / [Chapter 2] / [Chapter 3] / [Chapter 4] / [Chapter 5] / [Chapter 6] / [Chapter 7]
Hand in Hand
Chapter 8
Yunho struggles to catch his breath; a floor above him, he can hear the patter of footsteps as guards-he’s not a guard, he’s not, he gave that up already-run, searching for them.
He glances beside him. In the dim darkness, he can barely make out the two figures huddled with him in the niche that Yunho threw them into. Junsu breaths softly, sharp shuddering gasps that Yunho can barely hear.
Jaejoong avoids Yunho’s gaze.
I told you, you don’t understand. The words are on the tip of Yunho’s tongue, but years of being a guard keeps the words in instead of out. Instead, he says, “I’m sorry.”
“What happened?” Junsu asks. Yunho flicks his gaze towards Junsu, who stares steadily at him. Jaejoong glances at Junsu, but avoids Yunho’s gaze when Yunho follows the twist and turn of Jaejoong’s head.
Jaejoong moves like an outsider, wary of guards lurking just behind. Yunho watches, and Jaejoong shudders a little, twitching slightly. He doesn’t take well to being noticed, Yunho realizes, and wonders why.
Jaejoong was meant to stand in the spotlight.
But Jaejoong hides, as if he weren’t himself but rather somebody else. As if in another world, he wouldn’t be so scared.
Yunho’s scared.
Terrified.
He no longer has the safety of the counsel.
“I’m not sure,” Yunho says carefully, because he’s not, even though he thinks that maybe he might know. It’s not a comforting thought, what he thinks might be true. It would mean betrayal and bitter melancholy forever and ever.
Jaejoong snorts. “You mean you didn’t jump at the last minute.”
Junsu blinks. “Didn’t jump?”
“Off the tracks,” Jaejoong explains, not kindly, but not unkindly either. “It’s your stop, but you don’t jump off the tracks because you’re scared. First-timers do it all the time.”
“What’re the tracks?”
Junsu doesn’t remember anything; Yunho swallows cold disgust at himself down deep, and nestles it into his stomach.
“They’re pathways, all over the city,” Jaejoong says, eyes distant. “They go everywhere, take you anywhere you’d go. They’re everywhere.” Jaejoong frowns. “How can you not know what the tracks are?”
“The city counsel,” Yunho answers for Junsu, to stave off guilt. He amends himself, because he’s not the type to slide responsibility onto another’s shoulders. “No. Me. I’m the reason Junsu doesn’t know what the tracks are.”
Junsu stares and stares.
“I’m the one that brought Junsu here. I’m the one that choked his voice out. I’m the reason for this.
“Me. Not the counsel.”
Jaejoong turns away from Yunho.
“I don’t… I am sorry. Really. I just.” Yunho wants Jaejoong to believe him. Wants Junsu to believe him too. Trapped in a dark room, with their knees almost touching, Yunho wants nothing more than to feel the reassurance of forgiveness.
“I”-Junsu begins.
Yunho hears footsteps draw closer. He knows these steps. Remembers them from his childhood.
“Run,” he rasps.
Jaejoong stares back.
“Run!” Yunho snaps, struggling to keep his voice low. “Don’t get caught again. Please.”
“Why should we trust you?” Jaejoong wants to say, and Yunho can see the words under shuttered eyelids and desperate worry.
“It’s not a trap?” Junsu asks carefully.
“No. Not a trap.” Yunho shifts slightly, and the three of them adjust positions until they face the trapdoor that Yunho pushed them through scant minutes ago. “Not a trap. Just. Run.”
“Please don’t,” Shim Changmin says as the door opens a notch and bright light floods the storage room. “I’d have to call the guards then.”
Yunho stares at Shim Changmin. Where? How? It’s… it’s Changmin. Changmin’s here to help them.
Changmin ignores Yunho and Junsu for staring at Kim Jaejoong.
“You must be…” he pauses, as if he can’t believe his eyes. “Hero.”
Jaejoong shakes his head in bewilderment. “You have the wrong person.”
“Hero,” Changmin repeats, as if Jaejoong hadn’t said anything. “I’m actually… seeing you.”
Then suddenly, as if realizing where they are, he moves out of the way. “Come with me. Please,” he says, eyes never leaving Jaejoong’s face.
Jaejoong glances at Junsu.
“Go on,” Yunho whispers in encouragement. He trusts Changmin.
Jaejoong takes Junsu’s hand and steps out of darkness into the brightness of the city counsel.
*
“I never thought,” Changmin said excitedly, rummaging through a stack of projector-notes. His search proves futile, and he moves towards another stack.
His office, formerly pristine and organized, lies under an explosion of metal chips scattered around, all projecting their data. Yunho picks up one to see lines of code, written in a language he can’t understand, all circular symbols. It’s not Commek.
Junsu peeks at it, avoiding Yunho’s gaze. “I know that,” he says finally, after studying it for a while.
Jaejoong stares at the mess around him, as if uncertain what’s going on.
“Ha!” Changmin exclaims, pulling out a thick disk. He manipulates it, touching buttons and working the projector until it reveals a face unmistakably Jaejoong’s.
“That’s!”
“You,” Changmin says with smug certainty. He offers the disk to Jaejoong, who takes it carefully.
In etched Commek along the edge, the disk reads Hero.
Jaejoong throat works as he swallows. “I don’t understand,” he says. He puts it down carefully on another pile of chips. “I. My name is Jaejoong. Kim Jaejoong.”
Changmin nods. “And you live outside the city, or at least you do now. You used to live in the city. Seven years ago, you were run off the tracks while playing touch-glow-tag, weren’t you?”
Jaejoong nods.
“Suffered from-” Changmin rattles off a long complicated term.
Jaejoong nods slowly. “How do you know?”
“What is that?” Yunho breaks in.
Junsu studies his hands.
Jaejoong glances at Yunho before turning to Changmin.
“A knee injury,” Changmin says.
“How do you know?” Jaejoong repeats.
Changmin picks up the disk. “It’s all on here, Hero.”
Jaejoong straightens. “My name is Kim Jaejoong.” Jaejoong looks stronger, all fierce determination.
“Hero,” Changmin corrects with a shrug and an almost smile. “Kim Jaejoong is dead.”
*
“They operated on you too?” Junsu asks softly. Changmin is gone, to supervise guards as they bring in more people from the city.
Yunho frowns. “They operated on you?”
“Do you think that implants are just bumps set in skin? They’re connected: to the spinal cord, to the mind, to the entire body.” Junsu stares distantly, running a finger along scar tissue on his throat. “They set it wherever they want and run wires through you until you’re all threaded up, wire that tell you want to do: what to think, what to dream, and there’s nothing left of you to scream.”
In the distance, Yunho hears a ragged scream. He jolts slightly, and Jaejoong shudders a miniscule shudder.
Junsu doesn’t bat an eye. “He’ll survive,” Junsu says calmly. “Changmin will ensure that.” A bitter laugh. “Changmin always keeps people alive. Even when they don’t want to live.” Yunho thinks that perhaps Junsu’s speaking from experience.
Jaejoong stares at the disk held in his hands. Hero, Yunho reads.
“I need to know,” Jaejoong says softly, “who Yoochun was. Is,” he corrects himself.
Junsu doesn’t say anything.
“Maybe there’s a disk on him too,” Yunho suggests, moving towards the piles of data chips. “Maybe we can find something. Yoochun right?”
Jaejoong pauses. “Micky.”
Both Junsu and Yunho look up.
“Micky?” Junsu asks in a tiny voice.
“Micky?” Yunho repeats.
Jaejoong nods, and Yunho can feel his world collapsing around him. It’s Jaejoong that Micky turned to? Jaejoong that Micky whispered secrets and promises to?
“I don’t understand,” Junsu says. “My Micky?”
“He’s not yours!” Jaejoong snaps. “You thought he wasn’t real, remember?”
Yunho can only stare, remembering.
*
Joining the guard.
The knife digging into his elbow. “This won’t hurt a bit,” a voice says, and with a click, he can see a glow of something that hadn’t existed before embedded in his elbow. “It’ll do you good,” the voice says, low and husky.
It hurts like fucking hell.
“You liar,” Yunho manages to rasp.
“You’re lucky,” the voice says, “that I’m doing this and not that little genius the counsel has wrapped around their finger.”
“Probably wouldn’t be as painful if it were a genius doing it instead of you,” Yunho hisses. White hot pain throbbing in his elbow and bright yellow pain tingling up his spine from the operation.
Cold hands wrap around his fingers. “You’ll thank me for this, one day. When the bells chime twelve, you’ll thank me.”
Yunho snarls, “What bells? Who the hell are you anyways?” but then the pull of anesthesia-Yunho can hear the click of a syringe-tugs him under with only the colors of pain and a last whisper of: “Call me Micky.”
*
Once. Ringing over the city in a series of tolls.
“Micky,” Yunho says suddenly, scant days ago, looking away from the old woman hobbling out of the city.
You’ll thank me for this, one day. When the bells chime twelve, you’ll thank me.
Yunho stares at the empty gap where metal was before.
He saw people after their implants had been ripped out. He saw Kim Junsu once, three years ago, lying still as the dead as scientists pulled away a globe of metal from his throat, metal wires trailing out of it like a grotesque spider. He watched, neutralizer in hand in case Kim Junsu, subject no. 091001, rebel, moved against orders. He watched scientists trim away wires, spicing edges together.
He doesn’t think that Junsu was aware when he arched above the dissection table, screaming silently, because they had just taken away his voice.
(And Yunho thinks: his memory of rebellion also.)
You’ll thank me for this, one day. When the bells chime twelve, you’ll thank me.
Ding dong.
Yunho remembers everything, even the memories that he once thought he forgot.
Even the memories that Shim Changmin wrote programs to destroy three and a half years ago.
You’re lucky that I’m doing this and not that little genius the counsel has wrapped around their finger.
I am, Yunho thinks.
“Thank you, Micky,” he whispers as a boy with the red glow of the implant walks out of the city undeterred.
TBC [Chapter 9]
One more chapter left. This was slow writing, and I'm so behind on school. D: Anyways, things should be getting clearer and clearer, and I think I've sucessfully managed to tie up at least two plot threads that have been dangling. Expect chapter 9 up sometime next week probably. And edits to be made along the entire piece to make it much more cohesive because I was an idiot and wrote without an outline.