So, this is just a story I wrote.  It's unrelated to kpop, but some people might like to see it so I posted it.  Thank you to my dear PastelWolf88 for the names of two of the characters.  If you like top!Luhan and bottom!Sehun Hunhan stories, she's your girl! ^^  Please do tell me your thoughts and feelings on this!  I would love to hear what you think and I welcome constructive criticism wholeheartedly, and if you feel the need to flame please explain what you don't like at the very least. :)

Life Goes On…Or Does it?

          Alexei was coming back from his special place, a clearing in the forest with a clear, shallow stream that he had been attempting to catch fish in. That day was particularly sunny, a contrast to what laid in wait for him. His morning was ruined as soon as he left the house. He hadn’t caught any fish, he was hungry, and he was covered in mud from where he’d slipped and fallen into the stream. That hadn’t happened since the first time he came to this place five years ago. He had been twelve then and his seventeenth birthday was last week.

            On his way back something caught his attention. Two men in smart black suits were bothering a girl who seemed to be a few years older than him. One of the men grabbed her by the arm and started to pull her into their car, a sleek black one with tinted windows. She struggled and fought back, but for some reason she didn’t call for help like you normally would in that sort of situation. He subconsciously realized that this was strange, but he knew that to help her he’d have to act now.

            He had taken martial arts lessons since he was ten years old because his shyness made him a subject of bullying. His parents who wanted him to be safe had initially forced him to take classes to learn self-defense, but he’d eventually come to enjoy it. He was a black belt in karate, judo, and aikido. He put that training to use here. He landed a blow on the ribs of the guy holding the girl and threw the other over his shoulder when he tried to grab him from behind. The girl took that chance to escape and they both ran from the men. They ran and ran and finally stopped when they thought they were far enough. Then, she turned to look at him.

            “Thanks for the help back there,” she said. “I’m new here. I thought I was a goner when they started following me around town. I tried to lose them by going through back alleys and side streets, but my luck ran out and I hit a dead end and they dragged me out of there and tried to get me in their van which is where you came in. My name’s Angel. You are?” At this she paused and looked at Alexei.

            “I’m Alexei Barinov and I saw this on my way home. I have to get home before sundown,” he said before turning and walking away. He turned back and waved, “Maybe I can show you around next time I see you.” Somehow, even as he said this, he felt that next time he saw her, if there was a next time, it wouldn’t be on good terms.

            Alexei hurried home so that Nikita, his 26 year old sister, and his mother wouldn’t worry. After his dad never came back all those years ago, back when he was five, his mom worried and fretted if he or his sister came home late. She didn’t want them to get involved in something that would leave them just as another dead body among many others like their father. Their father had been a police officer who got shot in the line of duty while he helped people evacuate a building where a massacre had been happening. His dad had just turned 35 on that day and his family had been waiting for him to come back and celebrate his birthday with them. His mother was heartbroken and had to be hospitalized because the shock caused her to collapse. She had gotten better since then, but Nikita and Alexei had done their best to not make her worry after that event, even Alexei who had been five and didn’t really understand what death was and why his daddy had left them and why he wasn’t coming back.

            He noticed the tell-tale signs that someone was following him and saw a man in a black suit in his periphery. He realized that the man’s suit looked just like the suits the men who had been trying to kidnap Angel were wearing. He heard the crackle of static from an earpiece the man was wearing. The man whispered into a small mouthpiece attached to the earpiece.

            “His name is Alexei Barinov. We can stake out his house and interrogate the other occupants about him until we find out who he is and why he was helping that girl. Maybe he’s an accomplice.”

            There was nothing but static until a gruff voice replied, “Good. Do that. See that he doesn’t get away.”

            Alexei knew that was a sign of trouble up ahead.  He ran faster than he had ever before. He used his knowledge of the area to his advantage by setting some traps to slow the man down. He then took a shortcut to his house that he’d discovered while rushing to get home before dark. He ran straight to his room and started pulling clothes from his closet and dresser and shoving them into a knapsack. He went to his mom and sister and told them that he was taking a “trip” for a while. He took all his savings with him and was about to depart when Nikita stopped him.

            “Alexei! Why are you leaving? Mother has done her best to raise all by herself and you repay her like this?” Tears silently dripped from her eyes until the gentle stream increased and became a torrential flood of tears. She sobbed until she was incoherent and each word or phrase was accompanied by a hiccup.

            “Nikki, it’s not that I want to leave. I have to leave!”

            “Why?” She demanded with her sadness turning into rage and raw fury.

            “I can’t tell you!” He wished he could tell Nikita, she was his sister and his best friend despite their age difference of nine years. The only person he loved more than Nikki was his mother. He wanted to tell her too so she didn’t have to worry, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know what they would do if they knew about the man following him earlier. Alexei didn’t want the men to hurt his family, but he figured that the men would leave them alone if the men couldn’t find him, especially if Nikki and his mother didn’t know anything about why he left or where he went.

            Nikki yelled at him, “Then leave! And don’t ever come back!” Then she slammed the door on his face. With tears overflowing from his eyes he turned and walked in the direction that he believed led to the nearest town.

            In the house, Nikki’s heart was gripped by fear. Nikita wished she could run after her brother and tell him to come back home, that she forgives him. She felt it in her bones. Something bad was about to happen.

            Alexei continued walking for a long time even after sundown, even after the sun came up the next day. He stopped for short breaks to eat and sleep and then continued walking. Day by day he went on like this until days turned into weeks and weeks into months. He had settled down at the edge of the forest near a town not too far from his old home in the hopes that he might hear news about his family. He lived in a small cottage that he built by himself and worked at a shop in town. With the money he bought clothes, flour, utensils and anything else he needed that the forest couldn’t provide. He ate animals that he hunted and cooked and drank water from a pump that was connected to a large source of groundwater. He also used this to bathe and wash his clothes.

            After months of living a lonely life in his little cottage with no company, some women had taken pity on him and started to bring him food and they even taught him to cook using seasoning and spices. They also taught how to mend clothing which was the only thing that kept him from using all his money for clothes. He continued living like this for almost a year and during this entire time he saw something peculiar every day. A raven had started following him as he left home and ever since it had kept watching him with its beady eyes. It had a hungry look on its face, as if it was just waiting for him to die so it could strip the meat from his bones. He shook off all thoughts about this oddity and went to town to start another long and grueling day of work. On his way to the shop, he heard some news about his family. He had lingered here in hopes of hearing about his family, but this was far from what he wanted to hear.

            He talked to everybody who knew about what happened to his family. They had been kidnapped by those men from back then! He went back to his old home to search for clues to where Nikita and his mother were taken. An old friend of his sister’s saw him and told him which direction the men had driven in and which path to the end, the only place they could have gone was the capitol. His sister’s friend offered Alexei his motorcycle and apologized for not being able to follow them because he still had his wife and newborn daughter to take care of. Alexei thanked him profusely before getting on the motorcycle and speeding towards the capitol. He hoped he would make it in time before anything happened to Nikita or his mother. He recognized the car they had tried to push Angel into back then. It was parked next to a government building.

            He parked the motorcycle and ran toward the building. After a long and tiring search spent avoiding security guards and custodians alike he finally reached the last room. He thought something was fishy since he hadn’t seen any surveillance cameras even though this was supposed to be a maximum security government building. A niggling thought in the back of his mind screamed that something was very wrong but he ignored it in favor of finding his family. He pushed open the last door and there he saw his mother and Nikita bound and gagged alongside the men from back then and many other security guards. Next to them was a pile of surveillance cameras that seemed to have been ripped off the walls with brute force.

            He saw Angel and she was free, maybe she’d help Nikita and his mother like he’d helped her. He knew he was wrong when she turned to him with a smile befitting her name, if only it reached her eyes. Her eyes were as cold as ice and that look in her eyes that showed how detached she was from reality chilled him to the bone. If she was an angel, she was angel of death. Suddenly, something black flew into the room and landed on her arm. It was that raven that had watched him constantly. It seemed to be her pet. Of course, she’d choose a pet that represented raven.

            Abandoning all thought Alexei charged and using the element of surprise he scared that vile raven into flying and obscuring its owner’s view. While Angel was distracted by that horrid creature, he freed his mother and Nikita and some of the security guards by using his pocket knife to cut the ropes. The guards immediately set to work freeing the others while his mom and Nikki ran to him. They had both burst into tears, whether they were tears of relief, joy, sadness or fear he could only wonder, but when they smiled at him, he knew it was a mix of all of these. He and his family ran out of the building and to the car. A guard told them to get in the car and when they did he sped off leaving the building behind in the dust.

            As they drove towards Alexei’s cottage the guard explained how Angel was not only a serial killer but also a hacker who had stolen government secrets. What Alexei had thought was a kidnapping had been an arrest taking place. If only he had told his family and stayed with them this mess could have been avoided. They were all too overwhelmed and failed to realize that Angel knew where Alexei’s cottage was since she had sent her raven to spy on him day after day and night after night. If only they knew what a huge mistake they were making by thinking they were safe.

            Late into the night they woke up hearing shouts and screams. The town that he lived in for nearly a year was ablaze. People were running, screaming, shouting, crying. It was absolute chaos. Angel, the one who started the fire, stalked towards them wearing a dress that once had been pure white but was now a dirty gray-ish color with ashes and cinder and blood covering it. Her hair and skin were also dirtied by the blood and ashes mixture. Alexei couldn’t help but smile thinking that her appearance now showed the true color of her soul. Her soul wasn’t pitch black, rather it was a twisted, tangled mess of convulsing, twitching shadows that grew by eating the light that had once been her soul, back when she was an innocent, pure hearted child.

            Angel smiled at him, that same haunting smile from before with frozen eyes devoid of any light. He could feel that beneath that ice-cold hardness lived a girl that had once been as pure as a newborn. She was a girl that had lost her innocence growing up facing hardships. Instead of fearing the danger, she thrived on it. She thrived on the suffering and pain of others, the same suffering and pain that she had once felt.

            She raised a pistol and shot his mother right between the eyes. His widened in horror as he ran to his mother who had died immediately from that bullet to the brain. His mother’s blood had soaked Nikita who had caught her. He pushed Nikita towards that same security guard from before who took her to the rescue center that the rest of the townspeople whose homes had burnt down were staying in.

            Back in the charred remains of the town, Alexei and Angel stood facing each other. He stepped towards her and picked up the gun she had dropped. He points it at her with a watery smile and bids her farewell.

            “Goodbye.” He intones in a quivering voice.

            She smiles back at him sadly and accepts her fate. He shoots her with a trembling hand and as she dies her expression changes to one of pure bliss. She had finally achieved the freedom she longed for. That bullet to her heart freed her heart and soul from any all constraints. With the feathers of the raven spread around her and the blood and grime and her peaceful expression, she resembled a fallen angel who had risen back to the heavens.

            Alexei looks for Nikita so they can arrange the funeral for his mother and for Angel. She only became what she had because of this cruel world so she also deserved a proper burial in his opinion. He sees Nikita nowhere, but then bright blonde hair less than ten feet away caught his eye. He had known that shade of blonde as something only Barinovs possessed. He saw that the mess of hair was attached to the body of a young woman in her twenties. Deciding that he’d rather not live in a world as cruel as this by himself lest he become like Angel, he picked up the pistol once again and placed it at his temple and pulled the trigger. Something he had missed was that the woman he thought was Nikita had dyed her hair that shade of blonde and her dark brown roots were showing through.

            As the sun rose Nikita woke and searched for her brother. Having no luck in finding him at the rescue center, she decided that he must have gone back to collect their mother’s body in order to plan the funeral. She set off towards that lone cottage being happy that although her mother died, she still had her brother. As she approached she noticed four bodies. One body she recognized as her mother’s, another was a young woman she’d never seen before, the third was the body of Angel, and the final corpse was Alexei.

            She cried as she looked up at the sunny day without a cloud in sight. The whole world seemed to be against her. The townspeople soon woke and they took all the bodies to the cemetery. She trailed behind them feeling lost like she had no purpose to live. She watched as they were buried and spoke at their funerals in the following days. The security guard, now known as David, had supported her through this all, and she thought that maybe life wouldn’t be so bad after all.