Double update.

Enjoy!

When he and Kyuhyun rise up out of the mansion’s workroom floor together, Sungmin is stunned in place. The last thing he’d seen before apparating was an ice bullet flying right for the bridge of his nose. His eyes are still crossed, staring at that spot.

Then the grip on his arm carefully loosens and lets go. Kyuhyun’s radiating tension and a whole range of conflicting emotions. It’s keenly irritating to Sungmin’ sensitive mental shields, like a hundred small needles poking at his head.

“Stop that,” Sungmin grumbles, stepping away from him and gesturing in Kyuhyun’s general direction without looking at him at all. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“Sorry,” Kyuhyun mutters.

Really, that only makes it worse. Now Kyuhyun tastes like shame and guilt and self-hatred. It’s making Sungmin slightly nauseous. And it keeps getting stronger and stronger. Almost like it’s filling up Sungmin’ head.

“Ugh,” Sungmin says, pinching his nose. He closes his eyes and concentrates on patching up the holes in his mental shields.

And trying not to vomit.

“Look, I get it, you had to save us both, Leeteuk would have killed us without a second thought, et cetera, it’s impossible to miss when you keep blaring it on full volume,” Sungmin says tiredly. “Just – I’m really not up for all the yelling I want to do right now, all right, I’m going to have to take a rain check on that, yell at you about moral responsibility later, after I’ve had a good eight hours of sleep, thank you very much, and – and would you stop it with that? It’s really getting quite irritating, I’m full up already, thanks.”

There’s a pique of surprise from Kyuhyun’s mind.

“Stop what?” Kyuhyun asks.

Sungmin frowns.

Kyuhyun’s surprise is pretty quiet, compared to everything else.

Surprise doesn’t feel like that, like it’s secondary. Surprise coats over other things like a bright orange finishing paint. It demands total attention and is impossible to miss. It’s always louder than any other thought.

So why is it so quiet?

Sungmin blinks.

That overwhelming, slowly building shame, guilt, self-hate – it’s not Kyuhyun’s. Well, some of that is Kyuhyun, it probably started off as Kyuhyun, but now –

Sungmin glances back in his mind, and yes, there it is –

It’s like there’s a leak in the dam, right where the encryption is, right in the darkest corner of his mind –

And it looks like whatever was hidden in it, that bloody uncomfortable, mysterious encryption’s secret memory, is spilling out right now, whether Sungmin likes it or not.

“,” Sungmin swears emphatically right before he tumbles to the floor in a total psychic blackout.

-

He will deny it to the end of days, but Kyuhyun squawks like a chicken in surprise when Sungmin’ head thunks on the ground.

He stares at Sungmin’ limp body on the floor for a second.

“I... did not expect that,” he finally says. “...Sungmin?”

Sungmin doesn’t move a muscle. Even though both of his eyes are peeled open, staring at the far wall. Kyuhyun may not be a professional healer, but he’s pretty sure that isn’t a good sign.

“Seven hells, Sungmin – ”

Kyuhyun rushes forward, but he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They sort of awkwardly float a few inches away from the line of Sungmin’ body, dipping in before wheeling back again.

“Should I – steal a doctor?” Kyuhyun tries. “A psychic doctor? Is this a psychic thing?”

Sungmin, as expected, doesn’t respond.

Kyuhyun shoots up to his feet with a frustrated groan, and his arms spin like windmills. “What if it’s not a psychic thing, what if it’s a slow-acting curse, what if it’s some idiotic human illness, oh, hellfire, should I take him to a human hospital, or – ”

If this had happened a thousand years back, Kyuhyun would have just taken Sungmin to a few of his demon-sympathetic contacts on Earth to get a diagnosis. Unfortunately, they’re probably all dead by now. Kyuhyun frowns. Isn’t a thousand years when humans die? Or is it five hundred? He can never remember. Heechul seriously skewed his understanding of human life expectancy.

Anyway – it’s clear that Kyuhyun needs to do something. But he doesn’t know anyone except for Sungmin on this blasted dimension anymore –

His eyes narrow.

Well, he knows one other person.

Eunhyuk screams shrilly when Kyuhyun’s hand grabs his ankle through his tiled floor and tugs him into Sungmin’ mansion. He thumps down into the workroom with a muffled ‘oof,’ and looks up at Kyuhyun fearfully in his fluffy bathrobe and crooked glasses.

“Oh my god, don’t kill me,” Eunhyuk pleads.

Kyuhyun rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so self-centered. Like I’d even waste my time.”

“Then why did you – ”

Kyuhyun jerks his head in Sungmin’ general direction.

Eunhyuk follows his line of sight, and practically jolts in recognition. He scuttles to Sungmin’ side on his knees, and turns Sungmin over so that he’s completely flat on his back. Eunhyuk moves a finger in front of Sungmin’ peeled eyes that are now staring unseeing at the ceiling. He also takes his pulse, listens to his breathing, checks the rigidity of his joints. Kyuhyun does not have a degree in medicine, but as far as he can tell, Eunhyuk’s basically... doing the sorts of things doctors do. And hopefully doing them well.

“Oh my god,” Eunhyuk blurts out after a tense minute or two. “He’s in psychic blackout.”

Kyuhyun has no idea what that means, but it sounds fairly serious. Just going by Eunhyuk’s frantic tone. And the ominous feeling he gets from the word ‘blackout.’ Even in a committee budget meeting, the word is practically an impending nightmare.

Eunhyuk looks back up at Kyuhyun with wide eyes, but doesn’t say anything else. As if he’s waiting on Kyuhyun for something. Kyuhyun crosses his arms uncomfortably before he frowns and nods, as if he learned all about psychic blackout thousands of years ago and Eunhyuk is only just catching up to his level right this moment.

“And?” Kyuhyun asks aggressively.

Eunhyuk splutters. “Well, I just – uh – ”

“Hurry up and fix him,” Kyuhyun snaps, masking his embarrassment behind over-the-top hostility. It’s incredibly effective, as techniques go. “Or maybe I’ll change my mind and decide to kill you after all.”

Eunhyuk jumps right to work.

-

Sungmin feels like he’s drowning.

All of these terrible emotions are flying around his head, clamoring to be heard, and he has no idea where they came from. Why they’re there. He’s overloaded, he’s got to calm this storm down and get to the memory somehow, he’s got to know what’s making him feel like this.

Because it’s clear to him, now that the encryption is gone, that it’s his memory. Not someone else’s that’s been implanted. It’s a piece of his mind. One that he’s been missing for a long time, over a decade.

Something someone didn’t want him to see. Someone powerful, clever, and definitely amoral.

At the moment Sungmin would bet the mansion on the culprit being Heechul, but that’s immaterial. What’s important is for Sungmin to wade through the hurricane of bottled up guilt and fear that’s got him completely at sea, pin down the hidden memory, and fully integrate it back into his psyche. That should clear all this up, in theory.

But he can’t, he can’t – every time he tries to get a foothold, another torrent of self-hatred or panic slams into him and he’s unmoored again.

He screams out in frustration. How long is he going to be stuck like this, being battered around by his own mind?

Then someone grips him by the shoulders.

Sungmin stiffens in surprise.

“Eunhyuk?” he asks.

No one answers.

When he looks back, he doesn’t see anything, not a hand, not an arm, nothing. But he can feel Eunhyuk’s steadying hands on his shoulders, and he can feel them slowly taking on more and more of the brunt of the terrible emotional backlash whirling around Sungmin’ brain. It’s like it’s... draining into Eunhyuk, trickle by trickle.

The storming seas start to calm, and Sungmin suddenly can find his footing.

“Oh,” Sungmin says, surprised. “That’s... thank you, Eunhyuk.”

Now that he’s able, Sungmin starts wading through the chaos of his mind, one foot in front of the other. He’s going to find the root of this whole mess, damn it, even if he has to sort through miles of this bloody psychic clutter.

-

Kyuhyun twists his hands together nervously, hovering over Sungmin and Eunhyuk like some sort of deeply concerned vulture.

“Well?” Kyuhyun asks anxiously. “Is it working? Taking effect? Healing? That sort of thing?”

Eunhyuk seems to be fighting off an exasperated sigh. “It’s going to take time,” he says with a strained voice, hands still firmly pressed to Sungmin’ shoulders and spell humming in the air. “You might as well go do something else, because this is going to take hours. And your anxiety is probably going to bleed into the spell once I go into a semi-trance, so.”

“Hmph, well,” Kyuhyun scoffs. “I knew that. I’ll just...”

His eyes land on the map, still laid out on the workroom floor. They follow the trail of marked cities.

“...Go to work,” Kyuhyun decides. He grabs the messenger bag with the pendulum in it – good thing Sungmin left it on the desk in plain sight so that even Kyuhyun could find it – and slings it over his shoulder. He hesitates for a moment before pulling out his pocket journal.

Sungmin, he writes. Still have dozens of cities on the map, and we had a deal. I swear to you, I won’t come back until I find him.

He chews on the end of the pen, eyes narrowing on the last line of the page. He has space enough to write one more thing. He uncaps his pen, but the tip hovers over the paper for a minute before he decides exactly what he wants to say.

He finally writes down two simple words.

I’m sorry.

He changes his mind about it twenty times, almost crosses it out, almost writes in something else, and stops himself at the last second. Finally he just leaves it as it is with a sigh and clamps the journal shut.

He turns back to Sungmin and Eunhyuk.

“When he wakes up, tell him to read the journal,” Kyuhyun orders.

“O... kay?” Eunhyuk says distractedly before he closes his eyes and triggers the beginning of his healing semi-trance. The markings and sigils and things he’d scribbled over Sungmin and up his own arms start to glow a bit blue.

“Right,” Kyuhyun says with a decisive nod. “I’ll... be going then.”

“See you later,” Eunhyuk says absently.

“Er, yes. Bye.” Kyuhyun flounders awkwardly for another couple of seconds, but Eunhyuk doesn’t say anything else. Neither does he.

Social interaction over.

Kyuhyun leaps up onto the steeple of a skyscraper somewhere in Europe, pulls out the pendulum, and gets to work.

-

Sungmin doesn’t quite know how it happens, it’s like he tripped and fell into it, but all of a sudden he’s in the mansion’s kitchen instead of wading through dark edges of his mind.

There are his hands, right in front of his face, making two sandwiches on their own with no input from him whatsoever.

It’s oddly similar to when – Sungmin’ eyes widen in realization – no, it’s exactly like when he was in Kyuhyun’s old memory of his mother. This must be it – the memory someone desperately didn’t want him to see.

He looks a little closer, and yes, those are his hands, from over ten years ago. His fingers are so small they almost drop the jar of jam, and he has trouble reaching over the counter for two cups because he’s so short.

“Ryeowook,” his mouth calls over his shoulder. “I’ve made sandwiches!”

“Sandwiches, again?” His voice complains.

Sungmin lips twitch up into a grin.

“Torture, isn’t it, having other people serve you food,” his mouth says glibly as his body turns around with both plates in hand.

Ryeowook is grinning in the doorway with his arms crossed. “Shut up, rich boy,” he snaps, or tries to snap, anyway. It comes out as more of a strangled laugh.

Sungmin stares. If he was in control of his own tear ducts right now, he’d cry. There he is. Brown hair, blue skin….wait ? what? …that’s right …Wookie was half demon, half human. How did he forgot that?!!!).

He was wearing white pajamas, wicked smile. Just as he saw him, right before Ryeowook disappeared.

“What manners,” his mouth says with an air of severe disappointment. “What would high society think of that, young man?”

Ryeowook giggles, and springs into his normal seat at the kitchen table as he sets down their food.

“High society would fawn over me,” Ryeowook says decidedly, picking up his sandwich and biting a huge chunk out of it. “They’re a bunch of boring old rich people, they’d love to have someone like me around to spice things up.”

Sungmin grins. “High society wouldn’t even know what to do with you. They’d be torn between throwing you out and crowning you King.”

“Ha! They’d crown me,” Ryeowook says smugly with his mouth full of bread. “I wouldn’t settle for anything less.”

Sungmin raises an eyebrow. “First step to getting crowned king – don’t talk with your mouth full. They only allow people with good table manners to become royalty.”

“Really? Good to know,” Ryeowook says thoughtfully, with three bites of his meal still in his mouth. “Once I become king, that’ll be outlawed. Everyone in the kingdom will have to eat with their mouths full of food at all meals, or they’ll be executed.”

Sungmin snorts into his food.

“Good luck with that,” he says. “Can you imagine Mother’s face at the coronation feast?”

They both dissolve into giggles at that.

There’s a creak in the wooden floors, a few rooms away.

Sungmin looks up and his laugh falters – he can hear the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway, now. And they’re getting louder. A streak of fear shoots through him; it has to be one of his parents. The staff isn’t due until tomorrow morning.

Ryeowook’s eyes suddenly go sharp and dart to the side. They both descend into silence, listening and alert.

The footsteps stop with a squelch right outside the kitchen door.

Confusion shoots through past-Sungmin’s mind at the odd sound. Neither of his parents would ever let their shoes to get soaked, even in a flash flood. They would certainly never get all that water all over the polished floors. Present-Sungmin, on the other hand, is filled with a sudden dawning horror. He knows that those feet can’t be soaked with water – it’s not even raining outside, it’s sunny and bright.

No, they’re soaked with blood.

When he looks down, yes, there’s a thin stretch of red trickling past the gap in the door.

The sight shuts down Sungmin’ young mind with fear, and his eyes look to Ryeowook. He’s practically crackling with tension, attention completely fixed on the door.

There’s another squelching sound, like the heel of a boot turning through sludge. Turning towards them. And then the doorknob starts to turn with a familiar squeak.

Sungmin’ heart is hammering in his chest.

Then the door is open, and his eyes are caught on the shoes swallowed up in the dark red puddle of blood and gore. His eyes follow the trail of blood, past the stained slacks and the shirt that still have small patches of pure white where the red isn’t dripping, and finally up to the smiling face.

Even his smile is bloody.

“Evening,” Heechul says pleasantly in that terrifying way of his. His eyes aren’t human – they’re more like a mad dog’s eyes than a man’s.

He takes a step, only one step that gets him just past the doorway, but it feels like he’s lunged right into their space. Sungmin and Ryeowook both tense, freeze in place, and Sungmin can feel his hackles rise all the way up. Ryeowook disguise himself as human.

Then Heechul takes a languid couple of steps forward, into the kitchen, right past their kitchen table and to the sink.

Sungmin doesn’t dare look behind him. He hears the faucet sputter on, and the water hit the stainless steel.

“More of a mess than I thought,” Heechul says, almost apologetically. Sungmin can hear him scrubbing his hands together. “Really didn’t expect that much of a fight, from what I’d heard about your mother. Blood got absolutely everywhere, in the end. What a mess.”

The faucet stops running, shuts off, and Sungmin hears the whisper of one of the hand towels slipping off its cabinet hook.

Heechul steps back into Sungmin’ line of sight with his shoes still squelching on the floor, rubbing the towel over his face like it’s a linen napkin. He sits down at the kitchen table with them, carelessly tossing the bloodstained rag onto the table in a heap.

“I’ll have a man come by and clean it all up later,” he remarks, as if he’s talking about wine spills in the carpet instead of pints of blood. “Anyway, to business.”

He leans in with that unnerving grin of his, folding his hands together on the table like a priest about to start prayers at dinner. It makes Sungmin reflexively jerk backwards in fear, to keep more space between them.

Heechul chuckles at that.

“Now, now,” he says to Sungmin in a comforting voice. Sungmin has never been less comforted in his life. “Let’s stay calm, shall we, little Lee Sungmin?”

Then he turns to Ryeowook.

“And his dear brother, too.” Heechul’s horrifying grin stretches wider across his gaunt face as his mad eyes flicker over to Ryeowook’s. “Or, should I say, his dear changeling brother. Isn’t that right, Wookie?”

Sungmin risks a brief glance at Ryeowook. His mouth is drawn tight and his eyes are on fire, but his face is stony and carefully held still. Like he doesn’t want to reveal anything.

“Now here’s what’s going to happen,” Heechul continues conversationally. “I’m going to give you a choice. Either I finally get to rip your heart out without a fuss – ” He points to Ryeowook’s chest. “ – or I kill your dear brother Sungmin right here at the kitchen table and eat his instead.”

Sungmin’ throat clicks as he tries to swallow down a sudden wave of nausea. His shoulders are beginning to shake uncontrollably.

“But that’s not all,” Heechul says delightedly, wagging a finger. “You both have a time limit.”

He must see Ryeowook’s eyes narrow, in fact he must have been waiting for it, because he continues with a laugh, “Of course! Neither of you have realized it yet.” He claps his hands together in glee. “You see, you’re both currently under the influence of a deteriorating memory curse.”

Ryeowook’s jaw visibly tightens.

“Yes, isn’t it genius?” Heechul says. “In another ten minutes, Sungmin won’t remember anything about himself. That is, if he’s still alive. And you, Wookie? You won’t even remember your own sacred name.”

Sungmin and Ryeowook meet eyes for a moment. He can see the terror there, even though he tries to hide it.

“So, that means if you choose not to fight it, Wookie, Sungmin won’t remember watching you die, and he gets to live in peace. I might even accept him as an apprentice in five or ten years if he practices his magic,” Heechul says pleasantly. “And Sungmin, if he does decide to put up a fuss... Well.”

Heechul shrugs a bit regretfully. “In his last few minutes before he’s wiped of his identity, he’ll see his brother’s heart eaten. And after that, he’ll come with us peacefully anyway.”

Sungmin struggles to wrap his head around this monster of a man. He honestly doubts he’ll ever come to understand him.

“Why are you – ” Sungmin’ mouth blurts out, before he cringes back in