A/N: so, so, so, so, so sorry for taking the random break. My internet…….. right, so! Last week we started having problems with the home phone. The home phone and internet is on the same line, so I was also having a minor problem with that (mostly just videos buffering a couple times while watching). Anyway, we called our service provider and they sent a guy. Dude called in once about……30 minutes before he arrived to ask for a refresher about what our problem was and that was it. Dude stayed at the end of the drive the whole time and left without a word. But when he left……..we had no home phone and no internet. We had to call the next day to asked “what the hell?” and that’s when we found out that the problem was too much for the guy and we have to have a specialist come in. on Monday. Like…….what the ???? Monday??? Is that really the ing best you could do Bell? And, like, what the are we gonna do about it? Switch to Rodgers? Pretty sure they only just got dialup internet in our area, like, 4 fours ago (Bell had high speed out here for…….10 years or so, so……what the hell Rodgers? What are you even doing with your life? hahaha).

*sigh* what can ya do, right? Just gotta shut up and take it…….or ‘bout it when the topic of ty service providers comes up.

Anyway, sorry for the couple day gap on updates. Won’t happen again……unless my internet is killed again

Hakyeon’s family wasn’t really middle class, but they weren’t poor either. They sat in this middle ground area where they almost always had what they needed and sometimes got what they wanted. It was a nice life and Hakyeon got to enjoy it for most of his life. And then the year he turned sixteen happened and everything went wrong. It felt like overnight everything changed, everything went to hell.

First, his father died. Some accident at work that the company was able to cover up. Then his mother got sick and they couldn’t ever seem to get enough money to help her. It wasn’t very long before she died as well and Hakyeon was left to look after his younger siblings. He promised his parents he would do it, that he could protect them until they were old enough to leave home and start families of their own.

He just hadn’t realized it would be so hard.

Hakyeon dropped out of school, taking any job that would take him. He was always so tired, so ready to just drop dead, but he couldn’t do that. Not until his younger brother and sister had grown up and gone to college and married. He had to keep going, it didn’t matter how horribly sick or tired he felt. His brother and sister knew this, it was why they never asked for things. At some point, they took on an after school job or two to help out.

One of those jobs is what led to The Problem.

--

Hakyeon leaned against a wall, trying to catch his breath. Silently, he prayed that the hero chasing after him wasn’t too close behind him. He just…..he just needed a minute. Heck, just a few seconds would do. He needed just enough time for him to collect himself a little before he started running again. He wished……he wished for a miracle, for the hero to stop or for someone who would help him.

But that……

“Hey,” a man called out from the other end of the alley, “are you alright?”

--

“Son of a ,” Chan cursed, shaking his head as Hakyeon took a sip of the drink Woojin had got him.

“I really wish you would stop having hope about heroes,” Taekwoon sighed sadly, “you just keep getting your heart broken again and again.”

“I know,” Chan replied, “but still……..I want to believe that not every hero out there is a bastard.”

“Do you know where your brother and sister are?” Sanghyuk asked Hakyeon.

“They should still be with those monsters,” Hakyeon replied, “I mean, I did the drop, so maybe they let them go, but……”

“You don’t expect them to have held up their end of the deal,” Woojin interrupted, “they have a way to control you now, to make you do the stuff they don’t want to do. Why would they give up that control when you can still be of use?”

“Exactly,” Hakyeon nodded, tears starting to form in his eyes, “I…..I failed them.”

“You didn’t fail them,” Sanghyuk was quick to insist, “You’ve done everything you could do. Now….now you just have to trust someone else to help do what you can’t.”

“Do you know where their base is?” Taekwoon asked, already moving to grab all the maps of the city the group had.

“I’ve got a general idea,” Hakyeon replied, “nothing to find their exact location. They…..they didn’t want to risk me selling them out.”

“Then tell us what you do know,” Taekwoon replied, smiling slightly at the other man, “and we’ll take it from there.”

“Ok,” Hakyeon nodded before looking around at the four other men, “but…..why? Why are you doing this? Aren’t you guys…..villains?”

“And aren’t the heroes, well, heroes?” Sanghyuk shrugged, “none of us really fit our title, do we?”

“Sanghyuk wants to make a better world,” Chan smiled, “fix the hero system, cleanse the corruption, and change how the world views powers. Helping people that the heroes have failed or straight up …..that’s kind of part of our mission statement, too.”

Hakyeon nodded, digesting the information silently, before he pointed to a section on one of the maps.

--

“I didn’t have to heal much,” Woojin reported, “just some minor wounds. Honestly, everything seemed to be just for show. I don’t even think some of the blood was theirs.”

“That would make sense,” Sanghyuk replied, “the worse they look, the easier it would be to control Hakyeon.”

Hakyeon only half listened to the pair talking, much more focused on watching his siblings sleeping. They looked so peaceful, so happy. He hadn’t seen them looking like that in months. Maybe even years. Heck, he hadn’t seen them at all in a few weeks. But now here they were, cuddled up in bed and sleeping. They were alive and safe and he honestly didn’t think that this would be something he would see ever again.

“Thank you,” he said, voice soft as the exhaustion finally started to kick in, “thank you so much.”

“It was our pleasure,” Woojin smiled.

“How can I pay you back for this?” Hakyeon asked, finally turning to look at the pair, “You saved my family, you saved me. How……what can I do to thank you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sanghyuk assured him, “just sleep.”

Hakyeon was too tired to argue, so he let Sanghyuk lead him to the bed where he curled up with his siblings. The next day, he figured out how to thank the people who’d helped him and saved his siblings.

He decided to join them.

He didn’t kill, often staying home with Woojin and Jeongin, but that was alright. Hakyeon also joined Woojin and Wonsik in working at the bar, allowing him to save up money for his siblings while not wearing himself out by working multiple jobs. Staying in the group’s home helped lessen him load too since he no longer had to pay for rent and the cost of food was shared between the whole group.

Hakyeon had asked for a miracle.

He got that and more.

A/N: Hakyeon’s siblings aren’t gonna join the group. He wants them to live happy, peaceful lives away from the violence that the group experiences. The others all agree and flat out refuse to let Hakyeon’s siblings do anything villain related. At first it kind of pissed them off ‘cuz they wanted to help, this is their family too, but eventually they came to understand and agree the other’s reasoning. Seeing Jisung and Felix coming home full of holes might have had something to do with it.