The FYI is in the previous chapter

Kris-centric
Continuity: Post-fic

#8: Bright Future

Kris was beginning to wonder if the Tree of Life had some kind of vendetta against him, giving the affinity of Flight to this child.

“You are going to fall,” Kris growled. “You are going to fall and break something vital, and I will have no pity for you whatsoever.”

She was clinging to the chandelier, hanging on like a little monkey, and below her was a good 20-foot drop. She might actually break her neck if she did fall.

“I’ll come down when you admit that you were wrong about me not being able to handle actual flights yet,” she hollered down.

“This isn’t funny,” Kris yelled at her. “You’re not ready and I’m not going to tell you otherwise! Now get down here before that thing rips out from the ceiling!”

“No!” She screamed.

The yelling brought Suho down the hall, and he sighed when he saw the predicament. She’d been getting herself into more and more situations like this, with Kris inevitably having to come to her rescue just like he told her he would have to.

“Why don’t you just let her fall for once?” He muttered, lowly so she wouldn’t overhear them. “If she gets hurt once she’ll learn her lesson and never do it again. You let Kai make those kinds of mistakes all the time.”

“Only when there was no chance that he’d be seriously injured!” Kris cried, on the verge of a panic attack. “If it wasn’t so high I would, trust me, but if she falls from up there she could break a wing! I’d go fly up and get her myself but it’s really narrow and my wings are too big, I might knock her down.”

“I can get down myself!” She promised. “I got up here and I can get back down.”

Kris resisted the urge to scream from frustration. She’s so unbelievably stubborn, he’s never met someone as hardheaded and unwilling to budge as she is, not even Kai comes close. Sometimes he wondered if she developed her affinity out of sheer stubbornness, since they told her the only way she could come to the Sanctuary like her big sister was if she either worked there or matched with the Ten Cannons, and she’d been four at the time so she couldn’t exactly get a job. He’d never heard of more than one child from the same family developing an affinity, but then he supposed there was a first time for everything.

He turned his attention back to her. “Landing is much harder, especially when you don’t have a lot of room such as right now!” He yelled up.

“You did this last week!”

“I have also been flying for centuries and I have more experience than you!”

Suho winces and covers his ears. “The two of you,” he sighs. “What is it about her that makes you so crazy?”

“I wish I knew,” Kris almost whines. “I really wish I knew.”

Actually, he kind of does know. It’s true that he practically raised Tao, and he had quite a hand in Kai and Sehun’s upbringing as well, and he’s never met someone who makes him as crazy as this little girl does. But, he kind of has a feeling that it’s something to do with the fact that he pictures her more as his child than he did the others. She came to them at age four, and he’s been caring for her ever since. She’s probably the closest thing he’ll ever have to a daughter, as it’ll be her job to train the next Generation. He just doesn’t want to see her get hurt.

“Teach me to fly!” She screamed. The light fixture groaned under her weight and Kris had a horrifying image of the thing crashing to the floor, pinning her under it.

“Okay!” He yelled. “Okay, I’ll teach you to fly!”

She grinned at him smugly and looked around. After a few seconds she started to look a little uneasy.

“You have no idea how to get down, do you?” Kris deadpanned.

“I do know!” She insisted. “I totally do!”

And just because she was stubborn like that and wanted to prove her point no matter what the cost was, she let go.

Kris knew instantly that she would not land properly—she was flapping her wings too much without opening them widely enough, she wasn’t getting enough air and she was going to drop like a stone. Without even thinking he shot into the air and caught her fifteen feet up, and he opened his wings like a parachute to slow their fall. Kris tucked her head under his chin and when the ground got close enough he ducked and rolled, slamming his shoulder into the stone floor hard enough to bruise but otherwise he was uninjured.

He sat up cradling her in his lap and pushed her back so he could peer into her face. “Are you alright?” He demanded, running his hand over the back of her head to see if she’d hit it. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she whined petulantly, shoving his hand away. He had a moment of pure relief before the anger kicked in. He hadn’t felt this kind of fear mixed with anger and relief since Tao…he forced himself not to think about it.

“Good!” He yelled, startling her. “Because you are grounded for the rest of the year, Krystal! By the Tree, do you have any idea what could have happened to you?! If you ever try that again so help me I will never let you out of my sight again!”

Krystal gaped at him. “You can’t ground me, you promised you’d teach me to fly!” She yelled, and he knew she was seconds away from tears.

“I will teach you to fly,” he vowed, refusing to be swayed. “After you finish your punishment.”

She punched him in the arm. “You’re mean,” she sobbed. “You’re so mean and unfair…you won’t even let me try!”

Kris sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I know you think this is unfair, but I know what I’m doing.”

Krystal only cried harder. Suho came up behind them and laid a hand on Kris’ shoulder. “Perhaps you should take this somewhere else,” he suggested.

Kris knew the older girls would be getting out of their lesson soon, and he didn’t want Krystal taking off with them, so he decided to take Suho’s advice. He scooped Krystal up and carried her to the first place he could think of—the kitchen.

Chen was in there with the matrons, supervising dinner preparations. He took one look at the pair of them and ordered everyone to clear out. He dropped a bowl, spoon and the ice cream on the table on his way out.

“Alright then,” Kris sighed, sitting Krystal down on the table so he could scoop some ice cream out for her. “I’m going to tell you a story, and you’re going to listen to me. No interruptions, no rolling your eyes and no jumping to conclusions. Got it?”

He handed her the bowl. She hiccupped and nodded, pressing her lips shut.

“When I was just learning to fly,” Kris told her, “I fell and I broke my wing.”

Even hundreds of years later the memory gave Kris chills, and it wasn’t something he liked thinking about much less talking about.

“I was supposed to be hopping—that’s when you fly short distances, birds hop from branch to branch, I had a set of platforms that were slightly elevated. It was about the third day, and I misjudged the distance between two of the platforms. It wasn’t that high off the ground, and had I been an ordinary person I wouldn’t have gotten hurt. But I did get hurt, and I was lucky my teachers were with me, because if they hadn’t been able to get help for me as fast as they did, my wing might have been damaged forever.”

He thought of telling Krystal about the flash of terror he felt when he heard the bones his wing snap, or the blinding agony seconds after it happened, and later having to have his bones rebroken because by the time he got to the healers, they’d already started to heal the wrong way. Worse yet had been the feeling of being stranded on the ground for weeks after it happened while the tissue around his bones healed. But the point of the story wasn’t to scare her—not yet, he could do that later if this didn’t work.

 “But we can’t—” Krystal blurted, and Kris put a finger to her lips.

“We can’t die,” he reminded her, “But we can be maimed. You know what happened to Lu Han, don’t you? He didn’t die, but he’s not 100% okay either. He never will be.”

Krystal bit her lip and turned her head, but Kris put his fingers under her chin and made her look at him.

“I am not telling you this to scare you into never flying,” he promised, “I am telling you this because I want you to know that you are not invincible. Guess how old I was when that happened,” he ordered.

“Eight?” She asked.

Kris shook his head. “I was twelve.”

Krystal gasped. She was only six.

“I have to wait six years?” She wailed. “But I want to fly!!”

“I know you do,” Kris assured her. “Believe me, I do. When you find out you can fly, it’s all you can ever think about, it’s all you want to do. But you need to be patient and let your affinity finish developing. Flight is different from the other affinities, because it involves a drastic change in your body. You know how your bones are still hollowing? Right now you are too heavy to fly properly. I know you think you can,” he said loudly as she tried to talk over him, “But right now your flight is sloppy and loud, and if you learn now all you’ll learn is how to flap your wings loudly and careen all over the place.”

Krystal sighed and pouted. “But six years,” she protested.

Kris held up his hand. “I didn’t say you had to wait that long. Your wings came out a lot sooner than mine did, I was nine when they finally made their appearance. Your body will probably adjust faster than mine did, but I can’t promise you that.”

She looked like she was about to cry again, so Kris hurried on. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t try to teach you a bit of the basics,” he compromised. “That way when you are ready to fly, you’ll be able to skip a little bit of the beginner’s stuff and move on to the more advanced things a little faster.”

Krystal considered the offer for a moment before she shrugged. “Alright,” she relented. “I guess it’s better than nothing.”

Kris breathed a sigh of relief. “And you have to promise me you’ll listen to me and do whatever I say,” he told her sternly. “No more clinging to the ceiling, no more unsupervised flights, and no more back talking.”

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

Kris seriously doubted she’d do everything he wanted, but it was the best he was going to get, so he let her down off the table.

“Good, now go find Jessica and the other girls and play with them,” he ordered, pushing her in the direction of the door. “You’ve had enough for one day.”

‘And so have I,’ he thought tiredly as she scampered off. He meandered upstairs to Tao’s room, not even bothering to knock. He staggered in and flung himself onto the bed where Tao was stretched out with a book, narrowly avoiding crushing Tao’s feet as he did so.

“So is she lying in a bed with several broken bones?” Tao asked cheekily.

Kris shoved him. “I am so glad I’ll never have to do this again,” he muttered into the mattress. “Once is enough, once is more than enough.”

Tao patted Kris’ head sympathetically. “Only about eighteen more years until she’s reached maturity and they’re all set with their affinities and we can kick them all out to go protect and serve the planet,” He reminded Kris.

“Eighteen years,” Kris groaned. “Assuming I don’t run away and become a hermit first.”

Yay post-fic future Guardians nonsense!!! :D

And now you know the identities of two of the next Generation—Krystal Jung and Jessica Jung. Possibly that is all you will ever know because I’m still not feeling an actual sequel here. Just know that there would be 12 of them and no, and not all of them would be Girls’ Generation and f(x). Or maybe even from SM Entertainment. Because I do what I want.