Continuity: Chapter 1
Suho centric
Warning: MAJOR ANGST AHEAD.

#23:Where Did You Go

Suho’s fingernails dug into his palms and he bit his lip to keep it from quivering.

They’d agreed they would wait for Lay, Chen and Baekhyun for two weeks before they left Hong Kong and started to look for the rest of their group. Lay, Chen and Baekhyun had agreed to the same thing if they got there first and had to wait for Suho, Chanyeol, Xiumin and Kyungsoo. Suho’s memory was so bad by now that he couldn’t even remember the names of the missing boys most of the time, just that he needed to find five members of his family. Now it looked like he would be missing eight.

Chanyeol was not taking this well. He was sitting on the ground and openly weeping while Xiumin tried to comfort him.

“We agreed on this,” Xiumin reminded him. “We all agreed right before we got on the boat.”

Tears dripped down Chanyeol’s cheeks faster than Xiumin could wipe them away. “Don’t cry,” Xiumin pleaded. “We’ll find them. We’ll find them all.”

Chanyeol reached out blindly and grabbed Suho’s leg. “C-can’t we wait a little longer?” He whimpered. “Just one more day?”

Suho swallowed a lump in his throat and reached down to pet Chanyeol’s hair.

“We can only wait until sundown,” he said firmly. “Then we need to go get on the train.”

Suho hardly thought any more time would have made a difference, be it one hour or one day. If the other three were going to arrive, they would have done so by now. They couldn’t sit and wait for a month, it wouldn’t make sense; that was time they needed to look for their brothers and the other half of the tree’s heart.

The pier was mostly deserted, the few people who were standing around were too drunk or drugged to notice anything. Suho looked over to where Kyungsoo sat a few feet away, clutching the box containing their half of the Tree’s heart. He looked completely blank, which Suho knew was a coping method.

In the hour before the sunset, Chanyeol grew increasingly upset and Xiumin couldn’t find a way to comfort him. Several times he glared at Suho and demanded help, but Suho could think of nothing to say to comfort his boy. When the sun finally set, Chanyeol doubled over on the sidewalk and sobbed into his hands.

Suho swallowed and turned away. “Get up,” he commanded. “We need to go.”

He walked over to Kyungsoo and hauled him up. By now Xiumin was starting to cry too, and Suho could feel his patience wearing down.

“We have to go,” he said slowly. “We have to go now. Get up both of you.”

Xiumin stood. Chanyeol sat up but kept his head down.

“Chanyeol, get up now.”

For a second Suho thought Chanyeol would refuse, but then he got to his feet. Suho turned and lead the way to the train station, where they would travel to Shenzhen.

They had only gone a few blocks when Chanyeol suddenly stopped. He was still looking down, and his shoulders were shaking with silent sobs. Suho took a deep breath.

“We have to keep going,” he said as gently as he could.

Chanyeol finally looked up and Suho almost flinched at the utterly heartbroken look on his face.

“How can we do this?” He gasped. “How could we just abandon them?”

Suho shook his head. “We’re not abandoning anyone.”

“Yes we are!” Chanyeol shrieked. “How can you just walk away? How can you be sure they’re not on their way? What if we just miss them by one hour? What if they get here and we’re not here?”

“We can’t think like that,” Suho told him. “We can’t—”

Chanyeol lunged at him and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. “How can you be so calm?!” He shouted. “What’s wrong with you?!”

Suho grabbed Chanyeol’s wrists and tried to pry him off. “I’m only thinking about what’s best here. We have to find the others.”

“Bull!” Chanyeol snarled. “You don’t even know if they’re alive! You don’t even know—”

“How do you know Lay and them aren’t dead?” Kyungsoo asked.

They all froze, because it was the first thing he’d said in days.

“They aren’t dead,” Chanyeol gasped. “How can you say that?”

Kyungsoo looked up and there were tears in his eyes. “They could be. They could have drowned, maybe that’s why they aren’t here.”

Chanyeol shook his head. “They’re alive. We’d know if they were dead…Baekhyun’s not dead. I would know!”

Suho grabbed Kyungsoo and Chanyeol’s arms. “We don’t have time to lose our minds,” he chided. “We have to keep it together, we can’t think like this. I’m trying to be as calm as I can because if I let myself think about it for one second I will fall apart and I can’t do that.”

“Why?” Chanyeol yelled. “Because you’re the leader? That means you can just decide what’s best for everyone?”

“Yes!” Suho yelled as his temper flared, and he quickly forced himself to calm down. “Now let’s go.”

Chanyeol ripped his arm out of Suho’s grip, staring at him like he’d never seen him  before.

“Chen and Baekhyun could be less than a mile away!” He screamed. “They were your kids! Chen…he needs you! He’s still terrified of spiders, he still has nightmares! Baekhyun may not have been the clingiest kid but you pulled him out of his shell! You loved them! They loved you! How can you walk away from them?”

Suho snapped. “Do you think this is easy for me?” He yelled, finally allowing the tears to gather in his eyes. “I know who they are, I know what they are to me! But I have four other kids out there and a fellow leader! Do you know how hard it is for me to make this decision?!”

Chanyeol grabbed Suho’s arm and tried to pull him back to the pier. “Another day won’t kill them!” He yelled. “It won’t kill anyone! Let’s go back, let’s just give it one more day!”

Suho ripped his arm out of Chanyeol’s hand and grabbed his shoulders. “Stop it Chanyeol!” He pleaded. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Chanyeol stared at Suho for a few seconds. He looked absolutely furious, and he took a deep breath as if to scream. Suddenly he seemed to deflate, his shoulders sagged and he fell to his knees.

“I can’t,” he whimpered. “I can’t do this…” And then he covered his face and started to sob again.

Suho felt his tears finally run over, and he didn’t bother to wipe them away. He hadn’t cried in years, hadn’t cried at all since landing on this damn planet and now he was falling to pieces. He knelt down next to Chanyeol and put his hand on his back. Chanyeol practically threw himself into Suho’s lap and cried into his shirt.

“I want to go home,” Chanyeol whimpered. “I just want to go home…I’m so scared, Suho…I wish this was just a dream…I want to go home.”

Suho heard Kyungsoo fall to his knees behind him and heard the box containing the heart clatter to the ground.

“I want to go home too,” he breathed before bursting into tears himself.

Xiumin looked absolutely lost. “Guys…come on. We can’t…we can’t do this now.”

Suho looked up, grinning through his tears. “What’s wrong with now?” He asked, and Xiumin looked positively terrified. Suho continued, “What’s the difference if we break down now or later? We’re all broken, see?” His voice rose, Chanyeol clung to his waist and sobbed even harder. Suho started to shout to be heard over him.

“We’re all broken and there’s nothing we can do to fix ourselves. NOTHING!”

Xiumin was shaking, Suho was panting and Kyungsoo and Chanyeol were still crying. For a while Xiumin stared at the ground, and Suho thought he was going to break down too. But when he looked up, his eyes were clear and his jaw set with determination.

“We can find our brothers,” He said lowly. “We can find our brothers and get back home.”

With that Xiumin reached down and hauled Chanyeol to his feet.

“You too Kyungsoo,” He called. “Get up.”

Kyungsoo scrambled to his feet, sniffling and wiping his eyes. Xiumin glared at Suho.

“Pick up the heart.”

‘No,’ Suho wanted to say. ‘Chanyeol’s right. Let’s stay here.’

Before he could even open his mouth, Xiumin opened his. “Kai.”

Suho shot to his feet, suddenly assaulted by memories of a small child biting his hand and then hugging him and asking for “One more story, Suho!”

“Sehun.”

A little boy clinging to his hand and pulling him down to whisper in his ear, “I played tag with a butterfly today,” like it was the secret to happiness.

“Tao. Kris.”

A lanky preteen kicking an apple off Chanyeol’s head. A tall boy wrapping Suho up in his wings and telling him it was okay to cry, or to need a hug.

“Lu Han.”

The sweetest smile Suho had ever seen in his life, gentle eyes and a calm presence…Sehun had called him a deer.

Suho bent down and picked up the chest with the piece of the heart. “Let’s get going,” he mumbled.

Chanyeol cried himself to sleep for about a week, Kyungsoo developed a habit of going absolutely silent and staring at nothing for extended periods of time. Xiumin tried to encourage them as best he could, and Suho remained strong on the outside when all he wanted to do was fall to his knees and scream for someone to wake him up from this nightmare. He trudged on solely because he had five boys waiting for him to find them.

Though in the end of course, they found him.

It was Kyungsoo who saw the lights and pointed out to the horizon. Chanyeol had taken off running across the town, screaming for them to hurry up, hurry before they lost them again.

Suho was carrying the heart, and it was so heavy that it dragged him down. He tried to call at them to wait for him, but he couldn’t breathe properly and it came out more like a wheeze. Just when he thought he’d collapse from exhaustion, Suho saw them standing there. He saw Chanyeol tackle Kris to the ground, he saw his babies, his friends. Chen was the first person he went to only because he was the closest, and Suho collapsed in his arms crying and gasping for air.

“It’s okay hyung,” Chen whispered, using Northern dialect for the first time in years. “It’s okay, you found us. We’re together again.”

Much later Suho was walking with Kris, and he suddenly grabbed his fellow leader’s arm and pulled him to a stop.

“I didn’t think I would be able to make it,” he confessed. “I thought you were dead…if it wasn’t for Xiumin I probably would have given up.”

Kris tugged Suho over and hugged him tightly. “It’s alright,” he said. “I was unconscious for most of the last eight years but…if it had been me, I would have been the same.” Suho reached behind Kris and pulled on his wings. Kris smiled and wrapped them around Suho’s shoulders.

“Let’s just never separate again, okay?” Kris asked.

Suho laughed and tightened his grip on Kris’ waist. “Just try and get me to leave you alone.”

I have been lagging with the updates D: Sorry!!

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