It was easily a three day flight to the grove where the Elders resided. Jungsoo had originally wanted to live closer to them, but his dongsaengs had fallen in love with their own little cluster of trees and he had eventually caved, allowing them to move there. The first day of flight had been relatively uneventful, but full of worries and anxieties that ran through Ryeowook’s head almost constantly; he nearly burst into tears once and had to perch on a branch for a few minutes to collect himself before continuing.

The sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon when Ryeowook reached the edge of a town on the second day of his journey. Usually, he would have flown through the forest around the town, but that would have taken much more time and he knew he didn’t have much time to start with. So, holding his breath and mentally apologizing to Jungsoo, he darted from the trees out into the open.

The town was surprisingly quiet; there were a few people walking around or rushing to their cars or hurrying toward the comfort of their own homes, but they weren’t hard to hide from. Ryeowook smiled to himself, feeling proud. He was going to make it. He was going to make it through town and to the Elders without being detected, and then he was going to make it back to Jongwoon’s house and Jongwoon was going to live and—

A shrill laugh brought him out of his daydreams immediately and he froze in mid-air, tucking his wings against his back and falling down into a pile of snow.

A moment or two passed, then he slowly lifted his head up, peering above the mound of fluffy white snow; there was a small girl, probably no older than three, running around the yard he’d unintentionally flown into, two dolls clutched tightly in her hands. He gulped. This wasn’t good. He was pretty much out in the open; he wasn’t going to be able to move safely until she’d gone inside and he would have to pray that she wouldn’t come near him. He couldn’t be spotted.

He swore softly to himself, ducking back down and biting his lip. He should have just flown around the town because, at this rate, he would get to the Elders even later. He didn’t have time for this.

The giggles were getting closer.

Please no. Please, please, please. I want to save my friend and I can’t do that if some little girl finds me. Please. I just want to save him.

“Oh! Dollie!”

He nearly winced when he heard the shrill voice so close to his body, but managed to stay still; he knew that if he moved, he would be in even more trouble. Even so, he squeezed his eyes shut when he felt a chubby hand wrap around his body and lift him into the air.

“Dollie!”

“Min Ji! Min Ji, come inside! We need to get ready for dinner!” A new voice, one he guessed belonged to the little girl’s mother, cut through the air, and Min Ji bounced up, running toward the house, never letting go of the doll she’d found in the snow.

---

As soon as he heard the door shut, Ryeowook shot up, flying around Min Ji’s room in pure panic. They’d gone out for dinner and he didn’t know how long they were going to be gone, but he knew he couldn’t stay there. He had to get out.

First, he glided toward the windows, but they were shut tight; there was no way he could get out there. So he flew into the hallway, looking around the house in amazement. It was bigger than Jongwoon’s, but, as he soon discovered, much less pixie-friendly; the more he flew around, the more he began to tell exactly how tightly shut it was. There wasn’t even a tiny hole in the screen door that he could squeeze through. There was no way that he’d be leaving that house, not unless he was physically taken back outside. He flopped back down on the doll bed that Min Ji had placed him on, burying his face in his hands as tears filled his eyes.

“I’m sorry, hyung,” he whispered to the empty room. “I’m sorry.”

---

The family returned a lot faster than he wanted them to and Min Ji dashed straight up to her room to play with her new “toy.” Ryeowook, hearing footsteps on the stairs, quickly laid back down where she’d left him, wiping the tears off his cheeks before she burst into the room.

He mentally groaned when she picked him up again, but a feeling of pure horror began to creep into his heart when he listened to what she was saying.

“Dress, dress, dress!”

He nearly fainted.

There was no way he was going to let some little girl put him in a dress. He’d rather take his chances flying off and getting stuck in that house or getting kidnapped by one of the other members of her family – anything, really, than being manhandled and put in a dress, of all things. There was no damn way.

Just as he was seriously about to squirm out of her grasp and shoot for the door, her mom appeared, announcing that it was time for Min Ji’s bath. The little girl whined, but put down her doll for the moment, sulking after her mom and heading toward the bathroom down the hall. Ryeowook breathed a sigh of relief, letting his muscles relax when he was alone in the room again. He had to find some way to get out of here. And soon.

---

After her bath, Min Ji was sent straight to bed, something Ryeowook was personally thankful for. Just after midnight, when he was relatively certain that everyone was asleep, he slipped out of the room, searching through the house one more time for some way to escape. He found nothing, however, and, dejected, returned to his spot on Min Ji’s shelf, hoping that she’d want to go out and play later that day.

---

Min Ji’s mom woke her up like usual and she got dressed and pretty much ignored the doll she’d found the day before until after lunch – that was when she started making a fuss and wanting to go outside.

“Mommyyy!” she whined, tugging on the leg of her mom’s pants. “Mommy, outside!”

“Min Ji, isn’t there something—”

“Outside!”

With a sigh, the older woman finally caved and helped Min Ji into her hat, mittens, scarf, boots, and thick winter coat before sending her out the backdoor, a pile of dolls in her tiny arms.

For a while, Min Ji played with her dolls as a collective, moving them around the snow and giggling to herself, leaving Ryeowook no opportunities to escape (though, honestly, he was more than happy to just be outside where he at least had more of a chance). After nearly an hour, though, he saw an opening.

“Min Ji! I made you some hot chocolate!”

The little girl looked up at her mom, who was standing at the door, and squealed, dropping the dolls in her hand and waddling toward the house, obviously more excited about the prospect of getting hot chocolate and cookies than being outside. As soon as the door had shut behind them, Ryeowook stretched his wings and dashed into the sky, shaking the snow out of his hair as he did so, nearly crying in happiness.

He’d lost an entire day’s time, but he was free.

---

It wasn’t until late the next day that he got to the Elder Clearing. It didn’t look like much on the surface; just a wide, round clearing in the midst of an ancient forest, but to the pixies who lived in the area, it was so much more. There were small holes scattered around the edge of the clearing, hidden from any human’s curious view but blatantly obvious to anyone five inches tall. Through the holes there were passageways, curving and winding and intersecting, an extremely complex system of paths that led to different rooms and exits. It was exceedingly easy to get lost in the maze, but each and every pixie knew one pathway by heart; the pathway to the Elder Chamber.

The Elder Chamber was where the Elders sat. It was almost equivalent to a throne room in ancient castles, but more inviting, something sort of like a living room in a human house. When they weren’t sleeping or trying new spells or out looking for something on the surface, they were in the Chamber, taking care of any pixie that had flown all the way to see them.

There were five Elders in this region. Usually there were only two or three, but these Elders had been together since birth and everyone agreed that they were more powerful together, so they were allowed to all practice in the same area. They were the youngest of the Elder faeries in the country, but they were some of the most powerful as well and were, therefore, incredibly respected, despite their ages.

Every pixie knew the Elders to some extent, but Ryeowook, before he’d moved, had been as very close with them. He’d originally lived with them when they were younger, but when they had officially been chosen as the next generation of Elders, he’d been forced to move somewhere else. It was then that he met Sungmin and Henry; not long after that, they’d found Jungsoo, and the four of them had been together ever since. Ryeowook hadn’t seen the five Elders in quite some time, and so it was with shaking feet that he stepped into the Elder Chamber that evening.

“Ryeowook!” Without warning, a pair of arms was thrown around his waist and he was pulled into a tight hug; he heard the excited exclamations from the others and found himself at the center of a pile of hugs before long. When they finally let him go, he found himself, regardless of his worries and fears, looking up at them and smiling.

“Hi, guys,” he said softly, his eyes sliding from face to face.

“Long time no see!” The oldest of the Elders, Jaejoong, reached over, ruffling Ryeowook’s hair fondly. “What’ve you been up to, little one?”

Ryeowook shrugged slightly. “Not much, overall. But, um, I have a really big favor to ask.”

Junsu cracked a grin, gesturing around the room. “Well, we’re free at the moment, so ask away! Anything you need!”

The youngest, Changmin, interjected. “But could you cook for us? Something good; I’m hungry,” he whined, suddenly grinning when Ryeowook nodded slowly.

“Yeah, of course I can.”

“So what did you need?” Yunho, with his arm slung over Yoochun’s shoulders, peered down at Ryeowook curiously. “It must be something really important for you to fly all the way out here. Did something happen to one of your brothers?”

“Um, no, not to one of them.” Now that he was here, Ryeowook was finding it very difficult to choose the right words to explain his situation. “I, um…” He sighed. “It’s kind of a long story.”

Jaejoong smiled, wrapping his arm around Ryeowook’s shoulders and leading him out of the Elder Chamber. “Why don’t we go sit, then? My room’s much more comfortable, anyway.”

“Let’s go!” Junsu called out before Ryeowook could protest, charging ahead of them toward his hyung’s room. Yoochun laughed loudly, running after the other childishly, and soon it turned into a race between the friends, leaving Ryeowook no choice but to try to keep up.

---

After they’d gotten to Jaejoong’s room and settled down, they turned to Ryeowook expectantly. He was sitting in the middle of Jaejoong’s large bed and he stared down at the comforter, nervously tracing circles on the fabric with the tip of his finger as he started to speak.

“I, um, well, I met this human a while ago. He moved into this house at the edge of the woods that we live in. He’s really nice and he’s become one of my best friends but he’s sick. He’s really, really sick. He says that the human doctors have tried lots of different things but that nothing is working the way it’s supposed to and that they don’t think that there’s anything else they can do at this point. I can’t take it anymore; I’ve just been watching his life slip away and that’s not fair. He deserves so much more life, you know? He’s the kindest person and he really means a lot to me and I can’t stand by and watch him d-die like that.” He faltered for a moment, but took a deep breath and kept going. “Heechul hyung said that I should come talk to you because maybe you would know of something to do. I know that I shouldn’t be friends with a human and that I shouldn’t have ever let him see me, but there’s nothing I can do about that now. I care about him a lot and I…I just want to try to save his life.” Ryeowook kept his eyes trained on the bed, scared to look up at his friends.

The five Elders exchanged knowing glances.

“What does he have? What are his symptoms, Wook?” Jaejoong asked softly.

Ryeowook’s head shot up, his eyes wide. “You’ll help me?”

“We’ll do our best,” Yunho said with a smile. “After all, we can’t let our little Wookie’s first love die without putting up a fight, now can we?”

Ryeowook turned bright red. “W-what? He’s n-not—I n-never said—that’s—”

“Oh shush.” Junsu hopped up next to Ryeowook on the bed, ruffling his hair teasingly. “You didn’t have to say it for us to know. We just think it’s cute, that’s all.”

The shortest sputtered for a moment more, his face bright red, before he gave up and looked around at the five smiling faces around him. “Thanks,” he whispered, feeling more optimistic than he had in a long time.

---

Hours later, after Ryeowook had gone through a list of Jongwoon’s symptoms and told them everything he could about the situation, the five friends sat together in the Elder Chamber, looking worried. They’d sent Ryeowook off to bed since he looked dead on his feet, promising to work as quickly as possible to find a solution to Jongwoon’s illness. The problem, however, was that they weren’t quite sure what to do.

Yunho murmured a few words in the ancient faerie tongue over a bowl of water, bringing up a picture of the human for them to see; as soon as the picture cleared, all five gasped.

“Oh no,” Junsu breathed. “This is bad.”

“We…there’s no way…” Yoochun struggled to say what they were all thinking and ended up just gulping instead.

The Jongwoon that they saw looked a lot worse than the Jongwoon from a few days ago that Ryeowook had described. It seemed that, in the pixie’s absence, his illness had taken a rather dramatic turn for the worse.

Changmin looked up at his hyungs, shaking his head. “I’m not sure even we can do anything about this,” he mumbled, biting his lip.

Jaejoong shook his head. “We have to think of something, for Wook. We have to at least try,” he said, getting up and wandering over to one of the large bookshelves that were filled with volume after volume on pixie history and magic. “There has to be something in one of these books. Something we can use or modify in some way. We don’t have any time to lose, so let’s get to work.”

---

Ryeowook spent the next day stumbling through the maze-like underground passageways, exploring all the nooks and crannies and trying not to worry. He knew that this would take time, but he’d already wasted a day pretending to be a doll and he had a three day flight back home and he just wasn’t sure how much time he could afford to stay. He eventually found his way to the kitchen and, remembering his promise to Changmin about cooking them something good, he set about getting the ingredients to make an apple pie; maybe cooking would help calm him down. He’d only just started, though, when a small figure that he recognized as assistant to the Elders appeared in the doorway.

“Master Ryeowook, the Elders request your presence in the Elder Chamber as soon as possible,” the figure chirped out, then disappeared from view, leaving Ryeowook to scramble to put up everything he’d just drug out before shooting out of the door.

He dashed into the Elder Chamber, nearly bowling over Yoochun, his eyes wide. “Yeah?” he asked breathlessly, trying not to hope too much.

The Elders were silent for a moment before Yunho shuffled forward, holding something behind his back.

“Ryeowook…your friend is very sick. We searched through thousands of years of pixie history, but our race has never been exposed to anything quite like this, so we can’t make a one hundred percent guarantee that this will work. We wish that we could.”

“Under the circumstances though…” Changmin stepped forward next. “We’ve come up with something that we think will help.”

Yunho pulled his hands out from behind his back, holding out a small red berry to Ryeowook, who took it carefully and peered down at it uncertainly.

“Since we can’t go to him, we had to embed our magic in a vessel of sorts,” Jaejoong explained. “When you get back to him, please have him eat that as soon as possible.”

Junsu hugged Ryeowook tightly. “Come and visit us more often, alright? And bring your brothers with you. We get pretty lonely out here sometimes.”

Ryeowook nodded, slipping the berry into the bag that he’d brought with him and left in the chamber the night before. “Thank you all so much and I’m sorry I asked something that I know took a lot of power.”

The five Elders, who all looked weak and drained of power but were doing their best to hide it, just grinned.

“Don’t worry about it, Wook!” Yoochun chirped. “Just be safe on the trip back home, alright?”

Ryeowook nodded and, after one more round of hugs and goodbyes, he dashed out of the room, heading for one of the exits. When he was gone, Changmin looked around at his hyungs and sighed.

“I hope it works.”

“Me too, Changmin.” Yunho sighed, rubbing his forehead. “We all do.”

---

When Ryeowook finally flew through the small hole in the back screen door and landed on the kitchen counter nearly three days later, he noticed that the house seemed abnormally quiet. There wasn’t any music or the sounds of Jongwoon’s labored breathing or the sound of him shuffling around on the hardwood floors. There was a soft hum from the refrigerator and the distant tick tock of the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room, but, other than those always-there, underlying noises, there was nothing.

Ryeowook felt his skin grow cold.

His wings fluttered nervously for a moment before he launched himself back into the air, zipping to the living room but finding it eerily empty.

“Jongwoon hyung?” he called out; his voice reverberated off the walls and the only response he got was his own question being echoed back at him. “Hyung?” He had just started to head for the stairs when a small figure with pink-tinted wings shot down in front of him and pulled him into a tight hug.

“Wook! Wook, you’re okay! I was so worried that something had happened to you because you were gone longer than we expected – Heechul hyung told us where you’d gone, by the way – and I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you because you’re my little brother and—”

Ryeowook cut into Sungmin’s rambling, gulping. “Hyung, where’s Jongwoon hyung?” he asked softly, trying not to sound nearly as scared as he felt but failing miserably.

Sungmin grew very quiet and, for a moment, Ryeowook’s mind ventured to the worst.

“He’s not—”

“He’s at the hospital, Wook.” Sungmin’s voice was almost inaudible. “We dropped by to check on him a couple days after you left and…things don’t look good right now.”

“W-what room?” Ryeowook’s voice was shaking, but he clutched the straps of his bag tightly.

“Ryeowook, you can’t possibly be thinking about—”

“What room?” he asked again, slightly stronger this time. “I have to get this to him.”

Sungmin thought for a moment, then sighed. “Two forty-seven.”

---

Though he was exhausted from days of flight, Ryeowook kept going until the hospital was in sight. It took him a while to locate the right room from the outside, but he found it eventually and slowly fluttered into the room through the slightly-cracked window.

Jongwoon was lying, very still, on the bed, his eyes closed, several tubes and wires connecting him to a bunch of electronic equipment that held no meaning to the pixie. He was so pale. There was no color in his face at all, and Ryeowook felt tears immediately well up in his eyes, but he blinked them away and landed softly on the human’s hand, trying his best to be strong. There was still the pixie magic. It would help. Right?

“Hyung,” he whispered, tugging on the sleeve of that awful hospital gown. “Hyung.”

After a moment or two, Jongwoon stirred, his eyes slowly opening and a smile tugging on the corner of his lips when he saw who it was. “Hey, Ryeowook.”

The pixie quickly pulled the bag off of his back, digging through it for a minute before holding up the small, bright red berry. “I’m so sorry I left but…hyung, I went to the Elders and I asked them for help and they gave me this. It’s infused with pixie magic and they said it’ll help you.” He smiled a little, trying to look as hopeful as possible.

Jongwoon just chuckled softly. “I was so worried when you left, you know, but your friend Heechul told me what happened. Thanks for trying, little one. It means a lot.”

Ryeowook’s bottom lip quivered dangerously. “Hyung, come on, you have to eat it, okay? It’s going to help, I know it.”

“You know, Ryeowook, I’ve never really had a true friend before.” Jongwoon interrupted him, shaking his head a little. “I’ve had friends, I guess, but never anyone like you. I’m glad you came. I knew my parents wouldn’t. I’d hoped my brother would, but he probably doesn’t even know I’m here.” The human’s voice sounded strained, like every word took a great deal of effort, but he kept speaking, determined to get out what he had to say. “I…wish I could be here to protect you for the rest of your life. Your brothers will take good care of you, though, I know that. I don’t know. I’ve never…I’ve never felt like this. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve had a lot of time lying here recently to think about it. I love you, Ryeowook. Honest.”

“Hyung…” The pixie tried to be strong, but tears had started to roll, unchecked, down his face. He momentarily dropped the berry in his hands, clutching Jongwoon’s thumb instead, holding onto it like his life depended on it. “Hyung, Jongwoon hyung, don’t leave me. Don’t go. I c-can’t…I love you t-too, and I don’t want you to go, not now. Please don’t leave me, not when I just got back. Please!”

The machine to his left began making an irregular beeping sound and Jongwoon swore softly. He wished he had more time. He wished he had another hour, another day, another week to say goodbye, but he felt his heart slipping out of beat in his chest and, instead, he smiled sadly at the tiny figure on his palm.

“I’ve gotta go, Ryeowook.”

“No! No, you can’t!” The pixie jumped up, grabbing the berry and fluttering up closer to the older man’s face. “The Elders said it would help, please, just eat it, please. I can’t… Please, Jongwoon hyung, please.” He hiccupped, letting the tears flow freely from his eyes, as he pushed the berry onto the other’s lips. If only to indulge in his friend’s hopeful scheme, Jongwoon slowly parted his lips, letting the small berry slide into his mouth and down his throat. He waited for a minute or two, then shook his head a little, that same sad smile still on his face.

“I don’t think it’ll help me, Ryeowook. It’s a little late.”

“It has to! It has to… I love you, hyung, you can’t go.”

“I love you too. I really do. Thanks…for making the last few months of my life really worth living.”

That smile slowly slipped off his face as his heartbeat faded and Jongwoon closed his eyes for the last time and Ryeowook felt his world come crashing down around his ears.

I honestly have no excuses for why it took me so long to write this other than school, exhaustion, and general laziness. I'm so so so so sorry ;~~~~;

We still have a chapter to go, and I swear it won't take me three months this time!!

lots of love,

afallingstar