I can breathe. Oh god, I can breathe again, because the fire in my lungs is now only coals. I survived.

I didn't think I would. 

But I did. 

I made it. I'm alive. I survived the worst night of my life, and I'm alive. 

They're all here. Jonghyun, currently staring at me with a look of dumb wonder. Zelo, curled up in the corner. Minho, or, more specifically, Minho's body, slumped against a wall. Xuimin, weirdly enough, his eyes closed, but he didn't look like he was sleeping. Wasn't he enemy? Didn't he kidnap Jonghyun? But he was sitting with a closeness to Jonghyun that would never be there if he was planning to kill him. And if he wanted to kill us, he would have already. He would have slit Jonghyun and Zelo's throats, and left me to die with no one to keep me fighting. 

I start to move around. Test my legs, my arms, see if I can stand up. Nothing hurts much, until I move to flex my stomach, and pain so blinding it was like an exploding sun blossomed in front of my eyes, and I gasped. Ah, there it was. 

Jonghyun sprung up, and I could see Xuimin out of the corner of my eyes, snap open his orbs to fix them on me. I wave Jonghyun off, but he crouches next to me anyway. 

"Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I mean, I did have a poisoned blade stab me in the side, but other than that, I'm absolutely amazing," I snap at him, too tired to mind my tongue. He draws back, but not much, and watches with obvious distress as I slowly inch myself to a sitting position, wincing everytime I move, but determined to get up so at least I could see. Finally, I can move backwards so my back hits the wall, purposefully avoiding looking at the body a couple feet from me. 

"Never thought you'd make it," a voice drawls, and I look up to meet Xuimin's eyes. 

I test my side a little, bending back and forth. "Sorry 'bout that." 

He chuckles, and it's surprisingly warm, as warm as he can get. I remember he saved my life.

"Thank you... for, you know, saving my life." 

He lifts his eyebrows, icy eyes amused. "No problem. And I'm not one to be modest or anything, but you did do most of the work." 

I consider that. "...yeah." 

I can feel Jonghyun's eyes on me. I remember what he said, when I was drowning. I remember that, most of all, he saved me. He saved my life. Maybe he didn't mean to, with those three words, but he did. 

I don't know what to do with him. I don't know what to do. 

I'm not a king. But somehow, now, I am. 

I don't know what to do. 

All I know is, I have to get home. I have to get to Taemin.

"Let's get out of here," Jonghyun finally says, after a stretching silence. Xuimin gives him a silent nod of agreement. 

"I'll get him," Xuimin says, jerking his head towards Minho as if he can't bear to look at him. 

Jonghyun wrinkles his nose. I laugh from my spot on the floor. "And you'll get Mir," I tell him, to which he adopts a look of terror. 

"Wait, he's de-" 

"Yeah, he's in the first room," I cut him off. I want to see if he can do this. "Go," I say, flapping my hand at him when he doesn't move an inch. The prince gives me a tortured look, but slumped off on his little journey.  That left me and the sleeping Zelo alone, and me enough to time to make the humiliating process of standing up, which required several tries and a heavy reliance on the wall behind me. 

When I had gotten Zelo up, who was happy to see I was alive, I followed the route Xuimin had taken with Minho's body. Although I hadn't wanted to see him before, now I had a strange urge to wrap up this whole thing, to say goodbye to this man who had shaped so much of my life. I found Xuimin in a courtyard, staring down at his former employer, squinting as if he was trying to see something that just didn't want to be see. I padded silently up to him, but he heard me anyway, because he shifted just enough to the side the I was able to stand in front of this man. 

"It's really the end, huh?" 

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

"What do you think all those people are going to do? All those people whose lives depend on this job?" Xuimin continued, and this was a question I didn't know what to do with. Because these people, no matter what they do, are good people. 

"I don't know." But we can't just leave them, with nothing but empty air where the money-making envelopes used to be. 

Xuimin seemed to be thinking the same. "We need to find a way... to do something." 

"Something," I repeated, half-laughing. I saw Xuimin's mouth curl up at the corners. 

"Something," he said again. "Anything." I stared down at this man. Somehow, he had managed to use these people, and make them kill for his own whims, and his own twisted intentions, and yet he had most likely saved the lives of the assassins and even their families without meaning to. 

"But... we can't just give them random jobs, that they have no experience in, that would be enough for a normal person, but would be deathly boring for us," I mused aloud, gaze still fixed on Minho's still face. 

Xuimin studied Minho again, silence seeping into the surpringly friendly conversation. There was something to be said, something to be appreciated, though, by the bond you form with a person who saved your life, and the person whose life you saved.

The assassin next to me began to straighten Minho's clothes, brushing off the dust, trying to get the dried blood off as much as possible. No matter the man, no matter the person who had been inhabiting, the body after death was always treated with respect. Respect for the dead, some say. Around the man's neck, his hands paused suddenly, smoothed the fabric that reached just to the man's pale collarbone. Xuimin's head cocked, his eyes drilling into the skin of the man's neck, and after a stretching second, moved on.

"It needs to be something we all have experience in, you know? Something they all know how to do, and do well." 

They do well. 

"They kill well," I said, and snickered. Then stopped. "They kill well," I repeated, under my breath, slowly. "What if we, just, give them a job where they can kill? You know, like the spy jobs or whatever."

Xuimin paused again, and half-turned to me, a certain smile twisting his lips, he inclined his head. "And you think you're no good to be king." 

A few minutes later, with me still turning that sentence over and over in my head, Xuimin finished with the burying, and Jonghyun did as well, soon after. I take a last look around, at this building. This building, with so many deaths, so much heartbreak, in the past. But I think we gave it jut a little bit of hope. I hope if someone comes here, knowing nothing, and sees the blood and sees the reminence of fights and lost hope and tears here, I think that they will also see hope here, I hope they will see a little, just a pinprick, of love shining out. Shining out, even here. 

Because hope can reach anywhere, and everywhere, and all at once. 

You just have to believe. 

So, before we left, I reached down for my last knife, and carved a simple key in the wood. And then I followed the others out into the bright sunshine, leaving behind everything but our hope, or love, and a little rememberence of me, just a killer, that just may have a chance at something more. 

Don't worry, guys, it's not the end It is very close, but it is not quite the end;)