"Oh I feel overjoyed

When you listen to my words

I see them sinking in

Oh I see them crawling underneath your skin." 

My stomach's twisted into a sailor's knots,  and the stretch of time that I've been walking down this road hasn't helped. It has only made it worse, the fact that they could be far away, gone, wrapped up into the endless world with our Mir in tow. My Mir in tow. 

He isn't theirs. He isn't something that they can just take. He's a person, and he belongs with his family. He belongs with us. 

And maybe, just maybe, he belongs with me. 

I'm snapped out of my thoughts by lights brightening the road before me. I seek my eyes to the light, and it looks ever so slightly blue, and ever so slightly red. And then the curve of the road straightens with my quickened feet, and the flashing lights are so bright that I have to look away. 

But, still, my heart pounds with hope. Someone's coming. Someone's coming to help us, and someone can help us find Mir. Someone can help us save Mir. 

The two cars screech to a halt just in front of me, and I have to squint, with the lights shining in my eyes. But, still, what was strange to me was that it was completely silent. No sirens, none of the wailing drops and climbs that sometimes, back in the city, would wake me up at night. 

A door swings open, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Someone can help us. 

"Hands up! Hands in the air!" 

Wait. What? 

Still I comply to the rough, time-strained voice, and as I raise my arms up, I suddenly notice how terribly thin I am. My arms looked brittle, even washed out by the lights, and the bones protruded from the skin so obviously. I looked so fragile. The muscles that I had built up during my idol days were long, long gone. Four months and about a week gone, to be exact. 

Two sets of footsteps hurry toward me, crunching in the leftover leaves on the road, and I turn so I can see them clearly. One of them is a woman, slim and muscled, with light hair pulled sharply back. The other cop is a man, solidly built, and as he strode toward me, I could see a whisper of tattoos twinning up his arms. In the back, I can see an identical car, and two men standing near it.

"What're you doing here?" It's the man again, in that old, old voice, even though if I were to give a rough estimate by appearance, it might be mid-twenties. 

"I'm looking for a guy, his name is Mir. We're in a group together, and some people took him, a-and I'm just looking for him criminals took him, and he could be hurt, and if you could help me-" the women held up a slim, elegant hand to stop my rambling, and I shut my mouth with an effort.

Her eyes scanned me once, twice, and I felt suddenly bare. She raised her sharp eyes to mine and held them there. I could feel the time slipping through my fingers, and Mir as well, but I didn't want to anger them.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she nodded and stepped back. Gestured for the man to step back. "He's not lying," she said to him, and then turned to me. "We recieved a call from this area. It said the caller's friend was being kidnapped, and that the caller was going to try to stall him. Is that your friend Mir?" 

I almost started sobbing, right then and there. Someone had called. One of us had an idea about where Mir was. Someone had called the police, and we were going to save Mir. "Yes. Yes, that's him."

"Do you have any idea where he might be? The caller didn't specify where, and our tracker broke." 

Maybe. I don't know. But if they aren't in this direction, then they must be in the other. 

"I have an idea."

The women nodded again. She rounded the car, shouted a couple words to the other police car, and all three slipped into the passenger seat. She beckoned me to the backseat. 

"Come on."

***

I feel so suffocated, both by the men around me, and by the anger that's clogging my throat, making my skin burn. The man that left still hasn't come back, and although this stop is giving me hope, and maybe giving the only one's who can rescue me time to find me. Because I need them. I love them.

I won't shy away from them anymore. I'll give them my heart.

I'll give Joon my heart. 

Please, just let them find me. Please. 

Please save me. Someone save me. I can't do this again. I can't survive this a-" A freezing cold hand grips my arm, and I'm snapped out of my thoughts, my prayers, back to the real world. Back to where I'm all alone, and back to where I'm about to be kidnapped again. Where my mind will be torn to pieces again, and just when I've began to pick up the pieces. Just when I've began to see where they belong. Just when I've began to heal, they've come for me again. 

Why do they need me? 

The man gripping my arm leans toward me. Up close, I can smell his breath. It smells like rotten fruits, and something sickly-sweet. I try to shrivel to nothing in his grip, but he only lets out a chuckle. 

His brown eyes scour me, and turn back to the man that smells of spice and pumpkin. "We leaving?" 

Another man, thin and built like a runner and sitting across from me, spits a sunflower seed onto the floor of the van. "Thorn hasn't come back yet." 

The man's flat, golden eyes darkened. "We go. Kellar!" He yelled, and the man driving up front grunted a response. My stomach plummented, and a horrible chill crawled up my neck. I'm alone, and soon I will be their's again. I don't want to be their's. 

But the world is controlled by the people with power, and I, dizzy and thin and shaking and blisteringly hot and yet freezing at the same time, am not a person of power. I am someone to be controlled by the powerful, and this realization makes my bones feel like lead. 

I am nothing. 

The driving man ignited the engine, and the van let out a shuddering breath. I bowed my head, trying to hid the tears that were sure to come, but the man next to me forced up my chin with a dirty, callused hand. "Don't look so down, now. We're gonna find you a new home." 

No

But I am not brave enough to protest, so I just sit there, feeling ice-cold tears trace their way down my cheeks, feeling the teasing lightness of the hand on my chin, feeling the cold air seep into my skin. Feeling the engine gurgle to true life, and feeling the van start up again. Feeling it turn, and feeling it stop. A sputtering stop, and hissing forced it's way into the dealthy quiet van. 

The gold-eyed man swore viciously, and leaned forward to slam the heel of his hand against the seat. "Kellar!" He spat and even from the angle I had, I could tell his normally composed features were twisted with fury. 

"It won't go!" 

"Try. It. Again." Every word was forced through the man's thin lips like it had been torn from his brain. The driver gunned the gas. Nothing. Nothing but shifting, a hissing, as if the can was protesting this sudden development as well.

Hope sprang up again, but I tried to force it down. This didn't mean anything. This wasn't anything. They would find a way to get their prize safety away. 

But by the expression on the faces of the men, by the slight shifting away from the gold-eyed man, who was fuming, it was something unplanned for. Something unexpected. 

"Kellar, check the tires." 

"But, B-" 

"Kellar, check the tires." No room for argument. No room for nothing but obedience to power. That is the way of the world, I wanted to tell this over-powered man, but my mouth seems glued shut, and I would never work up enough courage anyway. They would find a way to use the words against me.

They always did. 

The driver slipped out of the seat, and slammed the door of the van behind him. The atmosphere was as thick as smoke, and the three other men were trying to get as far away from their leader, even though with the amount of space in the van was so that he could reach a couple feet and seize the furthest one in mere seconds. 

A puase. Then, the driver spoke from outside the van, his words nervous as if expected his leader to murder him right then and there. "Boss, they're cut."

The one spoke to, with his thin lips and pumpkin smell, twisted his lips, and his expression soured as if he's just bit into a lemon. "What are cut." 

"The tires. All four have slashes."

The tightness of the van was suddenly too much, too much, and the leader kicked the back of the driver' seat, so hard the van rocked slightly. He strung out swears as fast as he could, and the man, who had been holding me chin, turned toward me, and suddenly his big hand was wrapped around my throat. Not tight enough to suffocate, but tight enough to warn.

The eyes he turned toward me were filled with anger, but something else, something it had only seen when I look it the mirror; fear. Horrible, horrible fear. Fear, maybe, of this man next to him. 

This man who seemed to hold all their lives at the tips of his fingers. Just as they all did to me. 

Sympathy, so strange and foreign, welled up inside me for this man, but it died as soon as it came. "If this is one of your friend's little pranks, you're dead," he hissed at me, and his fingers tightened, ever-so-slightly. The leader's eyes, which had seemed so flat and expressionless before, were gleaming like gold, and when they fastened on me, he snarled like a wild wolf. 

***

He's checking the condition of every tire, and as I watch, I can see his hope that it's just a minor patching job slowly dissipating, and then crumbling to the ground. Two slashes, maybe 8 centimeters long, in each tire. They can't recover from that. They can't patch all four quickly. They might not be able to patch them at all, and that's exactly how I wanted it.

The knife in my hand is gripped too tight, but I don't loosen my grip. Mir's in there, and I can't ruin this. I need to get him out. He could be hurt. They could be blaming him for this. 

The man finally finishes checking the tires, and he stands just behind the back right tire, every muscle pulled taunt. The van door, closed in front of him, is so far away, and it is hiding who I need to save. 

"Boss, they're cut." He leans on his forearm, propped against the van, and I see my chance. I pick myself off the ground, slide up around the bush that I was sheltering behind. 

"What are cut." It's completely flat, but weaved in the words is an unspoken threat, and unspoken warning. My footsteps on the pavement are too loud, but he doesn't seem to here. My hand, wrapped around the knife's hilt, grows numb, but I ignore that. 

The man works his jaw, as if deciding how to answer. But there was nothing but the straight up truth to tell, and seeing this man's fear gives me a moment of satisfaction. These people deserve to be afraid. These people deserve to be punished for what they did to Mir. 

"The tires. All four have slashes." I was a foot away, and he still hasn't noticed me. From inside the van, a violent thud, and muffled, spat-out words. The man near me hissed out a breath through his teeth. 

I took another step. I raised my arm, the one with the knife, and took another step. He still didn't hear me. I took the last step, reached up, and wrapped my arm around his throat, grazing his skin with the blade. 

"Don't move." I was praying my voice didn't shake, and it came out, strangely, as solid as steel. 

The man stiffened. Didn't move. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, but it still didn't dispel the strangeness of the knife in my hand. 

"Back away from the van." 

I took a step back, and the man took a step back as well. His neck was stretched tall, and I realized it was so he didn't touch the blade. I pressed it closer, so it was a millimeter from drawing blood. 

"Yell for your friends," I told the man, my lips close to his ear, and he even let out a quiver of a smile. 

"I'm more afraid of them than you, little idol." 

Hate raised the blood to my face, and I pressed the knife deeper, so it cut a slit in his neck. 

"Yell." 

Silence. 

I pressed down, deeper, but there was a rock in my throat when I tried to swallow. I can't kill this man. I have the heart to threaten, and Mir being in there is enough to hurt, but killing a man is too much. Killing my captive, besides, would give me no bargaining chips. I would be a lamb to the wolves. 

"Yell," I repeated, louder, so I thought maybe they could hear me from the van, but I didn't care. This time, he must've felt it, my anger, my hatred. Something that told him his instincts that I would not hesitate to kill, even though I would. 

"Boss," he spat, but loud enough, and the cluster of voices in the van faded to silence. "There's a friend of the weak one. He's got a knife at m-" I pressed it even deeper, my own throat closing when I saw how deep the knife was. 

"That wasn't what I meant." 

"Told you." His lips barely moved, his voice hoarse and wet, as the van shivered with movement, and I realized that there might be too many. "You don't know Walus." 

"I know you kidnapped Mir, and I know you hurt him," I spat back, just as quiet, as the lock on the door rattled. 

He laughed then, a almost-gurgling sound that sent fingers of ice down my spine, and repeated what he said. "You don't know Walus."

The two doors swung open, and a tall man, with pasty skin and oily, red hair swung out. His eyes were dark gold, and were as sharp and as cold as icicles. Behind him, two more men came out, but no Mir. But my eyes had already fastened on something else; the handgun the lead man carried. 

He looked me up and down with those snake eyes, and something struck a cord inside me; this was the leader. I was sure of it. This is the man that ordered the torturing of Mir. This is the man that took him away, and twisted up his soul and shattered his mind and starved his body. 

It was all I could do to hold myself back from charging at him with the knife. This man was evil. This man was the reason we had to suffer. This man was the reason Mir had to suffer. 

But still I stood there, my knife to the throat of my only advantage. Still I tightened my muscles, and told myself to wait, to wait and to be smart. Still I tried to control this beast of anger rearing up, like none of the anger I had ever felt before.

But what is my anger, faced with a gun?

 The leader surveyed me with those horrible eyes. "Got ourselves into a little bit of a situation, have we, Kellar?" His voice is cool, and crisp, and there is no doubt in my mind that he will use the gun. 

Kellar shifts slightly in my grip, but he doesn't speak. 

The leader nods, as if Kellar had just told him something important, and released the safety on the gun with a click. I can see the two men out of the corner of my eye spread out on either side of me. I may have heard a thump inside the van, but all I'm seeing now is the gun, the barrel pointing straight at me. 

"Let go, and step away or I shoot." I swallow, but don't move. I have to be brave. I have to use this anger, use this hatred, but it will do nothing if I'm defenseless. It will also do nothing if I'm dead, but I push the thought to the side as soon as it forms. I can't think about that. 

The air is clotting, hot, and it's so, so quiet. Dealthy quiet. Dealthy still. But the emotions; the hate, the scorn, the fear, the anger, is alive, sizzling through the air. 

I don't move. 

Walus meets my eyes, and immediately I feel like a worm under his boot. He lifts the gun just barely, and his finger squeezes on the trigger. The shot rings out, and I flinch, but it wasn't aimed to hurt. It was aimed to warn, and as the crack bounces, and the rasp of the waves in the distance rise up to meet it, horrible fear clouds my mind. I don't want to die. I don't want to end my life like this. 

But for Mir, I will do this. It it means saving Mir, I will do this. 

I tighten my hold on Kellar. 

***

A shot. A gunshot. 

It's sharp, and it cuts through the suffocating silence like an axe through warm cheese. 

A gun. 

Someone with a gun.

I turn back the way I came, and then I'm running, running with all my breaths, toward the dying shot. 

***

That was him. That was Seungho. That was his voice. That was his voice that hissed yell, and it was his voice that had saved me from the looming anger above me, of the man with his strange, heavy eyes and reaching fingers. 

He's here. He's here. 

But at the same time as warmth replaces the sparkles of cold on my skin, I want to scream for him to run. They're too much for him. He won't get out alive. I'm not worth him sacrificing his life for. My scarred, bullet-holed ridden life is not worth more than his. 

And then the driver, the man, says something, and then all I can hear is a soft, almost animal-like growl, and the scrape of metal on metal as man with those eyes takes out a gun. 

My mouth is dry, my throat too tight. I want to scream. I want to scream for Seungho to run. 

I open my mouth- and a hand clamps over it before I can let out more than a whimper. It pushes my lips together, and the man attached laughs, his eyes glinting like flint. 

I can only watch, and the anger and fear starts to grow, as they file out, and through the doors I can hear voices, but my brain can't distinguish them into words. I can't do anything. Why am I so powerless?

Why do I always have to be the weak one? 

Why is it always me?

And then. A gunshot. Silence stretches after, absolute silence. No cry of pain. Maybe it was a misfire. Maybe he didn't hit the intended target. Maybe it was just a warning. 

But I need to do this for Seungho. I need to help him.

I ball up my fist, knowing that since my weight has dropped, my knuckles have stood out like spikes from my fingers. Quickly, before the man holding me could react, I put all my force in my fist and aimed downward, between his legs. 

The man let out a cry of pain, and his grip loosened. A flare of satisfaction that I had been waiting for months to feel sprung up, but I had enough mind to squirm out of his grip before he regained his senses. 

I took a few steps, and wobbled, the weight of my body seeming suddenly too heavy for my legs to support. I stood there, fighting it, fighting it with a wave of anger and fear and everything that I had held inside for so long. I will not be weak. I will not be weak.  

I took a step, and another, and I could see Seungho, see his eyes widening with something --hope, maybe?-- when he saw me, and I saw the man with the gun, and two others, and a knife at the throat of a knife and in the grip of Seungho, and I saw another knife held in the hand of one standing off to the side, and I saw the darkness closing in, and I saw the shadows stretching, and I saw blood coating the edge of the knife, and suddenly something slammed into my legs and I toppled to the ground, too fast for me to register, and my face met the pavement with a sickening crunch. But I was done.

Done with being weak. 

***

And then there they are, that pasty white van, and I'm running and my breaths are so loud but Mir is here, and we can save him.

And then suddenly I can see it; I can see the gun pointed at Seungho's head, and the man towering over a fallen Mir, but these are my family, and I know that I will do whatever it takes to save them. 

I step into the place, and two of their eyes sweep towards me. But I'm already moving, I'm striding toward the one without a gun, and I punch him in the face. 

He gasps with pain, and seems to crumple, but only for a second. And then he looks up at me, and his dark blue eyes seem to brighten. A snarl twists his lips, and he swings out, too fast for me too follow. 

I hear a crack, and my neck whips back so fast I stumble, and fall. I drag myself up, knowing I won't win this, we won't win this. But I also know I will fight for them, and I will give my life for them and for Mir. 

I feel, more than see, blood, but I ignore it, wiping a careless hand over my mouth. But when I turn, I freeze. 

The man with the knife has it jammed under Seungho's chin. The three are frozen, trapped by each other, and Seungho's trapped in the middle. The man with the gun smiles, crookedly, and swings it around to point it at Mir. 

Mir. 

I swallow, but the unspoken threat hangs heavy in the air. And then I let out the adrenaline from my fists. I let the fight go. We're trapped.

***

"Get that knife away from Kellar, and I won't shoot." Walus says, and as he does, he crouches so that the barrel of his gun is stuck directly in Mir's face. My stomach drops. 

I swallow. 

Walus blinks up at me, calm, his tone what it would be if we were discussing what to have for lunch. "I will not say it again." 

I lower the knife. 

Kellar brings his fist up, smashing it straight into my throat. I stagger back, and the man with the knife pulls away his knife, but a foot sweeps under me and suddenly leaves from the ground are in my mouth, and my nose is throbbing. I push myself up, and I can feel hands helping me up, and I know they're Byunghee's. But there's a faint whistle through the air, and a cry of pain. The helping hands slacken, then disappear altogether. 

"Byunghee!" I yell, but there's no answer. I can't look behind, though, to see where the knife hit. All I can do is push myself to my feet, and I barrel into Walus, knocking him off his feet. Adrenaline's coursing through my veins, hot and addicting, and I land a few pushes to his stomach and face before hot hands drag me off him, and Walus gathers enough composure to get a grip on his gun and slam it into my stomach, again and again. 

I double over, choking, gasping at nothing, trying to force air into my lungs, but still he's snarling and hitting me over and over, and then it hits me, as hard as the barrel of a gun: We're not going to win this.

We can't win this. 

***

I won't give up.

I haven't gone all this way, and gotten away from them, to just be taken again. I won't.

I reach for the man's knee, the one with the gun, and I wrap my hands around it from the back. I hear him let out a noise of suprise, a surprisingly human sound, and I pull with all my dwendling strength, and his leg collapses under him. 

I scramble back as he falls, but my eyes have already sighted on the gun, still grasped in his fingers. I hear the grunt of someone, and then the sound of fist hitting a person, and someone collapsing again, and I flinch but I keep going. 

I have to do this. 

The man snarls, from under me, and his other hand grips my hair, forcing my head into the pavement. I don't care, though. 

My fingers close around the gun, and I tighten my grip, forcing my nails to dig into his fingers, and shock loosens his grip. That's enough for me to snatch the gun, and even as the skin on my face is ground into the road, my two hands wrap around the gun, and my searching fingers find the trigger, and I can't breathe but that isn't important now, and I tighten my grip until the backlash sends a tremor through my arm, and I flinch, but I reward with a crack like lightening and a howl of pain from this man that always feels the need to possess me, to claim me as weak and as his. 

I shake off his hand, which was as limp as a bag of flour, and I somehow get my feet under me, and I somehow stand, and I can only see out of one eye; the other is sealed with blood, but I don't care. That isn't important. 

The man-- no. Walus. Walus lay there, his hair a shock of rust-orange, his eyes still that gold, but now filled with anger and bitterness, but something else that made my stomach twist, and my jaw set; contempt. He didn't think I could do this. 

I pointed the gun at his head. 

Somewhere, I heard a man's yowl of pain, and a stomach-churning snap, but it's just me and him now. Him, a man that ordered me taken, ordered me beaten and tortured and trapped and, when something went wrong, ordered me dumped. But here is a man that is weak in his pride. His pride wouldn't let him leave me here. So he came here, and he tried to take me again. 

This man has done horrible things. This man is evil, inside and out. This man, I would shoot to kill.

He raises his chin to speak, but I'm not weak anymore. I can't be controlled by him, and by them, anymore. I am not their's again.

"My Res would not shoot me." His voice is clear, confident, and even now, he thinks he has won. Even now. 

It takes bravery to admit when you are defeated, and this man is just a lowely coward. Just a coward, and I won't be controlled by cowards anymore. I won't. 

I don't blink. I don't flinch. When I speak, my voice is clear. "I am not yours." 

Even with no moon, and with the sun gone, I can see it as realization sets in, that I am not who I was when he first kidnapped me. That I am no one's but myself, and I will not hesitate to shoot him. 

He his lips, and his eyes dart back and forth as if he's trying to find an ally, but there's no one. No one. 

He opens his mouth as if to speak, but shuts it. He clenches his jaw, unclenches. 

I begin to tighten my finger on the trigger. 

And then the world is bathed with red and blue lights, and doors are thrown open, and a voice booms out in the silence. 

"Put your hands in the air. I repeat, put your hands in the air." 

I see shapes forming from the light, and maybe they're talking to me, but they're not. 

And then. A silence, one of those silences when you feel as if everyone is holding their breath.

Hal Walus, sprawled on the ground, defeated, dirty and disheveled, bloody and bruised and beaten, raised his hands in the air. 

Okay. Um. Wow. 4820 words. Wow. Longest chapter I've ever written in any of my stories, and it only took two days! 

Wow. Finally, the . Wow. Theres still 3 more chapters... but wow. This story had changed so much since I first spun up the idea, and a lot of it's actually been you readers commenting on things that i didn't actually notice lol

but I really couldnn't have made it through this without you guys. All you readers, subscribers, upvoters, you really make my day. Truly. I've loved almost every moment of writing this story, and it's just been awesome to meet some of you fellow A+'s.

 This isn't the end. But it's close. 

/wipes tear

on another note, it's my birthday! April 24th!!! Yay!!! In... 32 minutes, I shall be 14. 

Annnyyywaay, thanks for reading!