"We are the last people standing

At the end of the night.

We are the greatest pretenders

In the cold morning light." 

 The minutes were a blur. People were running, cars were slamming. 

Alarms lit up the night, and cars rode in on the wails. 

And I stood in the middle, surrounded and yet I felt so alone. 

I had almost shot a man. 

I had almost shot a man.

Suddenly, the wind blowing in from the sea chills me to the bone. I wrap my arms around myself, but skinny sticks won't dispel the cold. I bow my head, and the pain comes back to me in flashes of heat. The skin on my face, scrapped and dirty and ripped. My whole body was once was buzzing with adrenaline, but now to move would be to ignite a fire. 

So I don't, and I stand. The gun I had dropped from my nerveless fingers is gone. They must've took it. 

Someone comes up to me, dressed in crisp dark blue. I ignore then, tilting my chin so it digs into my chest, and my arms tighten.

A voice. 

I can't talk to them. 

But they keep going, keep asking me to follow them, to listen, and I can't, I just can't, I can't, and then suddenly Joon's there, and he's wrapping me in his arms and I'm not so cold anymore.

He's telling the blue-dressed person to go away, and they're gone, and it's so loud, but I can't look.

I can't look at those people, or the people arresting them, but I need to know about my family. 

I crack my eyes open. There's Seungho, looking so, so tired. He's crouched over a prone figure, lying on the ground, and when I look closer, I realize it's Byunghee.

I gasp, and in a flash I'm across to them.

At first, all I see is blood, and my heart plummets, and starts to shatter. No. No, not after all we've gone through. No, he's not dead. My hyung isn't dead.  

But then I look closer, and as I get onto my knees in a crouch next to him, Joon right behind me, I realize that the wound's in his leg, the upper thigh. And even closer, I can see the faint rise and fall of his chest. 

I let out a sob, maybe of relief. Tears start streaming down my cheeks, and Seungho reaches to me, and presses a kiss to my temple. Byunghee's eyelids flitter open, and Seungho raises his hand. A medic comes over, and they exchange a couple words, before she darts out again. 

And then another figure, as bloody and bruised as the rest of us, flies in with a rush of relieved breath. "Oh, thank god." It's Cheondung, and he kneels next to Joon on the other side of Byunghee, his wide eyes flying first to the blood, and then to Seungho. 

"Don't worry," he says, and he sounds exhausted. "They don't think it hit anything major. They're calling in an ambulance." 

Cheondung closes his eyes, one of which is already darkening to black, and lets out a sigh. 

I look around, at the five of us. We're all hurt; Joon has a wide cut below his cheekbone and a ring of bruises around his throat. Seungho has a still-bleeding cut on his neck, and it looks like he's trying not to sit up straight. Cheondung, when he extends his hand to Joon's, has bruises decorating his wrist, and when his other hand meets mine, I realize with a pang that the top of his middle finger on his right hand has been clipped off, to just above the top of his nail. Byunghee has the knife wound, and when he opens his mouth to breathe, I can see blood. And these are only the injuries I can see now. 

Me, I know at least my nose is broken, and the pieces of pavement that were pushed into my skin sting. Thousands of other cuts, and bruises, and flares of pain, are sure to be found, but right now, I can push that pain aside. 

Right now, I can join my hands with my family's, and I can cry for what we lost, and I can start to imagine what will be ahead. 

"We'll be okay," Seungho whispers, and this time, I think I can begin to believe. 

I can begin to heal.

I can begin to let go. 

***

Mir doesn't want to see them, in their temporary jail cell in Seoul, and none of us blame him. 

But I think I need to.

 Maybe my sister will visit me. Maybe she'll come.

Or maybe she's too ashamed of me. Of what I've become. 

I would be too.

So, when the watery morning light is streaming through the clouds, I'm slipping out of a cab, a hat pulled low over my face. I'm wearing a jacket with a high neck, to hide the bandages on my neck, and the flowering bruises on my stomach make it hard to move, but I can push through it. 

Silently, I push open the door to the station, and the secrety buzzes me in. Silently, but for the clip of heels on tiles, an officer leads me to the cell. 

Silently, he leaves me there, alone, but for the six figures in the cells. 

Out of the six, only one is awake. 

He's in the furthest cell to the right, and sitting on the floor with his back to the wall and his legs stretched in front of him. He was staring at his hands before I walked up, but as I did, his dark eyes moved up to latch onto mine, too quick. He registers me, and something fades in his expression, something that I wouldn't know was missing until I saw it there.  

I'm the only one awake. I don't know how they can sleep here, with the cold white walls and the breeze that sweeps in with the smell of the sewer. 

And there's nothing left to do but think. Think about how I could have resisted, like he did. How I could have been strong, like he is. But I'm not. I'm weak. 

And it is not my fault I'm weak, but it has decided my life for me. My life, behind prison bars. 

I hear footsteps, and my horrible, rotten heart leaps for just a second, when it think it is my sister that has come. To scream at me, to curse at me, I don't care. As long as she comes. 

It's not her, though, and although I know she won't come, that she doesn't care for me anymore, I still curse the man that comes to stand before me. But all too soon I recongize him as one of his, and my anger fades just as quickly as my hope. 

He has every right to hate me, and from what his haughty eyes say to me, I know he does. 

So why is he here? 

"Why are you here?" He says to me, and his voice is deep, and not quite like I expected. Not as slimy, not as sneer-y.

I don't know exactly why, but I have a question I want to ask. 

"Why?" 

He stares me down with those dark eyes, and finally, when he opens his mouth, it's something like what I expected. 

"I had no choice." 

But I did. I do. 

But I wasn't strong enough. I am not brave. 

His eyes seem to flatten, and I know that was the wrong answer. But I'm not strong enough to admit I am weak. I would rather lie instead. 

Maybe he didn't have a choice in his actions, but they all had a choice in the victim. 

"Why did it have to be Mir?" 

His eyes seem to grey, to gain the wrinkles of one who was seen too much. 

"It was Walus's system. I don't know how he chooses who's next." 

Truth. That, at least, was truth. I try to will him to know that, and I don't know why this is so important to me.

I want to want this man to die. And I do. 

But I don't think that if I was given the axe, I could swing. And it scares me. 

I hate him. I hate him so, so much. 

But I couldn't kill him. 

Silence engulfs the hall. I keep studying this man, as if looking hard enough with unwrap his secrets. As I watch him, he pulls his legs toward his stomach, and grits his teeth in pain as he does so. 

"Did you have braces?" I ask abruptly, and although he looks shocked, I'm as shocked by the burst-out question as he is. 

"No, just good genes." 

My sister has perfect teeth too, I want to say. It must be to make up for being dumped on the street when I was ten, I want to say, but I know I can't. 

I can't tell this man, who I hurt so much by hurting someone he loves, something that no one else knows. But I can tell him something else. 

"I'm sorry." 

Shock tightens my throat, and I try to meet his eyes, but they're lowered. And then the anger comes back, although not as strong as before. "It's too late." 

A pause. 

"I know. But maybe it's better late than never."

"It would have been better if you didn't have to apologize at all." His words are knives, sharpened to kill, and I tuck my shoulders in at the weight. But I know he's right. I know I deserve this, a million times over. 

So I just lower my eyes, and say something I don't mean to let out. "Have you ever done something you regret?" 

I blink, surprised, but I can't see his expression. But of course I have. "Of course. I do things I regret everyday."

"Have you ever done something you regret that has come back to haunt you, millions and millions of times over, when all you can think of is why you deserved this?" 

He doesn't answer, but I can see the answer plain on his privileged face: no. 

"I have." 

Against my will, my curiosity's pricked. Against my will, I feel something for this man, before I push it down again. But I can't help asking. "What?" 

He looked up, straight into my eyes, and his eyes all at once seemed as bitter as frozen steel, and as soft as a kitten's fur. 

"I didn't fight for who I wanted to be." 

When I left, his words ringing in my mind, as I still tried to bury that horrible sympathy for this man, I passed by no one but a woman, no older than 30, with beautifully soft brown eyes and, when she smiled a small, troubled smile as we walked past each other, the best teeth I've ever seen.

I hope you guys didn't find this chapter too confusing, and I hope your heart did a little betraying along the way;)

another note: so sorry for the long wait. the last week has been so busy for me I literally haven't any time for myself, so this was the soonest I could sit down for a bit and write. 

Thanks for reading!