[title song: satellite - sara hartman]
[about 11k!]
[warnings for description of violence & slight injury/blood/gore description]

chapter 26;

“We need Jongdae and Yixing.” Hyemi murmurs, her hand pressed to the carriage as she looks past the boys’ shoulders and towards the eerie little town below the hill.

Jongin blinks, brows knitting together in confusion as he slowly surveys the clearing, “Jongdae and Yixing are here? Where?”

Sehun points towards the town, “Somewhere in there.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“It’s a long story.” Hyemi murmurs, grimacing. “Very long.”

Jongin raises a brow, “Then tell me the short version.”

That’s when Baekhyun takes it upon himself to explain Hyemi’s vision and the twelve symbols she had drawn into the dirt, Hyemi inserting whatever important details Baekhyun misses. Jongin is frozen in his spot by the end of the short summary, his lips forming a small ‘o’ and his eyes locking onto Hyemi.

 “You’re kidding.” Jongin’s frown just deepens, the lines on his face only growing more pronounced. “You have got to be ing kidding me.”

“What?” Hyemi stares at Jongin, examines the distress spearing through Jongin’s dark eyes, the growing distress peeking through his carefully crafted façade. “What happened?”

She glances at Baekhyun, panic growing in her chest, and Baekhyun doesn’t do much to dispel her panic, his lips only pressing into a thin line, his jaw ticking as he stares and stares and stares at Jongin.

No one speaks, Jongin doesn’t say a word, in fact, Sehun is the first one to break the silence, “Jongin?” Sehun’s voice is quiet, filled with worry, gentle, and it’s a far, far cry from his usually snarky tone. “Jongin, what happened?”

Jongin drags a hand down his face, pulling at it, before he looks up, sighs, and smiles as if the distress in his expression had never been there. “Chanyeol was at the wall. I have no idea what his status is out there, we lost contact with him as soon as the wall fell.” Jongin’s voice seems to shake at the last word before he takes a deep, deep breath. Baekhyun’s fingers curl into fists and that’s all Hyemi can look at, even as Baekhyun speaks.

His voice has the slightest tremor to it and it makes Hyemi’s heart break into millions of pieces, her eyes focused on Baekhyun’s fingers, his knuckles whitening as his fingers dig into his palms. “That’s not—we can work around that, I mean—”

Jongin cuts Baekhyun off with a shake of his head and a hand pressed in his hair, “That’s not all, though. I mean—it’s just—Minseok disappeared, too—days ago. When things were looking…really bad, he just up and left one night. There was a note saying that we would get our asses kicked unless we got some help and that was about it. He left no way to contact him and Junmyeon thinks he left to go find Luhan himself.” Jongin pauses, grimaces, “Luhan is—well you all know what’s happened there. And now—now you’re telling me about Yixing and how you need all twelve of us to fight someone who is worse than Yeonma? How the hell are we supposed to do this?”

Jongin looks at Hyemi when he exclaims the last two questions, his eyes dark and his lips turned downwards into a grimace. He looks at her like she’s supposed to have an answer, when clearly she doesn’t. It only makes her angry, the stress and frustration of the news he had for her only feeding into the anger, making her blood boil. Baekhyun reaches for her hand and she shakes it off.

She groans, leaning back against the carriage, “I don’t know.” She shouts, throwing her hands up in the air, “Why are you asking me?”

There’s a short, stunned silence, before Jongin’s expression twists with irritation. He tilts his head and eyes Hyemi with nothing but contempt and it irritates her because Jongin hadn’t been like this before, so why now? It’s not like this war is her fault.

(But it is, a small voice whispers at the back of her mind, and that teeny, tiny notion alone makes her want to run back to her little apartment, curl up in her familiar bed, and cry.)

“Because these are your visions. We’re making decisions based off hunches that only you are able to get.” Jongin exclaims right back, copying her hand gestures. Frustration and anger settles in her blood, in her bones, and she’s semi-aware of the fact that she’s still too tired to conjure up any of her powers, even on accident. She’s semi-aware of the fact that a tiny, minuscule part of her feels disappointed by that fact, and that scary thought only makes her angrier, more frustrated, if not at Jongin or the situation they’re in, then at herself. She just uses Jongin as a target, an excuse.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Hyemi asks, sneers really, rolling her eyes. “I am incredibly aware of that fact.”

“If you were so aware then you’d—”

Sehun interrupts with a raised hand, “Guys, something’s wrong.”

“I’d what?” Hyemi asks, ignoring Sehun as she rounds on Jongin, glaring daggers at him. “I’d do what exactly? Because you’re right I have no ing idea what I’m doing. But, admit it. Neither would you if you were in my place.”

Jongin looks taken aback for a second and then his eyes narrow and his plump lips form a tight scowl.

Jongin opens his mouth to no doubt rip her new one, but Sehun speaks over him first, repeating himself, tone more urgent, “Guys, something is wrong.”

Jongin and Hyemi both turn their glares on Sehun simultaneously, but Baekhyun quickly reaches out and wraps a hand around Hyemi’s fist, a soothing warmth that makes the panic, the building tension, the stress of it all, shatter, overcome by his gentle presence. It’s still there but it’s less somehow, so much less.  

Jongin seems to blink rapidly, his previous irritation forgotten instantly when he sees the way Sehun is staring blankly around them, his lips parted and his eyes wide. He looks up, around, the column of his neck stretching out, his Adam’s apple bobbing in place. There’s a gust of wind, whipping at them from all sides and making Sehun’s hair flutter, the field of red flowers around them rippling with the wind.

Sehun’s looking past them, then, and Hyemi turns to follow his gaze, the wind growing harder all around them, whipping at their faces, at the trees, at the flowers.

“What is that?” Hyemi whispers, because no one else is moving and the wind is no longer a strong breeze but a mighty gust, scattering red flower petals all throughout the clearing, like flecks of blood caught in the wind.

Baekhyun’s fingers tighten around her fist and she immediately releases her fist, twisting her fingers until she manages to capture his hand in hers, her fingers intertwining with his cold ones. His fingers grip hers, a bruising grip that only makes her heart jump into .

Up ahead, where the little town had been, the sky is dark, alarmingly so, lightning bolts skittering through the dark clouds. It looks normal almost, she thinks, like Earth’s thunderstorms, but then she realizes that this is the first time she’s seen something like this, something so normal and Earthly on this planet.

It’s not supposed to be there, she realizes as faint alarms go off at the back of her head, it’s not supposed to be like this.

Dread makes her blood freeze over when her eyes drift downwards, to the little town beneath the thunderclouds and it’s like someone had set the entire town on fire, just poured gasoline over everything and lit it ablaze. The fire dances, flickering playfully against the dark sky, and it reminds her eerily of her visions of the house—Chanyeol’s house—going up in flames in all those visions she had had. Those visions of Pretty Hyemi falling into her grave, of Baekhyun making her look, of Chanyeol and his sister, of flames.

She blinks, frowning at her train of thought before everything comes to a screeching halt, another wave of dread trickling down her spine, prickly and cold, like the time Baekhyun had dropped an ice cube down the back of her shirt in middle school, laughing as she screamed. There’s no pleasant aftermath, this time, just a prolonged shiver, a squirming feeling at the pit of her stomach, and horrible, terrible dread.

She locks eyes with Jongin, of all people, right then, and his eyes seem to reflect the shivering terror she feels curling around the pit of her stomach. She whispers a horrified, “Jongdae” just as Jongin’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates and Baekhyun’s fingers tighten around hers, so tight his knuckles turn a pale, ghostly white, flickering out of sight for a brief second.

There’s a loud, prolonged, screech, like metal grinding on metal, and it’s so terribly grating that Hyemi grits her teeth, a chill running up her spine in the process. And then there’s a bolt of lightning, fast and sharp, streaking through the dark before disappearing, only to be followed by a deafening boom mere seconds later. It’s loud, the two sounds, and echoes in the silence between the four of them for barely five seconds before they’re all moving, Baekhyun tugging at Hyemi’s hand, making her stumble as she runs straight into Jongin, pushing at him arm to get him to move forward, though he doesn’t need an incentive to move, already moving forward on his own, Sehun hot on Hyemi’s heels. Until Jongin’s teleporting them, the familiar feeling of being squeezed through a tiny hole startling Hyemi, making her lose her breath, her fingers gripping at Baekhyun’s hand and Sehun’s shirt.

~.~.~.~.~

“Let go.” A vaguely familiar voice echoes in her head, fading in and out as if there’s someone on a little swing inside of her head, repeating those words over and over and over again. “Let go, let go, let go, let g—”

Her eyes jolt open as she takes a staggering breath, chest heaving. She thinks maybe she’d be on the floor, maybe with Baekhyun crouching over with worried brown eyes and that signature pout of his. Maybe Jongin and Sehun would be there, too, sweat dripping down Jongin’s brow from teleporting all of them at once. Except—she’s sitting in a chair.

Slowly, Hyemi takes in her surroundings, surveys the exposed beams above her head and the bare walls surrounding the tiny room. There’s a door in front of her, just beyond the table she’s sitting at, and no furniture whatsoever. The room itself is hazy with smoke, making her vision bleary. It smells faintly of chocolate and something else she can’t quite figure out. And then she looks down, at the table in front of her, and stares between a beautifully decorated cup and a piece of paper laid out in front of her. The cup, she notices, is a deep black, a dozen delicate of white running up and down the cup, like vines sprouting from the bottom of the cup in such a way that the cup looks like it’s being swallowed whole.

There’s something so utterly eerie about the room, like she’s teetering on the edge of both here and there, somewhere in-between realities. The hazy smoke only fosters that feeling and doesn’t do much to alleviate the tight knot forming in her stomach.

Hyemi doesn’t know where she is or what she’s doing, at least not until her hand starts to move on its own. Only then does she realize that it’s not her hand—she’s in another vision.

She watches from within her own body as her hand—the body’s hand—reaches for the piece of paper. She feels the rough texture of the paper, scratchy beneath her fingertips, before the paper is flipped over. All that’s etched onto it is a number, 22:12, in dark ink, some of which is splattered across the rest of the paper, like inky tear stains blotting its way across the paper’s creamy surface.

As if on cue, there’s a knock at the door, soft but so deafening when it echoes throughout the tiny room. Not even a single second passes by before the door is pulled open, light pouring through  into the hazy room, light that seems to dance in the dust and smoke, catching Hyemi’s—and her body’s—eyes.

The person—a vaguely familiar person who’s very presence makes the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end and a shiver run down her spine and straight to her toes—floats into the room, robes gently gliding along behind them and their face covered by a dark hood. She watches with an unexplainable racing heart as the person takes a seat right across from her, the chair screeching as they drag its legs along the ground. There’s something so real about this person, especially in a room that feels both unreal and real. She stares at the top of their hood and her heart slams in at the feeling of being watched. This person isn’t just staring at the body she is occupying, no, this person is staring at her.

She’s hit with the realization so suddenly that she can’t breathe, a trickle of fear creeping up her spine and down the back of her neck in a way that makes it feel like someone’s breathing down her neck, puffs of warm air hitting the skin there, fingers fluttering over her shoulders, goosebumps prickling at her skin. She realizes, right then and there, that this person can see her.

They can see her.

“Hello, darling.” The voice is quiet, almost inaudible, as if Hyemi’s imagining the voice in her head. She stares and stares and the hooded figure keeps speaking, in that spine-chilling, echoing voice, unrecognizable because of how far away it sounds, “Can’t seem to stay out of other people’s heads, now can you?”

There’s an edge to the person’s tone and she watches as the person lifts their hand, the very tip of their pale finger visible from under the long sleeves of their robes. She flinches, or at least she tries to since her body isn’t hers to move, but the hooded figure doesn’t pause in their movements, reaching forward and placing a delicate fingertip against the black cup. She watches as the of white lines begin to move, slithering up and down the cup, until there’s a dozen more lines, like tiny serpents grasping at the object, the white quickly overcoming the black color. Hyemi has always thought that absolute darkness would be a horrifying sight to behold, but as she watches the slither white lines fill the cup with a quickening heart, as she watches the white snakes slink onto the table, creep and crawl towards her body—the same body she can’t control—she starts to believe that absolute white is just as terrifying. The white lines seem to grow, both in size and in shape, and she can’t explain why her heart is racing so damn hard in her chest. They multiply, fill the room with the color white, crawl up her body’s hands and it burns. It burns so much.

“This is for being nosy.” The hooded figure says, tone amused, “You’ll see what you need to see eventually, unfortunately. But this will only be a little detour.”

She gasps at the sudden burst of pain flaming through her nerves and the hooded figure just laughs and laughs. That’s the only thing she hears as the slivers of white become monstrous , taking over everything. They crawl along the table, up her fingertips and up, up, up her neck. They slither along her arms and down her legs in a way that makes it feel like there’s a thousand tiny fires igniting along her skin all at once and it hurts so much.

She screams, not just her but her body as well, the sound a deeper one, as the white monstrous things creep up her face, into her eyes, her eyes watering. Her entire world turns white; it’s nothing but pure white and she thinks that pure should not be the word for it. Absolute black felt like nothingness, but absolute white feels like everything and its consuming in its brightness. It’s blinding. It burns. It burns.

It burns, it burns, it burns.

“It burns.” A voice whimpers, breaking on the last word. It takes her a moment to process through the shock that that voice is the same vaguely familiar voice from earlier and, once she does, her eyes widen, her fingers curling into fists, fingernails forming crescent moons along her palms.

Hyemi blinks, rubs at her face and the wetness staining it, before she looks down, at her arms—her own arms. They’re littered with scratch marks, raised and red and painful. She rubs at her stinging eyes and looks up through strands of fallen hair, squinting through the bright whiteness and she sees is someone hunched over, whimpering.

(Hyemi could almost pretend that they’re standing in a field of snow.)

She manages to get to her feet, stumbling as she moves closer, until she comes to a sudden halt when the person—Yixing, she realizes, feeling both relieved and horrified and as if she needs to sit down for a long, long time—meets her eyes, strands of matted, sweaty hair falling into his piercing eyes.

“Hy—Hyemi?” He whispers, like he can’t believe his eyes.

She limps (she doesn’t want to know because of what) towards him, stumbling and falling on to the cold, white floor before she scrambles towards him, her eyes wide. She grasps for him and Yixing doesn’t stop staring at her.

He just stares and stares and stares.

“You’re alive. You’re alive.” Hyemi breathes, her chest heaving as she quickly brushes his hair out of his eyes, frowning at the cuts and bruises marring his cheeks. Her frown deepens when she notices his swollen lips and the way he’s cradling his arm. “But why aren’t you…why aren’t you healing?” She whispers.

Yixing just stares at her and speaks, voice soft and low, “You’re supposed to be dead.” He whispers the words and she hears his voice waver the tiniest bit. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

She pulls away from him, her eyes wide and her fingers trembling, while Yixing shakes his head, tears welling in his eyes. The wounds on his face are getting smaller, as if they’re healing, but just when she thinks they’re disappear, Yixing recoils into himself, crying out. She watches, in absolute horror, as more cuts and bruises form on his skin, and she wants to cry with him.

“What happened to you?” Hyemi asks, though her voice comes out hesitant and so, so small.

Yixing lets out a heart-wrenching sob, the sound making her heart twist in her chest, “You’re all supposed to be dead.” He screams it this time and his voice sounds scratchy, as if he’s never really screamed like that before. He doesn’t seem like the type to scream or cry like this, she thinks, and the way his voice breaks, lilts up before falling away into a broken whisper only makes her want to wrap her arms around him and tell him that this isn’t real. She isn’t sure if it’s real or not, but she doesn’t want him to believe it is. “Why won’t he—why won’t my body just let me die?”

He whispers the last words, quiet and strangely calm, like the calm before the storm, and it feels like someone’s set her chest on fire. All she can think to do is reach for Yixing, comfort him even though she’s supposed to be dead. She reaches for him, only to have her hands pushed away.

Only to have Yixing, his kind eyes filled with pain and anger and the burdens of too many, recoil from her touch and whisper, “It’s all because of you.”

Her heart thrums in her chest when she hears laughter; that same ugly, bitter, cold laugh from the person in the robes. It gets harder to breathe. The accusing look in Yixing’s eyes only seems to echo in the empty white space around them, his words bouncing in her head, amplified by the haunting laughter.

“It’s all because of you.”

His voice sounds further away and she closes her eyes, tries her best to just breathe. She tries her best not think about how that is the one thing that haunts her most about all this; that everything that is happening, everything that they are going through is because of her. She’s the one leading them into destruction—creating destruction—and she’s afraid that she won’t be able to stop it, that this vision is something from the future, not something the robed figure wants to scare her with. It’s something real. Because, in the end, it’ll all be her fault.

When she finally opens her eyes, inhaling a staggered breath, she sees Yixing again. This time, however, the planes of his face are softer, younger. They’re not surrounded by blinding white space anymore. They’re standing in what Hyemi imagines to be Exo Planet’s version of a bar, where creatures of different skin colors and eye colors, with extra extremities, sit in a dimly lit room and chat away as they drink from heavy wooden mugs, a waitress with a third eye and sharp features gliding between tables and smiling at the patrons—at least Hyemi thinks it’s a smile since it’s all fangs and long, forked tongue.

Yixing is smiling, dimples deep and eyes curved downwards, as he weaves through tables gracefully, sidestepping the waitress who’s third eye, the one right in the middle of her forehead, watches him go, even as she talks to one of her patrons in a language Hyemi doesn’t recognize. Yixing squeezes her shoulder as he passes by and flicks a forked tongue at him, muttering something in another language that makes him laugh, a quiet little thing that’s gone as quickly as it came. There’s a strange sort of atmosphere that trails behind him, even as he quickly makes his way to the back of the bar and through rainbow bead curtains that rattle, the sound echoing in Hyemi’s ears. Hyemi doesn’t have to move; it’s like her body’s attached to Yixing because she’s following him whether she wants to or not, walking right through the bead curtains without making them move.

“Ah, welcome back .” Yixing murmurs, in that always calm voice of his. She watches as he takes a seat and smiles at the man sitting across from him. The man, though he still looks like a boy, has mint green hair and pure white eyes, his small face stoic and his lips downturned. Those eyes are disconcerting to look at, but Yixing doesn’t even look fazed. Yixing just his head to the left, still smiling, and murmurs, “I thought you said you’d be done after the last time.”

“I am done.” The mint haired, white eyed, pale boy-man spits out, his voice deep and his expression pinched. “I am done with you and your business. Your drugs.”

“I just amplify euphoric feelings.” Yixing tells him, still sitting even as the boy-man abruptly jumps to his feet, his chair falling back with a loud thud, his chest heaving. “You paid me to do it. They are not drugs, not unless you want them to be.”

“Half of the people in this town are addicted, you ing .” The boy-man growls out the words and though he tries for fierce, white eyes, there’s something almost defeated hidden in his expression, something pained and hurt. “I can’t—my friends—they’re—”

For the first time since sitting down, Yixing’s expression seems to change the slightest bit. His eyes wide a fraction of an inch and his Adam’s apple bobs in place. His fingers clench together in his lap and Hyemi has a feeling he can feel the emotions fluttering about in the room. “It doesn’t concern me.” Yixing murmurs, but there’s an edge to his tone that tells Hyemi that even if Yixing doesn’t want to care, he still does. That’s what Yixing’s powers do to him; they heal others, let him empathize with others, but they make him feel everything at a rate that Hyemi thinks she could never live with.

Yixing’s voice echoes between them in the silence, the tension growing, until the mint-haired boy-man shouts, a guttural, pained sound that makes Yixing wince for a second, just as the boy-man lunges for Yixing, his white eyes glowing, searing, with energy.

Yet, the boy-man doesn’t even make it across the table before he cries out, grabbing at his head as his screams morph into whimpers. He crashes into the table before rolling off if it, collapsing on the ground.

Yixing remains seated in spot, even as his guards, creatures who report to him in his business, remain rooted to their spots, watching on in fear. Yixing just sighs, but Hyemi sees the way his forehead wrinkles a bit in distress, “You feel that, Mr. Min? That’s how you felt when you fell off your Grandmother’s favorite tree. Does it hurt? What if I added the pain from that time when you were nearly beat to death by your father for secretly dating a child of the Second Moon?” Yixing pauses, stares blankly while the boy-man—Mr. Min—groans out pleas for him to stop. Yixing doesn’t. He just adds, “How about I add the feelings you just had, because your friends are dying from withdrawal right before your eyes and you can’t do a thing about it?”

“St—stop, please. Please.”

Yixing’s chair scrapes across the floor as he murmurs, “Attack me again and I’ll make it hurt worse than it already does. Trust me.”

And then he walks out, waving his hand at one of his stricken guards, leaving Hyemi to stare after his back, both horrified and in awe, while Mr. Min sobs against the floor, his mint hair sticking to his cheeks. He whimpers a string of bare comprehensible words, his voice trailing away weakly.

Hyemi doesn’t know what to think and her heart thrums in , more in fear than anything else. She had no idea Yixing could be like this; she didn’t think it was possible. Slowly, she closes her eyes, opening them to a new scene, one she hopes will be infinitely better.

That’s when she feels a sharp pain in her chest, right where her heart is. Hyemi looks down to hands that aren’t hers, looks up to black spots in her vision and screaming, screaming she belatedly realizes is her body’s—Yixing’s. There’s blood rushing in her ears and it’s so ing loud. She feels like she’s drowning in sounds, in screams and the pain in her chest, in overwhelming hurt and pain and feelings.

She closes her eyes, tries to stop the pain twisting at her chest and flooding her heart. She tries to block out all the awful sounds, chants stop stop stop (though it sounds more like Yixing’s voice than hers) and when she opens her eyes again, she’s surprised she’s succeeded.

She’s standing in a room where all she can hear are the sounds of water running and a soft voice singing a soothing tune.

Both of those stop almost simultaneously and the room is so, so quiet, a welcome relief from all the sounds from earlier. It’s a cozy little room, with just a large bed and a coffee table covered with cups. There are clothes strewn across the floor and a small trunk overflowing with folded clothes in the corner, just next to the door and the tall wooden rod that holds two coats. There’s another door straight ahead that’s open just a crack, steam trickling out the door, Hyemi doesn’t think she’s seen any place as homely as this in Exo Planet yet. It feels lived in, like there’s love burrowed in every corner.

The door creaks open and Hyemi watches as Yixing steps into the room, his nose and cheeks pink from the cold wind outside. He pulls his coat off, hanging it on the rod, and looks straight through her, walks straight through her, sighing as he takes a seat on the bed.

That’s when the other door creaks open, humidity filling the room.

Yixing grimaces playfully over his shoulder, “Did you use all the hot water again?”

“If you joined me instead of showing up early to your meetings this wouldn’t have to be a problem.” Jongdae quips back and Hyemi glances at Jongdae, takes one glance at his bare chest and towel wrapped waist, before she immediately turns around, reddening. “I hate it when you leave and I’m left to wait for you.”

“I told you that’s what my job woul—”

“I know. I just like to complain.”

“Whine would be a better word for it.”

Jongdae whines out, “Hey!”

“It’s cute, though.”

It’s quiet for a long time, aside from Jongdae laughing softly in the background, and Hyemi can see a glimpse of them through the dressing table mirror, Jongdae standing between Yixing’s legs and Yixing smiling with so much adoration and their fingers intertwined and Jongdae nuzzling his nose into Yixing’s hair, earning him a cute snicker from Yixing. It’s so utterly intimate, filled with so much fondness and love, that Hyemi has to look away from the mirror, giving them what little privacy she can. She feels like she’s intruding and it makes her wonder why in the world she needs to see this, her cheeks reddening a bit at the amount of adoration she had seen in their eyes.

She closes her eyes to Jongdae murmuring I love you and Yixing laughing so softly, the sound a pretty fluttering thing, caught in the cusp of two visions, echoing in Hyemi’s ears, because as soon as Hyemi opens her eyes, she’s standing in the pouring rain, cold water dripping down her skin and seeping into her bones, making her shiver and her teeth chatter uncontrollably. She blinks the rain from her eyes, her fingers trembling from the cold, from the thumping in her chest, from the tense atmosphere, thick and heavy, worse than the rain. Her heartbeat thrums against and her fingers tighten around her coat as she stares intently ahead of her, where a pitch black coffin sits on a bed of brown grass and mud. She feels drawn towards the coffin, but her legs won’t move. She just stares. Stares and stares and stares. The heavy pitter patter of the rain almost drowns out the crying, the choked sobs, a familiar deep voice gasping for air as if he’s a fish out of water, another familiar voice murmuring no no no. Almost.

The hydrangeas and daisies look strange from where they hang off the coffin, too alive in a world that is otherwise so, so dead. They look like they’re crumpling, dripping with heavy rain, as if the flowers are dying as well, wilting in honor of the person in the coffin. There’s a symbol etched across the top of the coffin and it takes Hyemi a long minute to wade through her sorrow-filled mind and fully make out that symbol, fully recognize it’s familiar shape. 

She squints, her eyes flitting over the star shaped symbol, dots lining the edges, until suddenly, it all just clicks into place and her heart tumbles into the very pit of her stomach, bursting a hundred times on the way down, her breath catching in her chest, making it so, so hard to breathe, her eyes widening, and—God, she thinks she’s going to throw up.

She doesn’t know if that’s possible, puking in a vision, but she feels utterly sick and her fingers fold into fists, her nails pressing red crescent moons into her palms until she’s seeing black dots and her eyes sting.

Because that symbol, the one etched across the top of the coffin, is one of the twelve symbols she had drawn into the dirt before the hunters had captured them. It’s not just one of theirs, her fingers only shake at the sight, the black coffin burning itself into her memories.

It is Byun Baekhyun’s.

The star shaped one with the dots lining the edges, she remembers Baekhyun pointing out each insignia, his pretty fingers hovering over the star for a moment longer than he had done with the rest of them, his warm voice telling her that it was his.

It is Baekhyun’s insignia.

And it is Baekhyun’s coffin.

She gasps, because she can’t breathe, and spins on her heels, her eyes falling on the figures surrounding her, at Chanyeol on his knees, the rain sizzling as it touches his skin, fire burning at the very tip of his fingers and turning into smoke. At all of them because they are all there, clutching onto their umbrellas—to each other, to themselves, to their emotions—for dear life, Jongin and Sehun and Tao and Junmyeon (who she suspects is creating the downpour to hide the onslaught of tears), Kyungsoo, Minseok, Luhan, even Kris. There’s Jongdae, pants covered in mud and face buried in the confines of his arms, his words (no no no) audible, despite everything, his hands wrapped so tightly around Yixing’s that his knuckles are turning white.

Hyemi’s eyes are filling with tears, her vision swimming, even as she tears her gaze away from Jongdae’s broken form, focusing entirely on Yixing crouching beside Jongdae, his fingers curled in Jongdae’s hair and his face pressed to the top of Jongdae’s head. His cheeks are wet with tears, but his bloodshot eyes are pinned on the coffin, almost unseeing. The grief and pain in his eyes and face are etched so deep that Hyemi’s knees buckle.

She sinks into the wet mud, her fingers grasping for purchase as she tries to make sense of it all. This can’t be a memory of Yixing’s, not when Baekhyun is alive. How could there be a funeral for him when he’s been alive all this time? How could that be possible? That only leaves one option, she realizes: one that terrifies her more than anything else. And that is the fact that this vision is just that: a vision of the future.

Her mind is whirring as she stares at Yixing, running through all the possibilities, until suddenly Yixing’s unfocused eyes drift away from the coffin and snap sideways, until he’s lifting his head and looking straight at her and her grip tightens around the wet, dead grass, her thoughts screeching to a halt because Yixing keeps staring, his eyes suddenly hyper-focused, boring holes into her.

She blinks, reaching up to rub at the rain and tears blurring her vision, mud streaking her face.

Yixing’s grief-stricken face just falls away into something worse, something scarier.

Yixing looks at her with so much concern, so much pity, that Hyemi is completely taken aback, startled out of her shock at seeing Baekhyun’s coffin and the emotions, the horror and grief, it had stirred up inside of her.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Yixing’s voice echoes in her ears, too loud for someone who is so far away. “Neither of you should be here.”

There’s laughter behind her and she slowly looks over her shoulder, her eyes wide, but before she can see, everything goes black.

~.~.~.~.~

Hyemi opens her eyes, groaning as she rubs at her aching eyes, frowning because her cheeks are wet and her eyes feel swollen, stinging at her touch. She doesn’t even get to orient herself with her surroundings or make sense of what she’s just seen when Jongin’s voice echoes strangely from beside her.

“Finally you’re awake.” Jongin’s exasperated voice is right in her ear and it makes her glare, dropping her hands to her lap and ignoring the throbbing headache as she looks up at Jongin, blinking rapidly

Her annoyed response dies from her lips the second she takes in her surroundings, the way Jongin’s lugging her forward, his face haggard and eyes more sunken in then she remembers it being earlier, his arm wrapped around her waist as he carries all her weight. She pulls away from Jongin, swaying a bit, her head spinning, before she latches onto him again. Jongin, thankfully, doesn’t say anything, just adjusts her in his arms and lugs her forward, his breathing loud despite how loud their surroundings are.

Her words get caught at the tip of her tongue when she sees Baekhyun right ahead of them, leading the way, warm, golden light spilling from his fingers. The warmth radiating from his light instantly makes her more relaxed and less disoriented, despite the fact that Baekhyun’s running now and Jongin’s running, too, that she’s trying her best to run, as well, though Jongin’s doing the most work between them. She manages to turn her head, her temples pounding painfully, and she sees Sehun running behind them, occasionally turning and running backwards, his arms twisting, his body composing dances only Sehun and the air know, his leg whirling into the air so fast, there’s a sudden blast of almost visible air arcing out and down the passageway in the same direction as Sehun’s legs and hands.

And behind him—behind them—is a group of hooded figures coming in fast, like shadows, fast and utterly uncaring. Some of them get hit by Sehun’s attacks, so hard that there’s a booming crack when one of the hooded figure is slammed against the ceiling or the wall or another hooded figure, but some of them dodge the attacks, ducking and rolling, before there’s a soft twang and an arrow shoots past Hyemi’s ear, just barely missing. The ones Sehun does manage to take out are only replaced by two more and it’s terrifying how many of them there are.

Sehun takes a moment to plant both his feet down flat, raising his hands as he takes a deep, deep breath, his hands forming loose claws as he extends his hands before he winds his arms, creates an intricate sort of dance that emits slicing wind gusts, emitting sharp sounds, their kickbacks causing Hyemi’s hair to whip against her face, strands of her hair getting caught in . He pushes his hands out and Hyemi watches in both awe and horror, tripping over her feet, as Sehun jabs his hands in the direction of a particular hooded figure, one with a chain and ball who’s is coming up awfully close, and a whirlwind of air swirls around the hooded figure’s head, whipping off his hood, his dark hair standing up straight. His feet hang inches off the ground, just dangling. She watches as the man—a boy, really—claws at his throat, his mouth wide open and his eyes bulging, the ball and chain falling from his fingers and hitting the ground with a resounding boom. He claws and claws and Hyemi vaguely realizes that Sehun has stopped the air from reaching his lungs.

Her eyes widen, some of the other hooded figures stop in their tracks, staring at the comrade, their expressions hidden by their hoods. Jongin yanks her into a side passage before she can hear the final thump and she is left to imagine the body going limp from suffocation.

They flit through the passageways, Sehun at Hyemi side a full two minutes later, sweat covering his brow and his voice hoarse as he says, “I’ve slowed them down. They won’t bother us for a while.”

She’s using her own two legs, this time around, but her head aches more than ever, her ears ringing. She’s glad they burst through a pair of doors because that means they can stop running.

She’s glad until the doors slam shut behind them on its own.

Hyemi immediately straightens up and Baekhyun changes his stance, his body blocking half of hers almost unconsciously. Hyemi tugs at the back of his shirt, pulling him back towards her a little.

“Ah, you’re here.” Wendy’s voice echoes in the room, bouncing off the walls, a mechanical bow hanging off her shoulder and her arms crossed over her chest. She smiles, a sweet, sweet thing that contradicts the image of Yixing beaten black and blue, sprawled out on his stomach in a cage, the bars an obsidian black color that looks infinitely stronger than any metal. There are sparks bouncing off between the bars, charged blue, and Hyemi is ninety-nine percent positive she’s right; that’s no ordinary cage. Yixing doesn’t do or say a thing, he just lies on his stomach, one of his eyes swollen shut while the other one is drooping, though pinned on Jongdae’s heaving form anyway. Wendy’s sweet smile doesn’t make sense with the image of Jongdae lying on his back, breathing heavily, while lightning sparks spill from his fingers, as if he can’t control them. His hair is matted to his forehead and his shirt is burnt and torn, blood pooling at his hip and his face swollen.

She tosses her hair off her shoulders and keeps smiling, her tone absolute delightful, “What took you so long?” She tilts a head, her electric blue strands glowing in the dim lighting. “I was beginning to think that they’ve killed you.”

Baekhyun’s back stiffens as he surveys Yixing and Jongdae before he murmurs, “What the hell did you do?”

“A better question to ask is; what the hell didn’t I do?” Then Wendy laughs, a low sound, and Hyemi’s blood begins to boil, hatred pricking at her veins. “I’m just appalled that you didn’t think I could take even one of you. How disrespectful. I’m a hunter, you dimwits, how dare you underestimate me?”

That’s when Hyemi speaks, her tone sharp, anger making her voice tremble and the pounding in her head only getting louder. “What did you do to them?”

“Him?” Wendy raises a brow before she jabs a thumb in Yixing’s direction. “Well, I did try to tell you about the hunters that run this place, didn’t I?” Then Wendy nudges Jongdae’s cheek with the tip of an arrow, pressing the sharp end into the fleshy part until a speck of blood forms, trickling slowly down his cheek. Hyemi watches it happen, her head pounding as if someone’s banging a drum against her brain, and her blood itching at the sight, her fingers clenching into fists at her side. “This one, though, made the mistake of turning his back on me.”

Jongin takes one step forward, snarling, his expression cold and hard, “I’m giving you five seconds to drop your weapons before I kill you.”

Neither of them expect her to laugh, a loud ringing sound that bounces off the walls. For a moment, Hyemi thinks Wendy’s image flickers, disappearing before reappearing like a bad reception, but it’s so fast Hyemi just assumes it was a part of her imagination. Wendy easily draws her bow, lifts it leisurely at them, making Hyemi tense in her spot, grabbing at Baekhyun to pull him back only to have him step in front of her more, as if he’s trying to protect her. Wendy closes one eye, measuring the distance with pursed lips. “I’m the fastest shooter in our organization. I can shoot you clean through in a blink of an eye. Would you like a test run?”

It’s obvious in the way she looks at them, with glinting eyes, that she’s not bluffing.

“Listen.” Baekhyun says, slowly. “We promised you that—”

“This arrow has a special little mix in it. The Red and The Velvet?” Wendy cuts him off with a humming voice, “I think you had a taste of it earlier, am I right?”

Jongin glances sideways at Hyemi and Baekhyun when they stiffen, confused, “What’s she talking about?”

Sehun groans softly, “You don’t want to know.” Hyemi notices the agitation in his eyes, since he’s clearly still too exhausted to do anything fast enough with his wind, too spent to help. Jongin looks like he wants to argue, but then he just purses his lips and keeps his mouth shut, his eyes pinned on Wendy, as if he’s analyzing the situation and running through scenarios to get out of this.

“Well, that one was the prototype. Yeri says this one’s the real deal. Says it takes instantly and it lasts five times longer. Imagine five days of being in an absolute vegetable state. She’s a genius, isn’t she?”

“I ing swear,” Hyemi snaps out when Wendy just drags out her words, immediately pushing past Baekhyun, her hands balled into tight fists, “Stop playing around and just ing fight—”

Hyemi cuts herself off immediately when Wendy’s entire body goes rigid as she snaps her bow in Hyemi’s direction, the string taut in her fingers and her light blue strands swinging distractingly. She watches Wendy’s movements warily, Baekhyun’s hands pressed against her waist, more of a harness than a tether this time. Wendy smiles, “We’ve never gotten the chance to test it inside of a freak before, though. Tell me, Hyemi, should I shoot you or…” She moves her arm just a an inch to Hyemi’s left, the arrow hovering over Baekhyun’s heart, “This pretty boy of yours?”

Baekhyun’s stance becomes completely defensive, as if he thinks he can shield Hyemi with his whole body, and this only infuriates Hyemi more because what the hell does he think he’s doing?

“If you’re such a great hunter, then why don’t you just fight one of us head on? Or are you just waiting for backup like a coward?” Hyemi blurts out, her eyes pinned on Wendy.

Wendy’s expression changes and Hyemi just hopes she’ll take the bait, she just hopes that she can get Wendy to fight them one on one, at least so Jongin can get Yixing and Jongdae out, though Hyemi thinks Jongin’s one mass teleportation away from passing out.

Her eyes darken and she drops her arm, the bow going slack, and Hyemi has to fight to keep the relief from her expression.

Wendy’s narrows her eyes before she says, slowly, “You’re right.” The relief is short-lived however, especially when Wendy murmurs, “I choose this one, then.”

Without warning, she lifts her arm, drops her gaze, and grabs the arrow off her bowstring before jabbing it downwards, pushing it directly into Jongdae’s torso with such strength that Jongdae splutters, his mouth falling open in a silent scream, dry lips cracking and eyes fluttering as he thrashes, blood gushing when she twists. They’re a second too late by the time they realize what she’s done, what she’s planned next when Wendy’s pressing a button on the other end of the arrow and detaching the end of the metal arrow, spinning on her heel to throw the spear-like end at Yixing’s cage, clearly aiming through the bars at Yixing. Hyemi’s scream catches in , weak in comparison to Baekhyun, Jongin, and Sehun’s shocked shouts.

Hyemi scrambles forward, then, Sehun blasting air through the room, catching Wendy just as she’s about to turn and run and shoving her forward onto her hands and knees. Then Sehun brings his hands down, slamming her into the ground, face first, blood spurting when she breaks her nose.

The splintered metal arrow hits one of the cage bars, but Yixing doesn’t even heed it any mind, leaning up on his hands, his good eye wide with shock and mouth open. Sehun’s uses air pressure to press Wendy into the floor, the stone ground beneath her slowly beginning to crumble with the added pressure, her gasps of pain echoing in the room along with the soft crunch of gravel, of what Hyemi thinks might be bone, intertwining with Jongdae’s heavy breathing and small whines, his fingers overrun by tiny sparks of electricity, jumping and shooting off him haphazardly. Baekhyun’s already at Jongdae’s side, hands hovering because he can’t touch Jongdae, not when his powers are so out of control and practically bouncing off his skin. Baekhyun’s hands are shaking.

“Jongdae.” Yixing’s soft voice breaks at the last syllable, turns into a helpless little lilt.

Hyemi turns to Jongin, whose eyes are closed, his brows furrowed, and her heart races against her ribs, “Can you teleport in there and get him out? Yixing can…he can heal him.”

“I can’t.” Jongin gasps, his eyes flying open. He tries to touch the cage and flinches, yanking his hand back. “I can’t.” He whispers.

Hyemi whips around, her ears ringing from the pain in her head, “Open the ing cage.” She bites out.

Sehun lets up on the pressure and Wendy takes a deep, shaky breath, and Hyemi doesn’t even feel bad that Sehun’s pushed her half an inch into the ground, rubble lining her body, her cheek bruised and her eyes bloodshot. “It’s NCT Hun—hunter…tech. I have n—no idea h…ow to work it.” Wendy mumbles, easily giving in to Hyemi’s demand. Sehun’s breathing hard, kneeling from overexertion and Wendy looks relieved with that fact. “Nothing will work ex…except the k—key.”

When Hyemi looks at Jongdae, she feels a certain responsibility to him, perhaps because this entire mission, this entire situation, was her mother’s fault and therefore her fault, or maybe it was because of the look Jongdae had given her before leaving with Wendy, like he had been asking for permission, like she was the one in charge here. Which she is. Jongin was right. And she can’t help the panic building at the pit of her stomach, especially when her eyes hone in on the blood pooling beneath him. She can’t help the utter grief seeping into her thoughts when she thinks of Yixing, trapped in that cage, unable to help though he’s the only one that can.

That’s when Hyemi snaps into action, moving forward towards Jongdae. “Move him closer to the cage.” Hyemi murmurs to Baekhyun, who looks at her with startled, sad eyes. She glances over her shoulder in indication, “It’s an electrified cage and it’s only a couple feet away. Jongdae can touch it and Yixing can—he can heal him through the bars, right?”

“We can try.” Sehun mumbles, face pale and lips paler from overexertion.

Hyemi raises her hands, hesitates for a moment because the electricity bounding along Jongdae’s skin is going to hurt and her instincts are telling her to stop right there.

She doesn’t. She takes a deep breath and reaches for Jongdae, at the same time Baekhyun does. It hurts, it burns and tingles, like she’s pressing her fingers against a hot stove, but they quickly drag him towards the cage. Jongdae lets out a low, weak groan and Hyemi pretends like she doesn’t see the streak of blood trailing behind his body. Yixing immediately scrambles forward, pushing his hands through the bar. The electricity of the cage eats away at his skin, the smell of burning flesh getting stronger and stronger, but Yixing doesn’t seem to notice, his skin regenerating only to be eaten away, over and over again, as if palms glow against Jongdae’s skin. Hyemi stumbles back, Baekhyun catching her hands in his as they both fall to floor, watching on in muted anticipation as Yixing murmurs words in a different language to Jongdae, Jongdae smiling weakly. Yixing works to remove the arrow, his hands pressing into Jongdae’s wound.

Hyemi thinks it’ll work. It’ll work. She won’t have to see another funeral, her fingers tightening around Baekhyun’s cold fingers, her fingertips digging into his skin so hard he murmurs, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

She wonders if he’s saying that for her or for himself.

It’ll work, she thinks, but then the door to the giant empty room slams open and hooded figures spill into the room. Hyemi can’t breathe, not when an arrow flies through the air and lodges itself in one of Yixing’s forearms, not when Jongdae coughs up blood, his hand fluttering up to his wound, where Yixing is his shirt, trying and trying to heal him, though the white glow of his powers is fading, his body clearly overexerting his powers.

Yixing screams, then, a loud, heart-shattering sound and Hyemi doesn’t have the guts to look at Jongdae or Yixing. Her headache splits through her head, makes her see things that aren’t there.

(“You’re always making me wait.” Jongdae’s beautiful pout as he sits on Yixing’s office chair. Jongdae’s face morphs into anger, when they’re both at the academy and Kris is rolling his eyes, voice crawling with self-hatred as he mutters nonsense about being just like his father. And then Kris is walking away and Junmyeon overextends himself, exhausts himself, and Jongdae looks so so sad. Yixing starts feeling empty, because sometimes, he gets too caught up in other people’s emotions, in manipulating other people’s emotions, to tell what’s his and what isn’t his, and the emptiness relegates him to curling up in his bed, unable to get up. Jongdae makes a habit of joining him eventually on these days, tiptoeing into his room, occupying his entire bed, his palms pressing onto Yixing’s cheeks as he kisses Yixing’s forehead, tells him about his day, about Taeyeon hanging someone off a tower by his underwear for calling her short, about Baekhyun and Junmyeon and Kyungsoo nearly dropping a rock on Chanyeol and purposely thinking about horrible songs repeatedly around Luhan so they’d get stuck in Luhan’s head, all while threading his fingers through Yixing’s and drawing smooth circles along the back of his hands and kissing the wrinkles from between his brows, Yixing going cross-eyed just to watch it happen. Yixing joining the brotherhood first, leaving for long periods of time, only to come home to an empty bed, to Jongdae gone for long periods of time, too. But they find a way to keep going, they start a tradition of finding handwritten notes in the drawers, in the bathroom, in their pantry, from Jongdae to Yixing, Yixing to Jongdae, ranging from mundane things that have Yixing smiling to things that make Yixing groan and curse, butterflies tumbling at the pit of his stomach, his heart swelling as blood rushes to his head.

The emotions, Yixing’s emotions, were always subdued, so much softer than the ones he’d feel from others on a daily basis, but right here, right now, the feelings of love, the feelings of anger and hatred and grief and pain surrounding him, emanating from Hyemi, Baekhyun, Sehun, and Jongin, from Jongdae, from the hooded figures, all seem to mesh together with the feelings emanating from those memories, the feelings of fear and pain, and it becomes so, so loud, practically screaming into the void in his brain. Hyemi can see how afraid he is to lose Jongdae and it starts to mesh together for him, meld until he’s emanating a dark aura, all fury and hatred so pure that it makes Hyemi’s own blood boil.)

Hyemi blinks, snapping out of her thoughts, of Yixing’s memories, only to find that one of the hooded figures is walking towards them. Jongin, who is closest, is already flexing his fists, ready to fight. The hooded figure, however, takes one step forward before he drops to his knees. Jongin immediately whirls around, his expression full of panic, fear, and recognition, as if he’s seen this before. There’s a loud screech and Hyemi spins on her heels and the cage door is broken, Yixing stepping through, his eyes a pure black and emotions pouring out of him. Hyemi can feel it, she can feel the anger and grief and it invades her like a parasite, seeping into her veins, into her very bones, before she blindly spins, looking for Wendy because this is all her fault.

Except Wendy is gone, her blood and the outline of her body in the ground gone, too, and Hyemi tries to figure out where and how, but she’s already pulled away by the hooded figure, the leader, she figures, crumbling to the ground, clutching his head, his hood falling back and his eyes bulging, as if he’s overwhelmed. He looks barely of age, she thinks.

Something deep inside Hyemi says this is wrong, because Sehun is doing it again, forgetting about overexerting too much as he turns on another hooded figure—another hunter—and swipes a hand, catching the hunter by the head with his wind and sending him flying through the air and into the wall all the way on the other side of the room.

“He will not die.” Yixing’s voice is low, a whisper, but so full of feeling, so intense, that it makes Hyemi snap out of her anger for a moment, despite the fact that she’s gathering her power at her fingertips, the feeling of reaping destruction in her hands, the tingling in her palms, despite her burns, and the warmth coursing through her as she imagines a ball of light inside of her. It all feels so utterly good, so powerful, especially because of her intensified emotions, and she thinks she loves it. She loves it so much.

So when she turns and sees a tall hunter with swoopy hair and small lips bring down his scythe on Baekhyun, catching him in the side, the blood he draws ingrained into her vision, Hyemi’s body lights up with fury. Without thought, she’s pushing forward and grabbing at the blade before it can catch Baekhyun by the shoulder. She expects it to hurt, slice up her fingers, but it doesn’t. Instead, the scythe disintegrates in her hands, turning to ashes at their feet. The man—baby-faced beyond belief—looks utterly horrified, his eyes widening. He immediately backs up, his hands flying up in surrender, in mercy. Something inside of her tells her to stop, allow him mercy, but it’s a teeny tiny voice that she easily ignores, opting for the adrenaline rushing through her veins. One of his knees give out and she advances on him, before she reaches out and grabs him by the neck, hears him scream, a piercing human-like sound that reminds her of the screams from that monster in the clearing. Only this time, it’s a human. But still, he’s a human that had been trying to kill them, she tells herself, her power running through her veins, warming her body. Her blood runs hot as she watches him scream and gurgle at the missing windpipe until he goes completely silent, his skin disintegrating, as if her powers are eating away at his flesh, until he’s nothing but a tiny pile of black ash and the smell of burnt flesh. She spins on her heels, eyes focusing on Baekhyun, and for a moment she sees a wicked grin flicker across his face, all pretty sharp teeth. She can’t help but copy his expression, her emotions amplified thanks to Yixing.

But then the high emotions just drop. They fall and she feels like she’s hurling out a five story window, the drop so sudden that it makes her knees buckle and she’s dropping, Baekhyun doing the same, his hands curling around his white t-shirt.

Yixing is staring down at Jongdae, right in front of him, tears in his eyes and exhaustion deepening the lines on his face. Jongin is speaking to him, in a low, low voice, words that make Yixing’s bottom lip tremble, that has obviously made his volatile powers return to normal.

Jongin takes a slow, deliberate movement towards Jongdae before he drops to his knees and presses a trembling finger to Jongdae’s wrist. “He’s still—he’s still alive, Xing. You just have to heal him.” Yixing just keeps staring at Jongdae and Jongin murmurs, his voice hoarse, “The hunters are gone.” Jongin takes another deep breath, eyes glassy, “Please, Xing. He’ll understand what just happened. He’ll understand what you did.”

Hyemi looks up then, her head still aching, and she sees Yixing fall to his knees and place his hands over Jongdae’s wound, closing his eyes. She looks up and around them and she sees so many hooded figures curled up on the ground, hands over their ears and completely frozen. Her blood runs cold, though, when she sees the pile of ash in front of her, realizes just what she’s done. Her fingers shake and her breathing goes shallow and she remembers the man’s face, it’s etched into her memories, burned there. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to forget it.

She glances at Baekhyun, immediately searching for some kind of reassurance, her eyes wide and glassy, and Baekhyun leans forward, his hands on either side of her head. His thumbs rub at her cheeks, as if he’s wiping away tears only he can see.

Her heart races still when he leans down, hovers for a moment, his eyes flickering back and forth between her eyes before they remain on her lips. He presses a gentle, feathery kiss against her lips, one that nearly manages to cancel out the tingling feeling in her palms from using her powers. He tilts his head forward, his forehead knocking against hers, his nose brushing hers, and he breathes out, “You had to do it. He would have killed you otherwise.” And she knows he’s right. So many people want them dead and he’s right because the hunters did want to kill them. His breath fans over her cheek, warm and reassuring, his fingers sliding down her back, up again, and into her hair, a gentle touch that feels so utterly secure, that makes her heart jump in her chest.

“Thank you.” He whispers, voice melodic, melting as it trickles into her bones, seeps through and burrows a home there. “Thank you for saving me.”

She nods and nods and nods and his lips brush along her cheek, cherishing her as if she’s the most fragile thing in the world, only to pull away when Yixing whimpers, “Please, Jongdae.”

Hyemi watches, her eyes wide and her arms wrapped around Baekhyun’s torso, her pressed against his, when Jongdae takes a ragged breath and opens his eyes slowly, reaches out for Yixing only to be met halfway.

Yixing just stares and stares, as if he’s memorizing Jongdae’s face, as if he’s asking for an explanation. Jongdae’s face softens significantly.

“It was my t—turn to make you wa—wait.” Jongdae wheezes out, full on grinning despite everything, and Yixing laughs, airy and choking.

It takes a while, to get up, to get situated, to ignore the bodies around them. Yixing frowns and Jongdae mumbles that it’s fine, it’s a war, Yixing, you had to. And Hyemi tries to find comfort in that. Baekhyun helps carry Jongdae’s other side, since Jongin and Sehun can barely walk, let alone carry someone, and Baekhyun’s not going to let her do it, not when her fingers are shaking the way they are, her eyes drooping tiredly.

It’s not that far, Jongin had said, since Hyemi had been a vision for most of the run back here.

About five minutes in, Hyemi frowns up at Sehun, who looks like he’s falling asleep while walking. She glances around them, glaring at the thought of the girl, before she asks, “Where’s Wendy?”

Sehun rubs his eyes, making a face, “What?”

“Wendy?” Hyemi repeats, a little slowly this time, “Where did she go?”

Sehun gives her a funny look and says, “Who’s Wendy?”

a/n: pew pew PEW (that’s supposed to be those club sirens because ooooooo I updated! And it’s 2017!) I have a blog post about writing happening this year, and in regards to salt skin, I’m putting it at top priority because it is now fully planned out and I just really want to finish it up. It’s nearing four years since I started it guys…..time to hurry up me @ myself.

Anyways there was some xingdae time happening in here, mostly because Yixing and his memories are very important also xingdae is cute. Also I love nct omg and there’s like a million members so there’s like a million nct hunters obviously

Thank you all SO MUCH for subscribing and commenting and still reading this. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH, MORE THAN BAEKHYUN LOVES YIXING AND THAT’S WILD BECAUSE BAEKHYUN IS XINGMI #1, PRESIDENT OF XINGMI FANCLUB

XOXO