They can keep me out until I tear the walls,
until I taint your heart, and I take your soul.
For what has been done
cannot be undone.

The term had spread.

Suho wasn’t entirely sure when or why everyone had started calling the aether the negative space. Most had just called it something like ‘the space between worlds’, ‘the beyond’, or even ‘the astral plane.’ But lately, calling it the negative space had just become the norm.

In all honesty, Suho liked it. The term described the plane so well. It was where they were all reduced to nothing but their most basic of forms; it was where they lived—if what they did was considered living—until they were called to fulfill their destiny.

Suho had gotten his first contract a few days before. He’d known it would come eventually, of course, but now that it had, something was different. Now he stood, unable to move, staring at the name emblazoned on the paper in bold letters.

They’d been instructed to burn the paper after reading it.

Suho did so with pleasure.

He’d always liked fire. It was the opposite of him, the complete other side of power. Whereas he was water, all flowing movements and persistence, fire was pure power incarnate—devouring, destroying, burning all in its path. It was unstoppable. It was beautiful.

Suho stayed there, staring at the paper until the flames burned down. Embers littered the ground, still smoking gently, curling little wisps into the air, and a multitude of unfamiliar moons hung in the sky above him. He had no idea what world he was on, but he didn’t care.

Turning, Suho stepped back into the negative space.

He’d never had any intention of carrying out the order. He didn’t care about the Collective and their petty squabbles; he didn’t care about their contracts. He’d never agreed to any of it, so why should he have to condone to their wishes? 

Something about that just didn’t seem right. 

In the negative space, Suho was water.

Outside it, however, he was someone else. He had a body. He appeared human as long as no one bothered to look too close. He had arms and legs and eyes, he had hair and teeth, he had ears. It was all the same. But to him, it was strange and unfamiliar.

The first time he’d stepped onto a new world, he’d been completely overwhelmed. In the negative space he heard, smelled, saw, tasted, and touched all at once. Outside it, he had to focus on which happened when. And not all of them happened simultaneously, not like they did in the negative space.

He’d never been able to decide which he preferred: inside or outside, the negative space or the universe.

Could he consider either one his home? 

Suho didn’t think so. He didn’t even understand the concept of home. It was alien to him. The negative space had been his place of birth. He’d lived there for so long, with so many others like him, that he couldn’t really imagine living anywhere else. But he’d never truly thought of it as home.

Not really.

He was there now, in the negative space. His fellows drifted around him, each in their most basic of forms: puffs of air, ice crystals, wisps of smoke. He was with them in this way, nothing but water incarnate, swishing through the air.

For a while, all was normal. He drifted in and out of consciousness, often not even sure if what he was experiencing was, indeed, consciousness. Perhaps it was the absence of thought. Perhaps it was what he’d heard humans refer to as ‘dreams.’ He didn’t know. He only knew that he was there, and all was well.

Then suddenly his senses sharpened.

Suho felt something around his being crackle, as if with electricity. Confused and a little bit afraid, he phased out of the negative space without even thinking about it, stepping onto yet another unfamiliar planet. His feet were bare; grass tangled between his toes. The world around him seemed to be, at the moment, nothing more than a large expanse of hills layered intermittendly with grass and wheat. A soft gust of wind ruffled his hair, and Suho relaxed.
 
What had he been worried about?

Abruptly, he felt an unfamiliar prescence behind him. Snapping himself out of his misguided sense of peace, he spun around, glaring at the newcomer. 

It was a man. 

At first glance, he seemed rather normal: his eyes were dark, his cheekbones sharp. Lips like the bend of a recurve bow tilted up in a small smirk, and it took Suho only a few moments to realize that they were the same.

Suho frowned. “You’re … like me.”

“Yes.”

His voice crackled when he spoke. It reminded Suho of the strange sensation he’d experienced before throwing himself out of the negative space. “Who are you?”

“Chen.”

“Why are you following me?”

Chen scoffed. “Did you think you could just ignore an order from the Collective and get away with it? We don’t get to make decisions like that.”

Suho sighed. He’d seen this coming. “Of course I knew.”

“They why’d you do it?”

“Because the only other alternative is to kill.”

“So?” Chen looked genuinely confused. “It’s kill or be killed. There is no other option.”

“That’s what they want you to think.”

Chen’s confusion turned to intrigue. Suho saw it there on his face as surely as he saw the ruthlessness in his eyes. “You’re an odd one.”

“I like to think for myself. You should try it sometime.”

Ah, there it was. A spark of anger in Chen’s eyes. Suho had struck a chord; he could only hope Chen didn’t have enough discipline to ignore it.

He didn’t.

Chen lunged at him, electricity sparking along his skin, but Suho was faster. He phased to a different world with merely a thought, replacing rolling hills with towering skyscrapers, and gave a quick sigh of relief.

He had no idea where he was, but he didn’t care as he melted into the crowd, desperate to get away. This had gotten out of hand. 

He had known, of course, that the Collective would send someone after him.

He’d just never thought it would be one of his own.

It didn’t make any sense. Why were they following the Collective’s orders so easily? Where had it all started? Why did his people, who were so far ahead physically and mentally, obey humans? There was no gain in it. No logic. No loyalty.

Suho felt the air crackled around him then, remiscent of the sensation in the negative space, and he knew Chen had caught up. Desperate, he shifted dimensions, doubting Chen could follow him there. The divergence meter embedded in the aether allowed Suho to go from one parallel world to the next; anyone could use it, but Suho was the only one of his kind who’d learned how to harnass its power.

He called it the tesseract.

So when Suho felt the air around him hiss and spark once again, warning him that Chen was getting close, something akin to terror sank in his gut. That was impossible. Chen couldn’t have followed him there. No one could follow him when he shifted dimensions.

But, disproving everything Suho had ever thought he knew about the tesseract, Chen materialized moments later, doubled over as he tried to ground himself. “What did you do?” he demanded, breathing heavily.

Suho’s eyes narrowed. “That’s my line. How did you follow me? Do you know how to use the tesseract?”

“The what?”

“The tesseract. It’s the divergence meter that’s embedded in the aether. It controls the push and pull of the space-time continuum and allows me to shift dimensions.”

Chen stared. “Shift dimensions? But … no one can do that. We can phase between worlds, yes, but the negative space is the only alternate dimension we can access.”

“Not if you learn how to use the tesseract.”

“You’re insane.” Chen moved forward, his eyes hard. “You’re ing insane.”

He had that look in his eyes again—that hard, determined look—but Suho just shifted again before he could do anything, returning to his own dimension and phasing to a new planet in the blink of an eye. 

This time it was a world of lush grass and endless wooded areas. A huge white star hung in the sky above him. Suho could see mountain peaks off in the distance, rising up from a forest of evergreens, and he took a moment to pause and catch his breath as he tried to figure out what to do.

This wasn’t going to work.

He couldn’t keep running from Chen forever, especially not now that he knew Chen could follow him when he shifted dimensions. They would chase each other across eternity and never get anywhere if Chen had the ability to use the tesseract. That meant there was only one thing left for Suho to do.

He had to confront Chen and implore him to see reason.

Suho clenched his hands into fists, waiting for that familiar spark of energy that always so helpfully announced Chen’s prescence. He was going to be ready.

He was going to fix this.

Chen appeared moments later, lightning sizzling over his skin and crackling through his dark, messy hair as he stalked forward. “This ends here,” he snarled, his hands clenched into fists. Suho could see bolts of electricity curling over his fingers and up his arms, daring Suho to try something.

But Suho was water.

“I hope you know that you cannot electrocute me,” he said.

Chen’s eyes narrowed. “I can electrocute anything.”

“Not me. I am water.”

“Water is a conductor for electricity.”

Suho grinned. “Only when it’s impure. But I am pure. I create water from nothing, water incarnate. Electricity cannot be conducted through pure water.”

Chen’s eyes narrowed and he paused, the lightning that had been sizzling around him disappearing into nothingness. Suho felt hope clench in his chest. Then Chen stepped forward, a wicked smirk curving at his lips, and Suho knew that he had been naïve to let his guard down.

“There are other ways to kill you.”

Chen was in his face before Suho could blink, his hand in Suho’s shirt and shoving him back. There was nothing but grass underneath Suho’s feet, nothing to grab or steady himself with, and he went down. Chen followed, straddling him.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said. His voice was far too calm, too steady. He spoke of murder with such ease, and suddenly Suho was afraid.

“Wait!” Suho gasped, “Look, just please listen to me for a second.”

Chen’s eyes narrowed, but he did not move. Suho took that as acquiescence, a final act of loyalty towards one of his own, and he wasn’t about to pass up the chance. He could still turn this around if he played his cards right.

“Why do we follow the Collective’s orders?” he asked.

Chen frowned. “What?”

“Why do we care? We don’t benefit from it. We don’t get any sort of thanks or payment. We only do it because we always have, as long as any of us can remember. None of us even knew what would happen if we just ignored them, and that was why I decided to try it. Now I have my answer: if we don’t obey them, we die. So basically, our only choice here is to obey them without gaining any reward at all, lest we be eliminated. That doesn’t seem like a very beneficial choice, now does it? In fact, it doesn’t seem like a choice at all.”

“What is your point?” Chen’s voice was no longer calm. It twisted its way out of his throat, falling from his lips like a snarl.

“My point is, we are logical beings. We care little for humans; we only do what benefits us. Obeying the Collective makes no sense.”

“But you said it yourself. If we disobey them, we die.”

“Yes, and when we die, we get to die by our own kind.” Suho shook his head. “Don’t you get it? They’re manipulating us. They’re making us kill for their petty human squabbles, and now they’re even making us kill each other. But we could overpower the humans with ease. We could destroy the Collective and free ourselves.”

Chen faltered. “Some of us are loyal to the Collective—”

“Loyalty means nothing outside of our own kind; you know that.” They all did. It had been burned into their minds from birth. Loyalty to your own kind meant everything. Outside of that, logic was the only rule. “We could show them how illogical this is, how illogical all of it is. They’d have to agree with us.”

Doubt abounded in Chen’s features. His hand was poised, ready for the killing blow; Suho could see the lighting in his eyes.

“Do you really want to live like this?” Suho was desperate now, grasping at whatever chance he had left. “Do you really want to kill one of your own simply because they refused to obey the orders of a pathetic group of humans?”

That did it.

Chen faltered, releasing his hold on Suho’s collar as he stood. He looked pale, gaunt and drawn in the bleached light of the ancient sun above them, and his voice was nothing more than a whisper when he spoke. “Our lives are meaningless outside of the Collective. We do nothing except exist in the negative space.”

More relieved than he cared to admit, Suho pushed himself to his feet. “I know what we could do instead.”

“… What?”

Suho smiled. Above him, the sky was heartbreakingly blue, sparkling cerulean behind the silhouette of an unfamiliar white star. 

“We could destroy the Collective.”



 

a/n: This had been sitting in my fanfic folder forever, 
and I finally got around to finishing it.
There might be more of this AU eventually???