Shifters are not human. Even the shifters themselves acknowledge that.

Some shifters might say that they are more than human, but for those that live around China and Mongolia, anywhere near to civilization – they don’t say that, unless they’re asking for extermination.

Shifters and humans used to live in relative peace (that’s what some old-timers say), until the reformation happened, and shifters became commodities – to be hunted, and led, by man.

The shifter tribes left over, they stay far away from humans.

It’s not even an issue now. Shifters are traded, and sold, with efficiency.

Jongdae’s collar is a plain one, unmarked by any House sigils, but he’s under no illusion that he will get one soon. No shifter is ever left unmarked.

Where can he go? His tribe is gone, demolished by the hunters.

Kai trained him up for the fight, then let him go. Yixing’s only keeping him out of charity.

Jongdae has nowhere to go. Nowhere. He doesn’t just mean physical location – he means that he feels like he’s taking up air that he shouldn’t, space that he shouldn’t – that this world will not be different without him, and his life has run its course, even if he disappears in the next second he wouldn’t have any ties back to this world.

He won’t hurt anyone, if he leaves now.

If he goes back into the world, though – Jongdae remembers being locked into the cages, muscles growing weak, bones shattered and reset. Remembers Kai and how careful he had been with Jongdae- he had to, Jongdae had to be groomed and fed and positioned, to be a self-driving arrow, that would find meaning and strength in being used.

That will be his life, back in the world.

Jongdae pushes the bowl of porridge away. Why had he been scared, in the Pit? Why did he run away, in the name of survival?

--

Jongdae wakes up, smelling blood in the air.

There are shouts outside. People groaning, in pain.

Jongdae lies flattened on his bed, fear keeping him down.

After a while, nothing happens. There are still groans, but the shouts aren’t- they are just people giving orders.

It sounds like a medicine hall. Maybe Jongdae is in a medicine hall. That would explain the injured people.

Curiosity gets the better of him. He goes out, into the courtyard. Walks to the red teak doorframe, leaning against the closed door, listening.

He turns to stone, because he hears a familiar voice. Not too loud, but unrestrained, unrefined, almost. Spoken casually, with a hint of intimidation behind it – playful, as always.

Kai.

Tell me they’ll be fine.

I’m not a miracle worker. You’re not hurt?

I have my Pack.

Xiumin has bruises.

He’s getting older, and slow.

No fighting in my courtyard, or you can stitch them back yourself, Xiumin. Kai.

It’s all over. A calmer, amused voice. We’re not fighting anymore, now that Kai’s finally gotten my attention. You’ve worked hard.

Kai’s familiar laugh. I was trying so hard to impress you!

I saw, Xiumin says. You took that little bet so seriously…that you could find the ingredients for Yixing to get him to make the medicine… you must owe your life to him.

My life could be owed to you, Kai says, coyly.

If Suho heard, Xiumin says, he’ll get father to throw you back to the dogs.

I liked it there, Kai says, fed well, slept well... I lost weight when I went back to the Palace.

I’ll get people to send good food over for your dogs, and you, Xiumin promises. But not openly. You understand, right?

I’ll wait, Kai says, not for long, though.

You’ll wait for however long I choose, Xiumin says, easily.

So sure of yourself, brother.

Sure of you, XIumin corrects, and how much you actually hate Suho.

What makes you think I actually like you?

I don’t know, Xiumin says, I wasn’t the one whose mother got both of us sent away from the Palace…you to the kennels, me as a servant in the brothels.

I think you’re the one who hates Suho, da ge.

I didn’t know I wasn’t clear about that, Xiumin says, amused. I should go back, check on my soldiers. Good fight today, Kai.

…You should go back as well, Yixing says.

What happened to the lynx? Kai asks. Jongdae’s suddenly aware that Kai’s just a door away from him – stiffens, holding his breathing.

What could happen, Yixing says. You ruined him.

You must have a hard time, taking care of him.

He’s fine, he keeps to himself. Doesn’t give me any trouble.

Doesn’t sound ruined, to me. Where is he, Yixing?

You’re not doing him any favors. He won the match for you. Leave him alone.

Where can he go? Kai asks. Yixing.

You should leave.

I’ll search this place room by room, if I have to.

You only care about yourself, don’t you?

That’s right, Kai says, that’s how I survived.

Silence, in the courtyard. Jongdae’s still holding his breath.

He falls back from the door, as it opens.

“Jongdae,” Kai says, surprised. “If you can eavesdrop, you’re probably better.”

Kai’s looking Jongdae over, carefully. He puts fingers on Jongdae’s shoulder, indicating for him to turn.

Jongdae turns, before he knows what he’s doing.

“Any nightmares? Trouble sleeping?” Kai steps forward, until he’s pressed against Jongdae’s back. His breath, voice, they come sudden, hot, intimate, beside Jongdae’s left ear.

His fingers trace Jongdae’s ribs, then slip down to hold his waist. “You haven’t been eating.”

Jongdae’s – Kai fed him, by hand, for over a month. Kai also force-fed Jongdae – Jongdae remembers that.

He doesn’t move, can’t move, too conflicted to move.

“He can’t eat meat,” Yixing says, from behind them. Jongdae startles, tries to turn around, but Kai tightens his grip. Jongdae bumps into Kai, tries to retreat, but Kai follows him – moving in and out, seamlessly, keeping them pressed together.

Jongdae feels – bare. Vulnerable. Scared, but at the same time, it’s also something familiar, something Jongdae dreams about at night, sometimes – Kai holding Jongdae’s cat form close, his ears, down his back, smile tucked into Jongdae’s fur -

Kai has a smell, Jongdae realizes. Remembers. Like human skin, warmed, with a tinge of salt, and also dog.

His cat says, turn and cling onto Kai, dig claws deep in, until Kai can’t leave; until Kai can’t hurt him.

He doesn’t turn, to look at Kai.

But neither can he move away.

Kai lifts his hands off Jongdae. Jongdae has a moment of sheer panic, where he’s convinced that Kai’s going to back away.

The hands come back, landing on Jongdae’s shoulders. They knead his shoulders firmly, moving in slow, tight circles.

“You’re so tense,” Kai says, and Jongdae just – just stands there, letting Kai touch him. Afraid that Kai will leave, but also angry at what Kai did to him.

Jongdae’s shoulders relax, but the rest of his body keeps tensing up.

Kai moves. Jongdae’s extra-sensitive to him, and he’s moving, away from Kai, instinctively.

“I have some time,” Kai says. “Let’s have a meal.”

Jongdae shakes his head, tightly.

“You’re too thin.”

“I’m not,” Jongdae says.

Kai’s just  - looking at Jongdae, and that looks like disappointment.

Jongdae’s conscious, of how he is. More and more, the less he eats, the less he goes out, in the day – he’s becoming more like a ghost.

Jongdae hisses at Kai. Whoever Jongdae is, whatever he is – it’s none of Kai’s business.

The corners of Kai’s lips twitch. “Lynx,” he says, affectionately.

Jongdae backs away. Turns, and runs for his room, scared.

--

“I grew up with dogs,” Kai says. “I want to go back there, again.”

Jongdae’s curled up in his hold, barely breathing. Kai followed him into his room, stalked him until he got Jongdae to stay at last – both on the bed, Kai at the edge of the bed, Jongdae beside him - Jongdae’s feet tucked below his body, arms loosely around Kai’s waist.

It wasn’t hard. Kai just had to stay close enough, until Jongdae got tired of running away.

“You’re scared of your cat,” Kai says. “You’re scared of knowing what you really are like, once the veneer of civilization has been ripped away. You’re scared that you are nothing more than the lynx, desperate for meat and a neck-rub.”

He tips his head, says, “you’re right, to be scared. In those moments, you’re just a cat, a cat who does what he wants. And what’s wrong with that? Why don’t you want to see the worst you can be?  Why are you so scared of knowing what you want, and how far you’ll go to get it? This world wants you to talk and look human but tries its best to keep you from being that. It’ll open you up, one day, push and squeeze and coerce and entice you until you don’t have ready words or clothes or smile left, only yourself without anything to hold you back.

It’s a betrayal of yourself to see yourself too clearly, it stays like a vivid death-face, changing your face in the mirror. But it’s also an honest accusation that you need to make only once, to yourself. A chance to see yourself for who you can be, and pin that down, pin it on you, say, that’s you, this is me with my mouth and teeth and tongue and throat working with a person’s meat and blood. I did it.

Live with the knowledge of how you can kill when you are pushed, how you can step on someone else’s corpse to reach daylight, away from the pit. No one and nothing else can shake you hard and shatter you, like clumps of powder into dust.

There’s nothing left to fear, after you’ve seen yourself, nothing that can scare you more. Because everything else can be let go of and forgotten, but you can’t step out of your own skin.

You are the lynx. You are part-animal, and part-man, part honesty and part deceit. Why fear it?”

Jongdae’s blinking, trying to catch up. This doesn’t sound like Kai. Kai’s usually fast and brutal, words like a blunt truncheon, swung hard. This is fast and brutal, but it’s also eloquent.

“Are you listening?” Kai asks, exasperated.

Jongdae’s surrounded by warmth, but inside, his heart is cold. Kai’s words are words that no shifter wants to hear.

Shifters are no better than animals; only more dangerous. Shifters can’t be reasoned with. Shifters need a firm hand, guiding them, leading them. Those are the assumptions that people make, about shifters, and because of that, shifters are hunted, trafficked and owned, with the full blessing of the Dynasties behind them.

Owning shifters is the mark of a great House. All of the Houses, all the royalty – they built their fortune on shifters. The Palace maintains dominion because it distributes licenses to favoured Houses, to people who want to start their own Houses – licenses permitting someone to hunt and own shifters.

Jongdae doesn’t want to be a shifter. He doesn’t want his cat.

“You’re not listening,” Kai says. “I grew up with the Palace dogs. Suho and Xiumin, Yixing, Chanyeol – they groomed me into a person, because I looked useful. Like dogs, shifters have a honesty humans don’t. They have something else they can become, something they can go back to be honest and unashamed. If you hate your shifter, you hate yourself. You’re better off hating your own shadow, instead.”

“I don’t want to be anything,” Jongdae says.

“Run away and hide,” Kai says. “This world will never leave you alone.”

“I don’t want to be angry all the time,” Jongdae says.

“You don’t have to be,” Kai says. “How many years are we alive? Death will come. Before that, we have to live, as well as we can. Why be angry when you can walk away and move on, to a place where no one can hurt you again?

Numbness is temporary, it’s a reaction to pain. It’s not an end, it’s not a state that will keep you safe.”

“I feel like,” Jongdae says, “I feel like I’m not understanding, what you’re saying.”

“I tried,” Kai says.

“I feel like someone said this to you before,” Jongdae says, and laughing quietly, Kai says, “maybe.”

--

Kai comes by every day, to check on his warriors. He sits with Jongdae – doesn’t feed him, or touch him – just sits with Jongdae, at the pond, both of their trouser legs rolled up, feet in the water.

Jongdae likes to nudge at Kai, until he puts an arm around Jongdae’s shoulder.

Jongdae looks at both of them in the water, their reflections peaceful, broken by the occasional koi surfacing in search of food.

Jongdae always feels hungry, after Kai leaves. He doesn’t touch meat, but everything else that Yixing cooks, he eats.

--

“Kai says you’ll leave with him.”

Jongdae nods, mouth full of food. Yixing hardly talks to him.

“Why?” Yixing says flatly.

Jongdae thinks about it. He shrugs.

“He’s not a good person,” Yixing says. “I watched that boy grow up, and as you’ve seen, I do almost anything he asks me to. But this boy’s fighting for his survival in the Palace – is fighting for a place for himself. He doesn’t have time to be kind, or be nice. Anything good that he does, it’s a byproduct. It’s not the goal. I’m saying this because I spent two months patching you back up, and I’m telling you, it won’t be the last time. I could and I will leave that room for you, because you’ll be back soon, if you’re leaving with him.”

“He didn’t ask me,” Jongdae says, “but I didn’t say no. I’m just going.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jongdae says. Yixing shakes his head, leaves.

If Yixing had stayed, Jongdae might have told him – Jongdae didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who to be, couldn’t trust himself. But Kai offered him a way out, offered him a collar with a sigil but also a long enough chain, tethered to himself – to pats and hugs and a warm body that understood how tightly Jongdae wanted to be bound.

Jongdae didn’t trust Kai, but he trusted that Kai had something in mind for him.

Jongdae’s just tired, of making decisions for himself.

--

a/n: whew okay I finally have some idea of where this is going / will go