He had this delusion the day after the war, somehow everything would return to a somewhat normal state as quickly as it had changed. But the fallout from the madness hadn't been positive at all.

Kyungsoo was able to admit what happened to him by the days afterwards, but it didn't make anything easier. Really it only made it worse; now he knew what had been done and he still blamed himself for it.

He'd go on and on about how he deserved it and how he'd asked for it and how he'd put himself out there for that sort of thing.

Baekhyun's cruel words were deeply branded into his mind and as much as Kai was pushing against it, Soo's own self contempt one-upped him a step ahead each time.

There was no way that the blonde was able to guess his insecurities so easily ... Chanyeol must have told him all of those pressure points. He'd been a collaborator in that part of the assault without even meaning to be.

He was innocent in that sense. But he still needed to be held accountable for the the and pillaging of Kyungsoo's body and spirit. He still needed to be nailed to the ing cross for speaking that way about someone who was so good to him.

Chanyeol deserved to have a bullet to the brain for what he'd done. The death penalty wouldn't be good enough. He'd taken advantage of the most sublime person to ever exist and then he'd violently ed him into the ground. Tried tearing him in two for his own amusement while whispering into Soo's ear all of those insecurities that Baekhyun would pounce upon later.

The only righteous punishment for him anymore might have been some kind of medieval   disembowelment. There would never be enough pain in the universe for Chanyeol to get his just desserts.

Everything had been stripped from Kyungsoo, everything Kai had worked so hard to build up ... all the happiness and recovery, leveled in a span of a few hours.

Kyungsoo wouldn't leave the house anymore. He didn't feel safe being anywhere outside of their little apartment. Kai could barely convince him to go down to the laundry room with him by the end of the week; the older had forced them to wait until very late at night so that he could be sure they'd be down there alone.

And he wouldn't go to school anymore. Just completely stopped going to classes. And when Jongin was gone during the day, he knew that the older was simply locking himself in his room and doing anything and everything to distract his mind till Kai was home.

It's not the clinginess of it that bothered him ... he was grateful for every moment with Kyungsoo. But it was the continued regression of the older's beautiful personality that terrified him about all of this.

Soo's closet suddenly became a nuclear waste site; he wouldn't go near the place anymore. He'd dumped his gorgeous attire of before and instead just put on Kai's things.

"Didn't I just wear that yesterday?" he sat down on the couch with a little cup of ramen.

"Oh ..." Soo looked down, but no stunning blush was forming on his cheeks, it seemed more like shame, "I couldn't find anything else to wear."

"I noticed dirty clothes are starting to pile up fast."

"I'm sorry that I'm taking all your stuff," shame ... all their ing was anymore was shame ... heart squashing, blood curdling, tear wrenching shame, "You don't mind, do you?"

Kyungsoo joined him, but his eyes were still stuck on the ground or on the sweatshirt or on the couch cushions. That was another thing that was becoming impossible for him ... eye contact.

"Of course not," he did in reality, but not in the way that Soo would have thought. He minded, not because these were his things -- the older had been wearing his shirts as a status sign since they'd first began sleeping in the same bed -- but because he felt the old Kyungsoo slipping away more each day as he rejected bits and pieces of his own being.

In the aftermath of Juno's rampage, Venus's corpse was left floating in the cosmic sea.

It was in turn silently killing Jongin's soul.

They went to bed that night quietly. But Kyungsoo screamed in his sleep and was forced back into the conscious realm from nightmares.

Progressively things like this were getting worse.

When it first happened, a night after the assault, it wasn't this bad, just a cold sweat that made the older muse awake. But that was just square one.

It'd been more than a week now and Kyungsoo was in a full terror state when he dreamed.

Add that to the list of things that Park Chanyeol had stolen from him; precious sleep. Demons tormented him while he rested and all Kai could do was ignore this to his greatest ability and not mention it in the morning.

If he said anything it wouldn't be fixed, but would only add onto the guilt that had mounted on Kyungsoo's heart. Instead he just closed his eyes tight when he felt the older start and prayed that his tired body would give out from exhaustion before the love of his life began sobbing.

His heart was a thing of the past at this point ... the injustice of it all and the suffering of his cytherean had broken him as well. Eve