"Ayo, ayo, run a little more, I think we're almost there. Ayo, ayo, don't be afraid I'm right here." -EXO, "Run"

Tao's dreams were haunting, memories of the past- the beatings, the murders- ideas of the present- trapped in fake beauty- fear of the future- the nights of reluctance and submission. He was terrified even if he didn't show. Everyone in the Halo acted, so he would have to do the same and try to be someone, something, that he wasn't. Every part of his being had known that be transferred to the Halo was a possibility, never had he thought that that possibility would be a reality. Being a Worker was his reality. Things like comfort and safety weren't supposed to be a part of his reality. So he dreamed of the terror. It was no wonder he screamed when he was nudged awake.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll get to work, let me up!" he whimpered when a face began to loom just above his. A shiver crawled up his spine as he looked into those dark eyes. His cheeks were red- with anger perhaps?- and words seemed to be on the tip of his tongue.

Scrambling to his legs Tao got up and rushed away. "I'm-"

"Jeeze, you poor thing, what did they do to you." His skin crawled at the sound of the voice and he paused. He wasn't in the Commons, not even in the Pit, and those red cheeks had been filled with embarrassment not anger. Rin looked at him from where she stood a few feet away. Looking around he remembered what had taken place just last night.

He was an Angel now.

This was the Halo.

Soon he would meet the Dancers.

"Sorry," Tao bowed to her and felt a blush beginning to crawl up his cheeks. "You just," he paused and cleared his throat when he saw that she looked bewildered. "Never mind, sorry."

"No, it's nothing, but wh-"

"Where is my panda?" Mimi came bursting in the room, her eyes worried and furious at the same time, softened when she saw Tao at a standoff with Rin. "We're all good Taera!" She hollered down the hallway before sneaking up to him and wrapping her arms around his waist.

"Oh," he smirked, "so I'm yours, now am I?" His tactic of flirting worked yet again and he stifled a laugh when she shied away, pink dust dancing across her cheeks as she punched his arm playfully to cover the embarrassment.

Not much happened the rest of the morning. As soon as Rin noticed that Tao was yawning hardly an hour later, she sent him back to bed. His room that time though.

"Panda!" Something landed on his side and me and he groaned. "Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Mimi?" Tao managed as he pulled the blankets off of his face.

"You're awake! Rise and shine little panda of mine!" She smiled and he groaned before shoving her off of him and pulling the covers back over his eyes to block out the light shining through the red curtains. He couldn't help but think that she was way too nosy for a maid and that she was too close to him considering they had only met just yesterday.

"Mimi, get off of him." Tao couldn't help but thank the flower in his that was Rin. He silently made a wish for her only to take it back when she said the same thing that Mimi had. "Zitao, get up."

He grumbled incoherent words into his pillow and only burrowed deeper. He was drugged by sleep and couldn't find it in him to not snuggle deeper into the warm blankets. All of a sudden though, all of that comforting warmth was taken from him. He glared sleepily at Taera who had apparently stolen his blankets.

"Get up, in twenty minutes you're meeting with one of the Dancers." That time he got out of bed.

Dinner was eaten much earlier here than at the Pit.

The dining room, as they called it, was giant just like all of the other rooms Tao had seen so far. There were more looping diamond lights in this room though than the others. Other than that though there were seats around a long table for at least twenty people. The walls were a dark maroon and the floors an almost white wood. It was so different, Tao thought, than the Pit. They had actual plates, with more food on that single plate than Tao would see in an entire week as a Worker and even though it was just Zitao and one Dancer, there was still more food lain out across the table. He couldn't help but stare at it as he nibbled on plain white rice and wondered how in the world are two people alone supposed to eat all of this?

Their meal had not been silent by any means though. Oh Sehun, the Dancer on the opposite end of the table, had taken it on to explain what happened here at the Halo. Tao took it upon himself to ask why the maids had no leash.  Sehun had laughed before going on to explain how the maids actually had more freedom than himself. "So long as they get what needs to be done done they can do whatever they want, I haven't put any rules on them. It's funny actually, watching them have less of a schedule than I do."

There really is no schedule here in the Halo. When something needs to happen, it happens. When you get hungry, you eat. When you need some rest, you go to bed. Everything was on a whim here. Or at least that's how it was for the Angels. At first Tao was skeptical as to how something could work like that, everything being free and at a moments notice, but the Dancers, as it turned out, were the politicians of sort. They had a schedule. Scheduled meals, meetings, observations. They kept everything together, kept the Angels under their keen eye and made sure everyone was doing their part.

"And what exactly is 'my part'?" Tao asked as someone came in to clear off the table. Sehun stood and closed the gap between the two so he could answer the question after all plates and silverware were gone.

"Your part?" Tao nodded. "You're only here to look pretty."

Oh Sehun's eyes were pretty, he noticed. But so was his hair, so light and golden, almost as light as his fair skin. Tao wondered what his skin felt like, velvety smooth most likely. And even though his face seemed stern and cold, in his eyes, on his lips, mixed with that almost unnoticeable blush creeping on his cheeks, was something else. Lust.

"But the true job of an Angel." A shiver found its way up Tao's spine and suddenly something came over him. He wanted Sehun. Now.

Sehun growled as he pulled Tao by the collar of his shirt and lifted him onto the table. Their lips met each others furiously and almost immediately Tao was overcome with heat. He wanted more than just a heated kiss, he wanted more, and apparently Sehun did too.

Sehun's hands roamed across Tao's body before his fingers lighted across his chest and he shoved Tao down, forcing his back against the bare dining table.

"Mh," Tao mumbled, breathless, "More."

He didn't think he would regret it this much, he had already succumbed to the fact that it would have happened at some point anyway. It was his job. But what still confused him was why Sehun had been so gentle, he seemed to want to please Tao. He didn't seem to only want pleasure on his own side, but rather he wanted both of them to feel pleasure. It was unexpected, how gentle he had been.

But something didn't feel right.

Tao still couldn't figure out what had taken over him. On any normal day he wouldn't have allowed it. So why had he? He should have been disgusted and repulsed but instead of the event making him feel , he felt almost the exact opposite. A part of knew that next time it would be different, that next time Tao would feel a lot more abused. And that's what he was waiting for. He was waiting for that feeling of dread to take over him. For it to stir something in him that would make him realize that everything about this place was wrong. That the people in this place were monsters. But right now he just couldn't do that.

He couldn't find a reason to hate anything about this place. Everything was so perfect.  He could finally be himself. He could be Huang Zitao who had been locked away all of his life. Besides that nobody had a problem with who he really was.

How was he supposed to not like this place? With its glass walls everywhere that showed a thousand more reflections inside each one. The pristine diamond lights that wove across the ceilings. And the grand red curtains that draped themselves over the windows. He didn't have to sleep in the dirt and wake up to the sound of pain. He could shower as often as he wanted and he finally had clothes that covered all of his scars. He had freedom here. Was he supposed to dislike it?

Tao kept thinking how ashamed everyone would be of him back in the Commons.  Some would even be scared of him. All the rumors they had heard about the Angels had ended with them becoming crazed monsters, even if Tao were able to go back to see the only person that actually had significance to Tao, he would probably see him just like that. So whatever made Tao want to see his little brother was also what pushed him away: himself.

For so long Tao had wanted nothing other than that “normal life” that he always heard about it in the tales he heard as a child. He supposed that what he had now was as close to that as he would ever get. What then? Was he expected to live his life in this luxurious cage. trapped in a place which he wasn’t so sure he wanted to leave.

But what if there was better than this? More normal than this?

His mind wandered to Yifan for the second time since he had been here.

Upon laying eyes on the man he had seen a certain curious yet wisened naivety in him. Although he seemed dumb and unexposed to the true things in this place, Tao had sensed an endless map in the older. A map that Tao had wanted to explore without realizing it.

As the days passed with boredom, blankets, and giggling maids Tao began to realize how unnatural this place was. Just the other day he had tripped up the stairs yet when he fell and scraped his elbow he hadn’t felt a thing. It was then that he realized why he hadn’t felt offended by anything Sehun had done to him the other day, why he had been so willing to the Dancer.

This place was painless.

There was something that flowed through the vents that kept anyone from feeling pain.

“Do you know what the air is made of in this place, Rin?” Tao and the young girl had gotten closer, Rin being the closest person to him in his lifetime besides Luhan. She was turning into his sister just as Luhan had become his brother.

Tao watched her eyes narrow the slightest bit before she responded.

“I’ve heard rumors that the Dancers put a sort of gas in it, like a number that doesn’t allow anyone to feel pain. You know,” she paused, “So that they can do their job without pain.” A silent “oh” found its way onto Tao’s lips and although he blushed and seemed innocent and ignorant on the outside, it was quite the opposite in his mind.

The puzzle of his mind slowly began to piece itself together.

He would figure it out some day. He would eventually figure out why he felt so strange ever since Sehun. And sooner than later apparently.

The days passed in a blur and Tao became more and more lonely.

It wasn’t that he was literally alone, in fact he hardly had a moment to himself with Mimi, Taera, and Rin practically attached to his hip. There were moments though, that right as Tao woke from a dream he would feeling his heart sink a little further into his chest. There wasn’t a single night he didn’t dream, and although most of them were nightmares every night of hallucination he had would take him back to the Commons and no matter how much he tried to refuse the feeling he missed his life as a Worker. Where everything was predictable, where he had grown up with many of the people around him and had what he liked to call a family.

He missed Luhan. He missed those people from the Fields and the Caverns that he would talk to on occasion in the Pit. Although he didn’t talk to people besides his own Workers often, he liked to hear the tales that some of them had. A lot of them weren’t like the usual tales that he heard. His favorite story teller was a Farmer named Baekhyun. Although the stories he told were sad and lonesome, a smile was always on his face and the stories were told with such truth and detail Tao couldn’t help but admire them and listen to every single word the man spoke. Of course at some point it would have to come to an end. And it did. One night Baekhyun wasn’t there, and he remembered being torn and scared for the man, Tao had been nine at the time, Baekhyun grown and mature. But then one moment he was gone. And at such a young age Tao realized that nobody in life would stay with you very long. Eventually they would disappear.

 So he had something he had to do before he lost anyone else.

a/n: Waaay more subscribers from the first chapter than I would have expected XD THANK YOU ALL!!!

I actually had a se scene written but it was embarassing so I deleted it and left that instead.

-goes and hides in a closet for the rest of life-

Aaanywaayyss... Nice to meet you all! Even though I sort of don't know you Haha. ha. ha.... -crickets chirping-

Thank you again <3

How's yours been?

Better than mine I hope~

ps. -whispers- you wanna know a secret?... thatss myy naame....

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