A/N: HOOOOooooOOOeeeee this is a long one. Prepare for jumpy timelines

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On that night so many years ago, the rain poured down heavily and the thunder clapped loudly across the sky as if the gods themselves were waging an earth-shattering battle in the heavens. The sky was black and lit only to white as the lightning flashed across it, illuminating the ground in bleak luminescence like strobe lights in its wake. And on the many warm and wet summer nights as such happened, Baekhyun could hardly sleep a wink.

It was on the nights such as these that he usually stole through the large, veritable manor to curl up at the side of his mother in her bed – seeking shelter from the storm raging outside. But as luck would have it, on the nights when the thunder seemed the loudest, she was never there. On this particular night, it would have been a miracle to find either of his parents at home – both of them away for work, as he would have told the other students at school. The reality of his mother working nights as a hostess and his father doing god knows what at his office was something Baekhyun had learned about long ago – learned to keep as a secret.

Victoria – one of the housekeepers – lived just down the hall from him in the servants-quarters, but Baekhyun never went to her on nights like this. Even at the tender age of eight he knew she was below him. His father had made sure he learned that lesson the moment he first reached out to hug her so many years ago.

But even though the attempt was fruitless, he abandoned his bed and ran down the long curling hallways to his parents’ room when lightning seemed to strike just outside his large window and thunder shook his bedframe. Of course, the room was empty when he pushed the door open – the bed was neatly folded, evidence it hadn’t been used in weeks. The house was pitch black –the electricity had cut of an hour ago - but that had never scared him. What did though was the large crack of sound that seemed to come from inside the house. It seemed so strange that the thunder should seem to strike before the lightning. But before he needed to question it further that same sound echoed throughout the house again, and there was no light at all to accompany it this time.

He knew something was wrong immediately, but his feet followed the trail of sound all the same and he descended the spiral staircase into the grand foyer. He flinched and forced his eyes down to the white marble tile when lightning flashed outside, but the brief jolt of light showed another figure in the room, just adjacent to him.

When his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw Victoria in her white nightdress pressed up against the door to the kitchen. Her eyes were wide and glued to the small crack in the open door, watching inside. Almost ghostlike she turned to him, a finger pressed to her lips, and in silence she urged him away with a flick of her hand.

But his small hands pushed passed her and opened the door, subtly creaking from its disuse. It was almost as if he knew what he would find and yet a morbid curiosity forced him forward. It was as if he needed to see it with his own eyes – after all, it wasn’t like he didn’t know the things his father did – as if he needed to let it all sink in, that this life would also be his fate.

All in all, the dead man on the floor should have bothered him much more than it did. But he took in the sight with a quiet calmness that momentarily made him forget the storm outside. He stood still as he watched his own father – a man absent from his life on a regular basis – drag the bloodied man across the kitchen floor. Even as the lightning illuminated the man’s face and the gun held loosely in his father’s hand he watched in silence. As the thunder resounded in the distance he began to shake, but whether it was from the sound or the adrenaline he would never know.

Without turning around it was if the invisible tie of fatherhood alerted the man of his son’s presence, yet even so he didn’t face the boy and continued to drag the body towards the back door.

“Don’t just stand there,” he snapped with annoyance and caught Baekhyun’s attention, for it seemed as though he were speaking to no one. “For god’s sake, Baekhyun. You are eight years old and still afraid of thunder. Do you think the world is kind enough to accept your weaknesses without any consequence?”

Baekhyun shook his head no and his father finally turned to glare at him, the angry wrinkles so deeply set around his eyes and forehead made him seem even older than he already was.

“Now grow up and help your father,” he snarled with a flick of his head.

As Baekhyun gingerly picked up the feet of the dead man lightning struck in the backyard and illuminated the entire room, and Baekhyun clearly saw the face of the deceased. His father had killed old Mr. Shin - old Mr. Shin with the round glasses and the kind smile, Mr. Shin with the round belly who used to make Baekhyun laugh when he sat on his lap, Mr. Shin who used to stand at his father’s right hand side. And for some inexplicable reason, Mr. Shin now laid dead in their kitchen with two bullet holes directly through his heart.

Mr. Byun must have noticed the shock on his son’s face because he began to speak again, slowly this time and more softly as he continued to drag the heavy weight towards the back door.

“You can’t trust anyone in this world, Baekhyun. Even those who you think are close - those who you call your family - even they will betray you in the end. And in the end all you will have is yourself, so keep your friends close” – then he nodded to the body – “and your enemies much closer. Because then when they betray you, you can put them down with your own two hands. Do you understand, Baekhyun? You are alone in this cruel, cruel world, and your survival depends on you. So it’s best that you forget all those fairytales you’ve heard right now before the ground crumbles beneath your feet.”

At that moment another flash of lightning struck and thunder boomed and reverberated through Baekhyun, echoing through his chest. He dropped the feet and his heel, pushing past Victoria and running up the stairs and down the grand halls to his room.

From his window that night Baekhyun watched through the rain and lightning as his father buried Mr. Shin in the garden beneath the roses. And while he pretended to sleep, his father stole into his room in silence later, taking and burning the bloodied pajamas that Baekhyun had hastily discarded. And from that night he never ran through the house in search of comfort again.

He was his only comfort.

-

It was raining again the night his father died too. Baekhyun was only seventeen then - face still rounded with baby fat - and yet he was dangerous enough to have made the top spot on the police’s watch list.

He remained expressionless as he watched the man in front of him slowly fade away in their home, surrounded by his mother and the nurses who had been watching over him in his final stages, lungs so blackened he could hardly breathe without a respirator. Chaerin had squeezed Baekhyun’s hand as if she were trying to comfort him, but he knew the action was more for herself than it was for him. Baekhyun hadn’t felt anything for his father in many years, and now that the man had succumbed to his cancer, he was nothing but weak. Useless.

With his dying breaths, father quietly passed onto son the legacy and burden of the family’s trade. And it was in that moment that the first flash of lightning struck outside the window that night. With each boom of thunder Baekhyun could feel the weight of his responsibilities sinking deeper and deeper into his chest, resonating and aching – his hands shook in their wake.

He took his father’s cigarettes from the drawer of the desk in his office afterwards, and his hands trembled as he raised a lighter to the end of a stick. He shivered as lightning flashed across the window, rattling the glass panes with the following boom. The smoke stung his throat as he inhaled too quickly, and he coughed and hacked against the foul taste. His mother watched him from the door – he could see her in the window’s reflection – but she made no move against him, and he chose not to acknowledge her.

The burden of grief was hers alone to bear. The family’s burden was his.  

-

Baekhyun crawled along the floor, one arm clutching his stomach as the other gripped the short carpet fibers and dragged his body forward, heavy with drowsiness. Blood seeped from the cracks in his fingers and left a dark trail across the once pristine office, stretching back to the desk where the other body lay dead.

When he reached the bathroom he finally began to flash in and out of consciousness, managing only to sit up against the wall outside the door.

The front door opened then, and Junmyeon stared at the scene for a full minute before he reacted, rushing to his cousin’s side.

“Baek- Baekhyun!” he stuttered, looking back and forth between him and the man lying on the floor across the room. “What happened!? Oh, god! You’re bleeding!”

Baekhyun coughed and tasted blood in his mouth – the knife had penetrated his stomach. “Junmyeon… towel. Bathroom.”

The other nodded, eyes wide as saucers and pulled a thick white hand towel from the bathroom, pressing it over his cousin’s stomach. Together they watched it quickly seep red.

Baekhyun grunted in pain and then flicked his head towards the man across the room. “I need you to take care of it, Jun.”

His cousin’s face flickered in confusion. “Now is not the time. I’ll… I’ll do something with it after I take care of you.” Baekhyun didn’t fail to notice his cousin’s disassociation with the body.

“No!” he shouted sternly, coughing blood into his free hand. “Do it now! The longer we wait the more time we risk exposure. I won’t be caught for this.”

“Baekhyun, you’ll be dead before the cops get a chance to catch you!”

“Then call Jongdae! At least he’ll respect my wishes!”

Junmyeon grit his teeth but finally made the call, and Jongdae was there within minutes. He smirked at the sight of Baekhyun when he arrived, hands deep in his jean pockets as he looked around the room airily.

“Hmm,” he pondered aloud. “Mafia don dead at twenty-one. Stabbed by potential investor who was then killed in a tragic turn of events… It’ll make headlines, that’s for sure.”

“Jongdae!” cried Junmyeon. “Can you please tell Baekhyun that he needs help!? We need to get him to a hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Baekhyun and Jongdae said at the same time, watching a look of disbelief splash onto Junmyeon’s face.

However, while Junmyeon raged on at his cousin, Jongdae made a quiet phone call before interrupting them. “This building got a garbage chute?”

Baekhyun nodded.

“Excellent,” the other grinned. He slung the body over his shoulder and began trudging toward the door.

“Where are you going?” cried Junmyeon, outraged.

“Body delivery. Someone will pick up and dispose of the body and I’ve got a cleaning crew on the way here for the floor.”

“But how-?”

“I have a few people who owe me favors,” smirked Jongdae before he hauled the heavy body out the door and down the hall.

“Jongdae!” his cousin cried again.

“Junmyeon,” coughed Baekhyun. The other had been pressing too hard on his cousin’s stomach.

“You!” Junmyeon turned to him and gritted his teeth. “You are both… You are just… the worst!”

Baekhyun tried to laugh but only ended up coughing. “You’ll regret saying that if I actually die.”

A look of horror spread over his cousin’s face, but just then Jongdae returned, wiping his hands on his already stained t-shirt. “Now let’s get you home.”

“Home?” asked Junmyeon incredulously. “Jongdae, you guys are going too far. He needs a hospital! Do you see how much he’s bled out already?”

The other raised an eyebrow. “Not his home. My home.”

For three generations Jongdae’s family had run a veterinary clinic, and while it serviced dogs, cats and other mammals on the daily, it was also the place that three generations of Byuns had used as a hospital in private when their wounds were more than a little suspicious.

While Jongdae drove, Junmyeon spent the ride holding Baekhyun’s towel, attempting to keep him awake and applying pressure to the wound. The two of them carried Baekhyun through the back door, where Jongdae left them to turn on the light.

Junmyeon tried to place Baekhyun on the table but Jongdae shook his head.

“No. Not there.” He moved to a panel of the wall and after unlocking a discrete lever pushed it backwards so that it opened into another room. “Baek’s dad helped us upgrade a while ago.”

The room behind the wall was small and discrete, but seemed as sterile as any hospital room, full of silver and white tables and equipment. While Junmyeon placed Baekhyun on the metal table in the center, Jongdae went around washing his hands and sterilizing equipment as best as he could.

He pushed a line into Baekhyun’s forearm and injected a clear serum into the end. Baekhyun felt a sort of relief wash over him almost immediately and his limbs relaxed against his sides.

“What is that?” his cousin asked breathlessly.

“Morphine. I don’t want to sedate him, but at least like this he won’t feel the pain. …He needs a transfusion.” He moved quickly to the refrigerator behind them. “O-positive right?” he asked, pulling out a thick bag of blood and looking to Junmyeon.

“I’m… I’m not sure. Jongdae, do you know what you’re doing?”

Jongdae let out an irritated and exhausted breath and looked to Baekhyun, who barely managed to nod under his euphoria.

Junmyeon fussed at his heels. “What can I do to help? Just tell me what I need to do. Do you need this? Do you-“

“Enough!” Jongdae cut him off sharply, his smile gone as he pushed Junmyeon away from his side. “You’re being a nuisance fluttering around me like this! If you wanted to help you should have cleaned up the office like Baekhyun wanted. You’re not needed here.”

He scowled uncharacteristically and the older man cowered in front of him, looking like a puppy that had just been struck.

“Leave,” he practically growled, and a scared-looking Junmyeon his heel and fled out the door without another word.

Jongdae worked in silence for a few moments, raising Baekhyun’s shirt and examining the wound. He injected a needle into his skin with a sigh.

“I’m numbing the area, but it’s still going to feel uncomfortable.”

The tell-tale curling smile on Jongdae’s face disappeared completely into a deep set frown as he worked on. Baekhyun could only stare at him in wonder and confusion.

“You know,” he managed to say. “Even if you are trying to protect him, he’s never going to figure out you like him if you keep acting like that around him… He’s not like me. He can’t see through your fake smile… or your attitude.”

Jongdae looked at him resolutely for a while, and then continued to work as Baekhyun eventually succumbed to an anesthetic sleep. He sighed, “People like us weren’t meant to fall in love.”

-

Baekhyun’s fingers itched as his hands reached towards the top drawer of his desk, but Tao gave him a dirty look that stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said icily, quickly snatching the pack of cigarettes from the drawer and hiding them in his coat pocket. “I’m not ready to die of the black lung. Second hand smoke is the silent killer.”

“I thought that was hypertension?”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Baekhyun!” Junmyeon cried, bursting through the door. “You took the deal!?”

The man in question raised his eyes skeptically. “You found out quicker than I thought you would. What did you do? Bat your eyes at Jongdae?” he quipped sarcastically.

“I don’t know what you mean,” his cousin said in all seriousness and then plopped himself in the seat opposite Baekhyun. “But yes, I did hear from him. Anyways! That’s not the point. You can’t take this deal!”

“It’s too late. I already did. …But why not? I’m just curious.”

“Because! This is too much! The Byuns have never gone overseas with the business. The scale is just too big! Uncle couldn’t even-“

“I’m not my father,” Baekhyun said icily.

“No, I agree,” Junmyeon’s eyes turned sharp and his voice turned biting. “Your father would have known better. He would have known that a business of this proportion would put the Byuns in the public eye. He would have never let it…” Junmyeon paused and stared at Baekhyun, who had relaxed casually back into his chair. “You did this on purpose,” he said in disbelief.

“Think of it, Jun,” he said, leaning forward onto the large desk. “The Byuns. Worldwide. A syndicate the size South Korea never thought imaginable – no one thought imaginable. A veritable empire.” He stood up from his chair and turned to the window behind him, the view of high-rise rooftops spread out before him. “And you’re wrong you know. This was my father’s dream. He would have done it too, if he could have. But now I’m in charge. It’s my turn to hold the reigns, so to speak. And I can finally do what he couldn’t.”

“But why?”

“Why not? …Listen. I’m not like you or Minseok, Jun. I didn’t go to college. I don’t have a hobby. I don’t have anything to fall back on,” he turned back around to see Tao and his cousin’s pitiful stares. “I am just… this. From the day I came into this world this was the destiny set out for me. I was raised for this, bred for this, even. How else can I verify my existence if not with something of this magnitude?”

His cousin stared back at him with worried eyes. “You better slow down, Baek, or you’re going to end up dead before your time. Don’t let your father’s legacy force you to miss out on your own life… Like you said, you’re not him. You’re your own person. Your destiny is something for you to decide on your own.”

“How do you know this isn’t what I want? Why can’t this be my destiny?”

Junmyeon only stared at him silently for a few moments before answering. “If you truly believe that… then why do you look so sad?”

-

“That couldn’t have gone any worse,” Kris announced as they walked through the back doors of XOXO, his tone biting and spiteful.

Baekhyun fell into the chair at his desk and lay his head in his hands, staring down at the grain of the wood below him and trying to steady his breathing.

“Well, I’d say we were pretty lucky, considering,” commented Tao, lightly patting the bandages on his shoulder.

“You call this lucky? If that bullet had hit you another inch to the left you’d be gone right now, Huang!”

“It’s Tao,” replied the other sourly. “And it didn’t. So, yeah, I’d say I was lucky. The entire situation was a close call. It’s luck that any of us made it out, let alone unharmed.”

“I’d challenge that last bit.”

“Oh yeah?” Tao was clearly irritated now. “Like you challenged Boss’ orders? Like you challenged that man today!? You’re the reason they even started firing in the first place!”

“The situation was charged! If I hadn’t struck first then they probably would have done the same thing!” Kris yelled back.

“You can’t know that! You risked all our lives because of your decision! Why couldn’t you just listen to what Boss said!?”

Kris gestured wildly about the room. “I’m supposed to trust a man I only met weeks ago!? I don’t know you people from Adam and you just expect me to go along with you? I trust my instincts and nothing else. The way I see it that situation went belly up long before I intervened! I knew something needed to be done so I acted!”

Tao slammed the fist of his non-injured arm into the wall, sending fissures streaming from the impacted area. “That’s not the point!”

“Then what is your point!?”

Baekhyun didn’t know how long their argument continued, because as soon as their voices blew up he retreated into his own mind, playing the events of that day over and over again. He thought about how close they’d come – they’d all come – to dying. He had almost died. And it’s not like it had been the first time. But the thought terrified him suddenly and without warning.

The situation seemed to play faster and faster until it was just an endless loop of the bullet whizzing past his head and shattering the glass wall behind him, shot by a sniper more than one thousand meters away. His ear was still bleeding from where the round had grazed him. And like Kris had said, just an inch to the left and he’d be gone.

He’d be dead and gone, but what legacy would he leave behind? A string of bodies and piles of money… those were nothing. They would mean nothing to him when he was gone. His people? Kris, Tao, Junmyeon, Minseok, Jongdae, all of them… even they he kept at arm’s length. His death would be an inconvenience, sure – a disruption of business as usual. But eventually it would be forgotten. Just like he’d forgotten his own father, he too would become a faded memory.

His breathing began to quicken in panic and he squeezed his eyes shut. The fight in front of him grew louder and louder until he could take it no more.

“Get OUT!” he screamed. The room became silent and still before him when he jerked his head up, a crazed look about him. The two in front of him stood frozen and shocked. “I said get out!” he yelled again, standing from his seat in a flash.

The two hastily scrambled for the door and it slammed shut behind them.

When they had gone the strength left Baekhyun’s knees, sending him crashing down to the floor. His breathing turned to hiccups as he pulled his knees to his chest, and then hiccups turned into drowning sobs – sobs so deep that he could hardly breathe between the pain of their weight.

And like this Baekhyun cried alone.

-

“I’m so bored,” Baekhyun yawned, stretching his feet onto the desk and knocking over a few of his trinkets.

“Well like I said,” sighed Tao, hastily picking up the toys and realigning them habitually. “I have a few things I need to go over with you. Like here,” he said, handing a manila file over to Baekhyun who took it and then dropped it next to his feet with a roll of his eyes. “This guy has accumulated quite a bit of debt after booking from Jaewon over the past several months and-“

Baekhyun puffed air from the corner of his lips, pushing his long fringe away from his eyes in a bored fashion.

“-and then there’s some new intel on the group down in Busan. Jongdae says there might even be two groups struggling for power and that with time-“

“Zi Tao!” interrupted Baekhyun suddenly, and the other looked up from his papers with surprise, stopped dead in the middle of his frantic pacing. “You’re overwhelming me again.”

“Oh,” said the other sheepishly. “Sorry, Boss.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“I just need you to give me a source of action. Nothing here requires your direct involvement. I just need you to tell me what you want to do and I can put people on it.”

Baekhyun flipped briefly through the stack of files he was handed with leisure, but when he looked back up Tao was watching him, standing at attention. He rolled his eyes again. “You can go now, Zi Tao,” he waved the files at him. “I’ll look them over and let you know in the morning. Take the night off.”

But the other didn’t move from his spot. “I can stay, Boss.”

“It wasn’t a request,” he said sternly. “Now leave.”

Seeing his seriousness, Tao turned tail and left, closing the door behind him. When it was secure Baekhyun slouched further into his desk, the weight of his responsibilities crushing him almost immediately, as it seemed to do so often these days. If anyone looked closely enough they could see the purple bruises hidden by concealer under his eyes that served as evidence of his sleeping habits – or lack thereof.

These days hardly a night went by where Baekhyun didn’t toss and turn in agony, kept awake by the sheer force of his thoughts. Day in and out he couldn’t stop thinking about the things he had to do – the things he had already done. And the stack of papers on his desk was a cold hard reminder of his cold-blooded profession.

But no matter how many times Baekhyun told himself he didn’t care - convinced himself that he was emotionless – it still seemed to tear at his inner most being - his soul - every time he took a life. It didn’t matter how good he was at it - how he’d spent almost his entire life in the game - he was tired, and people began to mistake his constant irritability that grew from it as a sign of his strength, when in reality it couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Every day he grew more and more tired of the same old routine – the same old morbid routine that always seemed to end with death.

He held his head in his hands, and wondered how many times this week alone he had found himself in this same position, slumped over his desk with the weight of the world on his thin shoulders. How many times this week had he wished for it all to end?

Dramatic, he thought to himself. Always so dramatic. He breathed a heavy sigh and rolled his head across his shoulders. Thoughts like these could be pushed aside. Perhaps another day, another time.

He took the stack of files Tao had handed him and flipped open the first one. The pink sticky note on the inside listed a huge sum that the man in the file owed him. The gambler, he recalled Tao had said. Baekhyun scoffed. Here was just another low-life scumbag who’d thought they could get away with ripping him off. Perhaps he thought he had been clever.

But the face from the file that stared back at him was nothing like he’d imagined. The photos had been taken from a distance, but the resolution was clear, and a toothy grin beamed from every page. A dark haired man walked with a woman – probably his mother – and he held her arm as they strolled. His face was unassuming, his smile uncalculated, and his eyes crinkled as he laughed without a care for personal beauty.

Baekhyun caught himself staring back at the photos, lips pressed into a tight line, but unable to look away. He wondered what true happiness tasted like.

He had been joyful before, that much was true. But Baekhyun couldn’t remember a time when he’d truly ever been happy. And yet from a photograph he could tell that this stranger had been happier in that single moment than he’d ever been in a lifetime.

Suddenly, Baekhyun wanted to see him - see this man who lived his life peacefully, unknowing of the trouble he was in. He wanted to see the stranger’s innocence and peace crumble before his very eyes. He wanted to prove that that happiness could be shattered, and as soon as he pulled the wool from that man’s eyes, he too would feel the weight of his world crashing around him.

So Baekhyun stood from his desk in a hurry, ripping the address from the file and searching around his office until he found what he’d been looking for. He hadn’t used his paintball gun in a while, but it would have to do for now.

-

And yet - no matter what Baekhyun had done to him - that stranger seemed to remain happy.

He frowned, so unalike to that first joyous picture Baekhyun had seen. But Baekhyun knew that he was still happy underneath it all. He could see the difference between them as clear as crystal.

Something in Chanyeol was light, and even when he wasn’t smiling it radiated out of him, drew people to him. But Baekhyun’s darkness consumed him. He could feel himself being swallowed whole by it, and he wasn’t sure there was any time left for saving.

As the waves gently rocked the boat beneath him he stared up into the dark ebony sky, covered in clouds and devoid of light. He had been hoping for stars when he’d come out on deck, but it seemed that none would be shining through tonight.

That night he could feel the darkness inside of him take hold like a noose around his neck, pulling tighter with each passing hour. Desperately though, he was trying to cling to hope, anything that could pull him away from himself. He fought to drag himself out of the darkness, but he was torn. No. He was lying to myself. Hhe had already made up his mind about his destiny. He was just going through the motions, pretending he was trying to save himself. He placed his hopes in something that couldn’t possibly come through. Not tonight.

Just one, he thought. If I see just one star then it means something. If I see just one then I won’t fade away.

The darkness continued to stare back at him and he shuddered in the ocean breeze. He closed his eyes – squeezed them shut – and willed that they stay dry. But a single tear rolled down his cheek.

A squeak came from the other end of the deck and Baekhyun quickly turned his head to the door. He couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t the tear in his eye that reflected, but the man who bumbled about onto deck seemed to shine so brightly in that moment.

Baekhyun looked up to the sky again, and sure enough the moon had come out, illuminating the clouds and stars around it in a white light.

He laughed to himself quietly as the other figure stuttered an apology at him.

My star has come.

-

Baekhyun awoke in a cold sweat. His sheets lay tangled around his legs and perspiration ran down his forehead. The temperature control had been cranked down to practically freezing, but his body was on fire.

He put his hand to his hot forehead in a daze. He had only been asleep for about an hour at most but it was the deliriou