***Warning: double(triple-ish, kind of?) update!  Make sure you've read the previous chapters as I've been updating a lot recently!

Anyway, to put you all out of your misery (sort of) and also because I've just realised I'm not really going to be online tomorrow, here's the final chapter!  It's a long one.

Luhan and Weiyi talked for hours.  Minseok popped back in after five minutes or so when he reckoned it would be safe to see if he was needed, but Luhan just smiled and waved at him as he held Weiyi’s hand and continued talking.  He was pretty sure he couldn’t see any friction between them then, but when he and Jongdae popped back in around breakfast time to see how things were going, it was evident that there was no friction at all.  Luhan was lying properly in his bed at that point, Weiyi sitting close beside him and running her hand through his hair as they murmured to each other in Mandarin.

Minseok ordered food for them both off the breakfast menu and he and Jongdae left them alone.

It was with a heavy heart that Minseok brought all the others up to speed on Luhan’s condition as they ate breakfast themselves.  A rather subdued Jaera had curled up on his lap, her thumb, while Jaehwan was snoozing beside Semi on her bed, having slept very fitfully and occasionally starting awake and looking around with wild eyes before relaxing and curling back into his mother’s side.  It pinched at Minseok’s heart every time he saw it happen, and he found his hand creeping to the crucifix around his neck as he sent up a quick prayer that everybody was going to be all right.

“I think you should take him to Seoul with you,” Semi murmured as Jaehwan snuggled down again the fifth time it happened after breakfast.  Minseok was sitting beside her, reading through a draft police report that Jongdae had already started typing up.  “It would be a good idea to let him speak to Chanyeol.  He’s traumatised.”

Minseok bit both of his lips hard between his teeth and looked across at his son, eyes stinging.  He was beyond glad that the physical checkup on the boy had revealed nothing more serious than a few bruises and scratches, but the thought that he hadn’t been able to protect him from the situation the previous day hurt more than he was willing to accept.

“I don’t think I’m going to go to Seoul today,” he admitted in a small voice.  “We don’t know how long Luhan’s got.”

Semi hummed softly.

Minseok sniffed and quickly wiped his eyes.  “I need to get hold of Chanyeol and tell him that.  I’ll go when the doctors say Luhan’s out of the danger zone, but I’m needed here right now.”

A chair beside him scraped as his brother-in-law sat down and reached out to flatten one of Jaehwan’s cowlicks.

“I can go,” Sehun volunteered.  “I need to get back home soon anyway to fill out all the insurance claims from my apartment being trashed.”

Semi shot upright as though she’d had a brain wave.  “Why don’t you register as Taeyong’s guardian?”

Sehun frowned.  “I’m single.  Would they be happy with that?”

“Talk to Chanyeol, but I think you’d have a better chance of adopting Taeyong than we would.”

It was clear that Sehun was dubious about having a teenager crashing into his life as a sudden adopted son, but he nodded and promised to do so.  Minseok excused himself to make the phone call.

When he got back, Jongin was saying quick goodbyes to everybody in the room with the promise to be back that evening.  Being on an official mission to take down Sangchu, there was an awful lot he needed to do now that the man had finally been caught, and he’d apparently interrupted Luhan and Weiyi’s catch-up to get quick statements from them both to put into all the paperwork.  He admitted that if he’d had time to interview all the others before leaving for the holding cells, he would have done, and warned them light-heartedly to be prepared to talk when he got back.  Yixing got called in to see a physiotherapist around lunch and Jongdae spent a good hour and a half fending off phone calls from an irate home office about the situation that had occurred and which had now hit the press.  He and Minseok spent nearly five hours after that trying to deal with the press and get them evicted from the hospital.

Yixing had nabbed Jongdae’s laptop by the time they finally got their way.  Distracted, Minseok paused to hover at his shoulder as he typed rapidly at the keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

Yixing didn’t look away from the screen.  “I’m writing a long, angry email to the chief of homeland security and national intelligence telling him to go himself.”

Minseok blinked, taken aback.  “Why?”

“Because I finally can.”  Yixing paused to crack his knuckles, a slightly manic glint in his eye.  “Got a series of angry communications from him and his department demanding an explanation for us ditching work to show up in a shoot-out up north.  He sent an aide round earlier demanding that Luhan be moved to a military hospital or a prison infirmary, since he’s a wanted criminal.”

Minseok eyed him.  He wasn’t sure if he should ask Yixing what his response to that had been.

Yixing informed him anyway.  “I told them to s*d off.  Luhan was injured in defence of civilian children and the police and under any normal circumstances it would get him a police medal of honour, but when you couple that with the information he’s provided the NIS with, he’s a national hero.  They also can’t ignore that Korea’s worst criminal is now in the hands of the law thanks to him.  I’ve put in a request for a presidential pardon for Luhan – I’m in trouble anyway, so I figure it might as well be go big or go home.”

“Are they at all likely to grant that?” Minseok asked dubiously.

“No, but it’ll topple somewhere down the ladder and it could well get his sentence shortened or commuted.  If he’s lucky, he might even be exonerated.”

“But that might take months.  And Luhan doesn’t have months.”

“It won’t take months because they’re embarrassed as sh*t and want to give me a tidbit to keep me from telling everybody I was right.  The official stuff will take ages, true, but the unofficial stuff won’t and however long Luhan’s knocking about for, I’m sure he’d like to die a free man.  Or know that we tried.  It’s the thought that counts.”

Sehun had agreed with Chanyeol that he and Jaehwan would travel up to Seoul the following afternoon.  He’d originally intended to go that day to cover for Minseok, but Jaehwan was not in a condition to travel and seemed much happier spacing out during a game of monopoly that Sehun was playing with him and Semi.  There was another token which they were shoving around the board that Minseok discovered was for Jongdae, who seemed to be permanently taking phone calls or having to talk to people.  He quietly swiped Jongdae’s monopoly assets, but the game remained pretty subdued.

They had reached the point where it was clear Sehun was going to win by quite some way when Sungjong arrived.  The young hacker was putting on a brave face, but it was clear that he was distressed.  Not wanting to disturb Luhan while he was still talking to Weiyi, he hovered around in Semi’s room instead, talking to Yixing for a while, and then offering to help Jongdae just to have something to occupy him.

Just before dinner, Weiyi came back into the room looking a little teary eyed.

“He’s. . . he’s sleeping,” she told them when everybody turned to her for an update.  “He’s very tired.”

Sungjong immediately got to his feet and volunteered to watch over him until he woke up again.  Weiyi cast a nonplussed look at the latest arrival, not even sure who he was, and then turned to Minseok.

“C-can I talk to you?” she asked.

It was a bit of an awkward conversation.  They found a private, unused room so that they wouldn’t be disturbed, and Weiyi nibbled at her lip for a while before peppering Minseok with questions in Mandarin about his time growing up with Luhan.  Then came the more awkward questions about all of the criminal activity.  Minseok answered as honestly as he could, but tried to spare her the details where possible.

“This is all just so hard to take in,” she mumbled.  “He wasn’t as bad as Sangchu, but it’s still awful.  It’s. . . it’s just so hard to believe he did all that.  And your wife – I’m so sorry he—”

Minseok swallowed a feeling of guilt.  It wasn’t like he could just brush it all away and say that it didn’t matter, because he’d been just as bad.

“It’s not him now, at least,” Weiyi mused.  “I don’t think I’d have been able to stomach him if he was still like that.”

Her bottom lip was quivering, her eyes glassy.  Minseok gulped.

“And after apologising for all that,” she sniffled, “why does he think it’s necessary to apologise for being shot protecting a baby?  Why?”

Minseok had let her cry on his shoulder, patting her awkwardly in a hug, until she calmed down.

Sungjong and Jongin were both back when he returned to Semi’s room, Weiyi just behind him.

“He’s awake,” Sungjong said.  “Just. . . not doing so great.  The doctors kicked me out because his blood pressure dropped and they’re trying to stabilise him.  They said they’ll let us back in when things are a bit better.”

Minseok went anyway.  The nurses were just clearing away some extra equipment when he arrived, but Luhan looked very relieved to see him, even if he spent a full five minutes complaining about the oxygen tubes in his nose.  Neither of them touched the subject, but Minseok knew Luhan well enough to be aware that Luhan had been scared.  They talked about trivial things until one of the nurses popped in with food, and Minseok took a quick break to go to the toilet.

Jaehwan and Jaera were both standing outside Luhan’s door when he got back, Jaera pouting as Jaehwan sat her on his hip, looking like a breath in the wrong direction would topple him over.  It was obvious why they were there, even if their guilty expressions said that they’d snuck off without permission.  Minseok ruffled his son’s hair, telling them to wait for a second, and let himself back into the ward.

Luhan had already set aside his dinner tray, and Minseok fought off a grimace when he saw how little of the food had been eaten.

“The children want to see you,” he said.  “Is there a game or something you want me to fetch?”

Luhan shook his head, and so Minseok turned to the TV screen instead to see if there were any family friendly films in the DVD rack beneath it.  He held two up and turned back.

“What about one of these?”

Luhan was still shaking his head, now looking borderline scared.  “Don’t let them in.  I don’t want them to see me like this.”

Minseok stared.  “Luhan, you saved Jaera’s life.”

Visibly, Luhan gulped.  “I can’t.  They nearly got killed because of me and—”

With a sigh, Minseok put the films down and returned to Luhan’s side.

“Do you really want their last memory of you to be you getting shot in the back?” he asked.  “They might not understand everything that happened, but they’ll want to know you’re okay.”

Luhan half-heartedly started to voice one or two objections, but then he was silent, his breaths a little raspy before his body relaxed.

“Okay,” he croaked out finally.

Even Jaera seemed to understand it wasn’t playtime when they were let in, but it didn’t stop either of them from trying to poke around at some of Luhan’s injuries.  Their reasons were different, though: while Jaera would tentatively prod a cut or a bruise or a dressing of some kind and then look up and ask “ouch?” in a small voice, Jaehwan actively tried to take some of the dressings off.

“Whoa, hyung, you’re going to have the coolest scars,” he said in admiration when he finally got a peek at the gash along L