“Hey,” Sanghyuk smiled softly, wrapping his arms around Hakyeon and pulling him into a back hug.

“Hey,” Hakyeon replied. He sounded so tired and beaten down. More so then Sanghyuk had ever heard him sound before.

“It’s not your fault,” Sanghyuk said, moving to the couch in Hakyeon’s room and pulling Hakyeon down beside him.

“It is,” Hakyeon replied, curling into Sanghyuk’s warmth, “I couldn’t save them.”

“None of us could save those kids,” Sanghyuk argued, “and some of us, like me, are a lot more capable of things  like that then you. If anyone deserves blame, it’s those like me and Wonsik.”

“But I’m the leader,” Hakyeon tried to argue, “You just follow my orders.”

“So we’re all just mindless drones?” Sanghyuk challenged, “We can make our own choices in the field. If conditions change and your orders won;t work anymore, we can choose what to do. By that point in the battle, we were all doing when we thought was best, so the blame falls to all of us.”

“They were so young,” Hakyeon whispered and soon after he started to cry. Sanghyuk just held the elder closer.

“Just cry,” Sanghyuk said after a moment, “let it all out. For tonight, grieve. In the morning you have to go back to being our leader again.”

“I know,” Hakyeon managed to say, “I know.”

It was fine for him to grieve for now, but he couldn’t let that control him. He was Overwatch’s leader and the team needed him at his best if they were ever going to stop the Omnic Crisis. Sometimes Hakyeon resented that. He hated that he had to be the strong one for everyone else and that his pain and sadness had to be kept at bay for everyone’s sakes. But so long as Sanghyuk was by his side, so long as he had someone to talk to and cry to……it wasn’t so bad.

A/N: this isn’t gonna be a top fav, that’s for sure. Writing sad Hakyeon is never my favorite thing to do, but something like this, a failing to save people, needed to happen so…..*shrug*