They bury Eric before the seasons turn.

It’s a unanimous decision between them that needs no further explanation. Although there is no body, Hyesung lays a lacquer box containing memorabilia – Eric’s favorite watch, a box of cigarettes, photographs of the 6 of them – in the earth next to Andy’s grave and leads the rites. It’s simple and cursory like Eric would have wanted, and at the end he replaces the wilted bouquets of white chrysanthemums with fresh ones, before taking two final deep bows. Once done, he makes his way back to where Minwoo is waiting in his wheelchair, sitting in the shade of an elm under the cooling summer sky.

“All right?” Minwoo asks, although it’s more instinct than anything else and a response is not exactly expected. Hyesung nods and makes to sit on the ground beside him, stretching his legs out on the yellowing grass, uncaring for the dirt clinging to the fabric of his suit. They’re facing the direction of the graves, their gazes naturally resting on the three mounds representing the people they had loved. Hyesung doesn’t miss the fact that despite Minwoo’s insistence to come to the burial, regardless of the doctor’s health warnings and the long-winded preparations they had gone through to ensure he looked prim and proper, Minwoo hasn’t even attempted to go beyond the shade of the tree.

They sit there for what seems like hours, both seemingly content to just hear each other breathe.

“Hyesungie.”

Minwoo’s voice is soft and unlike his own, but Hyesung hears it as though he had spoken the words himself.

“Hmm?”

“Do you…do you think they know?”

A warm wind flits past, causing the dried grass and untended leaves to rustle and feather. If Hyesung closes his eyes he can imagine it being the whispers of everyone they’ve lost, humming and offering words of comfort in the vast, aching quiet.

Do you think they know?

(that we love them, that we miss them, that we will never ever forget their smiles, the sound of their laughter, the warmth they provided, that we will always be looking for them in every flicker of light, every passing shadow, in the midst of every thrumming crowd, in the notes of a song recorded so many years ago)

“Yes,” Hyesung says, although the words are bittersweet in his mouth. There is nothing else he would believe.

Yes, yes, a billion times yes.

Minwoo’s face crumples then, and his façade with it. He hunches over in the wheelchair, covering his eyes with the back of his palm. A strange keening sound emerges from his throat, more animal than human, and Hyesung places a hand on his knee to offer comfort, although he’s also on the verge of falling apart.

(With Shinhwa they’ve always resorted to dividing into pairs and it’s a cruel irony of the universe now that they still are: two dead, two missing, and two waiting, but maybe this is really how it’s supposed to be because even a godforsaken war can never really break them and Hyesung knows that even if he had been left with no choice but to stand alone, for their sake, he would, he would…)

“This stupid war…” Minwoo says, voice shaking, his eyes like open wounds. “This goddamn, ing, stupid, senseless war.”

“Dongwannie and Choongjae…”

“…They’re still out there somewhere. Alive. That’s…that’s what I believe.”

“How do you know?”

“Jinnie…Jinnie is a master avoider. And Dongwan is good at hiding. He’s small too, so he can fit in cramped spaces.”

“…Dongwan would kill you if he heard that.”

“I told him not to play the hero. I told him to find Jinnie and to come home.”

“Do you…do you think they’re together? Right now?”

“…I hope so. God. I hope so.”

Slowly, they start picking up the pieces.

Minwoo’s recovery is slow and excruciating, the gradual healing of his injuries bringing with it pain in high doses as his nerve endings come back to life, remind him that his legs, though broken, are still very well connected to the rest of him and his body is making it known to him in the most obnoxious way possible. Because of the war, morphine and painkillers are rationed and he gets the minimal dose, enough to take the edge off for a few hours but spending the rest in agony. It’s the cause of many arguments and near-blows, because there are days when therapy is the embodiment of torture and Minwoo says that I can’t go on, I can’t do this, but Hyesung is always ready for it, letting Minwoo, sweaty and breathless and white from effort, rest his entire weight on him while his hair and whispering you can slow down and rest but you can’t stop, okay? We can’t stop.

On good days they take long walks in the hospital garden, with Minwoo in the wheelchair and Hyesung pushing him along. They speak of small and careful things like last night’s dinner or the tests to be done that day, avoiding anything that will require them to think and remember. Often, Minwoo gets a distant look in his eyes, and Hyesung knows he’s there again, in the battlefield with a gun in hand, running, dodging, shooting, asking why am I here, why have I survived when they have not?

“I wasn’t in the base, you know, when they bombed it.”

Hyesung keeps his gaze on the cloud trail he's watching in the distance. “I know.”

He sees Minwoo pick at the blanket covering his knees. There will be therapy again tomorrow, a whole world of pain anew, and neither of them is looking forward to it.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Go back. Your commanding officer said you were already outside but you went back for the men. Did you have friends in that unit?”

“Not really.”

Hyesung eyes Minwoo’s legs, broken and near-shattered and the cause for all of his pain. “You just wanted to help then?”

Minwoo sighs, removes the cap that had been sitting on his head and runs a hand through his hair, now trimmed to a decent length. “They were kids. And I thought…I thought if I did that, karma would repay me back somehow.”

“By nearly rendering you paralyzed?”

“I couldn’t protect Andy and…” his eyes glisten at the word, “…I thought if I did that for someone else, for someone else’s friend or brother or son, some other person somewhere would do the same for you or Wannie or Jinnie if you would need it. To save you when we can’t.”

Hyesung can’t really find the words to reply to it, and so chooses to stay silent. It’s been six months since he’s last heard from Dongwan, and nearly eight since Junjin’s last missive. Minwoo seems to realize this too and hangs his head.

“…I don’t know what to believe in anymore.”

(There were times when I just wanted to sit down
There were times when I wanted to go back
But I know that there is a reason to this road)
 

The end of the war starts as a ripple.

After nearly ten months of inaction from other nations, the Philippines extends assistance through an incognito unit to help penetrate the North. When it proves successful, they move up to sending three, then five, then ten, and within a few weeks, Malaysia joins in, then Vietnam, Thailand, and finally Japan and Australia.

The firefighting is horrendous and there is a horrible week when they have to spend it in a bunker. When they finally emerge, a UN resolution has been proposed and dozens of North Koreans defect to the South and the North finally retreats, waves a proverbial white flag that ends the draft and everything related to it, and then…it’s all over.  

Hyesung doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Kangta visits them in hospital the following week. His hearing is shot and he’s thin as a rail but he’s more or less in one piece. The doctors turn a blind eye when he sneaks in a bottle of soju into the room.

“Any luck?” he asks, carefully pouring Minwoo a fingernail’s worth of alcohol.

Hyesung keeps his phone in his pocket at all times, fully charged. He glances at it now in the hopes that some message has come through, but the screen has stayed blank. “No.”

“What are you guys going to do now?”

Minwoo downs the soju in one slurp but doesn’t ask for more. “Survive, hopefully,” he says wryly.

“And Shinhwa?”

“Shinhwa’s gone.” The resignation in Minwoo’s tone hurts more than the actual words, and Hyesung automatically curls his fist. “What about you guys?”

“I lost them all.”

“.” Minwoo has the decency to look abashed. Hyesung touches Kangta’s knee. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” and there is a shadow of a smile in Kangta’s expression. “We ended on good terms. I don’t think I can ask for much more at this point, to be honest. I’ll see them again, someday. For now I’ll distract myself with making H.O.T’s comeback album.”

“All on your own?”

Kangta shrugs. “H.O.T is me and I am H.O.T. Funny," he says, though it's not funny at all, "it took a war for us to realize it. But I owe the guys at least that much.”

As long as one of us lives, Shinhwa lives, and as long as Shinhwa lives, we all do.

Something small and hopeful fuses itself inside of Hyesung, a glimmer of light in the seemingly never-ending darkness. He mulls on Kangta’s words for a week and keeps both Eric’s and Andy’s letters in his wallet. He starts bringing a notebook and pen around, jotting down stray notes and lyrics, until Minwoo asks to see.

“Why,” he says in a way that it’s not really a question but an accusation. He holds the notebook open in his lap, exhausted after that day’s therapy session. “Why would you want to do this?”

“You know why,” Hyesung replies because he’s equally stubborn and this is for Eric and Andy, and Choongjae and Dongwan, and for you and I because we need this, because we need to go on even though it hurts and I want to bring everyone along with us still and this is the only way I know how…

His throat hurts and he realizes that he’s said everything out loud. Minwoo stares back at him as though he’s grown two heads and at first Hyesung thinks it will be the start of another argument but he's surprised as Minwoo gives a barely-imperceptible nod, and Hyesung knows he’s won.

He and Minwoo work all hours, losing themselves in their shared passion of putting thought, emotion, memories into song, drawing from pain and affection in equal measure, and although there are days that are harder than most, they push on with the same zeal as when they first started, and by the end of September they have twelve songs. Hyesung takes upon himself the task of recording and mixing it in Eric’s home studio which he plays back to Minwoo every night, recording separate parts into his phone and mixing it back. Record, mix, listen, check. Rinse. Repeat.

When it’s done, their voices are raw and cracked but for the first time in a long while Hyesung sleeps at night and dreams of laughter, and when he wakes he wakes to sunshine.

In mid-October they gift the album to the studios and it’s so popular the radio stations play at least one or two songs thrice a day.

“It’ll be okay, right?” Minwoo says. He’s already on his feet most hours but has to use a cane to walk. When he gets too tired then he’ll have to use the wheelchair, although he hates it with a passion. He stays in Hyesung’s apartment with Hyesung because he still finds it too hard to go to Eric’s, but it’s all right. It’s all right.

“It’ll be okay,” Hyesung affirms because there’s nowhere else to go but up now and he’s not alone. He’ll never be alone.

We’ll always be six.

(You give me the light to see,
I can hear you calling back for me
This promise I’ll always keep
Just remember that I’ll never leave)
 

(The phone rings. A blocked number.

“Hello?”

A beat then some scuffling.

“Hyung.”)



END


Author's Notes: Finally done!!!! So psyched. Love it? Hate it? Please leave me a comment. :) And thank you so much to the ones who had been faithfully reading as it was updating! Ending is a bit open-ended in the sense that you don't know whether or not Dongwan is alive. For me he is, so don't fret. :3 I wanted to write Junjin in more but this was the type of fic where he unfortunately had to be relegated to the side. 

Still thinking if I should write the spin-off as it'll be from Eric's pov. The shipping I mentioned in the tags is obvs Ricsyung but it's so so subtle that I don't know if you guys caught it or not. Anyway, leave me your thoughts. :) Thank you very much again!