Suho was staring outside the window when Lay came back from Baekhyun's - and Aya's - room. He was at the exactly same place where he'd left him, which made Yixing sigh. He was as broken as all of them, the only difference being that he was more mature than them and able to deal with at least some of the things that were wrong.

 

Truth be told, had Junmyeon not been as strong as he was, they’d all still be lost at their respectful places in the world. Yixing would still be driving a bicycle, watching flowers bloom to life and not understanding it was him who was doing it. Others, like Baekhyun, would be reliving memories which stayed buried deep within them for God knows how long and running away from their phantom enemies.

 

He was worried for those who were not yet found, not yet awoken. He was worried that they’d be found and taken away and… No. He would not be as pessimistic as the rest of them. They would all be fine, he knew.

 

Suho said that he’d found him because he could feel his power and was drawn to it. He seemed to have been the first person to realize he even possessed powers, and as time passed, he slowly began to remember everything. Everything. In the maze, he was not as powerless as Lay, who could do nothing but lie down and try to breathe, since his connection to the essence of life was cut off. He had no strength to move, so he did not know much about what happened, except for what others had told him. Everything was still a jumbled mess, a mess which they could’ve sorted out, had they not been so shaken and broken.

 

Everyone was living through a drama of their own. Strangely enough, the only person who was not to blame for anything was unresponsive, hurt more badly than everyone else. They would all tune into their powers again, regaining their connection to The Tree of Life, but would she ever regain consciousness again? It was a question he did not want to answer negatively. Aya was the key to understand what had happened, where Kris and Luhan were and why they were all at different parts of the world, partly-amnesiac and not able to tune into their powers fully.

 

Baekhyun was there. He’d seen what happened, but he did not want to talk about it. He would’ve been as rude to Yixing as he was to all the others, had it not been for Lay’s power to maybe heal her. He did not understand much when it came to the relationship the two had, either, but the desperation in his eyes spoke enough. As he shook him by the collar and screamed at Lay to fix her, he was a man who did not want to lose his woman. Lay’s heart broke at the thought that maybe, things wouldn’t get fixed.

 

Sehun also knew what had happened at the other part of the maze - the part where Kris was. He’d only told them that he did not do anything to Kris, and that everything was Kris’ fault, but Suho insisted it was otherwise. Suho saw the two of them grab each other by the necks and then Sehun hit him with a ball of wind - how did he even manage to tune into his power? The maze was a place specifically designed for them not to be able to get out. They knew it when they entered it, but they had no choice. They never seemed to have a choice when it came to anything.

 

“Hey, Junmyeon,” Lay said as he moved to stand beside the leader, the person who was holding them all together at this moment. “Don’t worry about anything. They’ll all be fine, they just need time. And you do, too.”

 

As if woken up from a dream, Suho blinked and put a hand under his chin in thought. Then he began to pace around as he spoke. “I just can’t figure it out, Yixing. How can they be so focused on themselves when so many more important things are at stake? When our survival is at stake? What happens if the station really leaves this place without us inside it? What happens if we are unable to return?”

 

Suho was right - it was terrible and scary, and he did not want to think about dying slowly as the essence of life faded inside of him, leaving him as an empty shell. They had to get back there before it was too late, but how would they do it without Kris?

 

“We need to find Kris,” Lay said strongly, because that was the only way. But how would they find him if they had no idea why he was gone in the first place? And if he was even alright and not taken away by SM? If that was the case…

 

“I’ll go talk to them,” Suho said with determination in his eyes, but Lay knew he was too tired and did not want to fight with anyone. He was already putting too much weight on his shoulders, blaming himself for events he could not prevent from happening, because who could’ve know?

 

Lay knew Suho blamed himself for what Luhan did, too, but that was also something he could not affect in any way. None of them understood what benefit he could’ve gained from attacking Aya’s mind like that. It was a wonder she even survived: Lay have seen Luhan kill while interrogating prisoners, and it was while he was sorting through just a small amount of their recent thoughts. What could he have been searching for?

 

Lay put a hand on Suho’s shoulder, stopping him from going to see either Baek or Sehun, or both, which would only make things worse. “Baek is with Soo right now. In any case, I don’t think he’s going to have much success there, because he is basically insane right now. I think that things are going to change drastically when she wakes up, so let’s wait a little while longer.” Neither asked the question, but it hung in the air: would she wake up? “She’ll pull through - I’ve felt her life force. It’s strong and I can sense that she wants to live, it just feels distant, as if she’s at a whole other dimension somewhere. Could it be that she is having, like, the opposite of what we are having right now?”

 

Junmyeon looked at him with tired eyes, nearly-purple eyebags beneath his eyes making Lay want to heal them, though he couldn’t. Not yet. “What do you mean?”

 

Lay scratched the back of his neck, now suddenly not that sure his theory was right. “Well, we can’t reach our powers now and since the eclipse hadn’t happened yet, it’s not because something changed with The Tree of Life. Someone cut us off somehow. Perhaps what’s happening to her is the opposite - maybe she’s tuning into her power too much and constantly reliving other people’s memories, unable to get out and wake up. I mean, I’m not sure, it’s just a theory because her consciousness seemed very far away but not as if she was in a coma-”

 

Now Suho joined the club of lunatics who seemed to be taking him by the collar and shaking him too often lately. “Yes, that’s it!” he said, something that suspiciously looked like a plan shining inside of his eyes. “Yixing, you are a genius!”

 

With that, he ran out of the room, leaving Lay without any knowledge of what just happened.

 

When he didn’t come back after a couple of minutes, Lay deemed their conversation done and decided to try something himself. He had a perfect excuse, and though he was closer to Baekhyun than him, perhaps he’d manage to get a response out of him. Sometimes it took someone who wasn’t too familiar to make someone open up, and Lay certainly hoped he’d be that guy this time. They desperately needed answers, and he had them. So now, it was up to him.

 

Lay didn’t knock on the door before going in, feeling very rude for doing so but having to avoid the possibility to be yelled at and driven away. He tried to redeem himself by asking “May I come in?” after closing the door behind himself.

 

Sehun was sitting in the corner of his room as equally empty as others’, his arms circling his knees, which were pulled up to his chest. He did not react to Lay’s entrance or give any kind of response. Completely different way of dealing than what he’d seen Baekhyun do.

 

So Lay decided to try a different approach than the one he’d used with Baekhyun - instead of demanding answers right there and right now, he sat in the same pose, at the opposite side of the room. He did not say anything, instead waiting for Sehun to begin talking, if he wanted to.

 

He did not believe this would accomplish anything, but he knew that the other approach wouldn’t either. What happened between him and Kris was obviously strong and more than a simple fight, since regardless of the fact that Sehun was the maknae, he was more mature than most of the members. There was something dark in the whole story, which made Sehun hide things, and Lay hoped to find out, and soon.

 

Lay had almost given up, when Sehun started talking.

 

“I did not control that ball of wind,” he said slowly and in a voice devoid of all emotions, “I was not going to hurt him, regardless of the fact that I wanted to. I know none of you believes me, but that is the truth.”

 

Lay decided to play the good cop and pretend he trusted him, at least for now. “Okay. Let’s say that is true, but why did Kris fly away? Why did he leave us behind?”

 

Sehun turned his head towards the side. Lay thought this was the end of the conversation, but as it turned out, he just needed time to think about his response. “I don’t know. The two of us fought about a very unimportant thing and instead of fighting me like a man, he got scared and ran away. I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. I wouldn’t let him take me back, anyway.”

 

He wouldn’t let Kris take him back? But, what was he thinking? Was he thinking of staying and dying a slow death?

 

Was he crazy?

 

“Sehun…” he began uncertainly. He didn’t know what to say. It was his choice, after all, but it was pointless. He would not live long - perhaps a day, perhaps a week, but it was not worth dying for.

 

“I know,” Sehun said in a hollow voice. “But I’ve decided. I don’t want to stay, Yixing. I want to die. You’ll do fine without me. After we destroy them, or if the eclipse happens before that, I… want to give up.”

 

“But why, Sehunnie?” Yixing said carefully, feeling very worried for his friend, his brother, even. If Suho ever found out about this… he would be heartbroken. He would want to die, too. Or hopefully, they’d manage to prevent him from doing such a stupid thing before it happened.

 

Sehun closed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. Then he took a deep breath. “Because I am not complete, and in the maze I found out I never will be. I’ve been searching for something that does not exist anymore, for it was taken away from me. There is no more reason for me to live in this world anymore.”

 

Lay moved closer to him then, taking one of his hands in his own, trying to make the magic flow out of his hand and into him, healing all of his wounds, including those on his heart, but the magic was not there. He’d used up everything there was - and it was not much - to heal Aya’s physical wounds and try to heal her mind.

 

“Don’t say such things,” he said, trying to bring his friend back on track. What he was saying could’ve been true, but it wasn’t a reason for him to disappear. Not when they’d already lost too much. “Even if it’s not her, you can always just try again. You see, finding her didn’t have to mean that she was the right one for you - it could mean that you shouldn’t give up-”

 

“But it is her, Yixing!” Sehun suddenly said, seemingly losing his calmness for a second, the veins on his neck bulging out. “It is her, but it isn’t me, and it’s killing me! The worst thing is, I don’t blame her for what she did. I just can’t live with the fact that she didn’t do it with me, for me, but with-” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t know anything that can help, so just let me be sad and try to come to terms with everything, Yixing.”

 

“But Sehunnie, maybe you should try talking to her-”

 

Sehun put a hand in front of himself, shaking his head. “I’ve seen and heard enough. I’ve seen her today and my suspicions - my fears - were confirmed. She was never mine in the first place, I was just too blind to see it. I was too blind to see that everything was true and not an act.”

 

“Okay, but Sehunnie, you need to stay cheerful and not-” Lay tried for the millionth time. Had it been someone else, Sehun would’ve gotten punched for being rude a million times already, but Lay was patient.

 

“I will, I promise, hyung. I’m just tired and I need some time alone. Just let me be, and I promise I’ll stop making you worry tomorrow. I’ll get up and do all the chores and work hard on finding the others. Just… let me be like this today.”

 

Sehun’s eyes were not hollow - they were hurt and desperate, confused and betrayed. What was it so powerful that he could not be around her anymore? What had she done?

 

Lay sighed, worried, but got up and went over to their maknae and ruffled his hair anyway. Then he proceeded to hug him and put a kiss at the top of his head. “Okay, but I’ll come back with food, and you better eat it or else you’re going to need some healing!”

 

The smile on Sehun’s face was enough to satisfy Yixing that maybe, just maybe, he would rethink his words and decide to join them when the time came.

 

Little did he know that though Sehun tried to look cheerful to make him stop worrying, inside of him was a sickness that was eating away at him. He couldn’t breathe properly from the pain he felt inside of his chest. He couldn’t wrap his mind around what Kris had said - what he told himself over and over again was just another one of his lies, but what was proven as true even by Kris himself. He just refused to acknowledge it.

 

He closed his eyes, going back to his safe place - the place that was not his anymore, that he could not go to anymore, but that he kept coming back to anyway, because that was how pathetic of a person he was. No matter how hard he tried, he could not let go of it.

 

He could not let go of her.

 

He wrapped his arms tightly around her, refusing to let go. If only he memorized how exactly the feel of her body against his felt, they could stay that way forever.

 

Lamiya giggled. “Let me go, silly! You are seriously such a giant baby - all you want to do is hug.” She settled into his hug anyway and let him lift her up as he took her to where their tree was standing - to Earth’s Tree of Life.

 

He was so proud of her - as he settled her into his arms, she wrapped one of her arms around his neck and rustled the tree’s leaves with the other. She giggled again. “How am I able to do this, Sehunnie?”

 

Sehun shook his head. “I don’t know, beautiful. But it suits you perfectly.”

 

He did not know how she could control the wind, too. When he’d first seen her at this same clearing half a year ago, she was dancing around in the field, looking like a madwoman, and he’d wanted to leave immediately to remain unnoticed, but then he saw her do a very familiar gesture with her fingers. The grass rustled then, moved by the wind that was not supposed to be there.

 

He did not dare breathe as he continued to watch her. It was a coincidence, a strange coincidence he could not explain because he wasn’t paying enough attention-

 

She raised one arm above her head as she danced, doing another very familiar gesture. This time, it brought a butterfly over to her.

 

It immediately joined her dance, swirling around her in motions that were not a regular butterfly’s. It was as if she was controlling it somehow, as if she was controlling the whole world in order to trick him into believing any of this was actually real. She was probably just a witch using black magic to imitate his people’s movements.

 

Or she was SM. He immediately tensed up, knowing both of the possibilities were very dangerous, especially since he was alone.

 

The witch started to sing and the whole clearing became the center of a performance celebrating wind. It wasn’t possible for it to be real - it had to be some kind of a trap.

 

It was a trap he was slowly falling for. Her curly hair swayed in the wind as she kept dancing, the butterfly matching her every movement.

He felt her giggle in his heart. He would carry that satanic sound with him always, to remind him that beauty too pure had to be evil.

 

Then she stumbled and fell, and he fell with her.

 

Now, he breathed in the scent of her hair, the scent of her - how could he have ever doubted she was pure? She was as innocent as the essence he tuned into, the essence she somehow tuned into, too.

 

“There aren’t many people like us, beautiful,” he whispered to her as they lay in the grass, her head safely tucked at the place where his shoulder met his neck. She tried to change their position, but he was serious - he wanted her to hear this.

 

When she hummed in approval, now settling to play with their intertwined hands, he continued. “Actually, a guardian yielding wind is created very rarely. The Tree of Life does not like having to make a guardian suffer, so it usually gives out different powers.”

 

“What do you mean, having to make a guardian suffer?” she asked shyly.

 

“We all have to train to be able to fully tune into our powers and control them,” he began. This was a story all of his brothers knew because The Tree of Life had told it many times, but he’d never told it to anyone before. “So we are sent to nearby planets with conditions that allow for us to learn fast and efficiently. For some, the planets they go to are beautiful, such as Chanyeol’s, which was full of phoenix birds and beautiful sceneries. Others have to save their worlds, such as Baekhyun, who was sent to a planet without a star - his mission was to create one and give it life. It was a hard task, but he’d completed it without failure.”

 

Lamiya began to play with the hem of his shirt. He rolled his eyes. Could she ever just stay still and talk with him without having such thoughts?

 

She hummed again, and he suspected she wasn’t even listening, but then she asked him a question. “What about yours, Sehunnie?”

 

He smiled sourly as he ran a hand through her hair, making her look up in surprise. She was so beautiful - he could almost see the love in her eyes, which was reflected in his. He loved her. He’d said it already so many times. Why couldn’t she do the same? Was he really not good enough for her?

 

“The world I was sent to was an endless desert,” he whispered as he closed his eyes, knowing she could hear him. “There was nothing there. Just an endless desert storm which I had to endure over and over again until I managed to get a grip on my powers and start controlling it.

 

The Tree of Life says that usually, the guardian gives up long before becoming able to control such a huge mass of power. They die, alone in the sand, a failure to their race. I’d seen so many bones carried around on that planet - I absolutely understand why no more wind guardians are created.”

 

Lamiya sniffed and gently touched his cheek. “My poor baby must’ve suffered so much,” she said with a heavy voice, and as he opened his eyes, he could see that her face was tear-stricken. Did she love him? What was it in her eyes that he could not decipher? He was at the brink of death, and she never gave him any answers.

 

“No,” he shook his head while laughing. Meanwhile, her fingers were tracing the outline of his lips, her mind again venturing out to places it shouldn’t have been.

 

“You see, I had a friend on my journey, and I was too desperate to protect him to let the storm take him away and hurt him.”

 

She hummed again, moving dangerously close to his face. He laughed out loud.

 

“Call for him,” he said, a challenge in his eyes. She never backed down, even when she had no idea what the challenge was in the first place.

 

He loved her with his whole being.

 

Lamiya raised her hand with a confused face, not sure what she was doing but always doing everything right. Sehun was mesmerized with her, with how natural all of it came to her. When she’d stopped that tornado… it took him years to perfect that skill and for her it was just the flick of a finger. How powerful would she become when he trained her properly? What would The Tree of Life say about her?

 

Would she be allowed to stay, with him?

 

Sehun did not worry, because he knew The Tree of Life would never make him suffer in vain. How could it not allow her to stay with them at Exoplanet, when it was clear she was one of them? The Tree might’ve even planned all of this, though how or for what purpose, Sehun did not know.

 

Sehun did not deserve her - he didn’t deserve the movement she made as she closed her eyes, feeling the power flow out of her and out, wrapping around the most precious memory of Sehun’s and bringing it gently, oh so gently, to where they were entangled.

 

He loved her so, so incredibly much.

 

The butterfly immediately landed onto her nose, making them both laugh, but then it landed on his hand instead, slowly moving upwards to finally reach his neck, as if remembering, too.

 

He did not know how it was there. He had left it at the Exoplanet, promising he would come back someday, after they destroyed SM once and for all.

 

But it was there, and it was as impossible as the existence of her.

 

“So what,” she said as she played with the butterfly, tickling his neck while chasing him around his skin, “There was a butterfly at the planet?”

 

Sehun nodded, or well, at least tried to do so, since they were restricting him from doing so.

 

She looked at him and giggled again, shying away from his gaze.

 

He loved her so, so much.

 

“But how is it here, then?” she asked, still not looking at him, her cheeks flaming up.

 

He traced a finger down her jaw gently. “Same way as you are, beautiful.”

 

He loved her so much that he thought he was going to die if the moment ended.

 

“It’s a miracle.”

 

He put both of his hands over his face, finally allowing himself to start crying.

 

“I love you, Sehunnie,” she had said on that day.

 

She had told him she loved him as the butterfly went to hide in her hair - for him, they were one and the same. They were the only people in the world who could save him. Without them, he was powerless. Without them, he was nothing but a pile of bones, serving an eternal sentence of being carried by the wind, never finding peace. Never finding completion.

 

As he touched her forehead with hers and kissed her, he knew the feeling of completion. He was whole, finally whole, after such a long time of wandering alone.

 

He would not let himself lose her. If he lost her, he would get lost, too.

 

Why did he only know of this now? Why didn’t he know any of this information back when he’d seen her the first time, back when she’d woken him up and then proceeded to show she could control the wind, too?

 

Why didn’t it happen the same way this time, too? What did he do wrong?

 

Kris’ words rang in his head. He would never be able to get them out. He would never be able to be whole again.

 

He was never complete in the first place; it was all a big lie he’d chosen to believe into. His memories were wrong - she was not the one.

 

He loved her more than the whole world.

 

“You thought she would fall in love with you again, Sehunnie?” his once-best friend had said to him in the maze, his face a diabolical mask of mockery. “You thought she was yours to have?”

 

He laughed out loud, but Sehun knew he was bluffing. He had to be. He had seen it in her eyes, she was not in love with Kris-

 

“Let me show you how wrong you are,” Kris had said.

 

He was bluffing.

 

He loved her so, so incredibly much.

 

Then Kris summoned up the power of the wind and hit himself in the stomach.

 

He loved her…

 

But she had given her love to someone else.