“Look how far we’ve come.”

And Hangeng falls, falls in a neat curve down the same way as his daggers, falls from the tip of Yesung’s dagger to the ground before Heechul.

Eyes closed. Unmoving.

He can feel his jaw slackening, his eyes looking down at the man who lies at his feet, eyes closed so peacefully he almost wishes he could believe his long-ago partner is only sleeping quietly.

He opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out.

Moving back. One step at a time; he feels himself violently shaking his head. His vision is going blurry. His arms are going limp by his side, his dagger barely being held in his palm. He feels his chest clench, his head spin, his breathing harsh and heavy.

He races to understand, races to comprehend, tries so desperately to think otherwise.

But he’s an assassin. A trained killer.

And he’s seen death too many times to deny one.

He walks towards Hangeng’s still body. His steps are uneven, scuffling the ground in an untimely rhythm. He crouches, ignoring the pain in his body.

He doesn’t know what to do, what to say. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. His throat is tight, painfully so, and his heartbeat dull in his ears. It feels as if the clock has stopped ticking, time has stopped flowing, trapping him in this horrible cruel moment of cold dark grief.

How did we end up here?

He swallows thickly, pinching his lips tight to keep them from trembling.

And he knows, he knows too well that no amount of begging or wailing or praying will ever bring the dead back.

And yet he crouches,mbegging the heavens or hells or whoever is kind enough to watch over him to let him have one more chance, and yet he crouches with tears beginning to well up in his eyes and his throat going tight, praying that something can be done.

The world is silent around him.

He never learned how to cry prettily. His parents were gone too early to teach him, and the only school he ever went to taught him how to perfectly rid of every emotion he’s ever felt. So he doesn’t bother to hide the way the first tear trickles down his cheek; doesn’t bother to do as he’s been taught when it’s followed by a quick succession of cold teardrops, like a broken dam unleashing a torrent of held-back water.

He bends forward, crouching with his hands pressed into Hangeng’s, slowly going cold under his touch. He cries like a wretched child, cries until his eyes begin to hurt and his throat is raw with pain. It’s suffocating, crushing, and it starts off with a small whimper before it transforms into an unbroken, hazy mess of screaming. He screams like he’s being torn apart from arm to arm, screams like a sword had plunged itself into his soul and it out of him, screams like he’s being murdered.

The world is silent around him.

And soon, he falls silent too, too spent and too weary and too numb to scream anymore. He resorts to quiet sobbing, his hands pressed into Hangeng’s cold ones. There’s static buzzing in his head, sounds of his own screaming, sounding like a distressed child losing everything he’s ever had, raw and broken. He sobs until the tears he didn’t know he had to give were all gone, all used up.

He can taste blood in his mouth intermixed with the salt of his own tears, his shirt soaked with his blood and his cold sweat. He’s numb and cold and everything hurts.

Then he looks at Yesung, looks at the man with an empty gaze, just as he was trained. But this time, his stare is empty because every shred of his emotions that can be expended have been spent.

He doesn’t mind it if Yesung kills him now.

Maybe he’ll go to hell. Maybe he’ll see Hangeng there. And then he’ll go, he’ll cry in Hangeng’s arms like he used to and ask him why he was such an idiot to throw himself in the way of the dagger aimed for Heechul’s heart.

“I didn’t expect this legend to crumble so easily.”

His head snaps up, pinning Yesung with a glare. Stop making me hurt.

You killed him.

And then it registers; Yesung had been the one holding the dagger which Hangeng impaled himself on.

You killed him.

His grip on his dagger tightens.

His head clears.

“I thought you would’ve given up,” Yesung says casually as Heechul lets go of Hangeng and stands, wielding his dual silver daggers once more. “Since now you know the one you loved so desperately still loves you back; or loved, until now.”

The words fall out of his mouths, cold and constrained and choked. “I have never allowed love to stand in the way of my job.”

He sees Jungsoo staring at him, he sees Kangin flinching at his words. Yesung allows a small smile to curve his lips.

“I told Hangeng when we were training-” He pauses, swallowing, chokes down the broken cry that threatens to well up in his throat, “- That if one day he were to be gone, I’d avenge him.”

They meet in a flurry of violent slashes and swipes. He tastes blood more heavily in his mouth, knows that the wound in his chest is bleeding more heavily; he spins, dodges, attacks with that deadly precision that he was taught.

Yesung’s eyes gleam.

Heechul knows that he can’t last long in this state, and he knows Yesung knows it too.

For a brief moment, he looks