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Hero

Hei absolutely dreaded getting back to the ship (the cabin in particular), because Baekhyun was far from happy and she was exhausted and barely in the mood to fight with him. Briefly she contemplated attempting to avoid him for the better half of the day, except the problem with that was that she physically couldn’t stay on her feet for much longer after using her power. There wasn’t much more of an option but return to the cabin.

Chanyeol helped pull her on board when they got to where the ship had been anchored, and not long after, the group of them all piled on board, carrying the supplies they had gotten from Yifan. Chaoyun was still visible in the distance, but as a thin strip of land, nothing visible to hint of the fight on the beach.

It was Luhan that tapped her slightly on the back. “Go rest,” he said in a low voice. “You need it after using your power so much.”

The deck spun in front of her eyes briefly. Hei didn’t miss the glance he cast towards Baekhyun, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care at the moment. Whatever lecture he was going to spout about how she’d put their lives in danger—no, not theirs, hers—she wanted to shove it back as far as it would go.

“We should fix the canvas,” Jongin called. “I have the rest of the materials ready. Baekhyun?”

The hesitation was obvious, and Hei was pretty sure he looked at her, though she ignored in favour of heading towards the cabin. Hopefully fixing the mast would keep him preoccupied for long enough that she didn’t have to deal with it until a proper rest.

Proper rest, however, apparently didn’t come. She had changed into clean clothing and crawled under blankets ten minutes later, although despite the very obvious fatigue, Hei couldn’t bring herself to keep still with her eyes closed for over thirty seconds. For a long time, she thought about Yifan, about what had happened in Chaoyun. Jinqiong’s movements, quick, almost soundlessly elegant, before she cornered the man a good head taller than her and forced him on his knees with a knife to his throat. Luhan and Baekhyun could’ve easily taken down Yifan and his group of guards like it was nothing. What had she done?

Perhaps it was unfair and a little too much discredit. She’d used her power efficiently, after all, stopped twenty or so men without injuring anyone. That meant something. So it shouldn’t matter what Baekhyun said; his way of dealing with things wasn’t hers, and it didn’t need to be. Just because she didn’t want to kill didn’t make what she did any worse.

But for some reason, all she could think about was fighting with Yifan on the beach, helpless to do anything but struggle to block with her own blade before he’d disarmed her too easily. It was that—the feeling of helplessness—that she hated, but part of her was beginning to wonder if it was real. It had just been Baekhyun in the beginning, and Hei had brushed it off as overprotectiveness like always. He was always worried she’d get hurt so he had tried to keep her back from the front line. If he let her do anything, it was out of the way of danger. But what if it wasn’t just that? Jinqiong had been the one to take down Yifan. Luhan and Baekhyun fighting. Maybe the stay back from Baekhyun wasn’t only because he didn’t want her to get hurt but because he knew she would if she got involved.

Maybe she was thinking too much into it. After all, those three and a majority of the crew had had training, whether it be from the families or the streets. She’d been able to master her power in months; that meant something. Maybe she could ask Baekhyun to start training her again in combat; it couldn’t have been that hard. He’d agree, most likely, if it were for self defense.

Helpless. It wasn’t exactly Miyeon’s words or her voice echoing in her head, but it sounded similar. Hei shook her head. I’m not, she told herself, though all of a sudden, everything felt cold, even under the layer and layers of blankets.

She didn’t have the time to think more when the door swung open. Hei’s first reaction was to flinch at the sound, which was enough to tell Baekhyun that she was awake.

“Hei?”  Light slanted from the door, and she squinted.

“Yeah,” she replied grudgingly.

Baekhyun hovered near the door for a couple of seconds before he shut it behind him and made his way around to the lamp. A couple moments later, the cabin was aglow with orange, warm light. She pushed herself into a sitting position as Baekhyun began to unpack, the multiple blades he’d gotten from Yifan strapped onto his hips before finally the metal toolkit that Hei still couldn’t quite figure out. Warily, she watched Baekhyun. He wasn’t saying anything, often indicative when he was upset. It was his way of either attempting to calm himself down or think about his next words.

Baekhyun turned back to her when he was finished. Hei eyed him as he folded his arms, lips pressed in a thin line, before he managed, “What were you thinking?”

For a second, she was back in Hell’s Gate, sitting on the bed with her side burning in pain as Baekhyun stared down at her, livid that she’d nearly died from being too reckless.

Except this wasn’t the same. She hadn’t nearly died this time. Last time had been full of uncertainty. Baekhyun had, after all, practically killed her in a vision. Taeyong, the monsters, a half-haze of confusion and doubt. Byun Baekhyun was overprotective, yes, and they had their disagreements, but Yifan was wrong on that regard: he saw her as an equal, and Hei had no reason to be remotely scared of him. And she wasn’t.

“It wasn’t right to kill them,” she finally replied.

Baekhyun’s gaze flickered over her, a bit of anger sparking in his expression. “Chaoyun’s been terrorized by men like Yifan for centuries,” he said. “The whole city would be better off without him and his men.”

“Maybe.” He wasn’t meeting her eyes, so Hei continued. “But you didn’t care about that when we left, so why would you care about it after? You just gave me an excuse so you could kill them.”

“Because our priority was getting out then, Hei.”

“Would fifteen men really have made a difference?” she probed, and Hei saw Baekhyun shift, a bit of discomfort in his body language. “Would twenty? Yifan’s more powerful than that. He has much more people under his control. Was it really the village you were concerned about?”

His eyes flashed. “These weren’t necessarily good people.”

“They might have worked under the wrong person. Who’s to say they don’t have their own families?”

“And bad people with power will do bad things. It doesn’t matter what their motives were. Since when did you start caring about this?”

Since when? It was a good question. Since today didn’t seem to suffice, because it wasn’t. She’d been used to Baekhyun’s way of dealing with threats, and for a long time, it seemed to be the only way. Maybe it was unlocking another aspect of her power that made her wonder, but whatever it was, all of a sudden, it didn’t seem as much necessity as it was convenience.

“People change.” She could feel her voice growing more insistent, but Baekhyun’s mouth was still set in a thin line as he stared at somewhere she couldn’t quite see. “But they won’t if they aren’t even given another chance.”

“They don’t change.”

For a moment, everything else she wanted to say seemed to disappear at the anger in his voice as she stared at him, slightly shocked. Byun Baekhyun was passionate about many things, sure, but there was a certain conviction there that she couldn’t understand.

“Baekhyun—” she started.

“You know what I did before I became a pirate?” he asked.

Hei faltered. This wasn’t what she was expected. “You said you spent two years struggling by yourself,” she said cautiously.

He sat down on the bed next to her. In the lamplight, Baekhyun looked absolutely exhausted. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but he seemed tired too much the past couple of days.

“I didn’t want to be a pirate in the beginning,” he said with a rueful laugh. “I wanted to be a hero.”

Despite herself, she raised an eyebrow. “A hero,” Hei echoed.

“Yes. I guess it was more of a vigilante. I wanted to stop the families, you know, and I thought I could do so by helping the people they’d oppressed. Commonfolk. Steal from the rich, give to the poor—” Baekhyun shook his head. “I guess I just… I just wanted to feel righteous. Like I was better than the families. Because of everything they've done and everything they made me do and what I had to do and I... I wanted to make myself feel better by doing that.”

Hero. It was strange. Pirate was the only thing Hei had associated with Baekhyun in the beginning, an outlaw, thief and murderer. He’d become so much more, but hero? She couldn’t imagine. A boy barely seventeen, lost and alone and afraid and trying to use his powers to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

“What happened after that?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper, slightly scared at what Baekhyun would say.

“I figured that the people I was trying to help were no different than the families,” he replied. “Maybe not all of them. But some are just as corrupt, and would have done the same thing if they had that power.”

“Not all of them,” Hei pointed out.

“No, not all of them. But enough for me to realize that being a hero was stupid.”

“It’s not—”

“I had to learn to get my hands dirty,” he continued. “There’s no room for fairytales. If I wanted to make a difference, I needed to—” His voice caught. “I needed to stop caring so much. Reality wasn't defined by what I felt about myself.”

“And how did that work out?”

He gave a wry smile. “Not well,” he replied. “Drunk a lot. Kind of like Jinqiong right now, except she has an insanely good tolerance and I still can’t.”

“According to Yifan you also—”

“Not my proudest moments.”

“—broke a girl’s heart every night—”

“Alright, we get it,” Baekhyun cut in, though the brooding look had momentarily lifted and he looked slightly embarrassed. “I tried to take my head off of things by fighting, alcohol, and women. I hated everything. All I could think about when I was sober was making my father pay, and when I wasn’t, all I could remember was what I lost and what I regretted and did wrong and what I wished I could’ve done.”

Baekhyun had been driven when she’d first met him. She couldn’t quite picture him even more so. He had had an easygoing personality, after all, and there were times when he had gotten reserved and broody, but hatred to that point? It seemed impossible to imagine, even after everything.

“You’ve changed,” Hei managed finally. “From nine years ago. From when I met you. People do change.”

“Only when they’ve found a reason to.”

“And what was yours?”

There, the faintest hint of a smile appeared. “Heejin. My father. You.”

She allowed herself to smile back. “Then you give people a reason to change. Maybe you gave those back there one already. You never know.”

“And what reason would that be?”

“Mercy.”

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