Woojin was just a normal kid. He had parents who worked normal job; his mother was a doctor and his father owned a small music store. He’d inherited his mother’s healing powers and had struggled to decide if he wanted to help people like she did or go pursue something related to music before deciding to go to college for music. He had friends, he played video games, and he got pretty good grades. His parents loved him and wanted him to do whatever made him happy. No one he knew had died because of a hero or villain.

All this……it made it rather strange when he started following the activities of a villain duo known as Twin Flames.

He’d received a link to a Twin Flames fan site from a classmate, the context being ‘can you believe these weirdos backing these villains?’. He couldn’t. Not at first anyway. Woojin had never really been that into heroes. Sure, he thought that they were cool and he had some action figured from when he was a kid, but music and healthcare had always been more interesting for him. Especially music. But even if he wasn’t that into heroes, he still thought that they were, well, heroes. Thus, supporting villains was……weird.

For some reason, he kept reading the site, reading through the comments. Something…….something clicked in his head as he read what the people were saying. So, behind closed doors, Woojin started doing his own research. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly, but after a few months he found it. Proof that heroes weren’t always so heroic. Lots of it. Enough that Woojin felt sick that he’d never noticed it before.

This left him with a big question though. Now that he knew the truth, what was he going to do? It was pretty clear that he couldn’t go to just anyone with this. His father had called the Twin Flames and their new teammate scum. His friends had brushed them off as just worthless villains who needed to die already. His mother though……he saw the look she got on her face when the villain team was brought up. She never said anything, but……he wondered what she knew.

Woojin didn’t get a chance to confront her about it.

He’d been heading home after his last class when he saw blue flames shoot up into the sky a few blocks away. He didn’t know why he did it, but he decided to see what was going on. He pushed through people running away from the battle and eventually found the Twin Flames and the new teammate fighting against a couple of heroes. The fight was going in the villain’s favor until one of the heroes pulled a gun and shot the younger Flame.

“Jisung!” the older yelled, clearly panicked, before turning and charging at the heroes.

They didn’t stand a chance against the elder Flame’s anger. Woojin watched with wide eyes as the older Flame turned the heroes to ash before rushing the Jisung’s side. Their new teammate was already there, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Hey,” Flame said, voice soft as he tried to get Jisung to open his eyes, “Jisunggie, open your eyes for me. Please, little squirrel, I need you to stay awake.”

“I can’t stop the bleeding,” the new guy reported, “Sanghyuk, we need to find a healer or something fast. Do you know anyone who can help?”

“No,” Sanghyuk said, cursing as he punched the ground.

Woojin watched for a moment longer before deciding what to do.

“I’m a healer,” he called, rushing to join the three, “I can fix him.”

“Who are you?” Sanghyuk hissed, “How do we know you are what you say you are?”

“I promise you,” Woojin replied, “I can fix him.”

“You better,” Sanghyuk growled, moving away slightly so that Woojin could get closer to Jisung.

Woojin took a deep breath before starting his work. He silently wished he had gone the healthcare route for school, then maybe he’d been healing Jisung………faster……easier…….something. He was doing fine, Jisung was going to be fine, it was just……he could be doing better!

“We’ve got people coming,” Sanghyuk suddenly announced, “Taekwoon, get the car. Kid, can you heal on the go?”

“Yeah,” Woojin nodded, “the worst is over anyway.”

“Doesn’t even hurt,” Jisung muttered, eyes still closed but he’d gotten some colour back in his face.

“Let’s go then,” Sanghyuk decided, picking up his brother and following Taekwoon to the car.

Woojin didn’t hesitate to follow them.

--

“They didn’t see you,” Sanghyuk said later that night as he and Woojin watched the news, “good. You can go home.”

They group had ended up at the apartment of some guy named……..Woojin didn’t know. Sanghyuk had called him a friend and left it at that. They’d set Jisung up in the guest bedroom and Woojin had gotten right to work fixing the last of the damage. The guy who owned the apartment had gotten take-out for everyone and they all ate together, minus Jisung who was sleeping like a log. The three older men had talked about the fight, nothing too detailed though, and Woojin ate in silence, just thinking about everything.

Now, Taekwoon was keeping watch over Jisung who’d woken up briefly to eat before going back to sleep. The apartment’s owner was sleeping in his own room and Woojin was sitting with Sanghyuk, watching as the news recapped the fight from before.

“I guess,” Woojin nodded, “but……I don’t know if I want to.”

“What are you talking about?” Sanghyuk asked, looking Woojin over carefully.

“I read one of your fan sites,” he explained, “read through everything and then I did some searching of my own.”

“Ah,” Sanghyuk nodded in understanding, “you’ve opened your eyes to the truth.”

“No one I know can see it,” Woojin admitted, “or they don’t want to. Well, my mom might. She’s a doctor so…..she might know something.”

“But you’ve never asked her,” Sanghyuk said, “probably because you’re scared of the answer you’ll get, right?”

“What about you?” Woojin suddenly asked, “why……what happened to you to make you realize that heroes could be so……corrupt?”

“My mom was killed by one of the top heroes,” Sanghyuk replied, eyes getting a distant look in them as he recounted his past, “The only ones who lived were me and some other guy. He took whatever they offered him for his silence and my dad promised he’d keep me quiet when they threatened me and Jisung.”

“A top hero, huh?” Woojin scowled.

He’d never imagined that the corruption went that far. Most of what he’d found had involved lower ranked heroes, those who didn’t have as much power and thus couldn’t keep their wrong doings as quiet as others. But Woojin didn’t doubt Sanghyuk’s words. It made sense that the top heroes would be corrupt, too. If those at the top were good, why would they let those at the bottom be evil?

“You seem like a nice guy,” Sanghyuk said after a moment, “and I……I really don’t want to drag you into this kind of life. So….if you’re trying to figure out what to do, I suggest you go home. You don’t have to forget all of this, but……you have a life outside of this. Me, Jisung , and Taekwoon…….not so much.”

“But you need a healer,” Woojin pointed out, “I can do that.” He paused, “and……I might not be involved right now, but how long with that last? How long before someone I care about dies because of fake heroes? Before I get killed because of them?”

Sanghyuk regarded him for a long moment before suggesting that he sleep on it for a few days. He gave Woojin some contact information so that he could find them if need be before giving him bus money and sending him home.

--

Woojin did ask asked and spent several weeks thinking things over. Every time he thought he’d made up his mind, something happened to remind him what he would lose or risk if he picked one side or the other. Eventually though, he made up his mind.

One of the top heroes made an appearance at his college to talk to the students. Most of what he talked about was clearly directed at people who supported the Twin Flames. Woojin sat through the whole thing doing his best not to scream. See, after his talk with Sanghyuk, he’d looked up the incident the older man had talked about. This hero talking about Sanghyuk and the one who killed his mother were one in the same. The only difference was that the hero was higher ranked now, second place soon to be number one in fact.

After that, Woojin went home and grabbed everything that mattered to him. On the way out he crossed paths with his mother. They didn’t say anything for a long time, just looked at each other. Her eyes told him everything he needed to know. She knew the truth, she knew that he knew as well.

“Be careful,” was all she told him before pulling him into a tight hug, “please.”

“I’ll come back one day,” Woojin promised, “when all of this is over.”

“I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you too, mom.”

And with that, Woojin left to join his new family.

A/N: so I knew I needed someone to have a healing power. My first though was one of our wonderful leaders, Hakyeon or Chan. But I already had plans for them making this not an option. Then I took one look at Woojin and…….yeah. haha kind of a no moment for me. I’m really happy I decided to give Woojin a backstory of “he was just a normal guy with a normal life who decided to help what he felt was a worthy cause”. Like, I feel it serves an important purpose in the story. See, if everyone has a horribly painful backstory with dead parents and junk, then it just gets a bit……..i feel it ruins the story ‘cuz then every backstory is like “oh, another dead parents. Guess we’re Disney now” or something like that.