Wilderness

Baekhyun comes home to find his 6-year-old daughter missing.
 

Baekhyun’s POV; based heavily on Sleeping at Last’s Wilderness. He wrote the song for his niece, and I loved the explanation for the song that Ryan blogged. Felt that the lyrics were very fitting for Baekhyun and his daughter.

Set: A little above 6 and a half years after X Marks the Spot ends; a year and a half after the last Cutlass bonus chapter (the one with kids!). Sooyeon’s a little over six years old, and Soohyun is two and a half.

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Baekhyun knew something wrong the moment he got home to see the front door open, because Hei never let it open for long periods of time. Especially during summer, when she was very keen to let a minimal amount of bugs into the house. And also because it was awfully early in the morning, and nobody in the house ought to be awake at such a time.

For a couple moments of sheer terror, he wondered if it were possible that something had happened to Hei and the children, but there weren’t exactly signs of a struggle, even if the pair of shoes strewn haphazardly across the entryway was a pretty bad sign. Baekhyun found Hei in the living room. She was practically digging the base of her palms into her temple, eyes squeezed shut. Soohyun was clinging onto her leg, saying something incoherently, but seemingly having caught his mother’s distress. Sooyeon was… nowhere to be seen.

The reassurance that Hei and Soohyun were there was replaced with proper alarm that his daughter wasn’t present and she looked scared. Baekhyun unfroze and rushed over to his wife.

It was Soohyun who registered his presence first. He looked up, eyes widened, then his expression brightened ever so slightly before he threw himself at Baekhyun. “Daddy!” Hei looked up at him as well, eyes rimmed red.

Baekhyun picked him up absentmindedly. “Yeon gone,” Soohyun informed him.

It was a confirmation for what he already suspected, but Soohyun also was a little too young to be a reliable source of information, and Baekhyun tried to swallow the mounting terror in his throat as he knelt down in front of Hei. Gone could mean a lot of things, and he hoped that in Soohyun’s limited vocabulary, gone was one of the less frightening options he’d already thought of. “Sweetheart? What happened?”

She blinked at him a couple of times before shaking her head. “Sooyeon’s missing,” she told him, and Baekhyun realized she looked absolutely shattered. “I went to check up on her last night before I went to sleep, but she wasn’t in her room. Her shoes weren’t gone either and she always puts them on before she goes out. I searched the house but she clearly wasn’t there, so went over to Luhan in case she decided to go find him for some reason, but she wasn’t there either and I don’t know where she is and we’ve been looking all night and—”

She clearly needed a hug much more than Soohyun did, even if Baekhyun was also feeling more and more dread by the moment. He set his son down carefully, then reached over and wrapped his arms around Hei. She responded almost immediately, sentence breaking off, taking shaky breaths as she buried her face into his shoulder.

“Alright,” Baekhyun said when Hei seemed to have finally calmed down slightly. Panicking clearly wasn’t going to get them anywhere, and she’d been searching the whole night—she was exhausted, both physically and mentally. He needed to think clearly. “Can you tell me the last time you saw her and what happened?”

“Yeon gone?” Soohyun piped up, this time a little more unsure.

Baekhyun took a deep breath and allowed himself to smile at Soohyun. “We’re figuring out where your sister is right now. It’ll be fine.”

He stared back at Baekhyun, clearly contemplating the information. Baekhyun turned back to Hei. “When you went into their room, was there anything out of the ordinary?”

Hei shook her head. “Soohyun was still asleep, but Sooyeon’s bed was empty and the window was open, and I know I made sure to close it before they went to sleep. But everything else was normal.”

“If someone wanted to threaten us with the children, they would’ve taken Soohyun too,” Baekhyun reassured, though at that point, he wasn’t too certain if he was trying to convince Hei or himself. “Was there anything else?”

“There’s no footprints or anything. Luhan came over to check, and he also said it looked like she’d vanished into thin air, so I took Soohyun with me and we went to the village to ask around, but no one’s seen her. Seulgi—you know Seulgi, right? She was watching Soohyun and Sooyeon this afternoon and she told me that Sooyeon was a bit more tired than usual this afternoon and much more manageable, but she was more or less normal.” She took a deep breath to slow down. “None of us know what happened. I tried to try to summon a vision outside the window but I can’t control when it is that I see, so it was pointless and—” She broke off, sniffling like she was trying to hold in tears. A moment later she was crying, with Baekhyun rubbing her back and murmuring that Sooyeon was going to be fine. Soohyun watched the scene with wide eyes, clearly still trying to comprehend what was going to happen. Then he burst into tears as well. Baekhyun reached past Hei to pull Soohyun into the hug as well.

When she finally seemed to have calmed down slightly, Baekhyun pulled back. “Do you know where Luhan is?”

Hei shook her head again, then hiccupped. She sat away from him and reached for Soohyun, pulling him onto her lap and his hair absentmindedly. “He sent me back here a little while ago and told me to wait in case Sooyeon came back. I think he’s still looking for Sooyeon.”

Baekhyun nodded tersely. He didn’t want to leave Hei at home alone, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t slept all night, and Soohyun probably had very little sleep as well. He was usually fussier when tired. There was also the fact that he needed to get out and search so he didn’t feel absolutely useless and even worse, and staying there was doing nothing to help find Sooyeon and it made him antsy.

“Alright,” Baekhyun finally said, pushing himself to his feet. “Both you and Soohyun are exhausted, and you’re only going to be hurting yourself at this rate. Rest, and I’ll go find Luhan and look for her as well.”

Hei reached for his arm. “But—”

“If Sooyeon does end up coming back on her own, it’ll be much better if you’re here,” he pointed out. “Luhan had a point sending you back. It’ll be fine, sweetheart. Besides, Soohyun’s already asleep.”

Hei glanced down, momentarily surprised. Soohyun, clutching a handful of her clothing, had indeed drifted off, tear stains still on his face.

She took a deep breath. “Okay,” Hei said slowly, like trying to calm herself down. “Okay. But if neither of you are back in three hours, I’m going to look as well.”

He nodded, ducked to press one quick against her temple, and then slipped out the door of the backyard.

Hei was right that there was nothing outside the open window that gave any hints. There weren’t even footsteps. Swallowing his frustration, Baekhyun tried to wrack his mind for the places that his daughter could be. It was likely that Hei had searched all of them as well and it was unlike Sooyeon to wander off without informing either of them, but there also hadn’t been signs of a struggle and no matter how he thought about it, it didn’t make sense why Soohyun had been left alone if somebody was trying to threaten eit