Chanyeol was chewing on his lip while he desperately Baekhyun’s messy hair for what was likely to be the 1000^th time, but the fragile little brunette, who was curling up on the bed, crying, wouldn’t calm down.

“Baekhyun, please…,” he begged helplessly, looking around as if hoping to see some kind of solution reveal itself from inside the walls of the compartment. “At least try to breathe.”

“I can’t!” His mindless sobbing had finally turned into real despair in some form and was no longer the sound of his deranged scheme that never really held any true feelings to it, other than actual hysteria. “I can’t, I won’t, it won’t stop, make it go away…”
“Tell me what it is you want to go away,” he tried gently, his hand slipping tenderly over Baekhyun’s shoulder, but the other boy clung even more frantically to the duvet, shying away from Chanyeol.

“Don’t touch me!,” he shouted, pushing himself towards the wall where he crouched around the duvet, which he clenched in his hands until they were white from the lack of blood and his nails had almost pierced through the fabric. “Get away from me!”

Somehow he seemed way more aware than he usually did during an attack like this, only the taller boy had never seen anything like this before. Baekhyun was completely out of reach. He felt so sorry that he automatically rose from the bed and took a few steps away to not make everything worse.

“Please…,” he said again, his voice low and pleading and fighting not to choke on a hollow sob building up in his throat, “please tell me what it is you want me to take away from you, and I promise you’ll never have to see it again.”

For a very long time the devastated figure in the corner of the bed didn’t react to his words, but then slowly it was as if they reached him and he ceased sobbing for a moment, lifting his head to look at Chanyeol with the most terrified eyes the other one had ever seen. His face was glistering from tears, but Chanyeol knew better than to try and wipe them away, however much he might want to.

Very slowly he parted his lips; at first nothing but a bit of uneasy breathing escaped them, but then he managed to gather enough air to talk.

“I can’t… I’ll be next…”

Chanyeol could almost feel how his insides turned to ice.

“What do you mean?”

“He did the same to them, I know he did, I’m next, he’s going to come after me…” Baekhyun bowed his head again and started to cry anew. A scream escaped his mouth, buried in the duvet. “He’s going to kill me…”

The leader looked at the tall brunette, whose face was unusually hard and serious. The news wasn’t at all what he needed to hear right now.

“And there was absolutely nothing you could do?”

Chanyeol shook his head, completely at a loss and obviously frustrated.

“No, he wouldn’t even let me go near him. Suho, I have never seen anyone so frightened before, he sincerely believes someone is coming to kill him. It’s not just one of his little hysteria games, this is… this is something else. I have no idea of what to do. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t get him to tell me who makes him so scared. It can’t be one of us, right? One from the group I mean.”

“I don’t want to think so…” Suho ran a hand through his hair, his forehead furrowed by worry. “Actually, I shouldn’t even be able to think something like that, it’s just wrong. But with Luhan and Sehun dead I don’t know what to believe anymore…”

“But that kind of fear does not just come from nothing Suho!” Chanyeol was walking back and forth in the dimly lit compartment, Minseok still being in the interrogation room. Why didn’t the older one get it? “It must have started before we got on this train, it must have started way back! It would have had to have been built up from more than just one incident, I…”
“Chanyeol, we know Baekhyun is kinda jumpy. Are you sure it’s not the shock that has him frenzied about the monsters in his head?”

“You didn’t see him!,” Chanyeol cut him off. “That reaction does not come from finding bodies, no matter how jumpy he is. This is something else. He was terrified, he wasn’t raving as he normally is. I swear, he knew perfectly well what he was talking about, no, who he was talking about. This monster is perfectly real, we’ve got to find out who it is!”

Suho was about to answer in the same furious tones when the door was slammed open and Kai came rushing in, looking completely miserable all over again.

“Suho, I… I think you better come. Now…” His voice was very low and almost out of air, as if another shock had added to the pile. “Please, I don’t know what to do…”

“What happened?” Suho got on his feet with a twitch of pain briefly screwing up his face. The younger one looked at his seniors, confused and lost.

“That Russian guy was interrogating Minseok and… It’s Jongdae, he… he’s… Oh, just come!”

He started dragging Suho with him out of the compartment and back to the restaurant. The door was open and even from outside they could hear Minseok trying to calm someone, obviously Jongdae, but with little success.

“It’s going to be all right love, I know it is. Just try and relax, I’m sure Suho’ll understand it…”
“No he won’t, he’s going to bloody skin me!,” Jongdae whispered, and as they entered the restaurant they could see how his face was covered with tears and how red his eyes were. He was sitting in the chair they had left Kai in earlier, Minseok softly holding one of his hands from his position on the table. Yolkov was standing in the back of the room together with the translator, their voices muted as they kept discussing something in Russian with serious faces. They didn’t seem to want to interfere them as the three newly arrived boys gathered around their friends by the table. Suho kneeled down next to the chair, looking gently at Jongdae with a bleak smile.

“I’m a really y leader, huh? It seems everyone is having trouble which I know nothing of... It can’t keep being like that. Please tell me what happened?”

Jongdae shook his head, his eyes flickering wildly and they all noticed how both his hands were shaking. The leader looked to Minseok for help and the red-haired boy bit his lip, squeezing Jongdae’s hand almost as if he was sorry about what he was going to do.

“I told Yolkov about when we heard Baekhyun scream as he found Sehun and Luhan… Jongdae…” He took a deep breath and looked at Suho as if the world might as well come to an end now. “His glass shattered, remember?”

“It was pushed on the floor when we ran to see what happened, yes… It was an accident, right?” Chanyeol took a step closer to the chair and knelt to Jongdae’s other side.

“My hands were shaking...” The silent mumble was almost inaudible; they only heard it because they were standing so close. Jongdae didn’t look up when he continued. “My hands were shaking so much I accidentally pushed it from the bar…”

Suho sighed, pity in his eyes; obviously he knew where the conversation was headed, yet he asked anyway.

“And why were they shaking?”

For a very long time there was only silence between them, then Jongdae finally let out a distressed little whimper.

“Drug abstinences...”

Suho turned white, as did Chanyeol.

“For how long?” Suho’s voice was monotone, but neither angry nor accusing.

“A month, two, I don’t know anymore… It seems like forever…,” Jongdae managed to answer through the trembling pieces of his voice that made their way from his throat in an uneasy jumble. “Everyone was busy with other stuff all the time, it was so easy to hide it. I’m sorry, I should have told you… But I couldn’t manage without it… That’s why I was shaking, I hadn’t taken anything for hours. I tried, just before we left St. Petersburg. That was why I was in the bathroom, but there wasn’t enough time… That’s probably also why I got sick…”

Minseok leaned in to hug him when he broke into weeping again, unable to look anyone of them in the eyes.

“I’m so sorry, I’m sorry…,” he kept on mumbling as if in some kind of mindless trance and he obviously wasn’t fully aware of them anymore. The red-haired boy looked up from the hug, his face drawn with fury.

“What the hell has Kris been doing?!,” he sneered in a hoarse voice. “Why didn’t we see it before?!”

“On that note, where is he?” Chanyeol looked around. Somehow he ought to have noticed before that they were still lacking Kris and Lay’s presence, and also Tao’s for that matter. He guessed Kyungsoo must still be in his compartment, crying. “We need to get the interrogations over with as soon as possible so that he can make sure we’re all innocent.” Even though it seems everyone has something to hide after all.

He couldn’t stop thinking that Yolkov somehow must be right. It was impossible for any outsider to have done it. There hadn’t even been any staff in that part of the train when the murders happened and quite a few of them had been alone at that time… And Yolkov’s estimate of the time of the crime was only a guess, they couldn’t be sure Luhan and Sehun hadn’t been murdered earlier than assumed until the bodies had been properly examined, in which case any of them could have done it.
He gulped and looked away, ashamed of himself. What was he thinking, suspecting his group mates of murder? He had to keep faith in them, no matter what. No matter how suspicious some of them might seem… But no, Kai had just been stargazing, or rather he had been avoiding Kyungsoo. There was no way that jittery little boy was capable of shooting anyone without coming running back to them afterwards, not even by accident. And the others as well. Some logical explanation to their whereabouts was sure to be brought forth and they would all be able to go home. Well, almost all of them…
Chanyeol’s throat thickened when the unwelcome thought struck him and he tried to ignore it, even when the whisper in his mind started to remind him of exactly who was most likely to have pulled that trigger.

“I’m going to check on Baekhyun again,” he heard himself say as he turned around and left the room, his legs feeling unusually heavy as he walked back to Suho and Baekhyun’s compartment. Even from the outside he could hear the other one’s troubled breathing and his insides made a painful turn when he thought of how he had been able to just walk away from him in this condition. Some friend he was. Silently he knocked on the door before he opened it.

“Hey there. It’s me,” he said, as calmly as he could, despite feeling as if something was eating him from the inside and out. Slowly he walked to the other bed and sat down, watching as Baekhyun managed to rise on his elbows to look up. His eyes were as wide and scared as a deer in the headlights’. “How do you feel?”

“He’s in my head, Chanyeol,” he whispered, almost ceasing to blink as he spoke. No doubt he was scared half to death. “I can’t… I can’t stop thinking about him…”

The taller one had to lean forward to hear what he was saying.

“Who?”
“He’s a monster, he must be… He took Sehun… And he took Luhan, and he took me as well. He’s going to do it again. And if I resist he’ll kill me, I know he will. Because that’s why they died Chanyeol, it must be. Because he took them before and then he killed them.”

“Sweetie… No, sorry…” Chanyeol absentmindedly ran his fingers through his own long brown hair, trying really hard to make some sense of what the other one was saying. “Baekhyun, tell me. This… this monster. Can you tell me what you mean when you say he “took” them?”

Somehow his words made Baekhyun look even more terrified and he curled up in the bed, hiding his face in his hands. Chanyeol was about to say something soothing when he noticed the marks on Baekhyun’s left hand. They were screaming against his pale skin, red and fresh and ugly. It took all his might to stay as calm as he was and not immediately demand to know where they came from. He would though, as soon as he had gotten Baekhyun to make himself clear. But right now he thought it best not to stray from the current conversation.

“Please, tell me what the monster did to them. Tell me what he did to you.”

“I was the first… He took me first, I… I didn’t know what to do.” His nails were digging into his cheeks and forehead, leaving small crescent marks all over in his despair. A single sob escaped in his breath and Chanyeol had to remind himself once more to not reach out and try to hold him; nothing good would come of it.

“It’s okay, just tell me what happened,” he maintained in gentle tones, fighting to keep his deep voice from trembling in anger. What could possibly have made Baekhyun this afraid?

“He touched me…”

It felt as if someone was physically trying to rip out his spine, not just freeze it, when it finally dawned upon him what Baekhyun meant. The rage he felt was all-consuming as he sat there, helpless before the person he cared most about in this whole rotten bunch of people.

“How many times?” The fury was audible in his words now; he clenched and opened his fists, awkward about where to put his hands.

“Two…”
“When?”

Somehow Baekhyun seemed to have found new resources to help himself keep talking, because he sat up and looked at Chanyeol with renewed determination, even though every trace of pure fear was still visible on his face.

“A month ago, when we were in Busan… The… the day before he also took Sehun.”
“What about Luhan?”

“When… When he learned that Sehun had been touched by someone else but him, by… by that monster… he pleaded to make him leave Sehun alone in return for himself…” He broke off, terrified. For a few minutes he just sat there, staring right ahead as if he was looking at something Chanyeol couldn’t see. Then he took a deep breath to speak again. “He has taken Luhan ever since…”

“And the second time he touched you?”
“Today, just before I found… he killed them…”
“Today?!”

Baekhyun seemed to shrink under his sudden raised voice, but he couldn’t have stayed quiet even if he had wanted to, not anymore.

“I struggled…” The silent whisper was pleading and Chanyeol could feel how his eyes started to get heavy with water as he looked at the other one’s face that almost had frozen into an expressionless mask; only the eyes were alive with horror. “He tried to… to take me, but I pushed him away. He’s going to kill me Chanyeol, there’s no way he’ll forgive me.”

The tears became too many to be retained in his frightened eyes and even though he didn’t move they started to flow down his face.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.” Chanyeol rose from Suho’s bed and took a very careful step towards Baekhyun, ready to back away the instant Baekhyun started to show signs of being uncomfortable about him standing so close.

“You won’t let him touch me again?”
“No, I won’t.”

Very suddenly Baekhyun reached out and grabbed Chanyeol’s wrist, clenching it so hard he couldn’t possibly have moved away. His nails dug into Chanyeol’s skin, but the taller boy didn’t as much as flinch. The eyes in front of him were finally as conscious and aware as he liked them to be; the hysterical shadow had left them.

“When he touched me… It hurt. It hurt so much… If it happens again I’m not sure I’ll come back.”

Chanyeol nodded, determined.

“It won’t happen, not ever. Tell me who it is and I’ll see to that he gets his hands cut off!”
“You’re so violent…”

The brunette’s shy smile was probably the most welcome thing he had seen all day and Chanyeol felt as if someone had dropped a bit of warmth on his insides for the first time in ages. His voice was gentle when he answered.

“Tell me who it is, though.”

Baekhyun pulled Chanyeol so close their faces almost touched and leaned in to whisper his secret into Chanyeol’s ear. The name that fled Baekhyun’s tearstained lips was only a brief touch of breath on the taller one’s skin, yet it made the warmth disappear right away. And to think he had been so stupid as to believe in everyone’s innocence.

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Author's Note: Wow, guys, I'm so sorry for the wait! I know I'm two hours late, I couldn't get to my computer in time D:

That aside, I want to thank all of my new subscribers! I hope you'll all like reading this story! ^^
Last chapter was a bit short, so here's a longer one to make up for it ~

Next chapter, "Revelations, blood and broken faces", will be up Sunday 7th, 8 P.M. GMT+1! Please look forward to it ~