No. L hadn’t moved a muscle, his body frozen and eyes as wide as Haneul’s—though hers were filled with sadness and betrayal while his were b in disbelief—and the shock still fuelled his paralysis as it felt like his world came crashing down around him. It was Haneul’s screams that haunted him at night after all. It was Haneul’s fair skin, smeared with the purple tinge of angel blood, that lay trapped in the darkness of his subconscious like an abandoned rag doll. It was Haneul’s face, glistening with tears, that burned into his eyelids the moment before waking from his nightmares in a cold sweat, shaking and with shallow breath.

     “No,” he repeated, but this time out loud. “You’re wrong. You have to be.”

     His sanity depended upon it, because those gruesome images weren’t the worst part. The nightmares never started that way. They started with her porcelain skin unstained of blood and tears. They started in her arms as he drowned in the sweet scent of her soft, chestnut hair. They started in bliss, but they ended in horror. They ended in fire and chaos and pain and there was no way he was the one that did those things to her. He wouldn’t allow himself to believe that.

     He noticed her take another trembling step away from him and he knew she remembered the same horrifying things. But what he didn’t know was if she remembered the good things too, or if she remembered who it was that really hurt her. He had to know; he had to know that he wasn’t responsible for her pain. If neither of them could remember, there was only one way he could think of to find out.

     “Myungsoo, the punishment they gave you is spared for only the worst of criminals, only the most dangerous enemies of the state,” Haneul objected as they now walked briskly through the downtown streets. “If you were deemed big enough of a threat to be stripped of your powers—”

     “No, I’m going to show you,” he said determinedly, pulling her along at a steady pace, “I’m going to prove to you that you’re wrong.”

     If she wouldn’t believe his word that he was innocent, there was only one other one other voice of reason she would listen to—or rather, there were two.

     “Myungsoo, I don’t know what kind of answers you’re looking for but—” Haneul stopped mid-sentence, eyes widening as she faltered in her step. L stopped walking as well and tore his eyes away from her petrified features to look ahead, only to see two boys with platinum blond hair looking right at them.

     “Youngjae…” she whispered his name, the name that had been preserved in the farthest recesses of her memory, just as she had in her vision of BAP’s trial. She couldn’t believe it was him. Now, seeing him in person like this, the memories were flooding back. The palace, the library, the garden, the laughter. She finally realized why it was him of all faces that she had remembered. Although it felt like a lifetime ago, they had been such good friends before BAP had fallen. Growing up together, she never would have believed that it would be possible to forget him in the first place.

     L looked the boy over, wondering how Haneul knew his name, but then realized he recognized the second boy beside him.

     “Daehyun,” he called out in a low voice, his knuckles tightening as his hands closed into fists.

     The two blonds noticed the lemniscate tattooed upon L’s collarbone, and their stances instinctively turned defensive. “You’re an Infinite,” Daehyun voiced his realization, hoping L didn’t have any of his friends with him.

     “You’re damn right I am,” he stepped forward and punched Daehyun square in the jaw. Before either could retaliate, he grabbed Youngjae by the collar and punched him as well. Haneul immediately grabbed his arm to hold him back before he could throw any more hits.

     “What are you doing? Please don’t fight them!”

     “These bastards stabbed Sungyeol,” he growled, “And I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t extremely satisfying.”

     “How do you know it was them? There are four other members,” Haneul reasoned.

     “It doesn’t matter; they’re all BAP. They’re all filth.”

     Haneul glanced at Youngjae once again, and noticed he was looking at her as well. But there was no way he knew who she was; the Ancient’s had wiped all of their memories.

     “You can’t just generalize like that!” she pleaded. It was hard for her to accept all the terrible things  that BAP had done, that Youngjae had done, because she knew Youngjae. She knew he wasn’t like that, or at least that he hadn’t always been. If anything, it was their leader Yongguk that she detested for taking her friend away.

     It was just days before the Rogue Rebellion, when tension betw