I MESSED UP! THIS CHAPTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN POSTED BEFORE "THE IMPOSSIBILITY" REALLY SORRY GUYS...

Chapter Sixteen: The Beginning
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Jonghyun wished for something to drink. His throat felt like someone ran sandpaper over the inner lining of his esophagus. He's been sitting there for ten minutes now wondering if he should risk getting up and going for a glass of water. But thinking it over, he thought better of it. While both Krystal and Sulli had cried themselves to sleep, he couldn't risk them waking up and starting all over again.

He wondered for a moment if the hollow feeling he felt at the pit of his stomach was the same what Sulli felt when she finally drifted into a fitful sleep. It hurt, physically hurt, to see her in so much agony. Wounds of the flesh were easy to cure but wounds of the soul... those leaves its mark on a person forever.

Shifting his weight in the uncomfortable chair, Jonghyun stared out the window where the moon was just beginning to peek out from behind some clouds that had hide it until now. Even the night was restless, full of clouds that shift and move across the sky. It look like a summer storm was headed their way.

"Jonghyun?"

Turning, he was startled to see Sulli sit up on the bed, her eyes red and puffy. "Go back to sleep, Sulli. It's early yet."

Sulli brushed a lock of her dark hair away from her damp face. Glancing down, she spied Krystal asleep on the bed beside her. "I don't remember her getting in with me."

"You weren't exactly up to thoughts at the time," Jonghyun said kindly with a look of sympathy. "She cried for you."

Sulli offered a small smile. "Yeah, it would be so like her too. Krystal, the ever soft hearted one in our little group of misfits." She reached out and touched a curl on Krystal's head. "I'm very lucky with friends."

" Sulli?" Jonghyun said softly, offering his hand out to her. He may not be able to help Luna with whatever it was she was going through, but he could very well be there for Sulli who hurt too.

For a moment, she hesitated. While Jonghyun and her had been close once, they have since went their own way. But no matter what was said and done, they belong to something that only those within can understand. Reaching out, she clasped hands with him and allowed him to pull her to him.

Drawing her to him, he settled her into his lap and allowed her to settle herself into the curves of his body. There was nothing ual, nothing brotherly, nothing but friendship there in that embrace as Sulli allowed herself to absorb the quiet strength in Jonghyun that she's never noticed before.

The last two years have been strange, almost unreal, for them. Both having died and come back by the means of something that was out of this world. It had forced them to both grow up and face the world.

For Sulli, it was an awaking to something she always knew was out there, something that was never out of her realm of impossibilities. It had allowed her move comfortably from the strange awkward girl to a woman of infinite knowledge. For that alone, she will never regret knowing the aliens.

For Jonghyun, it forced him to see the world outside his safe little world. It propelled him from adolescent to man, opening him to the necessities of life. He understood his father's position so much more now, the hardships that came with knowledge of life. At the same time, he gave him a kind of peace and acceptance that he's never known before. The world opened more to him, all the possibilities... Seeing Taemin and the others, he knew that only the imagination limited them.

They sat there, in silence, just holding one another, offering and accepting comfort. It was the first time in a long while since either of them had this kind of peace.
 

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Kim Minjong hated being helpless. He was never good at standing in the sidelines when there were things to be done. But he was way out of his league here. This was something that was... unnatural yet natural all at the same time, unfamiliar and familiar all at the same time. "Get some hot water," he instructed quickly as Taemin and Minho gently moved Luna’s unconscious body to the bed.

"What did you do to her?" Key asked, as he dropped a cold compress to the reclining blonde's forehead. She was paler than she's ever been, and the lines of agony stood out plain on her face. "Minho!"

"Stop yelling!" Minho hollered back at the same volume as he lifted her leg and tucked a pillow under her ankles. "I didn't touch her if that's what you're asking."

"What happened Minho?" Taemin asked, slipping his body along the back wall and lifting her head into his lap. The once springy curls that drove him to distraction were limp and covered in sweat. She was hot to touch and paler than ice. Whatever was happening to her can't be good.

"Luna and I had a discussion," Minho replied, lowering the shields of his emotions.

"So why doesn't anyone in this room believe you?" Minjong asked as he motioned Key aside and checked her pulse. "Her heart is racing and her breathing isn't too smooth either." He checked her eyes, sending a silent thanks to the powers above for that six months training course in his late twenties on emergency first aid.

"Here's the hot water," Amber said as she brought the big pot that had been set to boil for spaghetti. "It hadn't boil yet."

"Good," Minjong replied, dipping as much of the hand towel into the scolding water as he could before lifting it to wring out. As hot to the touch as the water was, it was cool compared to the heat radiating from Luna as he patted her cheeks to get some blood circulating here. "She's burning up."

The choking cough woke her up slowly and she blinked unseeing blue eyes at the ceiling, muttering something unintelligible.

"What is she saying?" Amber asked, her voice anxiously, her eyes searching her brother's concern face and Minho's carefully guarded one.

"It's no language I've heard of," Key replied quietly. "But sometimes, when she sleeps, she'd have conversations in that language."

"Must be Antarian," Taemin murmured softly as he brushed a lock of hair out of her face. "She must be reliving our lives again."

Minho said nothing, his eyes drawn to the words that were barely audible. Unlike the others, he recognized it. It wasn't so much he recognized the words, it was the intonation and way she was muttering it. He had seen her do so once before, just before her slipped into the coma that she never awoke from. It was a prayer; a prayer of last rites.

Shaking his head slowly, Minho fought the urge to curse at her. *Just when I got her to agree to the damn thing.... She goes and pulls a stunt like this. Damn it Luna, I'm not going to let you win on this one. No way, no how.* Getting up determinedly, he stomped to the living room and grabbed the stones from the back. "It's time."

Taemin stared at the smoothly carved stones. "We have to wait until she wakes up and talk us through the processes."

"She's not going to wake up," Minho replied, placing one stone in Amber's outstretched hands.

Key gasped at him while Minjong dropped the phone he had been using to call the others back. "What do you mean?"

"She's not waking up this time," Minho replied, dropping the fourth stone in Key's limp hands. "You'll hold it to form the fourth corner of the square. Don't worry, you don't need to do anything but hold it." He gently took Amber by the shoulder and set her three feet from Key toward Luna's feet. Stepping onto the bed, he dropped himself across from Amber and next to Taemin. "Let's get this over with."

"But we don't even know what to do?" Amber asked her eyes wide with fear.

The shutter over Taemin's features came down like a ton of bricks. Dark eyes narrowing dangerously, he pinned Minho with a look that said not to mess with him. "How do you know she's not waking up?"

For a brief moment, Minho considered lying to him. But knowing Taemin like he did, and Taemin knowing him the way Taemin did, it would have been a pointless exercise. And with the fact that he's about to keep a whole deal with Luna under wraps, never to utter it again, it didn't set well with him to lie now. "She was saying her last rites of passage."

"Her what?" Minjong asked in disbelief before turning his pale eyes to the young woman in the bed. "You're kidding, right?"

"No," Minho replied. He shook his head impatiently; knowing that there was going to be more questions soon but now was definitely not the time. "Can we get on with this?"

Amber stared at the body that was emitting wretchedly painful sounds. "We still don't know what to..."

"It'll come to you," Taemin said with reassurance as he stared at his sister, offering his strength and belief. "Luna said that you are the stabilizer, you can channel the energy into the body. I can heal it and Michael can provide the energy source. We can do this Amber."

Minho nodded slowly, "We have to."

She took a deep breath, willing herself to stop the quivering stomach the threatened to make a mess out of this whole thing and opened her eyes. Key sated at her, his eyes and body calm with confidence in her ability to mix all the problems in the world. Somehow, it strengthened her to know that he had such unwavering belief in her. "Let's do it."