Title: Keeping a Secret
Pairing: HyuKen
Related Chapter: 45, 57, 65, 71, 82, 93, 106, 112, 136, 156, 162, 178, 184, 237,
Word Count: 1138

The two young men walked through the desert, dressed head to toe in combat equipment. Even with all of the armour, it was clear that one of the two men was starting to struggle with the heat. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, but his armours cooling unit had busted a few weeks prior and he had yet to get it fixed.

“Ken,” the other man said, “You can take off the helmet. You can breathe the air here and it might help cool you down. If you overheat and pass out, I’m not equipped to help you.”

“I’ll be fine, Hyukkie,” Ken replied, trying to laugh, “I just hope we can get out of this sun soon.”

“My scans detected the beginning of a forest a mile from our current location,” Hyuk said, “The trees should provide acceptable shade. Do you want to course correct?”

“Yeah,” Ken nodded, “that would be awesome.”

“We’ll have to inform Agents Leo and N of this change of plans,” Hyuk sighed, “but we have no signal here.” Hyuk’s frown was hidden thanks to his helmet, but Ken knew him well enough to know what his facial expression was by his tone of voice.

Or, maybe that wasn’t a skill Ken had learned. Maybe it was something that he’d gotten from Epsilon. When it came to Hyuk, it was sometimes hard to tell where Epsilon ended and Ken started. Didn’t matter that the AI fragment had only been in his head for a couple of days before being removed, it had made sure to imprint pretty much every bit of data it had into Ken’s mind. Maybe Epsilon knew Ken would be able to stop everything, or maybe he just wanted someone else, anyone else, to know what had been done before he was silenced. It didn’t matter why, just mattered that it had and that it happened to Ken.

That was how Ken found out about what Director Kim was doing. To the Alpha AI, to the fragments, to the agents, and to Hyuk. He’d gone right to his closest friends – Leo and N – and the three had formed a plan. Well, five actually. Those two still had their AI fragments, Omega and Theta. They’d gathered two more fragments since leaving Project Freelancer. There was Delta who Leo had found only a few weeks before. He had to take out Agent Suho, who was still loyal to the Director to do it, but they had all agreed that sacrifices had to be made if they wanted to save the AI and bring their former boss to justice.

The other AI that they had freed was walking beside Ken.

Hyuk was also known as Beta. Every fragment that came from the original AI, from Alpha, embodied a part of the original AI. Omega was his rage and Theta his trust. They knew that Delta was the logic, but they didn’t know about the other fragments that they were looking for, they left before they could find out anything like that. Epsilon had been Alpha’s memories. Well, most of them anyway.

Hyuk was….                                          

Beta was…….

Alpha was created from a person. That person was Director Kim Wonsik. Alpha had Wonsik’s memories, personality, everything. Wonsik had taken Alpha and started experimenting on him. Ken wasn’t super clear on just what exactly had been done to Alpha – Epsilon’s memories of those times were too blurred by fear and pain to recall anything useful – but it had been bad. Whatever Wonsik had done had shattered Alpha’s mind until there was nothing left, caused him to fragment over and over as he tried to free himself from the emotional and psychological trauma that had been inflicted on him.

The last part of himself that Alpha had held onto was the memories of Wonsik’s lover; Han Sanghyuk. Just like those memories were dear to Wonsik, they were dear to Alpha. At the end, he didn’t know why those memories were so important, but he still held onto them. When he finally let go of them, thus creating Hyuk….Beta, it was around the same time Epsilon came into being. Since Epsilon came first, Ken hadn’t the slightest clue what Wonsik had done to make Alpha let go of those memories, but he knew he never wanted to find out. However, he did know that Wonsik hadn’t ended it there. No, Wonsik had played around with Beta a bit, altering the fragment until he thought that he was the real Hyuk. Until Hyuk didn’t remember what he actually was.

When Ken, Leo, and N created their escape plan, Ken insisted on trying to take Alpha. Theta and Omega had agreed, too. As Leo once said, they had a need, deep inside, to be reunited with the Alpha, to become one again, and that meant their judgement on all matters concerning the Alpha AI was too impaired to be reliable. At the time, however, they hadn’t realized that and trusted the AI fragments. It almost got them killed.

One good thing did come out of it, however. Ken, while trying to find where Alpha was being stored, had run across Hyuk. He knew right away who Hyuk was – flashes of Hyuk’s name and face had leaked over into Epsilon – and had taken Hyuk with him. At first, Hyuk didn’t believe him and had tried to get away, but Leo had removed Hyuk’s program from the robotic body Wonsik had given him and implanted him inside Ken’s head. They only kept Hyuk there for a few minutes before transferring him back into his regular body, but it was enough to convince Hyuk that they were right.

“I see green,” Hyuk said, pulling Ken from his memories, “and I see the top of a communications tower. We should be able to contract the others.”

“Alright,” Ken nodded, “I’ll try the radio.”

“Ask them if they have any leads on the Director’s location,” Hyuk was quick to ask and Ken frowned.

Secretly, it really bugged him how much Hyuk cared about Wonsik. Wonsik had done horrible things, things that could never be forgiven. Ken wanted Hyuk to forget about him, to move on and be happy. To be happy with Ken.

Ken was perfectly aware of why he could never actually be with Hyuk, but he decided that he didn’t care. Hyuk was Hyuk and Ken loved him. It didn’t matter that Hyuk wasn’t technically real. But Ken knew he could never tell Hyuk any of that. Hyuk wouldn’t accept his feelings, too caught up in a past that didn’t really belong to him to realize he had a future to claim as his own. So Ken kept his feelings secret and watched over Hyuk from the sidelines, waiting for Hyuk to move on, all while trying to fix the mess Wonsik had made.

A/N: originally I didn’t like this too much, thought it was too long and talked about too much, but now I like it after talking things out with my one friend who’s also a Red vs Blue fan. Hope you all do too!