Chapter Text
Nagyeon wakes up to the smell of smoke. The suffocating scent quickly dispels any drowsiness he might’ve felt as he pushes off the blanket and sits up, giving a cursory glance around the room. The fireplace only lightly glints with sleepy, black-burnt coals that they could coax awake in the morning, and the lantern had been put out before they went to sleep.
Even fully alert, Nagyeon can't pinpoint where the smoke is coming from. The smell isn't particularly strong, the unusualness of it being what woke Nagyeon more than the intensity, but it makes him feel uneasy. The smoke must have curled in under the crack of their door and between the bricks of their walls. It must've come from outside — something is happening outside. This is the first thing that puts Nagyeon on edge.
The second thing that sets the tilt to his shoulders is the realization that Najin is gone.
The floor is cold on his bare feet as Nagyeon gets up. He knows that his brother isn't in the cabin, but he can't help but look around again as his pulse jolts. It's dark — the sparse furniture is barely silhouetted by the moonlight breaking through the uncovered window. It's darker than usual, troublingly, due to the smoke. So really, all he can glean is that the floor is cold and there is smoke filling the cabin from a fire that is happening outside. And the most important thing: that there is a fire and his brother might be out there in it.
The floor gets warmer as Nagyeon approaches the door, reminding him to pull on his boots before he opens it and steps outside. He's only wearing the thin innerwear that he sleeps in, but it doesn't matter. It feels like spring when he leaves the cabin, and as he runs towards the billowing stacks of smoke and sun-bright fire, it's like summer.
Tearing downhill toward the brightest column of flame, Nagyeon plunges into charcoal-black darkness and is suffocated for a moment. The only thing he can hear is crackling and crumbling and snapping, and the ash is sour in his eyes and his lungs. Then, it's all too bright and too dark as white-hot fire throws everything it consumes into intense shadow and belches smoke. Nagyeon sees silhouettes of people running, sharp black shapes of buildings, and then nothing again when smoke cuts into his path.
He still can't see the shape of Najin anywhere. He calls out his name, but it's swallowed up in popping sparks and the groaning of buildings. Soot coats the back of his throat as he opens his mouth to yell again, still running, and a body slams into his.
Najin. But the woman gets up and stumbles past him, clipping his shoulder as she goes. She's coughing, a hand pressed to her mouth, and her body seizes with every one as she drops back to the ground. Her pin-straight hair is blackened and curling at the ends, and her eyes are tightly closed against the brightness.
Swallowing down his disappointment, Nagyeon turns around to help her back up, and she pulls away to keep running. He watches to see if she falls again before continuing into the fire. It's getting brighter and there is a little less smoke, but his search for Najin remains unfruitful. To his dismay, Nagyeon's attention keeps straying to people staggering out of burning homes. There are parents calling for children, children crying for parents, and painful silences in response.
His head keeps turning towards these people, and while Najin's face burns at the front of his mind, Nagyeon can't help but charge into the silences to answer them.
----
A little distance away, a girl is lifted away from her burning home. She fights against the hands like a roped bull, bucking wildly as her eyes reflect red flames.
"My dad is still—"
There is a hero, but he's carrying grown men on a tiny back and doesn't have any room for more.
"My dad is still in there!"
With a sound like thunder, the roof cracks and the house is brought to the ground. There is a terrible stillness as the fire eats and dances. Tears rolling down her face, the girl lets out a strangled cry as she is hauled away to safety.
----
A boy like Nagyeon was built for endurance, not strength. It's what pulled him through the snow, his brother's little hand in his and their noses red. It's what built the muscle in his arms and shoulders, lugging wood and missing swings of an ax against logs.
It's what keeps Nagyeon calling out for Najin in the heat of a burning town. His mouth opens, his tongue dry and sticking to his hard palate, and he calls again.
And then he sees him, Najin, at the heart of the flames.
He sees Najin, letting a lit torch roll out of his hand. He sees it roll and thump gently against the wall, where fire quickly catches and spreads.
He sees Najin, who never thinks ahead, jump back in shock as the fire spreads quicker than he expected and a wooden beam crashes down in front of him.
Najin, suddenly statued in the middle of a burning house and making no move to leave. He just watches the flames grow, his hand still slightly outstretched from where he dropped the torch and—
Nagyeon pushes through burning wood and stone. His little brother's face twists in an odd way, but he doesn't have time to pick it apart the way he usually would. His mind is preoccupied with grasping that limp, outstretched hand and pulling Najin towards him. He tries to force their way out the same way he came, but his hands are suddenly burning and more of the structure collapses over their escape.
The smoke is getting thicker, trapped against the still-intact sides of the house. Soon he can't see anything but sudden sparks that make his eyes dart erratically, trying to follow their path. The smoke can't rise any higher, so it presses into their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. They're coughing, and every rasping exhale is followed by an instinctual inhale that leaves them choking and gasping more.
At some point, they can't lift their heads past a certain height. Any attempts are pushed back down with a sudden, roaring force of heat. It's a primitive instinct keeping their heads low with the understanding that nothing would survive up there. So they crawl, the heat and smoke a little more bearable here, and Nagyeon thinks he can see a way out. They're crawling, and suddenly Najin is dead weight on his arm.
Nagyeon abruptly remembers that twisted expression. And beyond that, he remembers the soot smeared on Najin's face, the strained seams of heavy gloves, and the scorched leather of his boots. The lack of burns.
It's for your sake, Nagyeon.
He remembers how Najin's expression jolted to shock only after the house began collapsing around him, after the fire ignited and he watched the flames spread. Like turning a page in a book, Nagyeon pinpoints that sudden grimace as guilt. Najin had met his brother's eyes and felt shame.
I did it, Nagyeon.
I hope I'm the only one who saw him. Nagyeon feels calm, but his heart is rattling with his lungs as he draws in thick, ashy breaths. It's unsurprising that Najin fainted, having been in the smoke and ash from the very start of it. Nagyeon's seeing stars himself as he hauls Najin through a small opening in a blackening wall, and the house finally caves into itself as they get away.
He needs to get Najin home before anyone sees them — and he needs to get Najin home before he inhales a terminal quantity of smoke.
It's dizzying, heart-stopping work. And it's an act of divine pity that they make it back without much trouble. Nagyeon's legs only give out after he hauls Najin onto their bed, upsetting a cloud of ash into the air.
Nagyeon kneels there for a moment, face pressed into staining sheets and his hand wrapped tightly around his brother's. His grip is tight enough he can feel a pulse tapping, though he doesn't know whose. Then, like he's being revived, Nagyeon rises and gets to work, stripping his brother of his fire-touched clothes. He dampens a cloth with the little water they have left and gently wipes away the soot on Najin's body. The cloth cuts clear lines through the black-gray, and it soothes Nagyeon to rediscover his brother's face under it.
The dirtied cloth gets dropped in the pile of discarded clothes. Nagyeon rolls Najin over slightly to pull off the blackened bedsheets and redresses his brother in clean sleepwear. Then he unties his hair ribbon to brush out his hair. By the end of it, Nagyeon's heartbeat has steadied, and it only jumps a little when Najin sporadically coughs and chokes.
Finally calm again, Nagyeon has already calculated what to do next. He takes off his loose shirt and pulls on that singed coat. He leaves the gloves behind, and he keeps his boots. He ties up his hair with ribbon and knows that no one will be looking close enough to notice the sudden length. They will just see the silhouette, the blond hair, the red eyes. They will see his calloused hands, reaching out to pull them from the embers. And they will feel the line of his shoulders as they lean into him, quiet strength carrying them away from the burning and the darkening.
So, dressed in his brother's skin, Nagyeon goes back out into the flames.