Chapter Text
❝Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed.
Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires,
each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.❞
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings.&
“Our relationship is give and take. I will cooperate when I find it in the world’s best interest, but I won’t be controlled.”
Christopher crossed one mile-long leg over the other with perfect posture, raised his slicked-back head high, and his prideful, arctic-blue eyes, glowing like the hottest of blue fires, which was the only indication otherwise that the dignified man was furious, as he met every nervewracked gaze. He’d summoned them for this meeting, and there was a particular someone conspicuously absent that he’d be paying a house visit to later.
“I'm a nation. A Nation does not surrender to another without a war.”
“Are you fucking kidding us?!”A military General slammed his clenched fist on the table with an echoing crash, knocking over a cup holder of pens and clattering to the marble floor. His ruddy face was all ink splotches and scarlet rage. “Are you threatening your own country?!”
“This isn’t a joke. I was born here. I’m an ally of America.” Christopher clarified through a perilous smirk, swirling his wine glass and sipping the blood-red liquid. It tasted bittersweet. It reminded him of the sword-wielding cat that dared to invade his den and go for a lion’s throat. “I’m simply letting everyone here know, for the record, that if you send another assassin to my house again due to our petty disagreements, you’d be wise never to forget something.”
Blessed silence reigned. Tension flooded the room like a broken dam. Nobody dared to breathe. Christopher commanded the room and everyone in it. Interacting with a National-Authority Hunter was a lot like getting on a plane. Once you were up in the sky, you were going down one way or another, but it was up to the pilot if the passengers landed safely. The notion that anyone among them had forgotten that was ludicrous. It should be impossible when every survival instinct and history hinted otherwise, but someone needed a wake-up call.
Like the assassin who was now just a clump of ash on the carpet, Christopher had trashed due to the stain he left behind.
“…What might that be, Mr. Reed?”
David Brennon, one of the only sensible people present murmured gravely with respectful regard, his fingers steepled under his chin in a false show of serenity, leaning forward in his chair, more tense than the others, because he was taking Christopher as seriously as he demanded, which was part of the reason he liked working directly with the reasonable Chief of the FBH, who never attempted to punish or force him to go on raids he didn’t wish to participate in. David failed him this time, though, by not keeping his employees in check. His blood simmered to a boil just thinking about it.
Christopher held up his left index finger and pointed it at the flower vase on the long, wooden surface.
Deputy Director Michael Connor shot out of his chair, sending it flying backward into the wall with an ear-splitting crash, and shouted in a panicked bellow, “GET OUT NOW!“
It was too late.
Christopher shot a small pinprick of light, barely the size of a needle tip. The flower arrangement in the center burst into flames, and its vase bubbled and melted away instantly, leaving only a charred, smoldering black hole that emitted wisps of acrid-smelling smoke. Chairs upended, their legs screeching over the polished surface as the good men and women who made up the upper echelons of the committee that worked with him and Andre scrambled from their seats.
Everyone but David Brennon. Who remained frozen, not moving a single muscle. Only sweat beaded on his brow. Ashes floated in the air.
“I can make what Kamish did to the West Coast look like a friendly neighborhood barbecue.”
“We understand.” David Brennon breathed just before the conference table snapped in half and each end slammed onto the floor, one after the other with a deafening thump, “I will ensure the culprit is brought to justice.”
“Very good.”
Christopher finally lifted himself from his chair, stood, and swept out of the room full of ashen faces, swallowed tongues, and endless schemes.
Just as he stepped out, he heard what must be a new employee whisper, “B-b-but there are anti-fire mana wards all over this r-room!”
&
He didn’t like threatening people he was tasked to protect. In the end, they shouldn’t come after their protector, either. As soon as he was out of sight, he crushed the crystal-clear glass in his hand, fragments ricocheting in every direction. They froze mid-air, hovered like dust motes, and sparkled like diamond fragments in the light of the underground concrete hall. Caught by a certain someone's telekinesis. With silent, ghostly footfalls like a panther, a man strode toward him with an eerily graceful gait and stopped before Christopher a few feet from the elevator.
He didn’t sense him; the elevator door was shut, he hadn’t heard it moving, so the sublime figure in all black had slipped out of his shadow.
For what could’ve been moments or decades, they stood, peering at one another, two apex predators at the pinnacle of power in their respective countries and the world at large. This was the only man Christopher admired, whom he would not pick a fight with under any circumstances beyond the occasional verbal argument. No one could compare because he had ceased to be an ordinary human or hunter ages ago who could be trifled with, even by him. It took a lot to make it to that conclusion, however, but he didn't mind it much anymore after what Jinwoo did to him, for him.
This was death, whom Christopher loved more than life itself.
“What will you do if they retaliate out of fear?” Sung Jinwoo asked.
“I’ll leave it up to their imagination.” One corner of Christopher’s lips quirked up, raising his chin to peer directly into a security camera.
Neither spoke another word as Jinwoo grasped Christopher’s arm, and they vanished in a flash of black light.
&
“You’re still furious,” Jinwoo observed once they reappeared in Christopher’s bedroom in his main mansion on the top floor. He immediately strode to the bed, turned, and dropped on his back. The mattress creaked a second time when Jinwoo joined him, cupping Christopher’s smooth jaw, fingertips sliding over his rough stubble, and he guided his scowling face toward him.
Coal bangs hung like an inky curtain from Jinwoo’s moon-pale forehead as he peered at Christopher from above, yet he never looked down on him, not from the beginning, when they met at the International Guild Conference. Christopher peered up at him, captivated by those smoky eyes that reminded him of the watery shade of a tree touching the ground. He wanted to lie there, in that solid, packed earth, and let it cool him down.
Christopher began, lazily reaching for Jinwoo, gliding his fingertips from his wristbone up his forearm, calluses getting caught on the fine hairs just below his rolled-up sleeves. Reveling in the field of goosebumps rising on his forearms, Christopher’s irises smoked like dry ice as Jinwoo traced his fingertip along his bottom lip.
“Not anymore.”