in the name of peace

by blessthishotmess

Summary:

To the public The Government is all about order, progress and national superiority. Behind closed doors...it’s all about absolute control, expansionism, and profit, no matter the cost. Their path to power runs on human lives, creating soldiers out of stolen children, turning them into weapons for the wars to come. But after a certain betrayal from an Elite Agent, seven fugitives begin to rise from the crumbling lower districts, demanding penance.
War is coming.
Peace will be bought in blood.

Or; Bang Chan and his boys say fuck it and blow up the government.

Chapter 1: prelude: the capitol

Summary:

the prelude.

Anger is one short letter from danger.

                           - Eleanor Roosevelt

---

The Council Hall smelled faintly of metal and antiseptic. It was always too clean, as if the walls themselves rejected the grime of the streets outside. He looked outside the wide, circular window, The Capital’s skyline cut into the sky, towers of glass and concrete casted shadows over the lower districts. 

The Director sat alone at the end of the metal table, the other High Council members scattered around, waiting like vultures for whatever words The Director will grace them with. The Director's gloved fingers tapped a rhythm against the armrest of his chair, his face was calm but his mind was running loose. Always running. 

On the table before him, a holographic map flickered. Red heat signatures bloomed to life deep in the streets of one of the lower Districts, District Nine. They were moving fast. 

“Rebels,” spat Commander Jang of the War Division. “They’ve resurfaced again. Our patrols lost two convoys this week alone.” Her voice had a rasp that only someone who had been barking out orders all their life would have. 

The Director didn’t look at her, he didn’t need to. His eyes stayed fixed on the map.

District Nine. Farthest from The Capital, closest to the border. A place where the Enforcers stripped the district of their resources and left them to rot. The people there were always restless, animalistic, addicts, the most nasty type of human that humankind had to offer. 

But District Nine never had been…organized. 

Until now. Apparently. 

“How many of them?” The Director asked. 

“At least five confirmed,” answered Commander Nam, from Intelligence. “Possibly more. They’re moving like trained Operatives, not like the usual ununiformed bullshit. Whoever’s leading them has military experience.” 

The Director leaned back in his chair, the screws creaking faintly. His mind ticked through the list of possibilities. Ex-soldiers? Smugglers? Foreign agents? Or maybe…even survivors.

His jaw tightened at the thought. 

“Our informants in the area have identified some of them as having unusual capabilities.” Commander Nam continued.

That made the room fall silent. 

“Capabilities.” The Director’s gaze sharpened. 

“Yes, sir. Strength. Speed. Some…more subtle. Capabilities consistent with our Enhancement Operative Programs.” Nam said, her fingers clicking against the tablet before her. 

And the air seemed to drop by several degrees. 

That only meant one thing. These weren’t just rebels. They were his. Or rather, had been his. Runaways. Stolen assets. Ghosts from his own programs that had finally come to haunt him. 

“How?” The Director asked quietly.

Nam hesitated. “We don’t know… but there’s one more thing.”

“What.” 

“There is satellite footage of her.”

The Director's fingers stilled. The low hum of the room faded under the rush of blood in his ears. 

One of the most valuable Operatives of his. His one special girl. Her betrayal. Her escape.

He knew exactly what she was after. Who she was after. It didn’t take a fucking genius. The Director's voice was cold as ice when he finally spoke. “I want District Nine erased–”

“Sir…” Commander Jang cut in, “with respect, we’ve deployed multiple units before. If they have multiple Enhanced–”

“I didn’t say patrols.” The Director was interrupted, harsh. “I said erased. Gone. Vanished. Nonexistent. For fucks sake, I want it wiped clean off the damn map.” And he rose from his chair. Every one of his movements controlled and deliberate. “I want the Shock Unit mobilized and Agent Lee is to be sent.” He then said. 

The Council exchanged uneasy glances. Though they had many Agent Lee’s, they knew who exactly he had meant by Agent Lee.

“Agent Lee Yongbok will lead the operation,” The Director continued, his eyes fixed on the glowing red blotches on the map. “He will root them out. Every single one of them. And he will bring me Hannah Bahng’s head.”

And if he were lucky…Agent Lee would even bring Lee Minho’s head.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!! Remember that, this is only the beginning, so strap in muwehe

Next chapter is in our lovely Felix's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 2: article twelve-seven

Summary:

Felix gets his orders and him and his unit go hunting.

Of all the ways to lose a person. Death is the Kindest

 - Unknown

 

---

Felix was already standing when the comms above went off and The Director’s voice came through. 

“Agent Yongbok in the War Room. Stat.”

It wasn’t a request. It never was. It was an order. 

Felix tugged the zipper up until the collar of his jacket hugged around his throat. The black jacket hugged around him like a second skin, when he rolled his shoulders the fabric moved with him, as if it knew the shape of Felix. It was armor in more ways than one. Light enough to follow his body, heavy enough to remind him who he was, what he was.

He took a slow deep breath, letting the recycled air fill his lungs, until an ache exploded in his chest. Then he stepped out of his room. The hall stretched before him, narrow and empty. The hum of the flickering lights above was the only sound until his boots met the cold ground. 

When Felix got to the War Room, the security panel glowed a bright blue before him and Felix pressed his keycard against the screen. The door hissed open the moment Felix pulled his card away and he stepped inside. The walls were sterile and cold, a cage. It smelled like disinfectant and ozone. Felix made sure his boots made no sound on the polished floor as he walked towards The Director, who was sitting at the steel table. His spine rigid, with his polished, gloved fingers interlaced before him. Felix ignored the rest who were in the room. 

The Director didn’t bother with greetings. He never did. 

“Sit.” The Director ordered. 

Felix didn’t. Instead he rolled his eyes and said, his tone flat, “you wouldn’t have called me down here if you wanted me to be comfortable…”

The Director’s jaw ticked but he didn’t say a single thing, instead he stared at Felix with his cold eyes. Silence. Absolute silence. 

“Sir.” Felix added a few more seconds later, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. 

The Director ignored Felix and gestured at the holographic display flickering over the table. Felix recognized the area. District Nine. It glowed in red pulses, heat signatures clustered in the narrow dirty streets.

 “Your target is Hannah Bahng.” The Director finally said and for a split second, Felix didn’t blink. Didn’t move. The name landed like a rock in his gut and it sank deep, drowning.  

But Felix’s voice came out steady, controlled, unaffected. “Give me a location.”

“She has been sighted near a group of organized rebels,” the Director said. “Enhanced rebels. They’ve taken out patrols, convoys. They are escalating.”

Felix’s gaze fell back upon the map and his eyes tracked the movement of red heat signatures. Organized was not the word he wanted to hear. Hannah was good. She’d always been good. Fast, precise, adaptable. She’d been his shadow in training, his equal on missions. His best friend. 

And now she was a problem.

“How long?” he asked, peeling his eyes away from the map and settling them back on The Director. 

“Two weeks, possibly more, Agent Yongbok,” Commander Nam said from the far end of the table, finally using her voice for something useful. She didn’t look at him directly. Predictable.  “She has capabilities consistent with her program file,” Nam continued. “Same profile as when she was under your command.”

Which meant Felix knew exactly what she could do. And exactly how to end it.

The Director leaned forward, close to Felix, his voice just barely a whisper so the others couldn’t hear. But Felix could hear him perfectly fine. “This is not a containment mission, Felix . This is eradication. District Nine is to be eliminated. You will find Hannah, and you will put her down. Copy?”

Remember your place, boy. 

You are to follow orders, like a dog. 

Know your place.

Felix allowed himself one small exhale before he whispered back. “Copy, sir.”

---

The order still rang in his ears. An eradication.  He could still feel The Director’s breath against his ear, could still see the way the man’s gloved fingers had curled into the steel table as if restraining something far uglier than words. 

Now, back in the hallway, that command followed him like a dead weight. District Nine erased. Hannah Bahng put down.

Yuri was sprawled on the bench press when Felix walked into the training room, a combat knife spinning lazily between his fingers. He glanced up, his hair falling into his eyes with a sharp grin. “Let me guess, Bokkie, we’re going somewhere that smells like shit and piss.” 

Felix rolled his eyes and instead answered, “District Nine.” He pulled his locker open, “pack for two weeks, but plan for three. Full loadout.” 

“Figures.” Yuri’s grin faltered. 

Jaehyun was already by the weapons rack, checking his rifle. He was more quiet compared to Yuri, a few years older than Felix, and built like a man who could snap you in half but only if you deserved it. Just how Felix liked them. Jaehyun didn’t look up from his rifle when he asked, “you expecting heavy resistance?” 

Felix pulled his side arm from the shelf and checked the chamber. “I’d be disappointed if there wasn’t any.” He said earning him a small huff of laughter from Jaehyun. 

Yuri sat up, swinging his knife into its sheath. “Who’re we huntin’?” 

Felix didn’t bother trying to hide the information. They were bound to find out sooner or later. Best get the dramatics over with. “Hannah.” 

Silence filled the training room. Jaehyun had paused in checking the chamber of his rifle, while Yuri’s grin flattened.

“Shit.” Yuri finally said after a few moments, breaking the silence. 

“Yup.” Felix replied as he slammed a magazine into his sidearm and slid it into his holster. “We lift in twenty. This is a full operation. Article Twelve-Seven: command-authorized lethal with discretionary collateral if it preserves target acquisition.” 

Yuri whistled low. “Twelve-Seven? I guess they're tired of playing patty-cake.” 

Felix nodded as the three went into prep. 

Felix moved through the sequence like it was muscle memory, without thinking. Slid his armory on, his sidearms secured, his gravity braces fit snug against his forearms. His braces weren’t visible tech to most people, but they were what kept his abilities contained until he decided to release them. The Capitol didn’t like its Agents walking around with their full power accessible. Not after what had happened to the previous Shock Units.

Once Felix saw that Jaehyun and Yuri were finished prepping, he gestured to them to head to the aircraft. The aircraft sat in the middle of the driveway, a matte black that soaked in the sunlight with the Shock Units’ emblem painted on the sides in a muted silver. 

Felix climbed aboard first, ducking through the low hatch. The interior was stripped-down of all the pretty shit that usually was in aircrafts. Instead this one was based on just utility: webbed seating, weapons lockers, a central console for tactical updates. 

Jaehyun followed after him, placing his rifle in the rack with care. Then Yuri came last, carrying his usual assortment of knives strapped in the most odd, theatrical places. He dropped into a seat lazily sprawled out. Sure yuri didn’t act his age, didn’t act like he was older than Felix, but Felix knew the man could be on his feet and lethal in half a second. 

The pilot, a quiet, timid woman, gave Felix a small nod from the cockpit. “We’re cleared. The weather’s clean.”

“Good.” Felix said as he took a seat closet to the central console. 

The ramp hissed shut a few seconds later but Felix’s eyes stayed glued to the console, waiting for it to connect to the satellite feed. 

Soon, the aircraft lifted and The Capitol fell away in immaculate grids, everything sharp and perfect.

---

“Do you guys remember when we pulled that chemical rat nest three years ago,” Yuri said about thirty minutes into the trip, like he was revisiting a favorite bar. 

Jaehyun’s mouth thinned, giving Yuri a look. “Also when that boy lost his hand, and you stitched the stump with your boot lace.” 

Yuri’s grin returned, crooked and all teeth. “I’m resourceful.” 

Felix snorted, pulling a compression wrap from his bag, “resourceful is packing your med kit like the checklist says.” He nudged Yuri’s shoulder with his fingers. When Yuri turned to Felix,  it was then Felix hooked the wrap into the net on Yuri’s vest himself so it sat where it should. “Try not to let your spleen fall out this time.” Felix muttered, glancing up at Yuri’s face. 

“Aw, you do care,” Yuri said, clutching at his chest. 

Felix gave him a look. “I care about not updating the casualty registry. Move.” 

They moved.

 “Are we doing eyes-in first?” Jaehyun asked, gesturing to the drones resting on the racks. 

 Felix checked his watch. “We’ll get a peek when we approach. But she knows our toys. Expect  countermeasures. Expect misdirection. Expect that she wants us to waste time on stupid shit.” He explained, though he knew both Yuri and Jaehyun already knew what to expect. 

“Hannah always did love a game,” Yuri said lightly, though his hands were steady as he seated his magazines. “Remember the tunnel game?” He then asked. 

“The tunnel game? Yuri… it was literally a paintball gun match. We just happened to be in a tunnel,” Jaehyun corrected. 

“So…the tunnel game.” Yuri confirmed, looking at Felix for confirmation. 

Felix nodded. Why not? But instead of adding on to the trip down memory lane, he said, “If either of you hesitate out there because you’re too busy reminiscing about her, I’ll shoot you both in the legs myself and drag you back.” 

Yuri held up both palms. “Not the leg, darling. It’s my best feature.” 

“Your best feature is that I haven’t choked you yet,” Felix said, his voice flat and Yuri chuckled.

Touchdown was in thirty, and so Felix made one last pass. Yuri’s harness, Jaehyun’s belt line, the catch on Jaehyun’s drone case, the angle of Yuri’s shoulder plate. He tugged a loose strap free on Yuri’s left side, cinched it tight, and used his thumb to wipe a streak of dried blood at the corner of Yuri’s mouth. Someone else’s, from sparring earlier. 

“Hold still,” he said.

 Yuri did, though his smirk softened, then it was gone. 

“Thanks, mom.” 

“Don’t make me ground you.” 

“Daddy issues,” Yuri said to Jaehyun in a whisper. 

“Both of you shut up,” Felix said, but a small smile crept up on his lipe. He slid his helmet on before either could see and flipped the visor down, the screen coming to life and the mission file forming before his eyes. 

 

HANNAH BAHNG

PRIOR UNIT: SHOCK. 

STATUS: ROGUE. 

CAPABILITIES: ENHANCED [REDACTED]. 

DIRECTIVE: ELIMINATE. 

 

The aircraft began to shake and so Felix strapped himself tight into the seats, Yuri and Jaehyun following after him. 

Headset crackled, the pilot’s voice coming through. “Shock Unit, confirm.” 

“Shock One, equipped,” Felix said. 

“Shock Two, equipped,” Jaehyun followed. 

“Shock Three, present and handsome,” Yuri said. 

Felix reached over, tapped Yuri’s helmet with his knuckles. “Try again.” 

“Shock Three, equipped,” Yuri sighed, then winked. “Still handsome.” 

Slowly District Nine began to come into view the more they lowered. It was like a ugly bruise, purple and green. Like it had been chewed up and spat out. Felix wanted to get out of here are fast as he could, for his sake and for his team’s. 

Jaehyun whistled under his breath, but didn’t say anything. 

“Rule’s of engagement reminder,” Felix said, voice even and quiet. “Article Twelve-Seven. If you have the shot, you take it. If you don’t, you don’t pretend you do.” 

“Copy,” Jaehyun said. 

Yuri raised his hand, his fingers dancing as he did so. “Question. Nonlethal capture authorized?” 

“Negative,” Felix replied. “The directive is eradication. Command wants proof of termination. Chain of custody will be strict. We’re logging it via headcam and body collection. No trophy-taking.” He felt, rather than saw, Yuri’s glance. He added, quieter, “If she’s in our hands and Command changes the directive, I’ll make the call. Until then, we execute the given Commands.” 

“Copy,” Yuri said, and he meant it. The aircrafts lights dimmed. 

“Two minutes,” the pilot said through the speaker. 

Felix keyed the drop bay, causing it to begin shifting open. “We’re not using the rooftop.” 

“Where, then?” Yuri asked. 

Felix tagged a spot on the map. An alley between an abandoned parking structure and a laundromat that probably hadn’t seen soap in over a decade. “She expects rooftops, so… we drop in an alley then we move through the service shafts.” 

“The tunnel game,” Yuri said. His voice was light, but Felix heard the harshness disguised within it. He always did. They all did. 

“Thirty seconds,” the pilot said. 

Felix checked his rifle. Breath in. 

Breath out. 

The ache went tight in the center of his chest, a pain he knew how to carry. Hannah had taught him a lot of things. He’d learned the rest alone. The ramp dropped. Heat and grit hit them unforgivingly. 

They dropped without fanfare.

---

The air in District Nine clung to Felix like glue. It was hot and damp, sticky. Absolutely disgusting. It was decaying here. Rusty. Rats running in the shadows carrying disease. It was deplorable. His boots hit the cracked pavement and his nose crinckled at the rotting smells that infected his senses. It wasn’t rocket science to see why Agents hated being deployed to District Nine for missions.

It was District Nine that The Capitol never bothered to clean. The place they liked to pretend never existed. 

Felix never understood the point of it. But pests are hard to ignore. District Nine was a pest, it always had an issuing arising that needed to be dealt with. 

Jaehyun and Yuri followed behind him without need for orders. They knew the formation. Felix at point, Yuris' gaze sweeping from left to right, and Jaehyun locking down the rear. 

The South edge of the District was a mess. Looted storefronts and half collapsed buildings. Glass crunched underneath Felix’s boot and somewhere far, a dog barked. Which was soon followed by the low thud of something metal hitting concrete. Felix’s eyes scanned everything. Not just for movement, but for signs. 

Organized rebels.
Enhanced capabilities.

Hannah was good at hiding in plain sight. She was good at melting into crowds and striking fast at you. Felix taught some of that. He clenched his jaw and continued walking. 

Hannah was a traitor. A rebel, now. 

At the next corner, Felix raised his fist up, halting them. Up ahead, was a street that used to be a market square. The stalls were long abandoned, their metal frames twisted and rusted. 

But the square wasn’t empty.

Three figures moved across it in ragged clothes and covering each other’s blind spots. Felix’s eyes narrowed. Rebels, and not amateurs. He caught the glint of a rifle barrel in one of their hands.

Yuri’s breath ticked in over comms. “Not our girl.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Felix murmured back. “They are with her.”

He signaled with two fingers, and they moved.

Their approach was silent, shadows hiding them away until they were at the square’s edge. Felix raised his sidearm, gravity braces humming faintly against his forearms. The air around him seemed to bend and emit the tiniest shimmer.

He held himself back for a beat. Then two. 

He stepped out from where he kept himself hidden and dropped the rifleman first. Gravity slammed the man sideways into the rusted frame, bones giving way with a crack. He didn't move after that. Then, the other two men spun. One went for a pistol while the other bolted for cover. 

Jaehyun’s shot rang through the air and the runner dropped to the ground, lifeless.

The last man froze when Felix’s gaze locked onto his. And within seconds Felix’s fist was colliding into his face, causing the man to crumble down like he were a game of Jenga. 

“Where is she?” Felix asked, his voice low and calm. 

The idiot rebel spat blood onto the cracked concrete as he lifted himself up. He glared at Felix. “Fuck you.”

Felix didn’t sigh. Didn’t even blink. It was fine. People were bound to be idiots. He lifted his hand slightly, and the man’s knees crunched under a sudden spike of weight, slamming him face-first into the ground. The concrete cracked under the force.

“Where is Hannah Bahng?” Felix pressed watching as the man gritted his teeth against the pressure. 

A flicker of recognition passed through the man's face. That was enough. Felix didn’t press any further. If this one knew her, Hannah would hear about the Shock Unit’s arrival before the day was out. These amateurs would let her know. 

But Felix would make her feel the hunt closing in.

He stepped back. “Clean it,” he told Yuri.

Yuri’s knife work was quick.

Four years. Four years of being the Commander of the Shock Unit. Four years of moving like a ghost through districts and ripping out problems by the roots. The Director had made him good at it. No, perfect at it. And Felix had stopped asking himself where the line was. 

He’d crossed it a long time ago. 

A boy had screamed once. Thirteen, maybe. Old enough to know how to throw a molotov but young enough that the glass bottle shook in his hands. Felix had shot him anyway. For the mission. 

A woman in the Border Cities had smiled at him once in the dark, whispered names into his ear while he kissed her skin, and the next morning he’d passed those names to Intelligence. She was gone within the week. For the mission. 

The Capitol never had to remind him what he was. He knew. 

A weapon didn’t have morals.

They kept moving. The streets got narrower, the buildings had a certain lean that seemed like they were seconds from collapsing. But Felix’s focus stayed locked forward. Hannah was here somewhere. Every step, every second, brought him closer to her, and the mission’s weight pressed harder against his ribs. 

She’d been his equal. And then she’d chosen this. Chosen to tear at the hand that had fed them, the structure that had kept them alive. He told himself that was why it mattered. 

The comm in his ear crackled and Nam’s irritating voice came through. Felix fought the urge to roll his eyes at her voice. “Satellite confirms concentrated heat signatures six blocks northeast. Possible command post. Advise caution.” 

Felix’s lips curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Copy,” he said.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!!! Don't worry, the rest of the boys will show up soon.

Next chapter is also in Felix's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 3: till i collapse

Summary:

Felix meets the lovely Bahng Chan, Seo Changbin, Hwang Hyunjin, and... Lee Minho.

The unfed mind devours itself. 

- Gore Vidal

---

They had been on their feet for three days. 

Time in District Nine didn’t feel real. The time warped in a way that Felix hated. Hours bled into one another under the haze of heat, rust, and decay. The air seemed to coat his lungs in mold, in the stench of piss and blood. Even the sunlight seemed dirty, like it had to break through a filter before it could touch the street. 

Felix hadn’t tasted clean air in days. 

The Unit moved in a tight formation through the alleys, crawling through service shafts when needed. Felix stayed on point. Jaehyun stayed at the rear. Yuri kept sweeping his gaze, by the grip on his knives loosened and he began turning them in lazy circles. Felix’s gravity braces hummed faintly at his forearms, that familiar pressure keeping his abilities leashed until he needed them. He could feel the faint vibration of the containment through the veins in his wrist. Constant and steady. 

Suffocating, whispered a small voice in the back of his mind. 

The last three days had been nothing but scraps, boot prints in the wrong direction, and ration wrappers.

But she was here. Hannah was here. Somewhere in this mess of crumbling buildings and trash filled streets, breathing the same rancid air. And when he found her, it would end.

Felix could feel it in his veins. 

Jaehyun’s voice crackled into his comms. “North side clear. No movement on thermal.”

“Remember, she knows our toys. Sweep again.” Felix said in his comms.

Yuri snorted softly. “At this point, Bokkie, maybe she knows us better than we know her.”

Maybe she did. 

Felix didn’t answer Yuri and continued walking. 

The street they turned into was wider than most they had passed through during the last three days, there was enough space for real sunlight to push through the haze. Felix’s boots slowed instinctively, eyes tracking movement from afar.

Far off on the right stood four figures. Felix frowned. 

“Eyes?” Felix muttered into his comms.

“Looks like some rebels. All male. Not Hannah.” Jaehyun confirmed before he went quiet. Too quiet. Then, “Bokkie… our databases flagged three of the four.” 

“Fuck.” Yuri's voice came through, full of disdain. 

Fuck indeed. 

Three of the four were confirmed in their databases. Meaning…they used to live in The Capitol. They had escaped. They have Capitol training. They… “Names.” Felix demanded. 

“Bahng Chan, Seo Changbin, and…oh fucking hell.” Jaehyun broke off. “It’s fucking Lee Minho.”

Felix’s pulse sky rocketed, hitting him like a sledge hammer. Everything in him went still, his eyes locked on the four figures. 

On Lee Minho.

“Fuck, you mean the guy The Director has plastered on his dart wall?” Yuri asked, voice disbelieving.

“Yeah… him .” Jaehyun confirmed. 

“Identity of the fourth?” Felix forced his voice out, though it felt like ash as the voices tore through his mind. Screaming at him. Repeatedly. Over and over again, unforgivingly. 

Traitor. 

Liar. 

Left you to die. 

“Hwang Hyunjin, the database says he is just some lowlife. Nothing much.” Jaehyun then said. 

“Why the fuck is this idiot with Bahng, Seo, and Lee?” Yuri questioned, “there has to be something…he isn’t just here for show.” 

“Contact?” Jaehyun asked.

“Hold.” Felix clipped, his focus locked on Minho. Not the group. Not the rest of those useless people. Not the formation. Felix reached for his guns, clicking the saftey off and he hid behind a building. His gaze still locked on Minho. Just him.

They moved like they had done this together thousands of times. Bahng scanned the area quickly and precisely. Seo moved forward like a shield. Hwang was loose and rangy, but he was sharp eyed. And Minho, in the center taking point. 

Felix didn’t even have to think about the order he gave next. “Jae, Yuri. Go find Hannah. If Bahng is here, then so is she. Find her, now.”

“What?” Yuri’s voice was sharp. “We can— you can’t just—”

“ Now .” Felix muttered. Not a request. Not open for argument.

There was a moment of silence, before Jaehyun cursed low and jerked his head for Yuri to move. Their footsetos faded, leaving Felix alone in the wide, empty street. 

The hum in Felix’s head got louder.

---

Felix moved first.

His gravity hitting the pavement in a wave, the concrete buckling under the weight looking like something alive had twisted just under the surface. Seo caught the brunt of it as he dug his boots in, his muscles straining and his veins popping as the street tried to knock his legs out from under him. “What the fuck?!” He grunted. 

“Spread out!” Bahng barked out, dragging Hwang with him. 

But Felix didn’t stop moving. He lifted his gun up and squeezed the trigger once. The round caught Seo high in the shoulder, sending the man sideways with a loud yell. Blood erupted from his shoulder.

Felix watched as Hwang lunged in a rage, quick and his eyes locked on Felix. 

Huh. 

Cover made. 

Maybe Hwang wasn’t a useless idiot afterall. 

Felix didn’t bother aiming his gun at the man, instead he just flicked his left hand, releasing a tight blast right in Hwangs direction. Hwang went airborne, his body slamming through a rusted balcony of a second-story building. Out of sight. 

Seo looked horrified and angry as he whipped his gaze from Hwang towards where Felix kept himself out of the clear line of sight. 

Then, Bahng closed in fast on Felix as his right arm cocked to strike Felix’s jaw. But Felix didn’t let him, as he let Bahng get close enough to cast a shadow over his boots, then…he pulled. 

Gravity grabbed at Bahng’s center and twisted his momentum. Felix caught his right wrist and twisted as Bahng went down. The wet, meaty crack of his shoulder dislocating was almost hidden under the grunt of Bahng’s pain. 

Banhg staggered back, his arm hanging wrong. His face was pale but his eyes were still sharp. “Yongb–?” 

Felix ignored him and shoved Bahng into the wall, the man slumping into it, and his gazed locked back onto Minho. 

Minho still hadn’t moved. Not really. Just enough to have Seo and Hwang behind him with his body angled to Felix, watching. Steady and unreadable. 

Felix’s breath came sharp as the voices pressed in harder. 

He left you. He left you to die. 

He lied to you. 

He used you. 

Felix barely noticed as the gun that was once in his hand hit the pavement. 

He closed the distance in a heartbeat, his vision tunneling until it was only Minho who was in front of him. The impact of Minho’s forearm blocking Felix’s strike cracked through the air. Minho tried to slip his elbow towards Felix’s jaw, but Felix had ducked and planted his palm flat on Minho’s chest and shoved . 

Gravity flared, harsher than before and Minho’s back slammed into the wall hard…hard enough that dust fell from the cracks. 

Minho pushed off and came forward again. Silent and his unreadable gaze on Felix. 

Felix hated him for it.

Behind him Seo had circled with blood streaking down his arm but his steps were still heavy and controlled. Somewhere above, Hwang’s voice echoed confirming life, though pained. Then Bahng barked out orders through the noise, rallying them back into shape. 

Felix didn’t register any of it.  

He attacked again with his bare hands, every strike filled with gravity. The force making the pavement crumble beneath their feet, streetlamps bending as if they were hit by a storm. Minho kept blocking, dodging, and redirecting. He kept striking but he wasn’t striking to kill. 

Just contain. Felix blinked at the thought. 

Remember Agent Lee Yongbok. 

Minho wanted you dead. He used you. 

He will betray you again. 

He will leave you again. 

He will lie. 

Felix’s fingers were slick with blood now, some his and some not. Blood dripped from his forehead and nose. 

Minho slipped to Felix’s blindside and drove his fist towards his ribs. Felix absorbed the hit, let it push him sideways, then he hooked his boot behind Minho’s ankle and ripped gravity out from under him. 

But the voices drowned out the sounds of impact, the crunching of his ribs. 

Kill him. 

Kill him. 

KILL HIM. 

Minho hit the ground hard, rolled before Felix’s boot could come down on his throat and he bounced up into a low crouch, looking up at Felix with a flicker of something in his eyes that Felix didn’t want to see. 

Seo came in from Felix’s right, low and fast despite the wound he carried. Felix spun towards him with one hand out and let the gravity hit him like a car. Seo’s boots left the ground and his body smashed into a rusted cargo truck. The metal caved with the impact, the glass shattering into a web. 

Blood smeared in a wide handprint where Seo had tried to catch himself. 

Then Hwang had dropped from above, twisting in midair to drive both of his boots towards Felix’s head. Felix caught him mid-fall with a spike of gravity, changed his trajectory and sent Hwang back flying into the railing two stories up. He dropped limp like a ragdoll.

“Bin, stay back!” Bahng’s sharp voice cut through, closer not. “He’s keyed on Minho!” 

It wasn’t like Bahng was lying. 

Everything else blurred. The blood. The broken concrete. The sounds of boots hitting pavement. The shouts. All of it was backgroun noice and Felix stepped towards Minho again. 

Minho shifted in his stance, his weight forward and his shoulders square. His hands didn’t shake. 

Felix came in low and grabbed the front of Minho’s jacket, slamming him sideways into the wall hard enough that the concrete cracked with the pressure. Minho barely hit the concrete, but it still left a dark smear. 

Felix’s pulse thundered. The voices were words anymore, it was just a roar.

Screaming. 

And screaming at him. 

It was his voice, but also someone elses. It was fourteen different people's voices. But also just his . 

The braces on his forearms burned against his skin, and his body felt heavy. 

Felix huffed as he wiped the blood dripping from his nose. He tried to step forward to Minho. To get one more hit in. To finish it. But the darkness was already closing in on him, cold and fast, and the last thing he saw was Minho’s silhouette through the dark haze.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Chan's POV, so stay tuned :)))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 4: for democracy!

Summary:

Chan and his boys practice democracy.

Oh my brother, my brother,

my brother

Who have you become in the wake of all that's happened here?

- Icarus, The Crane Wives

---

It had been hours since their run in with Agent Lee Yongbok.

It was all a blur in Chan’s head. The fight had left his muscles aching, his bones sore in ways no healing could erase. He felt as if he were still on that street. Dust in the air, concrete cracking under nothing…the way Agent Lee Yongboks’ eyes locked onto Minho with something feral and wild. Unrelenting. 

Jeongin was able to heal Minho’s head, seal the deep bruising on Changbin’s ribs, and mend all of Hyunjin’s fractures. But it put strain on Jeongin, sweat dribbled down his forehead and his hands shook, to the point Seungmin declared that Changbin can heal his bullet wound the old fashioned way. With stitches. 

It had been hours and the medical room was quiet. Quiet wasn’t something that often happened with the seven of them. Quiet was something Chan would have to actively seek out, outside of the building.  

The seven of them sat in a loose circle. Jeongin checked on Hyunjin, his hands gently moving Hyunjin around to his heart's content. Seungmin was stitching up Changbin. Minho layed down in one of the cots with an ice pack to the back of his head. 

Minho refused to look anyone in the eye. That was the first thing Chan noticed. The man hadn’t said much since… nothing, really, except a few murmured responses when Seungmin had checked him for a concussion. His gaze stayed locked on the ceiling now, expression unreadable.

Hyunjin and Changbin kept shooting glances between Minho and Chan. Glance at Minho. Glance at Chan. Back to Minho. Then Chan again. Like they were waiting for one of them to crack. It kept going until-

“Okay…just for the record, this is the most ominous conversation I have ever witnessed. And I have listened to Minho-hyung talk about cleaning supplies like it was murder.” Jisung said, breaking the silence as he leaned on his elbows. Chan’s lips twitched up before he could stop them.

“Must get your ears checked cause there is no conversation happening,” Hyunjin muttered, rolling his eyes. 

Jisung squinted at Hyunjin, opening his mouth to rebuttle. 

“Not helping.” Chan cut in, rubbing his left arm down his face. 

“I’m with Jisung on this one,” Seungmin said, his voice a drawl. “What the hell happened out there?”

“Got your asses kicked.” Jeongin muttered like the little shit he was. Chan watched as three unimpressed looks landed on Jeongin. “What? I’m the one that has to deal with the aftermath.” 

“And you guys brought in some unconscious body through the doors, so please. Enlighten us.” Seungmin added, focusing back on Changbin’s stitches. 

Chan sucked in a sharp breath. “I honestly don’t know myself.”

“Yeah…” Changbin added, looking disturbed before planting his eyes on Minho. “Hyung, he wanted you. What was that about?” 

It was odd. Hannah had left that part out when she broke into their building a few days ago. Chan had been ecstatic to see his sister, who had been ripped from him when he was just eight years old. She came and they talked. God, did they talk. They talked about everything and anything. Chan had missed her to pieces. 

But her stay was short, Chan wished she would’ve just stayed. Moved in. But she was adamant that if she stayed she would only bring trouble, that the Shock Unit was after her and right on her tail. Her. Not Minho. Just her. And with that she had left. 

She wasn’t wrong about the Unit being right on her tail, because just the morning after she left Chan, Minho, Changbin, and Hyunjin were making rounds. Making sure everything was…safe…normal…there they were, the Shock Unit.

She never mentioned anything about Minho being one of Agent Yongboks main targets.  

Chan also looked towards Minho. “Maybe I was too handsome for him. Cuteness aggression. It’s a thing.” Minho mused. 

Hyunjin snorted. “Right. That's it. You’re just irresistible.” He shifted stiffly under Jeongin’s hands. “I mean, sure, why else would a Shock Unit Commander try to break your spine in half–”

“Hyunjin.” Chan cut in, giving him that look that said stop before I make you stop . 

Hyunjin backed down but his jaw clenched tightly. 

Chan’s mind kept circling back to the way Yongbok had looked at Minho. Not just focused but locked. Like the rest of them weren’t there. Like there was nothing in that moment but Minho’s throat under his hands. 

That wasn’t normal targeting. 

It wasn’t just tactical. 

It was fucking personal.

The lull of silence didn’t last. It was Jeongin who broke it. His voice carried that casualness that meant I’m saying this before someone else does . “So…uh…are we not gonna talk about the fact we have the Commander of the Shock Unit upstairs in our locked room, in restraints?” 

Silence fell for a second. 

Jisung blinked. “Oh that guy? Yeah, forgot about him. Thought that maybe we could pretend he didn’t exist so we all could sleep tonight.” 

“We don’t have the luxury to pretend.” Seungmin said flatly, tying off another stitch in Changbin’s shoulder. “He’s the Commander. An Elite. Which means he is trained for every situation. Even situations like this.”

“Not if we put a bullet in him first.” Changbin grunted. 

Hyunjin tilted his head, almost as if he were considering the thought. “Or…” he trailed off, “we can dump him in the river with weights. No body, no problem.” 

Jeongin gave Hyunjin a look. “You do know that dead weight takes longer to sink than what people typically think?” 

“Do you ?” Hyunjin shot back with a smirk. 

“I say we interogate him. Find out what he knows, maybe he has something useful Hannah could use when she comes back around. About their movements in the Capitol. Get something out of him before he figures out where he is and makes a run for it.” Jisung offered, glancing back at Chan every now and then for support. 

“Are you volunteering to be the one in the room when he wakes up?” Seungmin questioned. 

“...I didn’t…say that.” Came Jisungs muttered reply. 

“Or we keep it simple. He is dangerous. Too dangerous to keep alive. We end it before he creates a problem for us again.” Changbin said, pushing his idea forth again. 

“That’s not–” Jeongin started but Hyunjin cut him off with a disbelieving laugh.

“Oh, because having the Shock Unit Commander tied up in our house isn’t already a problem.” Hyunjin said, looking absolutely floored. 

Then Minho’s voice came in, low and precise. “No.” 

Four heads turned towards him. Minho was still lying on his back in the cot, an ice pack still pressed into his head. 

“No, to...?” Jisung asked, his voice trailing off. 

“All of it.” Minho confirmed as he shifted so he sat upright. “No interrogation. No river. No bullet. No to all of it.” 

Hyunjin blinked at Minho. “So…what? We keep him here and braid his pretty blonde hair?” 

Minho didn’t even look at Hyunjin. “Yes.” 

It was silent for a blissful second, a short lived blissful second. Then a headache erupted in Chan’s head. 

This is what he got for choosing democracy. 

“Oh! You have lost it,” Changbin’s voice was a growl. 

“He’s gonna kill us!” Hyunjin shot back. 

“He’s not really… house pet material,” Jisung cut in somewhere in the outrage. 

Seungmin stared at Minho and demanded, “Minho-hyung. Explain.” 

But Minho just shrugged, his tone flat. “I don’t have to explain myself. I said no.” 

Chan stayed quiet through the chaos, watching Minho instead of joining in. Sure, on the surface Minho looked like he always did when he dug his heels in. Calm, immovable, irritatingly certain. That same look Minho always had right before he threatened one of them with tissues being shoved in their mouths. 

But Chan saw the small things. It was always the small things with Minho, most didn’t care to look. Most would just assume that Minho was just being an asshole, his annoying, mean self. But Chan knew better. In how Minho’s stillness was too tight. How his eyes were a bit far away, not all here with them, almost haunted in a way. How his hands rested on his knees, not loose. His fingers curled in like he was trying to hold onto something. 

It wasn’t stubbornness or Minho being Minho. 

It was desperation. 

Something was up with Agent Yongbok, something more than just: he is the Commander of the Shock Unit, he is able to fight off literal militias on his own. And this had something to do with Minho. And as Minho’s only hyung, Chan had a duty. 

“Alright, enough,” Chan finally said and all the bickering was cut off. “Before we make any rash decisions, I am going to talk to him.” 

Hyunjin frowned. “Why you?” 

“Because I’m the one who makes the final call,” Chan simply said, catching the small look of gratitude coming from Minho. Chan pushed himself up from his chair, ignoring the ache in his shoulder. “Nobody touches the Agent upstairs until I’ve spoken to him.” 

No one argued as Chan left the room. 

He was fucking starving.

---

Chan didn’t get to speak to Agent Lee Yongbok until six more hours later. And Chan couldn’t stop fidgeting. He had eaten. He had washed the day off with a nice, hot, shower. But his hands still shook.  

The hallway creaked under his boots as he walked to the far room. The one they’d reinforced with a steel door and a locking bar across the frame of Yongboks’ room.

No. His cell. Even with the way they had softened the edges, brought a mattress and left water within Yongbok’s reach, the steel door with the reinforcements made it impossible to pretend it was anything other than a cell. Chan stood there for a moment then he unlocked it and stepped inside. The air was cooler inside.

Yongbok sat against the far wall, ankles chained to the pipe, wrists cuffed in front of him. His head tipped back slightly when Chan entered, eyes following Chan’s movements but not much else moving. 

Yongbok’s breathing was slow, steady, just…still. Alive. Awake. Waiting. Even the harsh yellow light coming from the bare buld overhead made Yongbok (and Chan hated the word for it) beautiful. Everything about Yongbok was a contrast. His sharp jaw. The smooth slope of his cheekbones littered in freckles. His mouth was set in a straight line. His lashes were dark against his skin, absurdly long for someone whose hands had been red to the wrists just hours ago. There was something disarming about the way he looked, the way Yongbok looked like one of those storybook princes…

Chan remembered, vividly, how Yongbok had looked when fighting. No snarl, no theatrics. Just precision. The way his eyes had burned with focus, locked on Minho like nothing else existed.

Chan closed the door behind him and leaned casually against it. 

“Evening, Yongbok,” he said. 

Yongbok’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond. 

“Nice weather today,” Chan went on, stepping closer. “Well, if you like clouds and smog. You a clouds and smog typa guy?” 

“Are you here to interrogate me or just waste oxygen?” Yongbok asked, his voice dry. 

Chan smiled faintly. “A bit of both, maybe.”

Yongbok sighed, then asked. “Come to check if I’ve chewed through the restraints yet?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Chan. 

Chan ignored the bait and walked over to the chair they’d left in here, flipping it around and sitting down folding his one good arm on the backrest. “Came to talk.” 

Yongbok tilted his head, feigning innocence. “What about?” 

“You,” Chan said. 

That earned him a sharp little grin, all teeth, nothing sweet. “Wow. Didn’t realize I was that interesting to you, Bahng.” 

“You’ve been here a few hours now. Figured it was time we got to know each other.” Chan said with a small shrug. 

“We already know enough.” Yongbok’s voice was flat. “ You’re the rebel leader, and I’m the guy sent to put you in the ground. End of story.” 

Chan leaned forward slightly. “If that’s the end of the story, why are you still breathing?” 

Yongbok’s eyes narrowed just slightly.  “Oh?” He drawled. “What, you’ve taken a liking to me?”

“I’d like to think you’re more than what the Capitol’s turned you into,” Chan said simply. 

And for a second, Yongbok didn’t answer. Then he leaned back, letting his head thump lightly against the wall. “That’s cute. And very wrong.” 

Chan didn’t push. He’d learned years ago that some people needed space before they’d step close. Push too hard and they’d dig in their heels. So instead, he shifted the conversation. 

“You’re from District Three?” Chan asked. 

Yongbok’s eyes flicked to him, cautious. “Why?” 

“Accent.” Chan shrugged. “It’s not Capitol. It’s not Nine either. Sounds like Three.” 

Yongbok’s mouth twitched. “You think you’re some kind of accent expert?” 

“Maybe.” Chan smiled faintly. “My mom was from Three.” 

That made Yongbok pause. His gaze sharpened, like he was looking for a catch. “What’s her name?” 

“Rina Park.” 

Yongbok blinked. “…Park?” 

“Yeah.” Chan tilted his head. “Yours?” 

Yongbok hesitated, his eyes flickering as if he were debating in his own head whether or not to answer. Then said in a quiet tone, “Soojin Lee.” 

Something softened in Chan’s chest. “Guess that explains it.” 

“Explains’ what?” 

“Why you sound like home,” Chan answered. 

For the first time, Yongbok didn’t snark back at him, didn’t hit him with more sass. He just looked at Chan for a long moment, something flickering in his eyes. Not trust, but something else. Understanding. A shared place. Shared air. 

Even if they’d never met before now, their mothers had walked the same streets, probably shopped in the same corner markets, cursed at the same potholes. “So, District Three boys. Guess we’re not so different after all.” Chan had then said into the silence. 

Yongbok scoffed, but it lacked bite. “You’re a rebel, a traitor. I’m an Agent. That’s about as different as it gets.” 

“You think so?” 

“I know so,” Yongbok said. “Everything I am was built by the Capitol.” 

“Not everything,” Chan said quietly. 

That earned him a sharp look. “Don’t pretend you know me.” 

“I don’t,” Chan agreed, before he went on. “But I know what it’s like to be built into something you didn’t want. I know what it’s like to have that choice ripped from you. And I know what it’s like to still have pieces they can’t touch, no matter how hard they try.” 

Yongbok stared at him for a long moment before asking, almost abruptly, “Why do you care so much about this? About me?” 

Chan could have deflected. Could have given some tactical reason. Information, strategy, advantage. But Yongbok’s tone wasn’t mocking now. It was… searching. Like he needed the answer, even if he wouldn’t admit it. 

“Because I see myself in you,” Chan admitted. 

Yongbok’s brows drew together. 

“I used to be you,” Chan continued. “Not in the Capitol’s uniform, but in their hands. Following orders because I didn’t know there was another way. Believing that if I just did everything right, maybe I’d survive long enough to figure out who I was.” Yongbok’s mouth tightened, grim, but he didn’t interrupt. “You remind me of the kid I was before I ran,” Chan said. “And I know what happens if nobody reaches that kid in time.” 

Yongbok looked away, the muscles in his jaw flexing. “Maybe I don’t want to be reached.” 

“That’s the thing,” Chan said softly. “I didn’t either. Not at first.”

It was quiet for a moment, Yongbok’s eyebrows were drawn together and he stared at Chan like he was an anomaly. 

“You know…” Chan trailed off causing Yongbok’s head to tilt just a fraction towards Chan. “Hannah is my sister.”

Yongbok didn’t even blink. “I know, it’s in her files.” 

Chan’s mouth quirked up. “Of course it is.” He said, lightly shaking his head. He hesitated before he continued on, but only for a second. “I have to thank you.”

And that. That got a reaction out of Yongbok. He reeled back and looked at Chan, his eyes wide and horrified. “Why?”

“Because, you were the brother she needed,” Chan said, swallowing hard. “When I wasn’t there.” 

Yongbok shook his head, wincing as he did so. “I’m not. You got it wrong . I’m not…I don’t brother .” 

“Hannah told me some things.” Chan said, causing Yongbok to squint at him, assessing. 

“Of course she did…of course she was here .” Yongbok muttered, snorting almost as if he were amused with her. 

But Chan didn’t answer and he looked at Yongbok. He tried to see the Yongbok, the Bokkie , Hannah had talked about just a day ago. The same Yongbok that had trained with her, baked her brownies and sang to her when she was plagued with nightmares, how they’d exchange stories about their time witht their families. 

“What about…” Chan trailed off trying to remember the name Hannah had said. “What about Rebecca?” Chan asked, but Yongbok’s face lacked recognition. 

“Who?” Yongbok questioned back. 

Well, fuck.

---

Chan entered the Den. The lights were dim, the floors scuffed and a steady hum of the old boiler under the building. The voices had dropped into a hush the second Chan stepped inside.

They were all spread out like they had practiced it, how they would look when Chan came back down. Hyunjin was draped over the back of the long couch in a posture his spine would be complaining about later. Changbin was sitting up on a chair, shifting every second, trying to sit comfortably with that bullet wound. Jisung was perched on the table, his heels knocking back against the leg in a nervous manner. Seungmin was sat on the floor by Changbin, clicking away at his laptop. Jeongin was half-sitting, half-standing on the arm of the couch, grumbling at Hyunjin’s posture. And Minho, who was at the far end of the room, his arms crossed and his head tipped back. 

Chan didn’t go to take a seat at the table yet. He took a breath and spoke. “Something isn’t right…with him.” 

Minho’s eyes were on him before the words finished leaving his mouth. He didn’t blink. It was the kind of look one would get when the final puzzle piece slid right into place…and the picture made was way worse than you wanted. 

“What kind of something?” Seungmin asked and the clicking stopped. 

Chan shifted his weight. “It’s not just the basic conditioning, it’s more. He…” he trailed off trying to ignore the stare that came from Minho. “He doesn’t remember his older sister, Rebecca.” Chan doesn’t think Hannah would have lied to him about Rebecca. 

The words hung in the air, heavy. 

Then Jeongin frowned. “How do you know he even had an older sister?” 

“Hannah told me,” Chan said. “Yesterday.” He glanced toward the far wall, not quite at Minho but close. “She said he and Rebecca were close growing up, that he visited her consistently until she… passed.” 

“And now… absolutely nothing?” Jisung asked, disbelieving. 

Chan shook his head. “Not even recognition of the name. It was like she never existed for him at all.” 

Seungmin sat up straighter. “He could be lying.” 

“No,” Changbin cut in, voice low. “If you’d seen him today…when he fought…” Changbin shook his head, huffing. “That wasn’t the kind of guy who wastes his time on lying about his family.” 

Minho hadn’t moved, but finally, Minho’s voice cut through, quiet but flat. “Before I left The Capitol they had started experimenting with people's minds rather than just conditioning and obedience. They wanted to warp memories…maybe even erase them.”

And Chan paused. Everything froze. 

Before… before I left. 

The Capitol . 

Minho had…

“So you’re saying that they took her out of him?” Jeongin grimaced at the thought. 

Minho shrugged, “or buried her so deep that he can’t find her anymore.” 

“Wait hold up!” Jisung cut in, “ before you left ?”

“Yeah, I second that.” Hyunjin added, “what do you mean by that?” 

The room seemed to shift with every breath. Six pairs of eyes were on Minho, including Chan’s. 

And for a second, Minho did what Minho did best, he went still enough to pass for a marble statue. Then he rolled his tongue against his cheek, slow, and then he set his gaze on a spot just over Chan’s shoulder. 

Not on Chan. Not on anyone. Somewhere safe. 

“I left.” Minho then said, bland as water. 

Jisung threw his hands up, “wow! Thanks, that clears up everything. We all can now go to sleep now. Everything is better now.” 

“Hyung…” Changbin said, sounding half concerned and half what the hell . “You never said you were in The Capitol.” 

Minho’s mouth quirked, not a smile though. Something tired. Then he said, “I never said a lot of things.” 

Hyunjin was fully sat up now, staring at Minho. “How long were you there? What did you even–”
Minho cut him off, sharp. “Ask a different question.” 

It wasn’t like Minho to be so sharp with Hyunjin. It was normal for Minho to chase Hyunjin’s overdramatic ass around the building with a box of tissues, but never was Minho sharp with him. When Chan met Minho, Hyunjin was there. When Chan met Hyunjin, Minho was there. They were a packaged deal. One didn’t go without the other. 

“Okay, toaster-boy, easy there.” Hyunjin shot back trying to lighten up the mood, but there was a lack of bravado in his tone. He couldn’t seem to look away from Minho’s face, like he was trying to read a book that was just empty. “You can’t just say I leftI and expect us not to-” 

“I can and I am.” Minho said and Hyunjin’s mouth snapped shut.

Chan didn’t move. He could feel the weight of the room, suffocating them all. He knew Minho’s silence wasn’t stubbornness but a survival tactic, a habit. 

“What was your job there?” Seungmin asked, curious. “Enforcer?” 

Minho’s eyes slid to Seungmin and for a split second his expression said obviously before he smoothed it away. “I was useful.”

“Useful, how?”

“Enough.” 

Hyunjin snorted. “Are you gonna keep this up all night? This high and mighty act? Cause I can make some popcorn.” 

Minho’s head turned to Hyunjin lazily. “And if you keep yapping, I’m going to shove your head in a toaster and set it to burnt.” 

“How romantic.” Jisung murmured. 

“House rule,” Seungmin said with a sigh. “We do not weaponzie kitchen appliances.” 

“Speak for yourself.” Changbin muttered, shifting in his seat when his stitched up shoulder itched. He winced again. “A kettle is a decent weapon.” 

Chan scrubbed a hand over his face. The exhaustion seeped into his bones like concrete. “Enough.” He looked at Minho. “You said they experimented with minds. You saw it?” 

Minho’s throat worked as he propped one ankle over the other and stared at a chip in the floor. “I saw the beginnings. The scientists had files as thick as textbooks. People went into these labs and would come out…brighter, obedient. And some came out barely even knowing what their name was.” 

“And Agent Yongbok?” Chan asked, pushing just a fraction. 

Minho pursed his lips, his fingers twitching. “He wouldn’t have been spared.”

“Because he is the Commander of Shock.” Jisung added. 

“Because he’s Yongbok .” Minho corrected with a look that could kill. 

No one spoke for a moment. 

“How long?” Chan then asked quietly. “How long were you in there for?” 

“Long enough I had time to learn how to leave.” Minho replied, softly.

“And Yongbok?” 

Minho’s gaze lifted from the floor and all Chan could see in his eyes was hurt . “He was supposed to come with me.” 

Something in Hyunjin’s face loosened. It wasn’t pity, Hyunjin would never insult Minho like that, but it was understanding. “And he didn’t.” 

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Minho cut off, the words quiet and sounding like an apology of sorts. “We have the Shock Commander locked up and his team is most likely scavenging the streets looking for him. If you need story time, ask Jisung to make something up.” 

Jisung put a hand to his heart. “I’m really good at improvising.” 

Chan took in a breath. Let it out. 

He could push. He could force Minho to open up a scabbed wound, but by doing that wouldn’t fix the issue they currently had. The useful question was what do we do now , not what happened then?

“Alright, let’s circle back.” Chan said and looked around at the six faces that were his family. “We need to make a decision on Yongbok. Do we keep him or do we cut him loose? Options on the table. We’re going to vote, majority rules. ‘Kay?”

“Finally.” Hyunjin muttered. “I vote no. He’s a walking time bomb.” 

“Seconded,” Jeongin said, but then hesitated. “Uhm…actually. Can I hold off on my vote until the end, I need more time to think.”

Chan nodded, then looked over Changbin. 

Changbin shifted under Chan’s gaze, the chair squeaking. “I don’t like the idea of leaving him breathing. But dumping him puts him right back on our tail, thus putting The Capitol on us. Maybe we could, I don’t know…sand him down?”
“Is that a yes?” Chan asked. 

“That’s a yes, but not a happy one.” Changbin confirmed. 

“Minho?” Chan asked even though he already knew. 

“Yes.” Minho said without pause, zero hesitation. 

“Seungmin?” 

Seungmin held Chan’s gaze. “I have conditions. If we keep him, I want to rebuild his restraints and add two more fail-safefs to the door. And at least one person has to be awake at all times and within sprinting distance. If those are met, then yes.” 

Hyunjin made a face. “I hate that I love you.” 

Seungmin didn’t look at him. “The feeling’s mutual.” 

Chan’s gaze settled back on Jeongin. “So?” 

Jeongin chewed the inside of his cheek, eyes flickering back and forthe from Minho and Chan. “He is basically a living weapon. Keeping him is either the best idea we’ve had or our last one. I can monitor his vitals, keep him sedated enough so he is limited. But if The Capitol buried commands beneath his conscious–”
“He is not a dog.” Minho cut in. 

“I know,” Jeongin snapped, then took a breath. “But, I also know what they can do.” He licked his lips. “I think…yes. We keep him. With caution, I’ll work with Seungmin.” 

“Jisung?” Chan then asked. Jisung had been awfully quiet. 

But then Jisung popped off the table like a live wire. “No, no, no, no, no. I am not voting until I speak to him. I am not sleeping until I have spoken to the guy that managed to take Changbin-hyung down, of all people.” He gestured at Changbin’s wounded shoulder, the evidence of what Yongbok was capable of. “So you can put my vote in a box and set it on fire. I am abstaining until the man opens his obnoxious mouth and says something that convinces me he is not going to tear my spine out and giggle about it.” He ranted, his words  jumbling together.

Chan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jisung.” 

“What? This is Democracy!” Jisung gasped then swiveled to face Minho. “Also, toaster threats aside, your boyfriend in there tried to take you and the hyungs apart like IKEA furniture. I get to have a chat.” 

“He’s not my–”

“ Spare me .” Jisung drawled, cutting Minho off. “He went after you like how my sister did her boyfriend, when he cheated on her.”

Hyunjin winced. “He does have a point.” 

Minho’s eyes twitched. “I will end you.” 

“Bring a toaster,” Hyunjin shot back and Jeongin made a strangled sound, as if he were trying to hold back laughter.

Chan clapped his hands and the room snapped back to him. “Focus. We can’t delay this. Jisung, you can speak to him, but you do not go alone and you do not poke the bear. If he even twitches wrong, you walk away.” 

Jisung opened his mouth to protest.

“ Walk .” Chan repeated, more firm. 

Jisung pressed his lips together, then nodded grudgingly. “Fine.” 

Chan looked around. 

So far the tally was: Hyunjin no, Changbnin yes, Minho yes, Seungmin yes, Jeongin yes, Jisung pending, and Chan pending. 

“So, we’re leaning keep. But I’m not cementing it until Jisung gets his two questions out.” Chan said with a small nod. 

“Three questions,” Jisung said.

“Two.” Seungmin corrected. 

“Two and a half.” Jisung bargained. 

“Two.” Chan and Seungmin said in unison. 

Jisung waved his hands up. “Fine, you tyrants.” 

The air loosened. Not much, but enough for Chan to breathe without feeling as if his chest were to explode. He angled his body towards Minho. “Is there anything else we need to know before we all go do something stupid?” 

Minho looked at Chan for a beat. He sighed. “He’s not gonna break,” he said, certain. But he seemed dreadful over it. “If you push him head-on, he will only dig his heels in deeper. He’s stubborn as fuck.” 

“We’re not going to push him head-on.” Chan assured Minho. 

“You say that now,” Minho replied, too quiet. Chan filed it away for later, this conversation…it was something meant to be had when it was just the two of them. 

“Rotation.” He said, changing the subject. “Seungmin, work out a schedule. No one pulls any back-to-backs. Jeongin, I want the sedative protocol on paper with contingencies. No improvising. Hyunjin and Changbin, you two look for anything he can use as a weapon, replace any holes with resin. And Minho…” Chan met his eyes and held them. “You do not go in alone.” 

Minho blinked. “I wasn’t planning to.” 

Chan didn’t bother saying I don’t believe you . He didn’t have to. They both heard it anyway. 

They moved to get to work. Seungmin snapped his laptop shut, stood and walked out. Changbin slowly pushed to his feet with a grunt, testing his shoulder before he went off. Hyunjin swung himself over the couch and landed effortlessly before following after Changbin. Jeongin was already scribbling in a notebook he had pulled from his pocket. 

And Jisung. He hovered over them, vibrating in his own skin. “So, who’s my chaperone?” 

“Me.” Chan said before anyone else could volunteer.

Jisung’s nose scrunched up. “You’ll make it not fun.”

“It is not supposed to be fun.” 

“How tragic.” 

Minho stepped past them without a word and headed straight to the supply closet, where they kept resin cans. Chan watched him, the line of his shoulders, the way he held them stiffly. Chan wondered, not for the first time, what Minho thought everytime he heard Yongboks name. 

Chan looked back at Jisung. “Two questions.” He told him. 

“Two,” Jisung echoed. “But follow ups don’t count.” 

“Jisung…” 

“Okay, fine! Two.” 

They took the stairs up, Seungmin was already up there waiting. He didn’t spare Chan or Jisung a look. “His vitals are steady,” he said without being asked, “he hasn’t pulled at the restraints. Either he is saving his strength or he is more polite than Hyunjin.” 

“I heard that!” Came Hyunjin’s voice from downstairs. 

“I meant it!” Seungmin called back. 

Chan sighed before he keyed the lock. The bar slid with a rough grind and the steel door popped with a hiss. 

Yongbok has not moved since his chat with Chan earlier, but he didn’t bother looking up this time. Chan clicked the light on, and Jisung inhaled sharply from where he stood behind Chan. 

Chan snorted before saying, “evening again. I’ve brought a friend.”

“Oh my God.” Jisung breathed, pushing past Chan. 

“Jisung wait–”

“ Felix? ” Jisung asked, incredulous as he dropped to the floor right at Yongbok’s ankles. “Oh my God , Felix. Hey. Hi. It’s me.”

Chan stepped in to try and pull Jisung back, to keep him safe from Yongbok…who Jisung called Felix… But then, to Chan's utter surprise Yongbok looked up at Jisung and recognized him. “Sungie?” 

And then Jisung was hugging Yongbok like his life depended on it and Yongbok sank into Jisungs embrace. 

From behind Chan, Seungmin groaned. “What the actual fuck?”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I know she was a long one. I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Jisungs POV, so stay tuned muwehehe

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 5: going off script

Summary:

Jisung and the team chat then...Jisung goes off script.

I am overflowing with words I do not have.

- Adam Falkner

---

It had been two days since Jisung saw the guarded expression slip from Felix’s face and fill with warmth. The way Felix’s mouth quirked up, in a small soft smile, when he looked at Jisung and muttered, “birthday twin. ” 

It had been two days since Jisung replied with a, “you remember me? ”

Two days since. “How could I forget?” Felix laughed, softly, “Hey Sungie. ” And God. Felix’s face. He looked so young and unguarded, in the way his eyes went large and doe eyed when he looked at Jisung. It wasn’t the face of the Shock Commander. Not the face of someone who had injured four of his teammates. 

But the face of the boy who Jisung knew. The boy who used to sneak bread to Jisung when he thought Jisung hadn’t eaten enough that day. The boy who Jisung used to race down the halls with. The boy who Jisung used to make bets on who would beat the instructor. 

Two days since. 

And Jisung was still reeling. 

The others had been…decently chill about it. Well, Chan was as chill as he could get and Jisung couldn’t blame the man. Chan was pacing, muttering to himself, “Sungie? Sungie. Wow. Sungie.” Like Felix using the nickname Sungie was an act of war. Chan also did that thing, when things especially freaked him out, where he’d just do laundry. Obsessively.

But the others. They were decent. They didn’t question him. They didn’t corner him in the halls. Didn’t badger him. Though Jisung knew Minho was itching for it. 

But the decency didn’t last and Chan had finally called them all into the Den. 

Jisung came down the stairs last. His hair messy, hoodie hanging off his shoulders loosely, and still chewing on the crust of whatever bread Jisung found laying on the kitchen counter earlier. 

The Den was already loud when he got there. It would have been concerning if it weren’t. 

Changbing was pacing like a caged animal, his shoulder making him a bit lopsided which made Jisung snort. Hyunjin was sprawled lazily on his couch, predictable. Jeongin sat before a couple medical textbooks, Jisung knew he was working on perfecting Felix’s sedative schedule. Seungmin sat beside Jeongin, looking over his shoulder but also gazing into the room ready to call someone out for doing something stupid. And Minho…Minho was off to the side, far away. Usually he didn’t stand so far, usually he was right on the couch with Hyunjin and bothering anyone within a five foot radius. 

Chan was sitting at the head of the table…organizing socks . His gaze flicked up to Jisung and he could feel the weight of Chan’s gaze. A gaze mixed with concern of a leader and an irritated brother, a look Chan had perfected years ago.

“Finally,” Changbin said as he stopped pacing. He looked at Jisung all accusingly. “You are the reason we are all here for a serious team meeting …again.” 

Chan sighed, “we need to talk about Felix.”

Jisung froze and his gaze snapped to Chan. The way Chan said his name. Felix instead of Yongbok, it hit a place deep in his chest. “We’ve given you time,” Chan went on, “but the vote can’t hang forever. You clearly know him, he clearly knows you, and right now that connection is the only thing in this room none of us understand.”

Jisung bit back the: what about Minho-hyung . 

“So we want a story time.” Seungmin said flatly. “Minho-hyung was right. We should have gone to you for it earlier.” 

Jisung dropped on the couch beside Hyunjin, ignoring the way Hyunjin’s foot landed in his lap. “What do you wanna know?” He asked.

“Everything.” Changbin said immediately. 

“That’s too vague.” Jisung replied. 

“Start from the top.” Chan said, his tone leaving no room to argue. 

Jisung shrugged as he pulled his sleeves over his hands. “We met when we were eight. We were placed in the same training program. Y’know the youth squads.” He explained, Chan and Changbin knew all too well… and so did Minho apparently. 

But Seungmin, Jisung and Hyunjin…they looked confused so Jisung explained even further. “The youth squads were random, they were the first stage when they deemed a kid ready for physical training. Somehow me and Felix…” He trailed off, a ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth. “We have the same birthday week. Me on the fourteenth, him on the fifteenth. I was angry and I picked on him. Told him that since I was older I was smarter.” 

Hyunjin snorted, “and he bought that?” 

Jisung ignored the jab. “He said, and I quote… ‘then you go first through the minefield’ .” Jisung shook his head, the day they met was still fresh on his mind as if it happened yesterday. “Because of our birthdays we ended up in the same classes, the same sparring groups, the same meal rotations. Always next to each other. And for a while it was the two of us against the whole youth squad…” Jisung trailed off, blinking. 

“And?” Chan prompted when Jisung went quiet.

“We promised to keep each other safe. Like actual idiots.” Jisung simply said.

The room was quiet for a moment. Until Seungmin asked, “So what happened?” 

“Well, you know. I turned ten and they pulled me for an assignment. They threw me into 3RACHA.” Jisung gave Chan and Changbin a grin. “With you two bozos… but yeah, I didn’t see him again until two days ago.” 

“Just like that?” Hyunjin asked, his head tilted. 

“Pretty much,” Jisung confirmed and shrugged like he didn’t stay up some nights wondering, like he didn’t spend the first year in 3RACHA always searching for Felix’s freckled face in the crowds. “I figured he got assigned to some other squad. We were never supposed to know where anyone ended up.” 

“And you never wondered?” Hyunjin pressed. 

“Of course I wondered.” Jisung said, his voice coming out sharper than he intended. “But wondering doesn’t change a thing. Those files are sealed tighter than Seungmin’s lips when someone says ‘fun.’” 

“Wow…ha ha.” Seungmin muttered.

“And now?” Chan then asked, watching Jisung with an unreadable expression. 

Jisung blinked. “Now…?”

“Now that you’ve seen him again,” Chan said, “now that you’ve seen him as a Shock Unit Commander. The one we’ve fought against–”

“He’s still the same kid who gave me his rations when he knew I was starving,” Jisung cut in. “The same kid who trained with me and helped me fix my tells, the same kid who–” Jisung stopped, taking in a sharp breath. 

“Do you think he is the same kid?” Jeongin asked. 

“You didn’t see him in there,” Jisung said, looking down at his lap. “He looked at me like we hadn’t spent a day apart. He remembered me. He called me Sungie . I know he is the same kid.” 

Chan finally leaned back, dropping the sock he had been stretching out the entire conversation. “So…your vote?”

“Yes.” Jisung didn’t hesitate. “I vote we keep him. He stays.” 

Minho’s head tilted, like he expected the answer but just wanted to reassure himself. 

Hyunjin groaned, his head lolling back. “Oh perfect. Another yes. Why not just give him the keys to the weapons closet, while we’re at it.” 

“Only if he promises to shove your head in a toaster.” Jisung shot back.

Chan scrubbed a hand over his face, muttering to himself before, “alright. Meeting is adjourned before I lose the will to live.” 

And with that Chan stood up and left the room.

---

That night Jisung went off script. As per usual. 

The first thing Jisung noticed when he stepped into Felix’s room was that Felix hadn’t moved the mattress any closer to the door. Anyone else would have, at the possibility of being closer to the hallway, to escape. 

Felix sat where he’d been placed. Cross-legged, his back still against the wall and the cuffs still hanging off his wrists and ankles. The chains clinked softly when he shifted to look up at Jisung. “You gonna stand there all night or…?” Felix asked, his voice low and rough from lack of use. 

Jisung crossed the room and slid down against the opposite wall, knees up, arms draped over them. “I was giving you time to take in the view.” 

Felix huffed, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Still full of yourself.” 

“Still shorter than me.” 

Felix raised his brows. “By a centimeter .” 

“That’s still shorter.” 

“Bet I can still outrun you.” 

Jisung scoffed. “Bet you can’t.” 

Felix tilted his head. “Bet I could…” he trailed off, then an evil little grin made its way to his face, “... even chained.” 

“Alright, now you’re just making stuff up,” Jisung said, grinning despite himself. 

They let the silence stretch for a second, but it wasn’t awkward. Not the way it might’ve been with anyone else here. It was the kind of pause that used to happen between them when they were kids. When they would sit on the training ground bleachers between drills, trying to catch their breath before the next round of sprints.

“You really remember?” Jisung asked finally, his voice quiet. 

 “Sungie, I remember everything. The obstacle course races. The bread rolls you tried to smuggle under your shirt at dinner.” Felix said, his voice even quieter and softer. 

“I could’ve pulled that off,” Jisung muttered. 

“You looked like you were hiding a loaf baby.” 

Jisung groaned, pressing his palm over his face. “We promised never to speak of that.” 

Felix smirked. “Guess I lied.” 

A little laugh escaped Jisung before he could stop it. “You still do that.” 

“What?” 

“That face you do. When you’re pretending to be nice but you’re actually messing with someone.”

 Felix leaned forward slightly. “You mean my ‘I’m innocent’ face?” 

“That’s the one.” 

Felix did it. Wide-eyed, faint tilt of the head, a smile just shy of smug. It was exactly the same as when they were kids, the one instructors would fall for. The one Jisung would fall for. Jisung barked out a laugh so loud he had to slap a hand over his mouth. 

“Oh my God, you haven’t aged a day.” 

Felix snorted. “Tell that to my back.” 

It was so easy. Jisung almost forgot about the rest of the world. The Capitol, the war, the fact that Felix was chained to the pipe.

Felix told him about the time he swapped Commander Nam’s coffee for decaffeinated coffee, because she assigned him an extra month of training. Jisung latched to every word Felix said, and when he finished Jisung had talked about the week they decided to only speak in hand signals and pissed everyone off. 

It was easy. So easy. 

Jisung had missed him. Felix. His sunshine.

“Do you remember when Quinn threw her helmet at you because she thought you tricked her into not ducking?” 

Felix rolled his eyes. “I still think she overreacted.”

“You got her shot in the shoulder.” 

“A minor flesh wound. She lived.” 

Jisung leaned his head back against the wall and said before the guilt could eat him alive, “we were supposed to keep each other safe.” 

Felix’s gaze flickered down, then back up to Jisung. “I did.” 

Jisung frowned, thrown off by the certainty in his tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked. 

Felix’s smile returned, smaller this time, something almost secret tucked into it. “Eat before you go to bed, Sungie. You still forget half the time.”

Jisung scoffed. “I do not.” 

“You do. Your cheeks puff out more when you’re hungry.” 

“My cheeks…what?” Jisung gasped, “I’m older than you, you should really respect your elders.” 

“Oh my God, still on about that?” Felix groaned, his head thumping against the wall. “Let me see the Jeekies.” 

“I’m older.” 

“By one day.” 

“That still counts!” 

Felix grinned. “You act like that one day made you my legal guardian.” 

“It does.” 

“It doesn’t.” 

“Well, you’re welcome for all the times I told the older kids to leave you alone.” 

Felix’s expression shifted, something softer. “Thanks for that.” He said and it sounded like he meant it. 

Jisung stared at him for a long moment. “Why didn’t you tell me what squad you got put in? When they split us up?” 

Felix’s gaze slid to the side. “Wouldn’t have mattered.” 

“It would’ve to me . I know you, you found a way to find out where I got placed, why not you?” 

“That’s why I didn’t” Felix said and Jisung opened his mouth to argue but Felix cut him off before he could. “It’s late, you really should go to sleep.”

“I’m going to keep you safe, I swear.” Jisung said quietly, firmly, but Felix didn’t respond. 

When Jisung finally stood to leave, Felix’s head was tipped back against the wall, his eyes half-lidded but still watching him. “Night, Sungie.” 

Jisung paused with his hand on the door. “Night, Sunshine.” 

The smile Felix gave him was quiet. Real.

---

Jisung wasn’t sure what woke him up first. The smell of burnt toast wafting through the halls or the sound of Chan’s voice carrying through the hall like a foghorn.

He squinted at the clock on his bedside table. It was early. Too early. 

And Chan sounded pissed. 

He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie, the one that had more holes than fabric, and shuffled toward the hall. His socks didn’t match. His hair looked like he’d just escaped a fight with a bear, barely.

The closer he got to the main room, the louder Chan’s voice became.

It wasn’t a “I’m giving orders” voice. 

Not his “we need to be quiet” voice.

No, this was his, this is so stupid I can’t believe it actually happened voice. The one that carried through the walls, the one that Jisung knew Felix could even hear from above.

That was never a good sign.

“ Unbelievable— ”

Jisung quietly slipped through the doorway, still trying to blink away the sting in his eyes from the sunlight that shone too brightly through the windows. But before Jisung knew it, he was center in the room. 

Chan was at the far end, pacing with that wound-up, spring-tight energy that meant he’d been doing it for a while. Not even laundry could help him. His expression screamed oh, you have got to be kidding me the instant his eyes landed on Jisung. 

“You…” Chan’s voice jumped an octave, “you went and spoke to him alone?!” 

Jisung stopped midstep, “good morning to you too.”

The rest of the team had frozen. Hyunjin’s fork hovered midair, a piece of scrambled eggs hanging for life. Jeongin was trying to close his textbook with the slowness that said, I am locking in on this showdown . Minho didn’t even look up from his mug, but the way he sipped his coffee was deliberate. 

Seungmin was the only one brave enough to even whisper.“This is worse than the time Chan found a pineapple in his burger,” which was followed by Minho’s snort. 

“Don’t ‘morning’ me,” Chan hissed, resuming his pacing. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“He didn’t even try to kill me,” Jisung replied as he headed straight to the coffee pot. “Not like Minho.” He added, snarkily. 

“Oh fuck off.” Minho shot back. 

“Yeah, at least Minho is consistent.” Hyunjin said before he took the bite of his eggs. 

“Do you want me to shove your head in the toaster, Hwang?” Minho didn’t raise his voice, whic somehow made it more believable. 

Changbin, who had been sitting at the table beside Hyunjin, groaned. “It’s not even rbeakfast and we’re already threatening eachother with appliances? Can’t a man eat his chicken in peace?” 

“I make no promises.” Minho muttered, squinting at Hyunjin. 

Jisung poured his coffee, “seriosuly though. It was fine. We talked.” 

“You talked ,” Chan repeated like the word itself was a war crime.

“Yes.” Jisung took a sip. “We talked. You know, that thing where people exchange words instead of punches? Maybe you should try it sometime.” 

Seungmin then muttered, “coming from you, that’s rich. Remember The Wallet Incident? Because I do, vividly. I’ve got nightmares from it.”

Chan’s pacing got sharper, more frantic. “He’s a Shock Unit Commander. He is thoroughly trained in things like infiltration, manipulation–” 

“Charming the hell out of people,” Hyunjin cut in. 

But that didn’t stop Chan as he continued. “Which is why we are treading carefully. Just because you and Minho know him doesn’t mean…he is not going to try and kill us. We all saw how he went after Minho, maybe he is only talking to you because he is chained up. Who is to say? Not to mention the fact that his mind is messed up from whatever experiments…” 

Jisung waved his hand. “He’s also Felix. Keeping him chained to a pipe like some Capitol dog isn’t giong to make him talk.” 

“That’s because you will talk for him.” Seungmin said dryly. 

Jisung narrowed his eyes. “You act like I told him where we keep the spare keys and the emergency chocolate stash.” 

Hyunjin frowned. “You didn’t tell him where the chocolate is, right?” 

“This isn’t about snacks, “Changbin cut in. “If we loosen that chain and he slips…” He trailed off. 

But Jeongin finished Changbins thought. “If he fights through the sedatives, it won’t be a slip. It will be an all out fight, and I don’t think Changbin-hyung’s shoulder is up for round two just yet.” 

“Oh my God .” Jisung groaned. “You are all acting like I walked in there and handed him a damn gun.” Jisung set his mug down, harder than necessary. “I’m telling you. He remembers me, and not just vaguely. He remembered everything. Every stupid detail. That is not manufactured.”
They went quiet and Jisung took a deep breath. Then picked his coffee up and took a long slip. 

Chan slowed his pacing and sighed. “And you are sure this isn’t just him doing his job?” 

“Hyung. The Capitol can’t program a childhood nickname out of nowhere.” 

“And yet,” Seungmin said, “he doesn’t remember his own sister.” 

And that landed heavily, even Hyunjin stopped chewing. Minhos’ gaze landed sharply on Jisung, and Jisung fought the urge to squirm. 

“So you are saying,” Shangbin said slowly, “he remembers you, even the dumb stuff, but he doesn’t remember anything about his sister…” he trailed off. 

“He didn’t even react to her name, no recognition.” Chan said, thinking out loud, “he knew Hannah, but not Rebecca.” 

“Sounds like targeted conditioning to me. Memories erased, buried or altered. It doesn’t happen by accident.” 

“Which means…” Seungmin started. 

“Which means, Felix is still Felix.” Jisung interrupted. “And I think locking him up in that cell is doing him a disservice. He’s not a prisoner, he needs help .” 

Minho’s head lifted fully at that, his eyes locking on Jisung’s. The look he was giving Jisung was unreadable. It wasn’t anger, not shock. Something heavier. 

Chan noticed too as his gaze flickered between them like he was filing it away for later. 

“So, you’re saying,” Chan then said. “You want him… out.” 

“What I’m saying is that treating him like an animal won’t make him trust us. It’ll just make him hate us.” Jisung replied. 

“Assuming he doesn’t already.” Hyunjin leaned back with a scoff. 

“I’m assuming that Felix keeps his promises.” Jisung said, “and we made a promise to keep each other safe.” 

“That was over ten years ago, when you were eight. You’re twenty-two now.” Changbin reminded him. “People change even without Capitol manipulation.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Jeongin said suddenly, “People change. But if there is a crack in whatever shit The Capitol did, we should be building on it and not hammering it down.” 

Seungmin gave a short nod in agreement. “I hate to say it, but he is right.” He sighed and before Hyunjin could say anything. “Right now, all Felix has is proof that The Capitol was telling the truth about us, about District Nine. That we’d treat him like an enemy, no questions asked. If we want him to push past whatever has been drilled into his head, he is going to have to trust us first. And that isn’t happening while he is chained to a wall.” 

“You wanted him chained to a wall, in the first place.” Hyunjin grumbled. 

“That was before Jisung-hyung lost his mind and spoke to him alone without getting killed.” Seungmin stressed, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

Changbin frowned. “We can’t just let him loose. You didn’t see how he went at Minho-hyung, it was like he didn’t see anyone or anything outside of him, what he did to me, Chan-hyung and Jinnie…that was like him getting rid of pests. He’s going to go after Minho-hyung until he is six feet under.” He explained and Jisung pursed his lips. 

“I’m saying we control the environment.” Seungmin replied. “Limit his movements, monitor him, have safeguards in place. But at the same time, give him a reason to think maybe The Capitol lied.”

“That’s risky,” Chan muttered. 

“So is keeping him in a cageuntil he decides he’s got nothing to lose,” Jeongin said, flipping his textbook back open. 

Hyunjin vaguely gestured at Jeongin with his fork. “I mean…perchance...Innie’s not wrong.” 

“You can’t just say perchance. ” Seungmin groaned.  

Hyunjin continued on though, head high. “He is already terrifying enough when he is calm. I do not want to see what happens if he is desperate.” 

“See Channie-hyung.” Jisung said, “even the brat agrees with me.” 

“Do not call me that.” Hyunjin gasped, tossing a piece of egg at Jisung. 

“I’m just saying, hyung.” Jisung ignored Hyunjin, his gaze settled on Chan. “If there is even a tiny chance that we can get Felix on our side, why not take it?”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you guys are enjoying the story so far!!!

Next chapter is in Chan's POV again, stay tuned :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 6: tomorrow

Summary:

Chan and Minho have a chat about tomorrow.

God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts.

- Sylvia Plath 

---

As Chan folded the last clean shirt he realized he had been holding his breath. 

The laundry room’s air was always a bit warmer than the rest of the building. The pipes hissed, the dryer thumping against the wall, the crusty detergent that had dried into the cracks of the floor. And Chan has been here since dawn. 

It was an easy place to hide. A place where he could keep his hands busy while his brain ran in circles, and eventually the laundry wasn’t laundry and his mind was somewhere else. 

Tomorrow. 

Tomorrow they let Felix out. 

As a trial, of course, but that was already risky enough. Felix’s movement would be limited, eyes on him at all times. Chan had repeated those words to himself on loop, as if to reassure himself. Like repeating the plan could ensure them all safety. 

Chan set the shirt down and pressed his palms against the metal of the washer. The surface vibrated under his hands. He tried to control his breathing, matching it to the thump of the dryer. He failed. 

He could still hear the bones crack if he let his head go quiet. How the alley had sounded when they ran into the Shock Unit. The glass skittering, some random dog barking far off. Minho swearing. Hyunjin’s breath being punched out of him. Changbins yell when the bullet hit his shoulder. 

The sound of nothingness that came when Felix made gravity into a weapon. That nothing was what stuck. Chan had felt the way his stomach had dropped, the small little voice warning him: get out, get out while you can . The impending doom. It was like the world was holding its breath for Felix.

Chan blinked hard, once, twice. Then he reached over for a towle and folded it donw the middle, perfectly even, because someone had to do the chores in this house. 

Jeongin’s stapled papers on Felix’s sedation were pinned to the corkboard above Chan. It was perfectly typed out and at the bottom in Seungmin’s handwriting was no heroics …then smaller as if Seungmin couldn’t help himself, sungie, this means you . 

Chan huffed out a breath, almost a laugh but not quite. Everyone had done their jobs. Seungmin had rebuilt the restraints. Jeongin had built the sedative schedule. Hyunjin and Changbin had swept the house three times, replacing screws with resin, replacing everything. THey had even argued if a ceramic mug counted as a weapon. In the end, the conclusion was that yes, everything counts as a weapon. 

Chan had asked for all of it and they had done it. No complaints. 

And…that was what leadership was, right? Making the ask. Carrying the heavy weight for everyone else, even if it could potentially be the wrong one. 

Chan set the towel on the stack, aligned the edges and left the laundry room before he could reorganize the socks again. He walked through the narrow hall then cut into the stairwell, taking two steps at a time. 

The steel door creaked against his push, and soon the wind hit Chan in the face. 

The city, District Nine, looked loosely patched, rusty and used up. But from up here, the building sounded alive. Somewhere a radio about two rooftops over played something cheerful that didn’t fit the people of the city. 

Minho was up here. Chan had expected him. Minho was crouched by teh rooftop drain, tightening a screw that Chan knew didn’t need tightening. Chan had just tightened that screw a few days before they had run into Felix. Minho always came up here to fix things that weren’t actually broken.

Chan had spent months, years, learning how to recognize everyone’s tells. Jisung’s chatter went on overtime when he was afraid. Hyunjin humming nonstop. Changbin’s need to lift things twice his weight just to feel the weight sink into his bones. Seungmin going dead silent. Jeongin hid away in his room, shutting out and pretending nothing was wrong. Minho turned himself into a toolbox.

“Hey,” Chan said softly. 

Minho didn’t look up. “If you say ‘nice weather,’ I am throwing you off the roof.” 

“It’s not even noon,” Chan replied. He walked until he could lean on the cement and look over the ledge of the building, beside Minho. He braced his hands on the concrete and stared out at the deteriorating city. “We need to talk.” 

“That is never a good thing,” Minho said and set the screwdriver down carefully. He straightened up, wrists resting on his knees and pushed himself up. And for once, Minho didn’t fill the silence with sarcasm. “I know what it’s about. I’m not stupid.” 

“Tomorrow,” Chan said and it wasn’t a question.

Minho’s mouth fell into a thin line. “Tomorrow.”

Chan stared at the scar under Minho’s jaw, a small thing it was. You’d have to look hard to notice it, be around Minho for years to ever notice. For years he’d assumed it was a knife or silly fall, Minho never spoke about it because it was too embarassing. If this last week had taught anything, it was to stop assuming.

“I’m not looking for permission,” Chan said. “The call was already made. But I need to know if you’re okay. Not ‘composed enough to fake okay.’ I need you to be okay, fully okay. And I won’t accidentally have you in front of a loaded gun because I was too afraid to ask.”

Minho snorted, rolling his eyes. “When have you ever been too afraid to ask?”

“Right now,” Chan said simply. “Right this second.”

Minho looked away, gaze catching on something in the distance. “Okay.” Minho rolled his shoulders back and then let them drop. “Say what you want to say.”

“Not what I want,” Chan said. “It's what I need to know.”

Minho’s laugh was small. “You always loved the semantics.”

“You love dodging,” Chan countered, but there wasn’t any heat in it. He turned so his back pressed to the ledge, leaning back on his elbows behind him. “I watched you on that street and I watched him watch you, it was terrifying. So let me ask this, what does he do to you? In your head? I need to know if I’m about to let a grenade loose in the house.”

Minho’s expression stayed guarded and he held still the way only Minho could, like a predator. Still and patient. Chan waited.

Eventually, Minho exhaled and his head dropped a bit. “He’s not a grenade,” he said. “He’s a gravitational singularity with god fucking awful timing.”

Chan would have smiled, any other moment. “Minho.”

“He has… a trigger,” Minho said, the words slowly coming out of his mouth. “Not just because of me. Because of what they did. The Capitol was never subtle. If they wanted someone to tear a particular throat out, they didn’t write essays and prose about it. No, instead they make a button and push it so it’s like instinct.”

“You think they built you into his mission,” Chan said.

Minho shrugged. “Maybe? Maybe not? But there is something.”  His jaw went rigid. “You saw it. He didn’t care about you, or Changbin, or Hyunjin. He didn’t even look happy when he had the advantage. He… narrowed in on me, like tunnel vision. That’s not a choice. That’s built in.”

“Then we plan around it,” Chan said, forcing his voice to stay steady. “And we plan for you not to be the test subject.”

Minho’s eyes slid back to him. “You want me to hide.”

“I need you to live,” Chan said. “ And I need the team to live. And, sure, I want Felix to have a shot at living like a person again. All of these things can be true at once.”

Minho stared for a beat, then gave the smallest nod. Agreement. 

Chan swallowed hard, this was the difficult part. The part Minho had shut down at.  “Minho… I need context. Not the full biography if you don’t want to, but… I need something. I am asking you as your hyung and your teammate, not your leader. I can’t keep everyone safe without some context.”

Minho was quiet. He picked at his fingers for a moment, then: 

“I met him when he was fifteen,” Minho said. His voice didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. “I was seventeen. Elite Enforcer for about eight months, I felt very important about it.” Minho snorted at himself.

Chan kept his eyes on the side of Minho’s face.

“So, one day, I went into the Director’s office to collect a file, easy peasey. The door was unlocked, which…that should have been my first warning.” Minho shifted and looked at the clouds rather than the city. “I didn’t even get to the desk and something hit me from the side like a brick. Turns out it was a book.”

Chan blinked. “He hit you with a book.”

“He hit me with the Director’s ledger,” Minho corrected flatly. “Leather-bound with those fancy ass decorative corners. Very efficient weapon if thrown by a person with good aim and no patience.”

Chan followed the scar with his eyes again, under the angle of Minho’s jaw. “That’s where you got—”

“Mhm.” Minho nodded and traced the small scar. “Split me right here. I went down hard and he came at me like a feral cat. The weird thing was, he didn’t make a sound.”

“Who the hell throws a ledger?” Chan muttered, amused. 

“Someone who thought I was an intruder,” Minho said. For the first time his mouth softened at the edges. It wasn’t a smile. “He didn’t know me yet.”

“Yet,” Chan repeated, and heard the word the way Minho said it, heavy, and it mattered.

“So naturally, I pinned him to the carpet,” Minho continued, matter-of-fact. “He kept trying to knee me in the ribs and apologize at the same time. ‘Sorry-sir-please-sir-I thought you were…’ ” Minho’s tone went higher without mocking Felix. “ ‘intruder-ssi.’ ”

Chan bit the inside of his cheek, a smile pulling at his lips. “Intruder-ssi,” he echoed.

Minho’s eyes flicked to him, the corner of his mouth pulling for a second. “He was small. He had yet to get that really deep voice of his. But he looked at me like he meant to take my head off and looked sorry for it.”

“And that was the first time you met,” Chan said softly.

“Yes.” Minho confirmed. 

“And after?” Chan pushed just a little.

“I saw him around,” Minho said, then pointed Chan with a look that said don’t freak out . “He’s the Director’s son…” and he trailed off waiting for a reaction from Chan. But Chan offered none, though his mind was literal static. 

What the fuck? 

Minho went on, unaware that Chan quiet literally was having a mini mental meltdown. “So he had access everywhere. Labs. Training. The office when he wasn’t supposed to. We would cross paths. I’d make a comment. He’d make a worse one. He stole my ID once.”

Chan raised his eyebrows.

“To get into the machine room,” Minho added. “Said he liked the way the machines sounded. He returned my ID with little drawings all over with a Sharpie, and a smudge of chocolate.”

“Chocolate?”

“He liked baking. He’d learned how to get into the kitchens unauthorized. He would bring brownies to the younger kids he trained with. There was this one girl, he would sing to her when she was scared.”

Chan’s chest constricted and it hurt to breathe all of a sudden. “Hannah,” he said.

“Sometimes,” Minho said. “Sometimes not. He wasn’t picky about who needed something and who deserved it.”

“Okay,” Chan said quietly. “Okay.” He rolled his neck until it cracked. “You saw him. Enough to know him.”

“Enough,” Minho confirmed.

“Do you think,” Chan asked, “that anything in him recognizes you outside the tunnel vision? Or are we building around nothing?”

Minho didn’t answer right away. He looked out over the rooftops. “He recognizes me,” he said at last. “I just don’t know who does the recognizing and that’s the problem.”

Chan sighed and let it sink in before he said, “I’m not asking you to be in the room tomorrow,” Chan said. “In fact, I’d prefer you weren’t.”

Minho’s eyes flicked back to him, eyes filled with mirth. “Afraid I’ll shove his head in the toaster?”

“I’m afraid he’ll decide you need to stop breathing,” Chan said, seriously. “And I’m afraid of what it would do to everyone else to watch you do what you do if he does what he does.”

Minho nodded once. “Who’s in?”

“Me,” Chan said. “Jisung, obviously. He’s the only person who can make him laugh without trying. Seungmin, so he can manage the restraints. Jeongin on vitals. Changbin can glower through the window but he’s not physically there until his stitches heal fully. Hyunjin… I know he’ll be pissed, but he’s gonna show up and be a brat.”

Minho accepted that without argument, knowing he is the only one not there. “Rules?”

Chan swallowed, “we start in the common room. Felix uncuffed at the wrist but leg chained to the anchor point Seungmin installed under the table. We give him water in a paper cup. Food on a paper plate. Sounds ridiculous, but I don’t want anyone forgetting that every object is a variable. Seungmin and I on one side, Jisung across from him, Jeongin out of reach but visible.”

“And you,” Minho said quietly. “You make yourself visible.”

“I will make sure I’m the person he answers to,” Chan answered. “Not for power, but because we need to establish a channel and predictability.”

“And this predictability includes what? Asking him about his favorite cake flavor?” The sarcasm was back, gentle as Minho ever made it.

“I’ll start with small things,” Chan said. “Basic comfort and needs. He can ask to stretch. To shower. We say yes to the ones we can, no to the ones we can’t, and we explain why every single time. We make ‘no’ make sense. We don’t bark orders. We don’t use phrases from his file unless we want to see what they do. And we do not,” he met Minho’s eyes and held them, “say your name.”

Minho’s jaw flexed. “Good,” he said. “Because I think that one’s a live wire.”

“Triggers?” Chan asked, pressing. “Words, sounds, anything you know.”

Minho hummed and thought for a moment, “his unit’s directives were always embedded in the mission files. If you make Article references, directives, containment. He won’t say anything but his body reacts, his pupils dilate every time. Things like that, it locks him in, makes him efficient.” 

Chan’s stomach turned. “And you,” he said softly. “What about you?”

“I told you,” Minho said, not looking at him. “Live wire. He’ll hear me even if I’m not speaking. He’ll hear me even if I’m two floors down.”

Chan frowned. “How?”

“Because he looks for me, always,” Minho said, and that was the first openly raw, honest thing Minho had said the entire time. “Because he’s been trained to, or because he doesn’t know how not to. Take your pick.”

Chan stared out over the district. “Okay. Then we keep you out of earshot to start. We will give him a day with Jisung.”

Minho’s mouth moved like he was about to argue but he didn’t. “You sure Jisung won’t climb into his lap and tell him a bedtime story mid sentence?”

“I will sedate Jisung,” Chan said. “And then I will sedate myself for thinking that ‘I will sedate Jisung.’”

Minho huffed. The corner of his mouth did that thing when he didn’t want to smile.

Chan pocketed that smile like a gift. 

He let silence settle for a bit and then shared the thing that has been nagging at him.  “I keep thinking about Hannah,” Chan said. “How she held herself when she came here. How careful she was about not asking for anything we’d have to say no to. How she said your name like she knew exactly who you were.” He shook his head, that was a whole other thing to unpack later. “And how Felix knew me when I said her name, like a file, but didn’t… feel it.”

Minho didn’t blink. “They took things from him,” he said. “Some they took on purpose. Some because they could.”

Chan swallowed.

“I don’t tell you this so you’ll pity him,” Minho continued. “Pity’s useless in this world. I tell you so you’ll remember he’s not a monster trying to trick you. He’s Felix, some guy who was rearranged into a weapon with a freckled face.”

“I know,” Chan said. He did. On some level, he knew. “I just… wish knowing made the call easier.”

“It won’t,” Minho said, matter-of-fact. “But you’ll make it anyway.”

Chan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Come with me,” Chan said suddenly.

Minho tilted his head, squinting at Chan. “No toasters on the roof?”

“Boiler room,” Chan said, before he admitted something deeper, “I want to write out the rules with you where no one overhears me admitting I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Minho’s mouth almost curved. “We all know you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just very charming about it.”

Chan snorted and pushed off the ledge. “Come on.”

They took the stairs down, the temperature shifting with each floor. 

On the basement level, paint peeled in strips and the boiler room door stuck when Chan tried to push it open. A fight of its own. 

Chan jammed the door open and they walked in. The heat in here was its own weather. Minho dragged the single chair out from the wall with his foot and sat down while Chan took the upside-down crate across from him.

“Okay,” Chan said, palms flat on his knees. “Rules again, but slow. If something's wrong, stop me.”

Minho nodded and beckoned Chan to carry on. 

“Rule one,” Chan said. “No one goes in alone. Not even me. Two people minimum. No exceptions. If Jisung tries to go off script again, we lock him in the closet with a granola bar.”

“Two granola bars,” Minho said. “He’ll claw through the door for seconds.”

“Noted.” Chan said, then continued. “Rule two. No one uses Capitol language with him unless we’re deliberately testing a response. No ‘Directive,’ no ‘containment,’ no ‘Article’ speak, no ‘proof of termination,’ no ‘asset.’ We talk like people.”

Minho’s eyes softened a fraction. “He likes when people talk like people.”

“Rule three,” Chan went on. “We give him choices in small things. Where he sits, which cup he drinks from, whether he wants the window open or closed. We say no when we have to and tell him why. We say yes when we safely can so the yes means something.”

Minho nodded, slow. “He’s gonna test the boundaries.”

“Rule four.” Chan breathed in, breathed out. “We keep you away from the first session. You don’t come within hearing distance. You don’t ‘just happen to be’ in the hall.”

“Rude,” Minho murmured, but he didn’t fight it.

“Rule five,” Chan said. “If he asks for you, I say not today. If he asks again, I say not yet. If he keeps asking, we will schedule a meeting where you walk in with my hand on your shoulder and your power already humming.”

Minho frowned. “You want me to nullify him.”

“I want you to have that option,” Chan said. “I don’t want you to have to reach for it with your back already on the wall.”

Minho accepted that without commentary, but he still was frowning. “Six.”

“Six,” Chan echoed. He thought for a second, chewed the inside of his cheek. “We don’t weaponize tone.”

“Seven,” Minho said quietly. “You eat before you go in.”

Chan blinked. “Me?”

“You get shaky when your blood sugar drops,” Minho said. “If he starts talking softly and you forget you haven’t eaten, you’ll get sentimental and then you’ll get sloppy and then we’ll all have to listen to Seungmin tell us about it. So eat.”

Chan stared and then, helplessly, laughed. “Okay,” he said when he could breathe more steadier, “Seven: eat.”

Minho leaned back, the chair creaking in protest. He drummed fingers once on his knee, stopped, as if he’d remembered he wasn’t the drumming type.

“What else?” Chan asked. The question wasn’t about rules anymore, and they both knew it.

Minho went still again in that Minho way. “You asked if he recognizes me,” he said. “He does. In more than one way. And that’s why you’re right to keep me away.”

Chan licked his lips and then said, “tell me what you can, and I’ll leave the rest alone.”

Minho didn’t look up right away. “He met me as a problem,” he said. “That’s the first impression. The book, the blood. Then he met me as a constant. The halls, the missions, the training rooms, me as the Director’s shadow. The second impression.” A tiny breath. “Then he knew me as… safety. Not often. But just once is more than enough.”

Chan didn’t move.

 “The people in theCapitol don't understand safety as a concept. They understand absence of immediate threat. It’s not, I’m safe, it’s I can blink and I won’t get it. The Capitol will take that from you and put glass around it. Felix will fight for what’s in the glass because it is the closest thing to safety he can get.” Minho explained, “that’s what he was doing in the alley. He wasn’t trying to kill me because he hates me, he was trying to put things back in place.” 

“And you,” Chan said softly, “kept standing outside of it.”

Minho’s mouth did the almost-smile again. “I have a talent for being exactly where I shouldn’t.”

“That’s not true,” Chan said, before he could stop himself.

“It is and it isn’t,” Minho said. “The point is: If you give him a new impression, predictability that isn’t cruel, rules that aren’t traps. He’ll build around it. He’s a builder. He always has been. You just have to give him material that isn’t barbed wire.”

Chan let the words sit. 

They were not the Capitol. They had to prove it with more than their mouths.

“Thank you,” Chan said finally. He didn’t make it into a bigger thing than it was. He wasn’t going to touch the place Minho had just opened. Minho was trusting Chan with this.  

Minho shrugged, small. “Don’t waste it.”

“I won’t,” Chan said. He let his own shoulders drop. “One more thing.”

Minho groaned. “Of course.”

“It’s not a rule,” Chan said. “It’s… if you need to go somewhere tomorrow when we do this, come here. It’s our spot, ‘kay?.”

Minho regarded him for a beat, then nodded once. “I’ll go make friends with this medieval chair.” He gestured at the seat he was in.

Chan stood, knees cracking. “Not too good friends.”

“Possessive,” Minho murmured, but he pushed to his feet too.

They climbed the stairs.

When they got to the first floor, Minho paused, his hand hovering over the railingm hesitant.

“When he hit me with the book,” Minho said finally, not looking at Chan, “he apologized after. Not right then. Later. Walked up to me in the hall, he didn’t meet my eyes, and shoved a note in my hand. It said, in the worst handwriting you would ever see, ‘Sorry. I thought you were an intruder-ssi. Please accept this coupon for one non-lethal throw.’ ” His mouth tilted helplessly. “He drew a little book with a smiley face.”

Chan stared at him. 

Then he started laughing.

He saw it too clearly: Felix fifteen, shoulders straight even when he was scared, weapon and boy in the same skin, trying to make it right with a coupon.

“Do you still have it?” Chan asked.

Minho looked at him and his right eye twitched, barely. But Chan caught it. “No,” Minho said.

Chan didn’t call him out on the blatant lie. Instead he said, “we’ll make sure he doesn’t need to write you another one.”

Minho nodded once, then he stepped aside at the hall, letting Chan pass first.

---

The rest of the day was prep.

He moved efficiently through the base. He checked the anchoring bolts under the common room table himself, even though he’d watched Hyunjin pour the resin. He bent to the floor and tested the give on the chain link embedded in concrete. He stood at the kitchen counter and swapped ceramic plates for paper, ceramic mugs for paper cups.

He stopped at the infirmary and watched Jeongin log a blood pressure reading without noticing he had a spectator. 

He knocked lightly on the door of the room that used to be a storage closet and was a cell now, just to put his knuckles to the steel. He didn’t open it. Jisung had strict visiting hours, and Felix did better when the schedule ran predictable.

He found Hyunjin half-asleep on the couch with a book over his face and Chan pulled it off.

“Rude,” Hyunjin mumbled without opening his eyes.

“Go stretch out in the gym,” Chan said, not unkindly. “Tomorrow you're on door duty, and I don’t want to listen to you whine about your back.”

Hyunjin cracked one eye open and then the other. He searched Chan’s face for a second and he just nodded. “Okay.”

Changbin appeared in the kitchen at some point and made an omelet that could have fed three, ate half, and slid the rest into a container with a Post-it on it that said “Protein for FELIX. Don’t be picky. — Binnie.”  

Changbin caught Chan watching and shrugged his good shoulder. “He’s not the only one who does better when he isn’t hungry.”

“Thanks,” Chan said.

Seungmin came by with a neat stack of printouts and a marker. “Emergency phrases we do not use,” he said, and taped them at eye level on the wall by the Den entry. “And the code word for abort is ‘pineapple.’”

Chan stared. “We’re not using ‘pineapple.’”

Seungmin wrote PINEAPPLE in larger letters. “We are using ‘pineapple.’ It prevents ambiguity.”

“It invites mockery,” Chan muttered.

Seungmin capped the marker. “Mockery is a small price to pay.”

“Fine,” Chan said. “Pineapple.”

Seungmin nodded once, satisfied, and then lowered his voice just enough that only Chan heard. “You’re doing the right thing.”

Chan didn’t reply to that, instead he clapped Seungmin’s shoulder and kept moving.

By night, the building had that almost-quiet it got right before bedtime. Bedtime was a loose term, it just meant everyone usually went to their rooms to relax. By themselves, to decompress. 

Chan stood at the window overlooking an alleyway and watched the way the light caught on the brick. 

He tried to imagine tomorrow going smoothly. 

He tried to imagine tomorrow going to hell. 

He tried to accept both could happen. Don’t have your hopes high but also don’t be a cynic. 

Footsteps stopped behind him. He didn’t turn; he knew the cadence.

“You look like you’re trying to stare a hole through the brick with sheer will,” Minho said.

“Just practicing my laser eyes,” Chan said, and finally let his mouth crack into something like a smile.

“You should upgrade your software,” Minho replied. He hesitated. “The boiler room was very welcoming. I think the chair likes me back.”

“It likes everyone it can injure,” Chan said. “We good?”

“We’re good,” Minho said. A pause, measured. “Hyung.”

“Tomorrow,” Chan said.

“Tomorrow,” Minho echoed before he retreated.

Chan stayed at the window until the alley went from gray to black. He let the weight of tomorrow settle in his chest.

Chan had grown up inside The Capitol that turned kids into tools and then punished them for cutting. And he’d built a family out of the pieces left over. 

Helping someone the Capitol had broken wasn’t an act of mercy. It was a refusal. 

It was how he wanted to be able to look Hannah in the eye when she came back through his door and say ‘I got your Bokkie back’ .

Chan turned from the window and went to eat something because Minho was right and Seungmin was insufferable when he got to say I told you so.

Tomorrow.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you all for reading, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!!

Next chapter is in Felix's POV, omg it's been a hot minute!! stay tuned :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 7: my tears ricochet

Summary:

Jisung goes off script again and Felix goes through it.

I'm trying my best, don't know what's in store
Open up the door
In the back of my mind, I'm still overseas
A bird in a cage, thought you were made for me

I try to live in black and white
But I'm so blue
I'd like to mean it when I say I'm over you
But that's still not true,
And I'm still so blue

- Blue, Billie Eilish

---

Felix sat in the so called ‘Den.’

Not by choice. 

It was too warm, too lived in, too human, in the Den. 

It pressed in on him heavily. The smells of brewed coffee, frying oil, the lavender detergent that clung to the cushions. The ceiling turned lazily overhead, clicking every so often…a tick that made the muscles in Felix’s body tighten. 

They left him here. Not alone, never alone. But here. In a wide room with a couch that sagged in the middle, and a curtain that honestly looked like it belonged hanging off the shower instead. 

Bahng and his…minions surrounded him in a loose circle. Not a cage, but close enough. 

Bahng sat forward in one of the mismatched chairs, watching Felix with a steady look. His lips were set in a thin line, no smile, no sneer. But Felix had seen men bare their teeth at him for less than…whatever this was. 

Hwang lounged sideways on the couch, his long legs stretched out with his ankles hooked over one another. He was playing with the cuff of his sleeve, but Felix knew Hwang was watching him out of the corner of his eye. THere was grace in his movements and Felix knew better than to trust grace. 

Seo sat like a boulder on the same couch as Hwang. His eyes were sharp, tracking every twitch Felix made. He held himself tightly, ready to pounce if Felix made one wrong breath. 

Then there was Seungmin and Jeongin, Felix had never seen them in their databases. Felix honestly wasn’t sure if those were their real names, but that was how they introduced themselves. Seungmin. Jeongin. Seungmin was in the seat closest to the door, his fingers drumming the table, while Jeongin sat right next to him with a pen in his fingers. 

And then…there was Jisung. 

Jisung was perched right next to Felix. Close enough that Felix could see the faint scar at his hairline, close enough that if Felix leaned an inch their knees would knock together. Jisung smiled at him, a real smile, unweighted and like Felix wasn’t being watched like a hawk. 

Jisung wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t like the others. 

Sure Jisung is with these people…but Jisung…a threat? No. That was wrong. 

Felix folded his hands in his lap. 

“You don’t like eggs?” Hwang’s voice was smooth and full of mockery.

Felix’s eyes slid to the plate on the low table in front of him. Half of an omelet. He hadn’t touched it. “I don’t like being watched while I eat,” he said flatly.

“That’s fair,” Jisung cut in before Hwang could twist it. “Hyunjin stares at everyone like that. It’s his thing. Makes you feel like you’re in a perfume commercial.”

“Better than smelling like Changbin’s chicken,” Hwang shot back.

“Hey,” Seo said mildly, “you should be grateful. I make food that actually tastes like something.”

Felix let the voices wash over him. He didn’t want their food. He wanted out. The walls were pressing close. The carpet fibers were too soft under his boots. He looked around for exits, distances, who would reach him first if he moved.

“You’re quiet,” Bahng said after a beat.

Felix’s eyes snapped to Bahng’s. “What exactly do you want me to say?”

“Nothing in particular. Just trying to start somewhere that’s not…” Bahng swallowed, his neck bobbing. “hostile.”

A snort from Seungmin. “Bold of you to assume there’s a ‘not hostile’ setting in this room.”

Felix’s lip twitched up, the smallest motion. He hated that it happened at all.

Jisung tilted his head. “We could start easy. Favorite food.”

Felix stared at him.

“What?” Jisung shrugged. “It’s neutral. Unless your answer is like… baby seal or something, in which case I’ll reevaluate.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Seungmin muttered.

“Let him answer,” Jisung said with a tone that left no room for argument.

Felix’s mind went to rations, to the crumby protein bars, to the burnt-edge bread they used to serve at dawn. The question was utterly ridiculous. Favorite food?

“Toast,” he said finally.

The silence that followed wasn’t disbelief, exactly. More like… recalibration.

“Toast,” Hwang repeated slowly.

Felix’s eyes narrowed. “Problem?”

“No, no,” Hwang said, raising his hands. “It’s just… out of all the possible answers—”

“You picked the most depressing one,” Seo cut in.

Felix’s jaw tightened. “It’s simple. Hard to ruin. And you can eat it standing up.”

That last part slipped out before he could stop it.

Jisung’s smile softened, but he didn’t comment. Bahng’s gaze sharpened.

“Okay,” Jisung said brightly. “Toast. Got it. Next question: least favorite?”

Felix exhaled slowly. “This is stupid.”

“Humor me,” Jisung said.

The word lodged somewhere in Felix’s ribs. Humor. He didn’t remember the last time…

“Fish,” he said shortly.

Hwang perked up. “Finally, something we agree on.”

“You just don’t like anything that smells stronger than your shampoo,” Seungmin said.

Felix tracked it all, each voice, each angle of body language. They weren’t closing in. Not yet. But they were testing him in ways that didn’t look like tests.

Felix leaned back against the couch, keeping everyone in his peripheral vision. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” Bahng asked.

“Pretending this is normal.”

Bahng didn’t flinch. “Because it could be. Eventually.”

Felix barked a laugh. “You believe that?”

“I have to,” Bahng said simply.

Jisung glanced between them. “Or you could just let it be what it is right now. Which is, us trying to keep you from climbing the walls.”

Felix’s gaze snapped to him. “And what do you get out of it?”

Jisung blinked. “I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t like seeing you chained to a radiator.”

The room went quiet and Felix’s pulse jumped.

Hwang broke it with a drawl. “Wow, Jisung, so poetic. Want me to write that down for your memoir?”

“Bite me,” Jisung said, tossing a pen at him.

Felix almost missed the way Bahng’s shoulders eased, just slightly, at the return to noise. Almost. They moved through more stupid questions: colors, music, drinks. He gave short answers, and yet they still laughed. 

Then Jisung shifted, his leg pressing into Felix’s and Felix could feel it before the words came. The way Jisung sucked in a breath, shuddery, like he was about to take a risk. 

“Tell me about The Capitol.” Jisung said. 

And within seconds every pair snapped to them and Bahng’s frame went rigid. 

“Sungie, I don’t think that’s what you were supposed to ask.” Felix muttered, peeling his eyes from Bahng and to Jisung. 

“You and I both know that we like the questions we aren’t supposed to ask. Why be boring, Sunshine.” Jisung replied easily and Felix believed him. 

“Jisung.” Bahng warned. 

But Felix’s vision had tunneled down and the only thing he saw with his Sungie. Everyone else was a peripheral blur. 

“What about it?” Felix asked, shifting close to Jisung. 

“Did you have anyone there? Friends?” Jisung asked, his voice steady before he added quickly. “Not including me.” 

Friends. It felt strange, fuzzy.

Flashes came to the forefront of his mind, flashes that didn’t fit . Didn’t make sense . A hand passing contraband under the table and loud laughter echoing in the empty halls. 

Felix pursed his lips. “Friends are a distraction and highly frowned upon.” 

“So you did.” Jisung said. 

Felix didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His chest felt tight and heavy. 

“Any lovers?” Jisung asked, wiggling his brows, like they were still his favorite colors. 

The room went still. Hwang sat up straighter. Seungmin’s eyes narrowed. Bahng looked seconds from yanking Jisung away from Felix. 

Something in Felix pulled. 

Lover. 

The word felt heavy like stone and when it dropped it broke things. Love was a miserable thing. A destructive thing. Inhumane. 

Felix heard himself laugh sharply. “That’s two questions.”
“Then answer both.” Jisung said, persistent. Felix wanted to look away but Jisung’s gaze pulled him in, it was an anchor and if Felix looked away…he probably wouldn’t be able to breathe. 

“I…” Felix’s mind tilted sideways. Static erupted and Felix couldn’t see but…Jisung needed an answer. He needed it. 

There was a chair scraping. 

A book in his hands. 

Sunlight…no. That was not right. There was no sunlight here. 

“There was someone.” Felix said, his mouth working before his mind did. 

Jisung didn’t react, instead he just said, “and?” 

“People don’t last long in there.” Felix forced out. 

“Do you miss them, Sunshine?” 

The same images filtering through his head. Chair. Book. Sunlight. And the static surged again, and a familiar loop played: 

BLANK is not useful. BLANK is a weakness. BLANK gets you—

“Yes,” Felix said, the word raw in his mouth and his eyes stung.

Jisung’s gaze softened and he reached for Felix’s hand, he gripped tightly once he interlaced their fingers “You can say it here. No one is going to punish you.” 

“That’s what you think.” Felix muttered. “Thay always know.” 

“No,” Jisung said, firmly. “That’s what I know.” 

Felix hated the way his stomach twisted low in his gut. The way he squeezed Jisung’s hand back. The way…he believed him.  

The rest of them were here. Logically Felix knew that. But the edges of the room had gone dark, like someone dialed the lights down so it was the two of them in the center. 

Jisung kept going, steady, an anchor. “What were they like?” 

Felix’s mouth opened, then shut. 

They had an off centered smile. They liked to swear a lot, they did it all the time under their breath. They liked to reach for Felix’s hand when no one was looking. They liked to count the freckles on Felix’s cheeks.

Felix shouldn’t have thought that. 

That wasn’t real. 

“Sunshine?” Jisung pressed. 

“They…” Felix blinked. “They made me laugh a lot.” 

“You liked that?”

“I hated it.” Felix said automatically but his voice was soft, it wavered between them. “I… didn’t.” 

Jisung’s voice was just as soft when he said, “The Capitol hated it too.” 

Felix’s chest stuttered. But the image stuck though the thoughts of drills, orders, march protocols pressed heavy and hard. His head hurt . But the image. It was there. Two of them in a small room and laughter muffled into sleeves.

“It was me.” Felix then said, blinking hard. 

Jisung’s other hand was on Felix’s face and his thumb swiped against his cheek. “What were you?” 

“I think. Because of me, Sungie. They took them away because of me.” Felix breathed, pursing his lips. 

The rest of the room went utterly silent. 

“That wasn’t your fault,” Jisung said, his gaze locked onto Felix’s. “It wasn’t.” He repeated, firmly. Felix looked away. 

Felix wanted to scream at that. Snarl at Jisung. Wanted to tell him that he didn’t get to decide what was or wasn’t Felix’s fault. But the words caught against the back of his throat. 

“Felix.” Jisung said and Felix looked back at him. 

He hated the way his name sounded in Jisung’s voice. Like it was sacred. Precious. 

“What?”

“You remember more than you think,” Jisung said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “They didn’t get rid of it all.” 

Felix’s head felt too light and too heavy all at once. The fan clicked overhead. Somewhere far off, someone cleared their throat, but it might as well have been miles away.

For a brief moment all Felix could hear was his own breathing. And Jisungs, steady and close. 

Felix’s hand ached from how hard he was gripping Jisung’s hand. He could feel the small tremor in his fingers. Jisung noticed, he always noticed. 

“What else do you remember?” Jisung asked, quiet and steady. Always steady. It was maddening. He wasn’t speaking like an interogator, he spoke like he actually wanted to know. For himself. For Felix. 

Felix wanted to shut down. 

Don’t speak. Don’t give them angles. Don’t give them keys to doors they don’t even know exist.

“There’s nothing else,” he said.

Jisung didn’t call him out on it. Didn’t even blink. He just tilted his head slightly and watched Felix. “That isn’t true.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“I know enough that I can hear it in your voice,” Jisung said. “Sunshine, I know you . I spent years with you, I learned your tells. You’re holding something.” 

Felix’s breath shuddered. His heart thumped and thumped against his ribs, aching. His pulse picked up and his skin felt freezingly hot. The room seemed to shift, not literally, but in the way it sometimes did when Felix was in The Capitol getting worked on. When they would nudge his perception enough to make the floor uneven under his feet. 

But Jisung didn’t tilt. He stayed solid. 

“Who did they take from you?” Jisung asked. 

Felix’s jaw locked so hard it hurt. 

“You think I’ll hand you names so you can just–” 

“I’m not going to use it against you, Sunshine."

Felix shook his head. “No. That is what everyone says before they do. They lie .” 

“Not me,” Jisung said without any hesitation.  I’m your Sungie, I’m in your corner. Remember? I will keep you safe. I am keeping you safe.” 

THe click in the fan felt louder and Felix felt like static. 

But there was something. A faint hum of something . 

“You promise?” Felix asked

“I pinky promise.” Jisung said, holding his other hand up with his pinky sticking out and Felix was thrown into the day they first wrapped their pinkies together. They were hidden under the blankets, a flashlight flickering and not giving them much light. And the promise to keep each other safe. 

Felix tangled his pinky with Jisungs as his mind bled and began to drown him. Smothering him. Choking him. Barking orders at him. 

“Was it someone older? Younger?” Jisung asked his voice pulling Felix back up.

“Stop,” Felix muttered.

“Someone you worked with?”

The static roared louder.

“Someone you—”

“Stop.” The word ripped out of him, sharper than he meant, and several of the others shifted.  Bahng’s focus snapped between them, Hwang leaned forward like he was about to intervene.

But Jisung didn’t break eye contact. “If I stop, you’ll keep thinking you imagined them. That’s what they want.”

Felix’s breathing had gone uneven. His nails bit into his palms. He wanted to tell Jisung to shut up, to leave it buried, but the part of him that listened wouldn’t stay quiet. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

“They liked…counting my freckles,” he heard himself say, the idea seemed off kilter. “They didn’t like it when I covered them up.”

Jisung’s expression didn’t change except for the smallest pull at the corner of his mouth. Not amusement, not pity, just… listening.

“They laughed at me…with me,” Felix said, the words starting to tumble without his permission. “Even when I was… when I was exactly what they wanted me to be. They still–” His voice cut off, throat closing around something dangerous.

“Still what?” Jisung asked.

“They still looked at me like I was–” He stopped again. The word that wanted to come felt wrong, heavy.

“Like you were what?”

Felix swallowed hard. “Like I was… worth something.”

The air in the room went very still.

And for a moment, Felix could see it. A sliver of a memory so clear it hurt his eyes. Sitting in the storage room, the dim overhead lights, a scrap of bread split in two and pushed into his hands without a word. The smell of minty coffee, leather that was rained on, it was stronger than the image of itself. 

His breath hitched. 

“It’s real. It happened, Felix.” Jisung said, quiet but firm. “That. Happened.”

Felix shook his head once, hard. “You don’t know that.”

“I know because you are shaking,” Jisung said. “And you wouldn’t be if it was just some fabricated thing they put in your head.” 

“Why are you doing this?” Felix asked, and it came out almost like a plea. Begging for it to stop. Just stop.

“Because they took enough from you,” Jisung said. “They do not get to take this from you too. Don’t let them take it.” 

Felix’s chest was wound tight. Deep down, he hated that everyone was still in the room, hated that they were hearing this…seeing this. But they were blurred into the background and all Felix could see was Jisung’s calm and stubborn face. His Jeekies. 

“They’re gone, Sungie.” Felix whispered. “And if I try to find them…” He trailed off. 

“They’ll come for you.” Jisung finished for him. “I know, Sunshine. But I’m here now and I am not going anywhere. No one’s gonna lay a hand on you ever again.” 

Felix’s throat ached. He looked away from Jisung for the first time in what felt like years and he stared at the edge of the shower curtain hanging off the window. 

“Felix,” Jisung said again. 

Felix didn’t answer him. He couldn’t. 

---

 

Notes:

Thank you all for reading, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!!

Next chapter is in Chan's POV, shit is about to go down. stay tuned, my loves :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 8: to be in love with a weed

Summary:

The boys are fighting!

Family is supposed to be our safe place.

Very often, it's the place where we find the deepest 

heartache. 

- Unknown

---

It always got too quiet during the night. 

The kind of silence that wasn’t really a silence at all. The heaters clicked against the walls and someone's boots scuffed faintly against the concrete outside. Chan could hear all of it. 

He hadn’t slept. He doesn’t think he could. Not after he watched Jisung push Felix with those gentle questions, the kind of questions the regular person wouldn’t think twice about. Friends, lovers, memories. Then he watched Felix… bleed.

Chan had almost called it off. Almost. But Jisung’s stubborn face had kept Felix rooted, and Felix had answered him. Not all of it, not clearly, but enough to prove to Chan…to everyone in the room that there were cracks in Felix. That The Capitol’s claws weren’t as deep as Chan feared. That there is someone left to save.

Chan was folding his blankets up when he heard it. Voices down the hall. 

Not voices… shouting.

Chan was bolting out the room before his brain could catch up, heart lurching in his chest. 

The door to the Den was open just enough to cause light to spill into the corridor. Chan slowed as he reached it and pressed his palm flat against the wood. He drew in a breath and listened.

“…what the hell were you thinking?” Minho’s voice, low and sharp.

And Chan’s stomach dropped.

Jisung answered, just as sharply: “I was thinking that he’s a person, not some goddamn dog you can tiptoe around forever.”

Chan’s gut twisted.

Inside, Minho’s pacing and pacing. Chan could hear the scrape of his boots on the floor. “You don’t know what you’ve done, Jisung. You don’t get it. His mind is fragile. Any wrong move and it could break. He could break!”

The sound of a chair screeching erupted and Jisung was on his feet. “Don’t tell me I don’t get it! I lived in the Capitol too, you fuck! I lived there, I saw what they did to people. And you think I don’t know fragile? You think I don’t know what it means?!”

The scrape of boots again. Minho was moving fast and Chan pushed the door open before he realized he was doing it.

The room froze.

Jisung’s face was flushed, hair wild, chest heaving. Minho stood across from him, jaw clenched, shoulders rigid, eyes burning with something Chan didn’t recognize. The others hovered, half-hiding, half-waiting to see who would win.

Chan’s voice felt like lead when he spoke. “Enough.”

Every head turned to him.

Chan stepped inside fully, shutting the door behind him, pressing his back against it for a moment.

“Chan–” Jisung started, still angry.

But Chan raised a hand. His pulse was hammering, but his voice stayed even. “I have heard enough.”

The silence after Chan’s words didn’t last long.

Hyunjin was the first to break it, throwing his long arms up with a hiss of frustration. “This is exactly what I said would happen, right Bin-hyung? Put them in a room together and suddenly it’s less about fixing Felix and more about—”

“Shut it,” Minho snapped.

Hyunjin’s mouth clicked shut, though his glare was lethal.

Changbin leaned forward in his seat, his voice a low rumble. “Look, nobody’s saying Jisung didn’t cross a line, but…”

“There is no but ,” Minho cut him off, sharper this time, his voice cracking. His hand came down hard on the back of a chair. “You don’t push someone like that. You don’t pull at the seams when you don’t know what’s underneath!”

Jisung’s face twisted, anger and guilt, but he didn’t back down. He pushed his hair back with shaking fingers and snapped, “If we wait around forever, we’ll never know what’s underneath! What do you want, Minho? For him to sit there not knowing what's real and what's fake until he rots?”

Minho’s jaw clenched so hard Chan thought he might crack a tooth. His voice came out raw. “I need him alive.”

Jeongin, quiet until now, spoke softly. “He is alive.”

But Minho shook his head, shoulders hunched. “You don’t get it. None of you do. He’s not some puzzle for you to solve to pass time. He’s…” His voice broke. “He’s fragile. You can’t see it, but I can. One wrong push and he won’t come back from it.” 

“And you think coddling him is going to help him? He’s already fucked up, Minho. Sitting there, trying to see what’s real and what's not… and don’t you dare tell me I don’t understand that. I lived it. I lived in those walls too.”

Minho spun on him, eyes blazing. “Don’t pretend you know what it did to him. ”

“I don’t have to pretend,” Jisung shot back. “Because he remembers me. Not you.”

The words landed hard and even Hyunjin, who usually always had something to say, didn’t breathe a word.

Minho went still. Too still. His chest rose and fell, ragged, but his face was blank.

“You think this is jealousy,” Minho said finally, voice dangerously low. “You think I’m angry because he looks at you instead of me?” His lips curled, not quite a smile, not quite a snarl. “If only it were that simple.”

Seungmin shifted in his corner, tone sharp. “Then what is it, Minho-hyung? Because from here, it looks a hell of a lot like jealousy.”

Minho turned on him. “I’m terrified, ” Minho spat, his eyes shining. “Terrified that one wrong word, one wrong anything, and he’ll unravel until there’s nothing left but what they made him into. And you–” He glared at Jisung. “You were digging at him like it was nothing. Like you weren’t pulling screws out of a live grenade.”

Jisung’s face softened for the barest second, guilt flashing. But then he straightened up, his chin rising stubbornly. “And if I don’t pull those screws, then what? He just stays their’s forever? You want that? You’d rather he never remembers who he is ?”

Minho’s hands curled. “Don’t act like you know who he is.”

“He remembers me! ” Jisung shouted, his voice cracking. “He looks at me and it’s there, Minho. Not the programming. Not The Capitol. Me. And you hate it. You hate that it’s me and not you.”

Silence again.

Chan’s lungs burned. Because in that silence, it clicked.

Felix’s strange warmth towards Jisung. The softness that didn’t make sense, when Felix saw everyone else as a threat, a predator. Minho’s bitterness, his anger, not just at Felix’s captivity, not just at The Capitol, but at also being…erased. 

The Capitol had dug its claws into Felix’s mind. Left holes where there used to be memories. But not all of them. One thing had slipped past. One name, one boy.

Han Jisung.

And Chan knew, suddenly and horribly, that Minho wasn’t afraid that Felix would shatter under Jisung’s pushing, under his questions. He was terrified of what could happen if they pushed that safe barrier, of what could happen if they pushed too far. 

Chan pressed the heel of his hand to his temple, trying to steady his breathing.

Hyunjin muttered, “Well. That explains… nothing.”

Changbin shot him a warning look, but Minho wasn’t even listening. His eyes were locked on Jisung, absolutely furious. 

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Minho whispered, voice gone hoarse. “You think it’s kind, but it’s not. If he remembers, it won’t help him. It’ll kill him.”

Jisung blinked hard, his throat working. “And if he doesn’t?”

Chan swallowed, his chest tight, his mind roaring.

Because Jisung was right. And Minho was right. And none of it mattered, because the Capitol had already written the ending into Felix’s bones, and they were all just fighting over which way they could mess with him some more. 

Chan forced himself to breathe, to step forward, to cut through the anger. His voice was low, almost shaking. “Enough,” he said again. Softer this time. A plea more than a command.

But he wasn’t sure anyone heard him.

Minho took a step closer, shoulders tight. “You think I’m hoarding him,” he said. “You think I want him small. Do you have any idea what you did when you asked him that?”

Jisung didn’t back up. “I asked him if he had a friend. A lover.” He lifted his chin. “I gave him a door. He walked through.”

“You kicked the damn hinges out,” Minho snapped. “You don’t see it when it happens. His pupils go wide. His breathing goes uneven. His left hand trembles…barely. He counts out of order. He listens for orders that aren’t there. He-” Minho’s jaw worked.

Jeongin straightened, pen already in hand. “Left-sided tremor?” he asked, almost gentle.

Minho gave him a sharp look, then gave the answer anyway. “His ring and pinky fingers. It’s micro. You’ll miss it if you’re not looking.”

“I didn’t,” Jeongin said, scribbling. “Heart rate spiked at the ‘lover’ question and then dropped ten seconds later when Jisung touched him, the drop held. That matters.”

“It matters until it doesn’t,” Minho shot back.

Hyunjin made a frustrated noise, flinging himself off the back of the couch to his feet. “Okay, but can we not pretend Jisung committed a war crime by asking if Felix ever held hands with someone in a broom closet? He didn’t ask him for a classified kill list.”

Jisung threw a hand toward Hyunjin. “See? The drama queen gets it.”

“Don’t call me that,” Hyunjin said, already rolling his eyes. “If anything you’re the dramatic one.”

Changbin dragged a palm over his face and groaned. “Everyone shut up and breathe.”

Seungmin didn’t even look up from the table edge he’d been tapping. “Breathing is for people who didn’t just throw protocol out the window,” he said flatly, then shifted his weight and met Jisung’s gaze. “You went off-script. You know that.”

Jisung’s mouth thinned. “I know.”

“But,” Seungmin added, to Minho this time, “our data says he stabilized quicker with Jisung-hyung than he does alone. That’s not opinion. That's a fact.”

“Your facts don't have a column for history,” Minho said quickly.

Jisung’s hands lifted, palms out, pleading or furious. Chan couldn’t tell. “Minho-hyung, listen to me…”

“No, you listen,” Minho snapped. “I have watched him strapped to a chair. I have watched him bleed and apologize for getting the floor dirty. I have watched him look at me and not see me, because someone bitch in a lab decided seeing me was a luxury he didn’t need.” He sucked in a sharp breath of air. “So when I say careful, I don’t mean politely word your fuck-ass questions. I mean you word it like there is glass in your lungs.”

Seungmin’s eyes cut to Chan then back to Minho. “If the Capitol had a record of Jisung-hyung’s link to Felix, they would’ve cut it out. They didn’t. Which means you're missing important pieces of the puzzle.” A beat. “Which also means your fear is valid. Both can be true.”

“Pick one,” Minho rasped. “Because I can’t do both.”

“Welcome to therapy,” Hyunjin muttered, arms folded tight across his chest. 

Jeongin slid the pen behind his ear. “I don’t think Felix feeling intense emotions will cause him to spiral,” he said carefully. “He spiked, but then he regulated with Jisung-hyung. That isn’t nothing. That’s something steady.”

“Or a trick,” Minho said.

“You don’t like steady because then you have to trust,” Hyunjin shot back. “Not all things will go unsteady.”

Minho turned his head slowly, giving Hyunjin a cold look. “If your head goes in the toaster, I’m setting it to scorched.”

“Romance is alive,” Hyunjin deadpanned. “I’m swooning.”

“Enough,” Changbin warned again as he drifted closer to Minho. 

Minho scrubbed a hand over his face, fingers trembling now. When his hand dropped, his eyes were red-rimmed. “You think I’m jealous because he turned toward you,” he said to Jisung, quieter. “I’m not. I’m relieved. Because at least with you he feels…like himself.”

Jisung’s chin quivered, then he bit it down. “Then let me be there. Let me take the hits.”

Minho’s laugh shivered. “Oh, you’re very brave.”

“Anything can happen and I will be here, I’ll stay brave.” Jisung said.

“Because you didn’t watch him–” Minho stopped, swallowing. “You didn’t watch him practically set himself on fire to keep someone else warm.”

Someone else. Not “a mission” or “a target.” Not “the Director.” Someone. Singular. Someone cose.

The ledger. The coupon. The machine room. The counting freckles.

Oh, hell.

It clicked so cleanly inside Chan that for a second he thought he’d said it out loud. He hadn’t. The others were still arguing, albeit less angrily. The wheels were turning revealing an ugly truth: Minho had loved him. Minho still did. 

And the only part of Felix that remembered love was attached to a boy who stole bread rolls, who called himself Felix’s elder by a day. 

Not to the man who’d bled on a ledger.

“New protocol,” Seungmin said. “We need one, for outcomes. If we accept that Jisung is a stabilizing variable, we can use him as controlled exposure.” He flicked his gaze at Jisung. “And no improvisation. When you feel an impulse to ‘open a door,’ you wait.” 

Jisung bristled, then deflated. “I can wait,” he muttered, which from Jisung was as close to ‘ I’m sorry’ as it got.

Minho frowned. “And what about when he asks about me?” Quietly he asked. 

Seungmin didn’t even blink. “He won’t be allowed.”

“That’s not how asking works,” Hyunjin pointed out, half a hand raised.

“It is if he has to go through me first,” Seungmin said.

Jeongin nodded. “I’ll adjust the sedatives, lessen the dosage. We’ll track for the tremor, pupils, breath, voice strain. Code word is still ‘pineapple.’”

“Oh God,” Chan said automatically, and it came out hoarse.

“Pineapple,” Hyunjin echoed, savage delight in his tone. “I love democracy.”

“Democracy would never pick ‘pineapple,’” Changbin said. “It would pick ‘chicken.’”

Jisung swiped a hand down his face. “Can we not do the fruit bit while Minho looks like he’s going to vomit?”

Minho, to everyone’s surprise, almost smiled. It was thin, vicious, and lived for exactly a heartbeat. Then it was gone.

Chan found his voice finally. He stepped between them. “We’re not going to solve this by screaming at each other,” he said, and winced internally because that was exactly what a person said when they had no idea what to do. “Tomorrow, we will try again: we keep the circle small. Only me, Seungmin, Jeongin, and Jisung. Hyunjin and Bin outside the door. Minho…” his tone dropped, “boiler room.”

Minho’s eyes flicked up in quick, wounded surprise, and Chan lifted his chin a notch. “Our spot,” he said quietly. “You said it yourself, Minho. Live wire. I won’t risk it until we lay more rubber on the floor.”

Minho looked down and nodded once.

“Boundaries,” Seungmin then said, quickly like he almost had forgotten. “Questions stay on comfort topics until I say otherwise: food, sleep, aches, where it hurts, whether the window should be open, whether he wants the radio on. And when you think you see a door , Jisung, you wait.”

Jisung nodded once, stubborn. “Okay.”

Hyunjin exhaled hard and flopped onto the couch again like the strings had been cut. “I hate this,” he announced to the ceiling. “I hate all of this.”

Changbin went to walk towards the door, shoulder bumping Minho’s as he passed, subtle. “You hungry?” he asked Minho.

“No,” Minho said, reflexively.

Changbin tilted his head. “Eat anyway.”

Minho for once, didn’t argue. “Fine.”

Jeongin closed his notebook and slid it into his hoodie pocket. He took one step closer to Jisung and bumped their shoulders, small, easy. “You okay?” he asked under his breath.

Jisung’s laugh went high and wrecked. “Define okay.”

“Breathing, heart rate under 120, not crying,” Jeongin said, ticking off fingers. “Two out of three’s passing.”

“I hate you,” Jisung muttered.

Chan watched it all happen. The small mercies. But the small things still echoed in his head: ledger, coupon, freckles, safety. He wanted to look at Minho and say I know, I see it, let me carry some of it. But that would be cruel, to force the truth into daylight, to everyone, before Minho was ready.

“Meeting over,” Seungmin declared, stealing the words right from Chan’s mouth.“Everyone drink some water and attempt to sleep. Minho,” he added, turning his gaze on him, “this is the part where you don’t wander the halls like a freakish ghost. If you need to walk, you text me and you walk circles in my room.”

“You keep your room at ninety-eight degrees,” Minho said flatly.

“Then you’ll sweat your anxiety out and save me the trouble,” Seungmin replied, unblinking.

Minho blinked, then huffed something close to a laugh. “Bossy.”

“Correct,” Seungmin said.

Changbin clapped Jisung’s shoulder. “Two questions tomorrow,” he said. “And if you go off-script, Seungmin’s gonna sedate you.”

“I will,” Seungmin confirmed.

“I hate all of you,” Jisung mumbled, but he was breathing easier now. He looked at Chan last, guilt surfacing again. “Hyung…”

Chan didn’t let him finish. He just opened an arm and Jisung crashed into him. For a second Jisung was ten again and Chan was thirteen. Chan’s throat clenched. He smoothed a hand over Jisung’s hair, then let him go.

“Tomorrow,” Chan said, to everyone. It felt like they’d all been saying that word for weeks. “We do this by the book. Our book.”

They dispersed toward bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen clatter and faucet hiss returning.

It left Chan and Minho last.

Minho didn’t move. He stared at the far wall, eyes filmed with a sheen Chan recognized: the look of someone who had been strong for too long. 

Chan drifted towards him, not too close. “You didn’t have to say those things,” he said quietly.

Minho breathed out through his nose. “I didn’t say enough,” he said back.

“I know,” Chan said, and felt Minho’s attention flick to him without his head turning. “You’re not wrong,” he said instead. “He is fragile.”

Minho nodded once, slow.

“But,” Chan added, “he’s also stubborn. Like the rest of us. Like a weed in concrete.” He managed a tired smile. “You do realize you fell in love with a weed, right?”

Minho closed his eyes, brief and pained, like someone had pressed a thumb into a bruise. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I know.”

Chan clapped him once on the shoulder, softly. “Boiler room?” he said, because saying I’m here would be too much and not enough.

Minho’s mouth twitched. “Boiler room,” he echoed.

“Don’t seduce the chair,” Chan added, and if the timing was bad, at least it got him a snort.

“Go to sleep, hyung,” Minho said. “You’re worse than useless without it.”

“Bossy,” Chan mimicked Seungmin right before he left the room.

In the hall, he leaned his forehead against the cool wall and let himself breathe.

Tomorrow, he thought. It’s always tomorrow. 

He pushed off the wall and made himself walk. Past the stairwell that led to the cell (that was not going to be a cell). Past the laundry room with its safe hum and folded towels.

He paused outside the infirmary. Inside, Jeongin’s neat handwriting had already been copied onto a fresh grid, a blank column labeled: Exposure Therapy (Sungie-hyung will be present)!!

 Seungmin’s annotations marched down the margin: 

NO ARTICLE LANGUAGE. NO “DIRECTIVE.” NO “ASSET.” 

And, circled twice in red marker: PINEAPPLE.

Chan huffed. “God, I hate that word,” he whispered to no one, and went to find whatever food Changbin had shoved into the fridge with Felix’s name on it, because Minho had been right: he needed to eat before he tried to sleep.

He ate standing up in the dim of the kitchen, a fork in one hand, the other braced on the counter. He could still hear Jisung saying he remembers me, could still hear Minho say I need him alive.

Chan chewed, swallowed, and made himself another promise he didn’t know how to keep...but will even if it killed him. 

I’ll keep you all alive.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you all for reading, I hope you guys enjoyed!!

Next chapter is in Minho's POV!!!! stay tuned hehehe :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 9: cabins and mint

Summary:

Chan gifts Minho something kind.

I long for souls

To be so deeply intertwined, 

That Death himself would weep

When faced with the thought

Of seperating us. 

- dd

---

Minho didn’t fix things as much as he punished them for being breakable. 

By noon, the boiler room had become an ecosystem of little things he had fixed: a clock, a jewlery box, the bindings of a book. The heat down here clung to his skin, sucking him dry of any thoughts, until there was only his hands and the tools. 

Better gadgets than people.

Now he was working on a pipe. He turned the wrench a quarter more on a bolt that did not need it. The pipe he had was brand-new and the hiss he kept hearing was from his memory. 

He knew that. 

He also put his ear to the pipe anyway.

“Thought I’d find you committing violence against infrastructure,” Chan said from the doorway.

Minho didn’t turn. He gave the nut an extra twist, felt the wrench bite and paused. “This piping is older than you,” he said. “I’m defending myself.”

The laugh Chan let out was small. Footsteps approached, measured and Chan came to stand beside Minho, not quite close enough to crowd. He looked out of place down here, too clean around the edges, too careful. Minho had always thought of Chan as a city person in a forest… somehow people followed them.

“You eat?” Chan asked.

“I chewed a bolt,” Minho said. Then, because Chan would keep circling until he had a real answer, “Yeah.”

Chan braced his hands on his hips, huffed. A leader’s exhale. “I want to try something.”

There it was. Minho rolled his shoulders back, slow, feeling the wet heat cling to him. “No toasters,” he said. Dry as he could make it. “I’m reformed now.”

Chan let that one pass; he was somewhere else already. “It’s controlled,” he said. “It’s not a promise. It’s not a test. It’s…” his mouth tugged, rueful, “a kindness, maybe.”

Minho stared at the wrench in his hands. “Say the thing you’re trying not to say.”

“I want you to see him,” Chan said, simple and Minho’s stomach plummeted. “Not up close. Not where he can see you. Just see him. As he is, when he’s not angry.”

Minho closed his eyes for a count of three and opened them. “That’s not a kindness.”

“It might be,” Chan said. “Depending on the day.”

“Today?” Minho asked.

Chan considered it. “Today he ate a whole slice of toast,” he said, and Minho could hear how much Chan wanted the ‘whole’ to matter. “He didn’t ask permission to finish it.”

Something in Minho’s chest gave a single, traitorous flutter. He twisted the wrench free and set it down with care. “What’s the setup?”

“Remember the storage office off the hall,” Chan said. “Bad glass, good angle. Jisung and Jeongin are walking him through the boring domestic tour. Faucet that squeaks, towel closet with exactly two towels that I think is growing mold. We’ll be able to stay out of his line of sight.”

Minho wiped his hands on a rag, then folded the rag again and again until it became a small square. 

He’d told himself last night that the right thing, the only thing, was distance. 

He’d told himself he could be courageous in that small way, that leaving the room was kind, was him being loving. 

And yet.

“You sure?” he asked, not because he doubted Chan, but because he needed the confirmation.

“I’m not sure about anything that matters,” Chan said, brutally honest as only the sleep deprived can be. “But I know you won’t touch the door handle. I know you’ll leave if I say leave. And I know it’s hurting you to say yes.”

Minho snorted. “I didn’t say yes.”

“Minho.”

He looked at Chan then. The heat made both their faces shine. He could have lied; he didn’t see the point. “Fine,” he said. “But you say ‘pineapple,’ I disappear so hard you’ll think you imagined me.”

Chan grimaced. “I hate that word.”

“Tell Seungmin,” Minho said. “He lives to be resented.”

Chan’s mouth quirked despite himself. He put the wrench back on the pegboard exactly where it belonged, because there were a few things left in the world he could keep where they were supposed to be.

“Let’s go, then,” Chan said.

They moved through the back ways. Chan had a talent for being large and yet moving like he wasn’t there. Minho matched him step for step.

At the end of the side corridor, Chan eased a utility door with a caution that made Minho’s jaw clench. He didn’t need the warning; his breath had already shortened in the way it did when he went on missions.

Inside: a broom closet upgraded to “office” by virtue of a dented file cabinet and a rolling chair that had lost its roll. The window was a rectangle of old glass that turned the world beyond into a softened painting.

And there he was. 

Felix. 

Felix sat at the table with his wrists free and his right ankle shackled to the anchor point on the floor. Jisung had draped a dish towel over the chain like that could trick everyone. Jeongin was at the counter, demonstrating meticulously the two-step coffeemaker ritual like he was teaching a class on Kitchen Appliances.

Nothing special was happening. That was the special thing.

Minho stood just behind the window frame and felt his body still. The kind that had made him valuable, the kind that meant he could watch for hours without an itch. He set his palm against the wall to keep from stepping forward.

Felix looked… smaller. Minho didn’t like that. 

 Jisung slid a glass of water across the table. Felix watched it come and, at the last second, reached a fraction too late. Jisung pretended he hadn’t noticed, nudged the glass the rest of the distance with one finger, and started talking about absolutely nothing. Something about how Hyunjin rated all towels on a scale of “cloud” to “sandpaper.”

Felix’s mouth did that thing Minho remembered and hated remembering: tugging his sleeve down like the fabric could be a shield from whatever was happening around him. It was when Felix would do that Minho used to drape his jacket over him, when Minho used to reassure him with soft words. 

“Don’t inhale the water,” Jisung was saying softly. “If it tastes like a rusty pipe, yell at Hyunjin. He did something to the filter because he thought it would be ‘aesthetic.’”

Jeongin, at the sink, didn’t look up. “That is slander.”

“It’s an objective reality,” Jisung shot back. “My tongue still is traumatized.”

Felix blinked slowly. He lifted the glass with his left hand. His right hand hovered, as though ready to intercept his own impulse to drink too fast. He took a sip. Set it down. The small tremor Felix would get in his left hand wasn’t there. 

Minho’s breath chose that moment to come back into his body. He stared at Felix’s hands. The skin over the knuckles was scraped, almost healed. 

“Don’t talk,” Chan said under his breath, as if Minho needed the reminder. “Just… watch.”

Minho didn’t respond. He watched. Felix picked at a sandwich before he ultimately picked it up and bit the corner as if he would get punished for it. Jisung said something that made Jeongin snort and Felix’s eyes flicked up: fast, bright, uncalculated. And there he was, his Lix. It was just a flash. 

And then it shuttered away.

Minho’s hand tightened against the wall.

“He likes mint,” Minho heard himself say. He didn’t recognize his own voice. “Not the fake kind in toothpaste. He likes the leaves.”

Chan’s head tilted just enough to say ‘I’m listening’.

“The Director’s kitchen,” Minho added, jaw tight. “There were herb pots near the window. He used to steal a leaf and chew on it. He did it whenever he had the chance.”

Chan didn’t ask how Minho knew that. He just said, “We’ll get a pot.”

“You can’t fix a person with a plant,” Minho said, and hated how defensive he sounded.

“No,” Chan said. “But sometimes the plant tells the person they’re allowed to exist in a room.”

Across the glass, Jeongin demonstrated the sink sprayer and managed to jet himself in the chest. Jisung cackled. Felix blinked again, slower this time. His mouth flattened but his eyes didn’t harden. Progress.

Chan shifted weight, a soundless move. “Last night,” he said softly, “when you said you’d seen the beginnings. The labs. The textbook-thick files.” He waited for Minho to nod. “Was that before or after you planned it.”

Minho’s mouth had gone dry and he let his head touch the wall, just once, a soft thud. His gaze never strayed off Felix. “During,” he said.

Chan didn’t speak, didn’t praise, didn’t ask for more. He let Minho choose.

Minho watched Felix watch the faucet and knew, abruptly and with a clarity that made him want to put his fist through the file cabinet. He had to say it. To make it real.

“We had a cabin,” Minho said. “Not on paper. In our heads. It probably was falling apart, some mice running around. But we would’ve fixed it together. I would do the dirty work while he held the flashlight looking all pretty.” He huffed, a small, ugly sound. “We pretended it had a stove that worked when you asked nicely. Two mugs, with small cat prints. One with a crack that always leaked but we wouldn’t replace it because he wanted to try to catch the drip with his mouth.”

Chan did not move. “Where?”

“Far,” Minho said. “North, then east. A place the Director would see as useless, he wouldn’t bother trying to monopolize."

Felix set the glass down too carefully.

“We had routes,” Minho went on. “Three of them. One through the service tunnels. One over the rooftops. One, the one we saved for last, where we’d just walk out and ignore whoever called our names. We had packs with stupid things in them. Socks. A tin with tea. Rope. Batteries. I put a notebook in mine.” He heard himself laugh, soft and deranged.

Chan’s gaze flicked towards Minho’s and back. “Two days before,” Minho started and took a deep breath. “The Director found out, I don’t know how. I don’t know who. I know that I came to the office and he was gone and there was nothing except for the smell of bleach and a smear on the carpet like someone had scrubbed too hard.”

Across the glass, Jisung reached and straightened the dish towel over the chain so it wouldn’t ride up against Felix’s ankle when he shifted. The mundanity of the act made Minho’s stomach twist.

“I thought he was dead,” Minho confessed. “I thought it for so long. For almost five years now.” 

“And now he’s here,” Chan said.

“And now he’s here,” Minho repeated. “He doesn’t look at me like I matter. And I know that it’s better. That it’s safer.”

“But that’s not what you want,” Chan said gently.

Minho stared through the glass. Felix had found the radio dial with two fingers; Jeongin had slapped his hand lightly and said, “Consent,” and it had made Jisung roll his eyes so hard his whole head went with them. Minho couldn’t hear the music through the glass. He imagined the static between stations.

“What I want,” he said, “is irrelevant.”

“It is and it isn’t,” Chan said. “Because it changes the choices you make when you’re afraid. And you’re afraid.”

“Look at me,” Minho said, without heat. “A miracle of insight.”

“I’m not going to be the person who tells you to hope,” Chan said. “You hate that. But I am going to be the person who remembers the plan.”

“We had three routes,” Minho said, on autopilot.

“I mean this plan,” Chan said. “The one where we give him space to breathe, give him a reason to trust. Where we make ‘no’ make sense. Where we keep you out of sight until his nervous system stops treating your silhouette like a detonator. Where we bring home some mint because it’s silly and also not silly at all.”

Minho closed his eyes before he cracked them open again. Somewhere on the other side of the glass, Jisung said something outrageous and Felix’s mouth did that thing where he liked to pretend he wasn’t smiling but he totally was.

“Say it,” Chan said, his voice barely above a breath. “To me. Not to him. Say the thing you’re carrying so I can carry some of it too. Let me help you.”

Minho had never loved or hated him more.

“We were supposed to be free,” Minho said.

Chan inhaled like someone who had just had the air punched out of them. He didn’t say I’m sorry. He didn’t say you will be . He said, “Okay.”

On the other side, Jeongin finished his lecture on kettles and water pressure and announced that the bathroom light switch was cursed. Jeongin spoke about birthdays which brought Jisung declared himself Felix’s legal guardian since he was older by a day. Felix, God help him, almost smiled with his teeth. 

Chan shifted and Minho heard it without turning. “When he asks for you,” Chan said, “I’m going to say not yet. And when I say yet, I want you to believe me.”

Minho’s throat worked. He watched Felix’s fingers touch the radio dial again, more confident. “I can believe you,” he said finally, surprising himself with how honest it was. 

“Good enough,” Chan said. “For now.”

Minho put both hands on the wall and leaned in, just an inch. The window made Felix into a softer version, fewer angles, more light. It was a lie, and it wasn’t. Minho let himself be mesmerized exactly as long as it took for Felix to reach for the glass and take a sip without bracing himself, and then Minho stepped back.

Retreat as discipline, not defeat.

“Boiler room after?” Chan asked, reading him as if they’d rehearsed it.

“Yeah,” Minho said. “The chair misses me.”

Chan huffed. “I’m going to burn that chair.”

“You won’t,” Minho said. “You like it when the world is uglier than you are.”

“It makes me look good,” Chan admitted, and Minho almost smiled. Almost.

They left the little office the way they had come. Minho didn’t look back at the glass. He didn’t need to; the image of him was burned into his mind and it was never leaving.

Halfway down the corridor, Chan said, his voice low. “Hey, one more thing.”

Minho raised his eyebrows.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” Minho asked.

“For not touching the door,” Chan said, and left him.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you for reading!! I hope you enjoyed Minho's first chap (not his last, don't fret)!!

Next chapter is in Felix's POV!!!! stay tuned :))

p.s. please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it
p.p.s. super excited that you guys like it so far, so a little early release :)) (I'm hiding in the walk-in posting this lolll)

Chapter 10: the right direction

Summary:

Chan teaches Felix how to fold laundry.

I haven't felt like mysely lately

I must be growing

- J.E. Fitzgerald

---

Felix was slowly learning the people who lived here. Assessing them. Strengths and weaknesses. 

Jeongin and Seungmin. Those two were the smart ones around here, level headed to an extent. Jeongin had this thing that Felix had seen around The Capitol. Their frontline doctors had it, this power. He could heal people, but only the surface level injuries, and he was able to do diagnostic readings on people. Seungmin? Well, his power was his mind. 

But, it was tragically clear that these two had barely any experience in…combat. 

Seo and Hwang were always up to no good. That much was perfectly clear to Felix. Seo was strong, like…in the way he could lift two cars with his pinky and still not break a sweat. And Hwang…well Felix couldn’t really tell what Hwang’s thing was. Hwang was just dramatic, always wailing about how loud Jisung’s humming is from three rooms over. Felix thought maybe Hwang had keen senses, but then again if he did…he would have been able to sense the bread roll Jisung threw at his face the other day. Felix wasn’t so sure. 

Bahng creeped Felix out, if he were to be honest. The man was adamant that Felix were to be locked up, chained to the walls. Then suddenly, like the switch had been flipped, Felix is allowed to go to the… Den (what kind of name was that? Just call it a damn living room ) and could sit in the kitchen. With limits of course, but Felix never expected as a prisoner to ever experience this. It was so odd. That and the fact that Bahng was being so nice? So...gentle. It was all just so odd. 

Essentially, Felix didn’t know what Bahng’s deal was at all. 

And then there was Minho. Felix knew exactly who and what he was. Perfectly trained in combat, is able to nullify abilities, and there was something else. Something about him, something. Felix knew he had to take him down, to eliminate, to terminate. It was expected of him. 

But it all was so jarring. Felix knew he was in the building, his mind knew Minho was lurking somewhere like some cockroach and yet the voices hadn't screamed at him. That and... Jisung seemed at ease even though Minho was in the building. Jisung had no trouble with any of it all. Jisung trusted everyone here so fucking easily. Felix didn’t know what to do with that. 

Felix didn’t go down to the Den today. He didn’t want to have to watch everyone’s every movement, he didn’t want to have to answer stupid questions like ‘do you prefer sleeping with or without socks?’ He didn’t want to do anything. Whatever Jisung did to him a couple days ago fucked with him. His head hadn’t stopped throbbing since, his dreams are more like nightmares and Felix is so tired. He simply just cannot go down to the Den today.

A soft knock and a voice followed not too long afterwards. “Permission to enter?” asked Bahng from the other side of the door. 

Felix stared at the door, his eyes wide. “Uhm…sure.” He replied, sitting up more as Bahng cracked the door open and stepped inside. 

Bahng had a basket of clothes, unfolded, and a glass of water. He set the water down on the side table before he looked at Felix then at the bed…then back at Felix. 

Felix nodded and that was all it took for Bahng to drop himself on the edge of the bed, just a couple feet from Felix. 

“Community service,” Bahng said, gesturing at the basket of clothes he had put on the floor. 

Felix watched as Bahng picked up the first piece of clothing and folded it. He had done it so fast that Felix kept his eyes on Bahng’s hands as he went for another piece of clothing, and then another, and another. 

“How’d you do that?”

Bahng paused his ministrations and glanced at Felix. “Folding a t-shirt?”

Felix nodded. “You did it so fast.”

“You don’t know how to fold clothes?” Bahng then asked, dropping the t-shirt he was about to fold to his lap. 

“The Capitol didn’t teach us things like that.” Felix replied, looking away from Bahng. The Capitol didn’t bother with teaching them anything other than what they were assigned to do. Felix is a combat agent, a Commander, a weapon, and that is what he is before anything else. Things like folding laundry…there were people for that, just like how there were people for cooking, driving, cleaning. 

Bahng’s gaze felt heavy on Felix. “Would you like me to teach you?” He asked, his voice soft.

“Okay.”

Bahng’s mouth twitched. “Deal. Lesson one: the T-shirt fold.”

He scooted the basket closer with his foot, then paused, checking Felix’s face the way Jeongin did when he was about to poke him with something sharp. “I’m going to sit a little nearer so you can see. That okay?”

Felix hated that the ask mattered. Hated how his stomach unclenched at being asked at all. He nodded once. “Yeah.”

Bahng shifted within arm’s reach but kept his elbows to himself and held up a black tee like it was evidence. “There are a thousand methods. This is the one for normal people.” He smoothed the shirt on his thigh. “Flatten. Fold the sides in to make a rectangle. Half up from the bottom. Then another half. Stack.”

He did it so fast Felix blinked and the thing was a perfect little square.

Felix reached for the next shirt, identical and somehow not. He mirrored the motions carefully. His rectangle had a bulge where the sleeve refused to be controlled. He frowned at it.

Bahng also looked at it and Felix did not like the way his eyes twinkled. “That one belongs to Changbin. His sleeves are just stretched out and stubborn.”

“Like him,” Felix murmured, pressing the bump flatter with the heel of his palm. It gave. The second and third folds held.

“Look at that,” Bahng said, genuine, no teasing. “It looks good.” 

His chest squeezed at that. It was ridiculous that simple praise over fabric could do that to Felix. But there it was, small and bright, nothing like the cold, quiet satisfaction of assembling a gun in under thirty seconds. He stacked the t-shirt on the pile. 

They worked in silence for a minute. Bahng was fast and Felix was… folding . Outside, a scooter backfired and someone yelled two floors down. Normal noises.

“Why is it called the ‘Den’?” Felix asked after a while of silence.

Bahng’s grin came crooked. “Hyunjin stole a neon sign from a club once. It only had three letters left: D, E, N. We, uh, leaned in.”

Felix pictured Hwang’s swanning into a dark hallway with a glowing sign under one arm like a jewel. It fitted too well. “Figures.”

Felix then spotted a sheet. “What about those, with the scrunch?”

Bahng cringed as he stood up, he beckoned Felix to stand up as well. “Ah. Ancient enemy. A fitted sheet.”

He pulled the crumpled sheet from the bottom of the basket and laid it out on the bed. “You tuck the corners into each other. Like this.” He found a corner, then another, nested them together. “Then you fold the long sides into a rectangle and pretend no one will notice the shit-show in the middle.”

Felix took a corner. Another. He wrestled with the sheet as it tried to move around as if it had a mind of its own. His fingers knew how to dismantle a gunned man blindfolded. Surely they could handle cotton.

“Here.” Bahng lifted his hands, waiting. “Can I help you? I’ll just…nudge your elbows.”

Felix’s throat bobbed and his pulse jumped once, twice. Bahng waited, hands still in the neutral position like he was approaching an injured animal and not a very tired twenty-two year old.

“It’s fine,” Felix said. 

Bahng was slow. He touched at the knobby bend of Felix’s elbow, then the outer forearm, adjusting angle rather than forcing Felix to bend to his will. “Tuck corner one into corner two…now flatten. Pull here. Good.”

Good. Another tight squeeze in his chest. Fucking stupid.

They got the sheet into somewhat of a square. Bahng held it up like a trophy. Felix huffed a laugh in spite of himself.

“You’re absurdly proud,” Felix said.

“Of this?” Bahng tossed it on the pile. “Yes. And of you, too.”

Felix blinked then focused on the next task, ignoring the little voice in his head. The small one that was elated with the praise. He covered the voice with the next task: a hoodie that smelled faintly like expensive shampoo.

“Hwang,” he said, deadpan.

Bahng barked a laugh. “You’re right. The sense of smell on you, Felix.”

Felix then pulled out a hoodie with a cracked print of a cartoon cat wielding a sword and paused. “Who…?”

“Jisung,” Bahng said, already smiling. “He pretends he’s above cute prints. He is not.”

Felix folded it carefully, smoothing the cat’s sword so it didn’t wrinkle. He would not be sentimental about a stupid hoodie. He absolutely wasn’t thinking about Jisung sprawled across the Den couch, ankle over knee, talking with his hands and making everyone else talk with theirs.

“Drink,” Bahng said, tapping the glass on the table with one finger. “You look like you need it.” 

Felix eyed it. His skull throbbed. He took the glass and drank. When he lowered it, Bahng had reorganized the folded stack into perfectly even columns. The man had a gift, Felix could respect that.

“You okay?” Bahng asked and Felix nodded. But Bahng didn’t look convinced, at all. “You sure?”

“Just a small headache.” Felix muttered. 

“Tomorrow you’re going to go see Jeongin and Seungmin,” Bahng decided, giving Felix a firm look.

Felix ignored him in favor of reaching into the basket.

The quiet that followed wasn’t heavy. Bahng finished the last of the socks, set the empty basket aside, and rubbed his palms on his jeans.

“You’re not in the Den today,” Bahng said gently.

Felix considered lying. Habit, self-preservation, the itch of being observed. He watched Chan’s hands instead. The way his thumb picked absent circles at the base of his fingers, the way he was deliberately not trying to stare Felix down.

“My head hurts,” Felix repeated. “And I don’t…like being looked at while I eat.” He angled his head down. “The questions are…a lot.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Bahng said, sincerely. It baffled Felix. “I told Jisung to watch it, so it shouldn’t happen again.”

Felix stared at Bahng as he continued. “You can come down, I’ll tell the others not to bother you. You can watch Hyunjin and Jisung argue, today it’s all about how to cook turkey.”

“I…” Felix trailed off. “I don’t know.”

Bahng nodded. “It’s okay. You don’t have to decide right now. If you feel up to it, head down and hang.”

It was quiet for a moment as Felix looked down at his hands, then he spoke. “You know…” He said, catching Bahng’s attention. “No one has ever knocked on my door. You're the first.”

Bahng went very still. “Okay,” he said after a beat, gentle and matter-of-fact. He swallowed and looked everywhere but at Felix. “I…” He trailed off, he couldn’t find the words. 

Felix tilted his head. “You’re not so bad, Chan.”

Chan’s head snapped to him and Felix swore he could see a small smile make its way on Chan’s face. “You’re not so bad either, Felix.”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading. I thought I would do something a bit soft to break from all the…heaviness. I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is also in Felix’s POV, so stay tuned >:)))

Chapter 11: pineapple

Summary:

Felix's visit with Seungmin and Jeongin.

how long are you going to keep holding on

to the story you don't want to keep reliving?

- unknown

---

His head has been persistently throbbing since Jisung ambushed him a few days ago. It had only gotten worse since his laundry lesson with Chan. It was non-stop. Unrelenting. And Felix just needed it to stop. Every throb hurt more than the last, every shift in movement he made caused a wave of nausea to erupt within him, every light, every smell, every little thing. 

Felix couldn’t breathe. 

The infirmary (infirmary being used extremely loosely) was small. Felix had been in here before, when he first got dragged here two weeks ago. It looked as if it had once been a storage room. The cabinets didn’t match, the cot Felix was on was a futon that was missing half of what made it a futon, and the medical supplies were scattered on a wooden desk that had too many cracks to count. 

Felix tried to count them anyway as Jeongin and Seungmin collected some things before they even got started with Felix. 

Jeongin glanced at Felix and he said, “we’ll go slow.” He clicked his pen before he set it down, and his eyes were tinged with a green. “Vitals, eyes, some coordination stuff. Nothing invasive. And if anything feels bad, just say pineapple.” He didn’t ask Felix if he had slept. They both knew it would be a waste of a question, they both knew Felix hadn’t properly slept in weeks. 

From the desk, Seungmin flicked his eyes up at them. “Do not say pineapple if you’re just bored.”

Felix almost laughed at that. 

“Any pain now?” Jeongin asked, washing his hands in the sink, scrubbing his fingers.

Felix pursed his lips. He knew that Jeongin knew he wasn’t feeling well at all. Jeongin had this thing. Felix had just started to figure out how Jeongin had a gift when it came to helping others heal. So Felix didn’t lie, much, “small headache.” 

“Okay.” Jeongin dried his hands on a towel. He pulled out a digital thermometer. “You’re a bit warm. So, under the tongue and don’t bite the device. I learned that the hard way.”

“How?” Seungmin asked without looking up.

“Hyunjin.”

“Of course,” Seungmin said, and scribbled something in a notebook.

Felix opened his mouth. The little plastic wand slid under his tongue. The device beeped too cheerfully for Felix’s liking. Jeongin read it out loud for Seungmin to jot it down, nodded and set it aside.

“Pressure cuff,” Jeongin said. “We’re using the soft one.”

The cuff was cloth which was… okay… but it was still a band, still a wrap, still a squeeze.

He fastened it around Felix’s upper arm with two fingers of space and pumped the bulb. Pressure climbed in a slow ache. Felix watched the needle rise and held still through it, chest tight and counted each line the needle hit. 

“Good,” Jeongin said before releasing air. The cuff sighed. Felix’s hand unclenched in his lap.

Seungmin stood, crossed, and stopped right beside Jeongin. He had a penlight between his fingers. “Eyes,” he said simply. “Follow my finger. Then the light.”

Felix’s mouth was dry. “Okay.”

“Pick a spot behind me to stare at,” Seungmin said. “And keep it there.”

Felix stared at the dark smudge above one of the cabinets. The light clicked, it clicked , and he did not flinch when it moved a little too close to his left eye. Then when Seungmin prompted him to follow his finger, he did. Left, right, up, down. “Good,” Seungmin said, “pupils are reactive and equal.”

Words. Not commands. Just facts. His fingers buzzed along with his head. 

“Maybe Jisung-hyung didn’t totally fuck him up, Felix your brain is just sore. Like how your muscles get sore after working them out. Jisung worked your brain out.” Jeongin said. 

Seungmin cringed at him. “That’s a terrible word choice.” 

Jeongin ignored him in favor of something by Felix’s ear. His brows drew together and a small frown pulled at his lips. Jeongin moved around to his left. “I’m going to look behind your ear,” he said. “That old scar there…it looks…?” He trailed off, his eyebrows drawn together. “I want to see if the tissue is healthy.”

Felix wrung his fingers together. “It’s fine,” he said, too quickly. “It’s old.”

“I believe you,” Jeongin said softly. “But I still want to see.”

The overhead light buzzed loudly.

And Felix turned his head. Jeongin pushed his blonde hair fully out of the way and cold air touched his skin. Jeongin’s fingers pressed at the edge of the hairline, gentle. Felix kept breathing. 

The smell of bleach hit him in the nose, the sound of the needle cap clicking open, the cold metal pressing against his forehead. Felix swallowed, willing the dizziness to subside. 

“Scar looks clean, but it still is a bit odd…” Jeongin murmured right before his thumb brushed the ridge of the scar by accident. Seungmin clicked a pen. 

He clicked. It clicked. And clicking is– 

Something flared white behind Felix’s left eye. Reflex charged through him like a circuit. He dug his fingers into the flesh of his palms. He could stop this. He could–

“Chin up,” Seungmin said, calm and automatic, reaching to steady Felix’s jaw the way the scientists did when they were forcing their experiments to bend to their will.

Two words and a touch.

The room swam and became something else, something sterile, white, clean. The buzzing overhead light went mute. The room reeked of bleach that was meant to wash away all the red, all the red. So much red. A voice not this voice said: Chin up. Agent, keep your eyes forward. A hand not this hand clamped down on his jaw to point it.

“Felix?” Jeongin’s voice, quiet, as he tapped cotton on his ear. The cotton came away red.  

Felix’s vision tilted. Time did the thing it did in the Chair where it stretched and snapped, stretched and snapped, like an elastic band. Stretching and snapping. Over and over again. 

Felix stood up. He was on a metal slab, his boots somewhere because he wasn’t allowed shoes in the lab, he wasn’t allowed to wear anything but his white gown with the yellow duck pattern. His breath went narrow and fast.

“Felix,” Seungmin said… was it Seungmin? “Look at me.”

The ceiling was too bright and not bright enough. A buzzing started to bleed into Felix’s ears, a buzzing Felix knew deep in the marrow of his bones. Behind his ear the scar felt hot, electric.

“Hold still,” Someone said. Demanded. Commanded.

The air dropped.

It was like the room forgot gravity and then remembered it wrong. The papers floated, then slapped down. The cabinet drawers squeaked and slid of their own accord. The blood pressure cuff slid off the table, hung for a second, then hit the floor harder than its weight would have allowed.

“Jeongin,” Someone said, quiet but urgent.

Felix didn’t mean to move; his body moved. A tray lifted, trembled, clattered. The pen rolled off the clipboard and stopped mid-roll, hovering.

“Felix,” A person said. “No one’s behind you. You’re in our room. Remember?”

“Pineapple,” Someone snapped, already moving away from Felix. They darted to the door, slapped it open hard enough to bounce, and yelled, “Pineapple! Now!”

Sound went thin in Felix’s ears. He saw the way the fluorescents stuttered. He saw the way the ceiling tile above him bowed, the screws groaning.

He wasn’t in charge of the ground.

Boots. He heard boots. They were coming for him. The doorframe cracked when the muscled man hit it with one shoulder, someone following right behind him. A tall lanky one was there, his breath fast like he’d run. Oh God…they were here for him. 

They were going to make him comply. They were going to-

And then… and…

Then,  Jisung.

“What happened?” Someone asked, his voice low, commanding. Leaderlike. 

“Touched behind his ear, and… and his chin,” Someone replied urgently “He’s in it.”

“Felix,” The commanding voice said, the voice sounding like home. He stayed where he was, hands visible at his sides. “You’re not there. You’re here.”

Felix flinched when someone’s boot squeaked against the floor too loud. He flinched. He flinched because flinching meant alive and alive meant being vulnerable and vulnerable and that…that meant he got hurt.

Jisung stepped one inch forward, two. “Sunshine,” he said softly. “Eyes on me.”

The room lurched and so did Felix’s stomach. A mug on the desk slid toward the edge then stopped. 

“Breathe with me,” Jisung said to Felix, matching their breaths to a count.

Felix’s vision tunneled. Jisung’s face was the only thing in it that had color. Everything else had been denatured by lab light. The part of him that learned to scan for weapons counted the hands: one, two, three, four, five, too many. He heard a squeak and lightning went down his spine.

“Chan,” Someone said, very quiet, pitch tighter. “We need him.” 

Chan’s jaw worked. He lifted his chin, took in Felix, he took in the room and everyone in it. He flicked his eyes to the doorway, to the hall and he seemed to come to a decision.

“Bin, get the chain out of here,” Chan said softly. “And anything heavy. Hyunjin, kill the lights.”

Hwang lunged for the switch. And darkness surrounded them. 

Jisung shrank down to his knees before Felix, looking up at him. Placating. “Hey. Hey, Sunshine. You don’t have to do anything. You can make it stop. It’s just us.”

Felix’s fingers dug deeper into his palms until it stung. He knew that it was just them. Just him and Jisung. He also knew what happened when they were bored. He knew what that thing in his head did when he was bad. He knew what happened when the door opened and she– no, not she, a man– no, not him either– stop, stop–

“Pineapple,” Chan said into the hall, not loud. But it carried anyway.

The air changed. 

Calm. His power, that didn’t feel like his, met something that absorbed it. Felix knew that hum. He hated that hum. A hum that felt like chains dragging him down. Felix wanted to curse him out, to scream at him. Felix hated how the hum burned like fire, choking him, consuming him.

Minho didn’t step into the room. He stood in the doorway, eyes on Chan’s shoulder instead of Felix’s face. Like a coward.

Target. 

Eliminate.

“Don’t look at him,” Chan warned. 

And Jisung suddenly was blocking Felix’s view of Minho. Jisung kept his eyes on Felix. “You with me?” he asked, stupid question.

Felix swallowed, his throat bobbing. His ears rang. He could breathe. His hands hurt.

“Sunshine,” Jisung said, softer. “Can I touch your wrist?”

“No,” Felix said, but then his chest stuttered and he blinked. And blinked. “Not yet.” He corrected.

“Okay,” Jisung said immediately. “Not yet.”

“Okay,” Seungmin said, “that was…okay.”

Someone snorted. 

Minho stayed where he was. Felix could feel him like an aching bruise. He wanted to vomit.

“Do not make me say the fruit again,” Hwang said under his breath, voice trembling.

Felix closed his eyes. “I…I can’t,” he said, and stopped because vulnerability got people hurt. It got Felix hurt. An age old tale. “I can’t…when someone…behind.” His words were broken. 

“I’m sorry,” Jeongin said immediately, tone low and even. Felix cracked his eyes open. “That was me. I should’ve warned you better before I touched you. I won’t do that again without asking.”

Seungmin exhaled heavily “It won’t happen again. That’s on us, not you.”

Felix stared at him, the tightness in his ribs uncoiling. Not on him. Usually the responsibility, failure, the blood on floors he mopped was because it was his mess. He drew his brows together and thanked whoever he didn’t have to respond as Chan cut in.

“Things like this aren't avoidable forever, it’s bound to happen. But we can learn from it, ‘kay?” Chan said, “And Felix, tell us when you don’t like something.” 

“Thanks, Dad,” Hwang muttered but his hands were still shaking.

Minho hadn’t spoken. The hum of his power had dialed down a notch, but the need to vomit hadn’t subsided.

Felix tasted metal. He wasn’t bleeding. He flexed his fingers slowly. His palms had little crescents where his nails had cut. Jeongin saw them and winced. His face did a thing and Felix knew he was doing his magical medicine shit he does.

“May I?” Jeongin asked.

Felix looked at his own hands then at Jeongin’s and at the door. Maybe he had imagined Minho. Maybe Minho was in some room. Felix lifted his hands. “Doesn’t hurt much,” he said, honest to a fault.

Jeongin smiled. He didn’t take Felix’s hand instead he hovered his palms above it. The skin under them stung. The puncture softened, then blurred and vanished. Jeongin moved to the left hand and did the same. He didn’t touch.

“There,” Jeongin said, helplessly pleased with himself.

“Show-off,” Hwang said but his tone was filled with affection.

Jeongin shrugged, eyes still on Felix. “Drink?” he asked. “Water?”

Felix nodded. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Jeongin said, as Seungmin handed Felix a paper cup filled with water. “Your brain did what a hurt brain does. We poked it. That’s on us.”

Felix breathed with it until his breath felt right. Then whispered, “okay.”

---

 

Notes:

I hope you all had a great weekend 🤍
Thank you guys for reading!! I hope you enjoyed it :))

Next chapter is in Jeongin's POV, so stay tuneddd :))

Chapter 12: guilt

Summary:

The team come to a decision and Jeongin is a bit in his feels.

Sometimes I wonder if things would have turned

out differently if I had done just one thing or

said those few words or been a little less

like this, and a little more,

like that. 

Sometimes I wonder. 

- unknown.

---

Jeongin scrubbed his hands clean twice even though the blood that had come out of Felix’s ears had already been scrubbed off his fingers.

The hum of his ability lingered, like the afterimages from staring directly into the sun for too long. He sucked in a deep breath and tried to will away the thrum. The sink water continued streaming down the sink and Jeongin tried not to think: the panic in Seungmin’s dark eyes, the way Felix’s breath had gone thin and fast, the way the room seemed to ignore the laws of gravity.

He shut the water off. 

From the doorway of the spare bedroom they’d turned into not-a-cell, he could see Jisung half-curled in the chair, forearms crossed on the mattress, cheek pressed to his own sleeve. Felix slept, his mouth set in the faintest stubborn line. Jeongin’s eye flickered to Felix’s left ear without meaning to… Jeongin had touched it and everything had gone to hell. And when they’d killed the lights, when the room was almost-dark, he could’ve sworn… just for a second … that he’d seen a pinprick of red under the skin.

A blink. Like a warning light.

His stomach flipped. Maybe it had been imagination, his brain trying to find meaning out of guilt.

Maybe not.

“Keep him sleeping,” Jeongin whispered to Jisung, as if Jisung would do anything else. The reply was a soft hum and a tighter curl around the blanket corner Felix wasn’t using.

Seungmin’s voice carried down the hall: “Meeting.”

Jeongin dragged a palm over his face and went down the stairs.

The Den always felt too lived-in for a crisis. 

Chan was already at the head of the table, fingers braced on either side, looking so tired…always so exhausted . Seungmin sat to his right, a bit slumped into the chair. Hyunjin had found the couch, very typical of him. Changbin took the seat to Chan’s left, arms crossed over his chest tightly and a small pursed frown on his lips. Minho stood, one shoulder on the wall. He didn’t look at anyone directly, instead he was picking at his nails that Jisung had painted the other day.

Jeongin slid into the chair beside Seungmin without a word.

Chan tapped the table once with an open palm. “Okay,” he said calmly. “We’re going to keep this short.”

Hyunjin snorted. “Lie.”

Chan ignored him. “Seungmin?”

Seungmin set his pen on the notebook and spoke firmly, confident. Jeongin knew him better than that though, with the way Seungmin’s foot kept bumping into Jeongin’s. “He had a flashback, something with his ear. But it started before his ear was touched…” By Jeongin. Jeongin touched Felix’s ear. Jeongin did this. “…I need more information. We can manage around known triggers and try to adapt. But we can’t treat something we don’t understand.” 

Jeongin’s jaw ached. He realized he was grinding his molars and stopped.

“So you’re saying we’re blind,” Changbin summarized, with no judgment. 

“We have been blind, Chan-hyung. We’re blindfolded in a damn minefield,” Seungmin said, lazily precise. “We can tiptoe but we won’t get far.”

“We need a map, basically. And this map is his files.” Chan said, before anyone else could. His mouth flattened. “Hannah is still off-grid. We can’t ask her.”

Hyunjin tipped an arm over his eyes and groaned. “The part where you say the words ‘so we break into the Capitol.’ Let’s skip it. Straight to the part where I say no and prevent us all dying.”

“Who said we were dying?” Changbin asked, interested despite himself.

“I did,” Hyunjin said darkly, peeking from under his forearm.

“We’re not there yet,” Chan said, though his gaze had gone far away for a second, like he was already plotting. He focused back. “Hannah’s safe, as far as we know,” he added for the room, and maybe for himself. “Unreachable, which is… safer for her right now. She would have brought anything she had that could help him. She didn’t. That means the file we need is something she never saw.”

“What kind of file?” Changbin asked.

“We need procedure notes, pharmacology logs for whatever they pumped into him. Chains of command. Locations. Anything that can help us.”

Jeongin swallowed. The itch behind his sternum hadn’t left since they’d said pineapple. He took a breath that didn’t feel like it belonged to him and said, carefully, “There’s something in the scar.”

Five heads turned. Minho’s did not. But Jeongin knew he was listening.

Jeongin fixed his eyes on the table. “I thought I imagined it. When the lights went down, I… thought I saw a light. Under the skin. Red. It blinked.” He made himself look up. “I’m not saying it’s a device, but… I’m saying there might be a device or something.”

Hyunjin’s hand slid off his face. “Like a tracker? Or…”

“If it were a tracker, they would already be here to get him.” Chan cut in, assuring Hyunjin.

“Most likely compliance,” Minho said, voice low and unpleasant. Jeongin’s stomach flipped. “I didn’t see a scar like that on him before,” Minho added, almost as an apology to the room. “It wasn’t there then. If it’s there now…” He let his voice trail off. Too many implications.

Chan hummed as he looked around and his gaze settled on Jeongin. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t know. It’s not on you.”

“It’s on The Capitol.” Changbin added, nodding in agreement with Chan. 

“Which brings us back to the part where you’re about to say ‘so we break into the Capitol’,” Hyunjin sing-songed.

“Do you have a better suggestion?” Seungmin shot back.

Hyunjin stared at the ceiling. “Yes,” he lied, beautifully. He dropped his eyes. “No.”

Changbin drummed two fingers once on his thigh. “I’ll say it. Getting in is not impossible.” He glanced at Minho, chin up. “Getting out with something like that… that makes me nervous.”

“Protocols change,” Minho said, in silent agreement. “Rotations change. They change things up often, to keep people from getting in and out. It also doesn’t help that Felix is the Director's son.”

Silence. 

Dead silence. 

The Directors’ son. Felix was the–

“Oh wow.” Jeongin breathed. “Oh wow .” 

“I am sorry, would you please repeat that vital piece of information we all should have known since the second we dragged him in here?!” Hyunjin burst out, levitating off the couch.

“The Director’s son . Minho-hyung, you couldn’t have told us that ages ago?” Seungmin stressed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What the fuck?”

“Honestly it lines up.” Changbin said quietly, mostly to himself, before he burst out, “You still could’ve told us! You… you …” he gave Minho a look then looked at Chan. “Right?”

Chan did not look surprised. 

“You little– you knew!” Hyunjin gasped out. “The betrayal!” 

Jeongin leaned back in his seat and rubbed his hands down his face. “It changes everything.” He said to no one in particular.

“No it doesn’t.” Minho snapped. “It changes nothing, Felix is still…Felix.”

“I meant in the plans to get his file.” Jeongin replied. “Not with him, specifically.”

“Excuse me! It does! Before we all decide to go get incinerated for a file cabinet,” Hyunjin said as he charged to the table and slammed his hands down on the wood, “let me tell you how stupid this is.”

“Please,” Seungmin murmured. “I would love to hear this one.” 

“Breaking into The Capitol is already idiotic. But to break in to steal a file. For Felix. Who is the son of the Director. The Director's missing son. How do you think it will look, Felix’s kidnappers breaking in and stealing his files?”

“We didn’t kidnap him.” Chan corrected. 

“ What?! Didn’t– we didn’t? Are you sure?” Hyunjin asked, horrified. “Oh my god? And you all call me an idiot . Look at you! You’ve gaslit yourselves into thinking we didn’t kidnap someone, the Directors son, a mere three weeks ago!” 

“Kidnapping is a harsh term.” Seungmin then said, “if anything, I would say rehoming. But anyways, all of their resources would be put into finding Felix so it could make getting into The Capitol easier.”

Hyunjin somehow managed to look even more horrified at that. He sucked in a deep breath. “Do you know how much effort it takes to break into The Capitol? I broke in at thirteen! I almost lost an arm!”

“Is this the part where you tell them you got caught?” Seungmin asked, very dry.

Hyunjin’s mouth thinned. “No,” he said, then sighed. “Maybe. I almost did. I got out because a pipe burst three doors over and all the alarms went off. Divine intervention. Or bad plumbing.”

“If Jin-hyung could do it, then we definitely can.” Changbin added. “It can’t be that hard.” 

Hyunjin shot Changbin a look. 

“So an entry exists,” Chan said, eyes brightening. “Can you give us a layout of how you did it?”

Hyunjin groaned, muttering a small ‘ oh my God’ before he said, “I can draw you something. But it was ten years ago.”

“Accuracy ten years later is more than zero,” Chan said. He turned to Minho. “What about you?”

Minho’s expression went distant, then returned. “There are cameras in every corner, every hall, every gate. There are at least ten agents on each floor patrolling. The Directors’ office is on the top floor. The Labs are in the basement. The Archives are two floors below the Directors’ office. Those are the things that stay put, the rest? It changes.”

Jeongin listened, absorbing. 

“Even if you get in,” Changbin said, “even if you land in the right hallway… who pulls what? Paper? Drives? Do they use drives?”

“They use drives,” Minho said. “They also use misdirection. If you pick up the obvious folder, it sets something off and someone with a gun appears at the door.”

“Hot,” Hyunjin muttered.

Seungmin sighed. “We need medical files specific to Felix. Not the unit’s training logs. Not the propaganda. Just his chart.”

“It’ll likely be in the Directors’ office,” Minho said, equally bleak.

Chan looked at Jeongin then, looking apologetic. “If we do this,” he said, “I want you on the pull team.”

Hyunjin made a choking sound. “Absolutely not.”

Jeongin breathed in deeply, then he heard his own voice. “Yes,” he said, quiet and absolute.

“No,” Hyunjin said, louder. “He is our medic. He is not going to–”

“Exactly, he is our medic. He is the only one who would know what to look for,” Seungmin cut in, unflinching. “If we send someone else, they’ll probably bring home some file on how Felix lost his first tooth.”

“He also has more combat skills than Seungmin. It was either Seungmin or Jeongin. I’m not sending in both.” Chan explained. 

“It’s okay, Hyunjin-hyung. I can do this.” Jeongin swallowed. “I don’t want to touch him like that again without knowing.”

The word again burned his tongue.

Chan’s jaw worked. “That’s not why–”

“It is,” Jeongin said, not unkind, just true. “And it’s okay.”

Hyunjin shoved both hands into his hair and pulled. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. But he goes with me, Minho-hyung is too much of a risk. Changbin also comes with us. Seungmin stays on comms and whispers sweet nothings into our ears. Jisung stays with Felix. Minho… what, remote?”

“Remote,” Chan agreed. “He’ll stick with Seungmin. He will guide you guys since he has the most knowledge on The Capitol out of all of us.”

Changbin leaned back, hands braced on his knees. “We need exits,” he said. “Two minimum.”

Seungmin ignored that. “Recon first. We plan the plan. We also keep treating Felix like a person while we plan to violate several federal laws.” He flicked his gaze to Jeongin, softer around the edges. 

Chan exhaled, slow. “Okay,” he said. “Actionables. Hyunjin and Minho, you two work together, sketch the route, flag the points you remember, anything: fans, pipes, weird temperature shifts.”

“Done,” Hyunjin said, already moving like he hadn’t been the one to say this would kill them all sixty seconds ago. Minho went to follow after him but Chan stopped him. 

“Minho,” Chan continued, “I need you to also write down every door you ever used, every door you were told never to use, the places you only went when you were called.”

“That’s going to be a long list,” Minho said, but there was no bite in it.

“Bin,” Chan said, “prep go bags. No metal. Paper only. Just in case they magnet sweep.”

Changbin nodded. “Already ahead of you,” he said, tipping his chin toward a duffel under the console table. “I am a boy scout.”

“You are a menace,” Hyunjin corrected from the doorway.

“Seungmin,” Chan finished, “you’re in charge of protocol. If you tell us no, we listen.”

“When have you guys ever,” Seungmin murmured. “But okay.”

Jeongin cleared his throat. “I’ll help Bin-hyung prep go bags, I’ll also prep flashdrives to transfer the files into.”

Seungmin’s eyes warmed. “Good,” he said.

“And if he says no,” Chan said, gesturing to the stairs, to where Jisung was, “we don’t do it.”

Jeongin nodded.

Chan sighed and gave Jeongin a look. “You don’t have to do this to prove you’re not a bad guy.”

Jeongin’s mouth opened. Closed. “I know,” he said, honestly. “I’m doing it because he needs me to be the kind of good I can be.”

Chan looked at him for a beat and then nodded. “We’re not heroes, Innie. Just…remember that. Don’t try to be the hero. Okay?”

“Okay.” 

“Perfect. Meeting’s adjourned,” Chan announced, before Seungmin could. “Eat, sleep, shower. Do whatever you feel.”

Jeongin pushed his chair back. “I’m going to sit with him,” he said.

“Tell him there are more fitted sheets to be folded,” Chan said, grinning. “He’ll be thrilled.”

Jeongin snorted at that and walked away, as he was walking he heard Chan call out, “Hyunjin! Can you find me a mint plant?”

He stopped at the kitchen to fill a paper cup with water then padded back down the hall and up the stairs. 

Through the cracked door, Jisung had slid farther forward, forehead nearly touching the back of Felix’s hand where it lay on the blanket. Felix’s chest rose and fell in carefully.

Jeongin put the cup down. He crouched, elbows on his knees, and looked at the scar again. Not touching, not even close. Just looking. The skin around it looked normal. The seam itself was a different texture. He watched for a long minute, eyes starting to water because he wouldn’t blink. 

And then there it was.

The faintest red. Not bright. Not even light, really. A blink. Then gone.

“Okay,” he breathed, to the air, to himself. “You’re real.”

Jisung stirred and blinked blearily up at him. “Innie?”

“Hey,” Jeongin whispered. “He’s okay.”

Jisung nodded, sleepily. “He will be.” He looked at Jeongin longer than a second and then said, softer, “It wasn’t your fault.”

Jeongin didn’t argue. Jisung would only say it again, even more adamant, and Jeongin didn’t have enough room in his chest for that kindness right now.

“Do you need anything?” he asked instead.

“A new spine,” Jisung mumbled. “And food.”

Jeongin huffed a laugh. “I can do one of those.”

“Do the food, maybe some noodles,” Jisung said, and dropped his head back down.

Jeongin stood and pulled the door mostly closed. He leaned his shoulder against the cool wall right outside, like Minho did, and let himself breathe in and out until the guilt didn’t feel like a live wire.

He will fix this.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Felix's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it 🤍

Chapter 13: the pot

Summary:

Hyunjin and Changbin bring home the pot.

It's not the drugs that make a drug addict,

it's the need to escape reality.

- unknown

---

There were three things Felix had learned about Seo and Hwang in the span of his captivity in their…base.

One: if they were whispering when together, then something was going to go wrong or explode. 

Two: if they were not whispering when together, then assume the thing already went wrong or already exploded.

And three: if they came bearing a gift…it was not a gift. It was a trap disguised as generosity, and the best you could do was brace for impact. 

So when Hwang waltzed into the Den melodramatically carrying a clay pot, Felix immediately eyed the exit. Seo, of course, followed close behind him with a grin. Seo probably thought they were being clever right now. Together, they looked like trouble, but not the clever kind. The idiot kind. 

“Guess what we found?” Hwang asked as he plopped the pot down on the table, right before Felix. 

Felix stared at the thing. 

A green stalk with a cluster of leaves. A plant. Just a plant.

Seo leaned in, his arms crossed over his chest and he eyed the plant before his sparkling eyes landed on Felix. “Mint,” he said, way too smug. “Just for you.” 

Felix’s eyes snapped up at him and his stomach did a traitorous twist. “...Mint?”

The smirk on Hwang’s widened even further than Felix thought possible. “That’s right. Real thriving mint. Not the weird stuff they stuff in toothpaste.” 

Felix couldn’t help himself as his hands twitched like they wanted to reach for it. He instead shoved them under his thighs. “But…” He trailed off, “how did you…who told you–” he cut himself off, his throat closing up. 

No one here should’ve known. Mint was…his thing. His secret indulgence.

Seo puffed out his chest. “We’re resourceful.”

Hwang twirled his hair, eyes gleaming. “And charming. Don’t forget charming.”

Felix stared at the leaves. A tremor of suspicion pushed against the desire creeping up his ribs. “It doesn’t look like mint.”

Seo's eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean? Of course it does. It’s leafy, it’s green. What else would it be?”

“Plenty of things are leafy and green,” Felix muttered. He leaned closer despite himself, nose hovering. The scent that hit him was… sharp. Herbal. But not mint. Not the clean brightness he remembered stealing from the Director’s kitchen. This was heavier, muskier.

Hwang clapped his hands once, decisively. “ Look , don’t overthink it. We risked our lives to get this. Some guy in an alley said it was primo quality mint, and we believed him, because we’re good at reading people.”

Felix squinted at them. “You guys bought this from a shady guy in an alley?”

“Traded,” Seo corrected." Hwang gave him a sketch of his face. That’s basically currency.” Then Seo added, quickly. “The guy was not shady.” 

“My face is worth at least two plants,” Hwang said with conviction. “My jawline alone is enough to…”

“Stop,” Felix said quickly, interrupting him. He pinched a leaf between his fingers, rubbing it lightly. Sticky. Odd. “…You’re sure this is mint?”

“Absolutely,” Hwang said, assuring him. 

“This is District Nine mint. Not as top quality as Capitol mint. But this mint is made from love .” Seo said, flicking at one of the leaves. “We wouldn’t give it to you if it would hurt you.”

Felix exhaled through his nose, heavy. He should’ve pushed the pot away, declared it useless, and walked out. He should’ve.

Instead, he plucked a leaf.

Hwang’s face lit up like Christmas. Seo grinned, nodding as he stared Felix down, kinda like those dads who were actually proud of their children. 

Felix raised the leaf to his lips, sniffed it again and grimaced. “If this kills me…”

“You’ll die with good breath,” Hwang promised.

“Shut up,” Felix muttered, and bit down.

The taste spread instantly. Not mint. Not even close. Earthy, pungent, a bitterness that coated his tongue. He frowned, chewing cautiously. “This is–” He stopped.

Because the strangest thing was, it wasn’t that bad. Not mint, no. But oddly smooth. A warmth creeped down his throat and it lingered. 

Seo leaned forward, eyes wide. “Well?”

Felix chewed once more, then swallowed. “That… was not mint. But not that bad.”

Hwang gasped, affronted. “What do you mean it’s not mint?!”

“I mean it doesn’t taste like mint.” He licked his lips, nose wrinkling. “It tastes like… like grass with issues.”

Seo barked out a laugh, loud and proud. “Grass with issues! That’s exactly what mint tastes like here.” Then, he also plucked off a leaf and tossed it into his mouth. 

Felix tilted his head. “No, mint tastes clean. Like when you brush your teeth. This is… this is like chewing on a sickeningly sweet moldy sock.” 

Hwang clutched his chest. “We risked our lives for you. We brought you luxury. And you compare it to a moldy sock? Unbelievable.”

But Felix didn’t spit it out. That was the problem. He reached for another leaf, almost against his will. The taste lingered strangely, making him curious. His body hummed with something unfamiliar. 

Then he handed one to Hwang and said, “try it.”

One leaf became two. Two became three. Then Seo and Hwang slumped into the seats beside Felix, utterly delighted. And by the fourth leaf, Felix’s head felt… lighter. Not dizzy exactly, but like his head floated, like a balloon. He blinked at the plant. It blinked back.

He frowned. “…Did that pot just blink at me?”

HWang slapped the table. “Mint blinks?”

Seo threw his arms up. “No it cannot, this one is just a genius.”

Felix groaned, dragging both hands down his face. “Oh my god.”

Which was when the giggles started. Unstoppable, bubbling out of his chest like the fizz in soda. Felix clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. “Oh no.” 

“Oh yes.” 

At some point, Felix went from sitting on the chair to the floor. 

Then, one minute he was cross-legged on the kitchen floor, and then the next he was sprawled on his back with his head in the open fridge, resting at the base by the vegetable drawer. 

“This is it,” Felix mumbled. “This is heaven.”

“Move over, your hair’s in the onions,” Seo grunted, trying to wedge himself into the same space.

Felix shoved him weakly. “Get your own heaven.”

Hwang, meanwhile, had discovered the spice rack. He lined up jars in a neat row like tiny soldiers. In alphabetical order too. “Paprika,” he whispered, holding the jar to his chest. “You’ve always been there for me. You’re the only one who understands.”

Felix giggled. Loud. Too loud. He slapped a hand over his mouth. “Why is everything funny?”

Seo had a yogurt cup in each hand. He peeled one open with his teeth like a barbarian. “Because the world is stupid, and we’re finally smart enough to notice.”

Felix stared at him, then dissolved into wheezing laughter again. His chest ached. His stomach ached. He couldn’t stop.

Hwang abandoned the paprika to dramatically flop to the floor with them. “We’re not smart, we’re enlightened . We’re philosophers . This…” he waved a random spoon like a royal scepter, “This is our symposium.”

Felix tried to sit up and immediately tipped sideways. “Then what’s the meaning of life, philosopher?”

Hwang pressed a finger to his lips. Thought deeply. Too deeply. “Cheese,” he finally declared. “Just cheese.” And before Felix knew it, Hwang had a block of… cheese… in his hands. Moldy cheese. 

Seo raised his yogurt cups. “Amen.”

Felix found himself nodding solemnly, as if this were the single greatest truth humanity had ever uncovered. 

They moved eventually, dragging themselves to the living room. Felix sat cross-legged on the couch, the chain that would be on his ankle…gone, and he was eating crackers with peanut butter. Hwang had built a tower of empty cans and insisted it was “modern art.” Seo narrated everything he did like a commentator, shouting play-by-play as he opened another jar of pickles. 

“None shall pass,” Felix said when Seo started to make his way to the couch.

Seo charged at him. “I challenge the tyrant!”

Felix screamed with laughter, fending him off with the butter knife. 

Hwang collapsed on the floor, tears forming at the corners of his eyes, chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

And Felix felt alive.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I thought I should do another light-hearted chapter before we got into some...heavy stuff. I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Changbin's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about itttt

Chapter 14: is he dead?

Summary:

Chan catches Changbin and Hyunjin, chaos erupts.

Almost dead yesterday,

maybe dead tomorrow, 

but alive, gloriously alive, 

today.

- Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

---

The first thing Changbin noticed when he woke up was warmth. Too much warmth. The second thing he noticed was weight. And the third thing…the one that jolted him upright with zero grace…was Felix.

Felix.

The Capitol’s prized little porcelain doll. The one they’d practically bubble-wrapped in chains and sedatives… was now sprawled across Changbin’s chest like a cat. Limp. Heavy. Completely, utterly unconscious.

“Oh, fuck,” Changbin croaked, his voice dripping with sleep.

Across from him, Hyunjin stirred, groaning, and his hair covered half his face. “Why are you yelling?” he mumbled. Then he blinked blearily at the sight before him: Felix nestled between them, one arm tucked over Hyunjin’s ribs and cheek pressed to Changbin’s hoodie.

Hyunjin sprang upright. “ Oh. My. God. ”

Changbin slapped a hand over his mouth immediately. “Shut up! Do you want to wake him?!”

But Felix didn’t stir. Didn’t twitch. His chest rose and fell, yes, but slow. Too slow. His lips were parted slightly, skin pale even in the dim light.
Changbin’s stomach bottomed out.

“…He’s dead,” Hyunjin whispered, eyes wide.

“No, he’s not dead,” Changbin snapped automatically. He pressed a hand to Felix’s shoulder and gave a careful shake. “Hey, Felix. Wake up. You’re fine. You’re fine, right?”

Felix remained limp, head rolling slightly with the movement.

Panic flared Changbin’s chest. He looked at Hyunjin, whose expression had shifted from shock to pure horror. “We killed him. We actually killed him. Oh my god, they’re going to hang us. No… worse . Chan is going to lecture us.”

Changbin squeezed Felix’s wrist, trying to find a pulse. His own hands were shaking. “No, we didn’t kill him. He’s- he is still warm. He’s breathing. See? He’s fine.”

“He doesn’t look fine!” Hyunjin whispered, barely. He clutched at his own head and looked up to the ceiling. “He looks… he looks like an orphan who died of tuberculosis! Look at him!” And Hyunjin’s eyes snap back down to Felix’s limp form.

Changbin glared at him. “Stop saying he’s dead, or you will manifest it.”

Hyunjin smacked his arm. “You’re supposed to be the responsible one! How could you let me eat that many leaves? How could you let him eat that many leaves?!”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” Changbin hissed, voice pitching higher. “You’re the one who traded for the damn plant! You said it was mint!”

Hyunjin’s mouth dropped open. “You believed me! Who believes me?!”

“Apparently I did, because you dragged me into your idiot scheme!”

“Chan-hyung asked me to find some mint!” 

The argument might’ve spiraled into a full-blown wrestling match if not for Felix humming. The smallest, faintest sleepy hum.

Both of them froze immediately, staring down at him.

Felix’s head burrowed further into Changbin’s chest, soft hair tickling his jawline.

“…Did he just purr ?” Hyunjin whispered reverently. “Like a cat?”

“He’s alive. That’s all that matters.” He exhaled shakily, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Thank God. Okay. Okay. We just… we just keep him comfortable until he wakes up. No big deal.”

Hyunjin nodded furiously, then said. “But if he doesn’t wake up soon, we’re screwed. Chan’s gonna skin us alive. He’s gonna skin us and then lecture our corpses.”

As if summoned by mere mention, footsteps echoed down the hall. A door creaked. Then–

“What the hell is going on in here?”

Chan’s voice.

Dear fucking God, they are dead. Both Changbin and Hyunjin whipped their heads toward the doorway in unison, guilty. Just like kids who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Chan’s eyes scanned the room. Felix limp between them, both of them wide-eyed and horrified… and Chan’s face drained of color.

“You idiots,” he breathed. “What did you do?” Chan didn’t yell. That was somehow even worse. He just… stared. 

Then his gaze slowly traveled to the pot, with a significantly less amount of leaves than before, sitting innocently on the coffee table. His jaw flexed. “You absolute idiots,” Chan said finally, voice low. “Tell me you didn’t give him that.”

Hyunjin squeaked. A literal squeak. “We didn’t give it to him! He wanted it! He reached for it himself!”

Changbin’s mouth went dry. “We thought it was mint,” he blurted. “Like, real mint. You know, refreshing, toothpaste-y, the safe kind of mint.”

Chan’s eyes narrowed, cutting to the pot. “…That’s cannabis.”

“What?!” Hyunjin exploded, voice cracking. “You mean we’ve been- we’re…oh my god, am I high ?!”

Changbin groaned. “Oh, now you realize it?”

Chan dragged both hands down his face. “You two…” His voice broke off, strangled. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened? He’s still on sedatives.”

Hyunjin, eyes wide with panic, said, “So… what do we do? Do we call a doctor? Do we…” Then his voice dropped into a whisper, horrified at the thought, “bury him?”

“He’s not dead!” Changbin shouted, louder than he intended. Felix barely even twitched at the volume, but didn’t stir. Changbin gestured down at him as if it were proof. “See? Breathing. Perfectly fine. Totally alive. Look.” He held up Felix’s arm to show Chan his pulse, but Felix’s hand fell limp.

Chan was not convinced. 

The commotion, of course, was loud enough to wake the whole damn house.

“What’s with the yelling?” Jisung’s voice filtered in first, rough with sleep. He padded in, hair sticking up in five different directions. His eyes landed on the scene, blinked once, twice, then widened. “Oh, what happened now? ”

Behind him, Jeongin appeared, rubbing his eyes. “Why are we all…” He froze, spotting Felix sprawled unconscious. “Did you kill him?!”

“We did not kill him!” Changbin snapped. He was sweating now, clutching Felix’s limp arm like a lifeline.

Hyunjin flailed off the couch. “It was supposed to be mint! Mint!”

Jeongin gawked at them. “Mint doesn’t knock people out cold!”

Jisung’s face twisted in horror. “Wait. Wait wait wait. You gave him drugs? To Felix ? While he’s– holy shit, you did kill him! What the fuck?!”

“He’s not dead!” Changbin barked again.

Noise grew louder behind them. More footsteps, more voices. Seungmin pushed his way in, scowling. “What’s happening now? Do you all have any idea what time it is…?” His gaze landed on Felix. He froze. “…Okay. What the hell.”

“Why does he look like an actual corpse?” Jeongin muttered, horrified.

“More like a goldfish corpse,” Jisung whispered, already getting all up in Felix’s space and checking up on him.

“Can we not compare him to corpses or fish right now?!” Changbin snapped, he barely noticed how he pulled Felix tightly against him.

And then Minho appeared and silence fell upon them. 

Changbin felt as if the world stopped spinning. 

He was silent at first, how he usually was in the mornings. Quiet, still waking up. Well, until his gaze zeroed in on Felix, then his whole body went taut. His eyes darted from Felix to Changbin, then to Hyunjin.

“What,” Minho said softly, dangerously, “did you two do to him?”

The room froze.

Hyunjin pointed a trembling finger at the clay pot. “We thought it was mint.”

Minho’s glare narrowed to slits. “You thought mint looked like that ?”

“It’s leafy!” Hyunjin defended. “And green!”

“Plenty of things are leafy and green!” Minho’s voice rose, filled with fury. “You could’ve poisoned him, you morons!”

“We didn’t know!” Changbin burst out. “We thought–we were trying to–” He clamped his mouth shut before he dug himself in a deeper hole.

Then. “Chan-hyung told us to get it!” Hyunjin blurted. 

Chan dragged both hands through his hair. Then louder, he said: “Enough. All of you. He’s fine. He’s breathing. No one’s burying anyone, no one’s dying, no one’s killing anyone else .”

But nobody moved except for Jeongin who walked towards Felix and gently pressed two fingers to Felix’s neck. “His pulse is strong. Breathing steady. Pupils okay. He’s just out like a light.”

Then… a splash .

Cold water rained down, soaking Felix’s hair and Changbin’s shirt.

Felix sputtered violently, jerking upright. “What the hell?” His accent thickened, groggy and annoyed, his eyes barely blinking against the water running down his face.

Changbin turned slowly, water dripping from his chin, toward the culprit. Seungmin stood over them with an empty glass in hand, looking unbothered.

“You’re welcome,” Seungmin said flatly. “Problem solved.”

“Problem created,” Changbin snapped, holding Felix tighter against him. “He’s not a plant, you don’t water him!”

Felix coughed again, wrinkling his nose and squeezed his eyes even more shut trying to block the water from entering. “I.. what the fuck?” His voice was raspy, sleepy, but he said it so softly.

And the room erupted around them.

“You poured water on him?!” That was Jisung, yelping. 

“I mean that is an efficient way to see if he is alive.” Jeongin winced. 

“You don’t just pour water on someone who is doped up on drugs!” Hyunjin snapped. 

“You all are so fucking stupid.” Minho muttered.

Felix’s body stilled. His eyelids fluttered, still shut, lashes clumped with water. He didn’t look up but he tilted his head faintly, like his ears were searching. And ice came over Changbin. Jisung pulled a blanket over Felix’s head, as if that could stop Felix from going on a murder spree.

“Hyung…you need to leav—” Changbin started, barely looking at Minho as he braced himself for the worst possible outcome. 

“Lee Know?” Felix mumbled, sounding utterly confused, and whatever Changbin was about to say died on his lips. 

The world seemed to drop out from under them.

Chan’s head snapped toward Minho so fast he must’ve gotten whiplash. His eyes were wide and Minho’s lips parted soundlessly.

The silence this time wasn’t loud. It was deafening.

Changbin was about to ask about what that was about. Who was Lee Know? Who was he referring to? But Felix was pushing himself up, a blanket still on covering his head and he said, in the most devastated tone Changbin ever heard come out of a person, “Lee Know’s alive ?”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Minho's POV, so stay tunedddd :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 15: you are not him

Summary:

Things just got more complicated.

Right now, I'm stuck

somewhere between what if,

what might, what cold have,

and what never will and all

I want to know is what

actually is

- Christina Hart

---

The sound of his own heartbeat was so loud it drowned the room.

Minho barely felt his fingers, curled into fists at his sides. He couldn’t look away from Felix. At his  drenched hair, blinking dazedly, lips parted, voice still echoing in Minho’s head like a phantom. ‘Lee Know’s alive?’

He hadn’t heard that name in years.

There was a time when Felix called Minho, ‘Lee Know’ , for months on end. It started when they first had formally introduced themselves to one another after the ledger incident. Felix had gone up to him, apologizing about the whole thing.

Minho, at the time, had just looked at Felix and the constellations of freckles on his cheeks and said, “ don’t sweat it, I’m Lee Minho. ” 

Felix had replied with, “ I’m Lee Felix. Nice to meet you, Lee Know-ssi. ” 

He had laughed so hard he hadn’t corrected Felix for months. Because Felix had said it with such confidence, with such absolute certainty, and it was funny .

Jisung had already dropped the thin blanket over Felix’s head. He’d tucked himself against the couch, close enough for warmth, and also acting as a barrier. Changbin, rigid, had one arm braced along the backrest and the other around Felix’s shoulders, like he could stop the worst from happening. Hyunjin was doing laps on the floor, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Okay, okay, okay. He’s hallucinating a Lee Know,” Hyunjin hissed, then flapped a hand at himself. “What kind of name is Lee Know?”

Minho pursed his lips and just as he was about to say something Chan cut in. “Hyunjin.” He sighed, like some exhausted parent. Though it was Hyunjin’s name that Chan said, everyone listened and looked over to Chan. Who had one hand on his hips and the other rubbing his forehead. 

Jeongin hovered, pale, fingers in a hover over the blanket covering Felix as if he could help him through fabric. Seungmin stood three feet back with his notebook open, his jaw worked. 

Minho kept himself by the doorway. He angled his body so if the blanket somehow dropped from Felix’s head (seriously does Jisung really think that thing is going to hold?) Felix would only see his shoulder, not his face. He knew better than anyone how to be present and not present; he’d spent years perfecting it.

“Felix,” Jisung murmured to the blanket, his voice pitched low, how one would speak to a sleeping cat. “Hey, Sunshine. You’re okay, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

“Lee Know’s…” Felix’s voice came small and wrecked from under the blanket. “No. No. He… he died. He died.” His breath hitched. “They said. I saw…?” The fabric shifted and his hand peaked out from under the blanket. He sounded young, so young , and something in Minho clenched, it ate at him.

Minho found the doorframe with two fingers and pressed into it until the bone ached. “I’m here,” he said, carefully. He kept his face turned away, his eyes on the crack in the molding where Hyunjin had once accidentally thrown a knife. “I won’t come any closer. I’ll stay right here.”

The blanket went very still. Beneath it, Felix’s breathing sped up, changed. Minho clocked it, the way the blanket sank in and rose: inhale for two, hold for one, exhale for four… no, three… no.

Jisung’s palm slid along the blanket at Felix’s shoulder. “Count with me, yeah? Four in… six out.”

Felix made a small noise that was not an agreement.

The air shifted. It always did before it really shifted. Minho felt it in his teeth. The weird way gravity forgot itself for a second, the paper on the table deciding it might prefer flying after all. How a teaspoon trembled and twisted in its cup like it was trying to escape.

“Behind me,” Felix said through the fabric, voice flattening, mechanizing. Not to them. To the thing in his head that woke when the world went blank in his head. “Behind means…behind means–” He inhaled sharply, shifting away from Jisung. But Jisung scooted even closer. Changbin kept himself still, his eyes wide as he looked at Chan for a call. 

Hyunjin stopped pacing. His gaze snapping to Felix. “Nope,” he said, immediately, backing toward the light switch with both hands up. “Nope, nope, don’t do the floaty thing. No one likes the floaty thing.”

“Lights,” Chan said, already stepping closer to Felix and Jisung. “Kill the overheads. Keep the lamps.”

Hyunjin slapped the switch. 

Felix flinched. He was listening to his head now, not them. He was gone. Minho knew that look without seeing it: the tight mouth, the eyes fixed on a wall with a far away look.

“Minho,” Seungmin said, looking at him. Not a command. Not a plea. Seungmin wasn’t a fan of Felix’s ability, Minho could tell based on how last time Seungmin screamed pineapple, how his eyes sought Minho and how desperate he looked.

Minho licked his lips. His chest felt too tight for his lungs. He thought about staying in the doorway and not making the problem worse, and then the mug on the table skated three centimeters and the picture frame on the shelf tilted and the ceramic mint pot (which was not mint) for the love of God, shook. The air pressure went wrong. Jisung’s hair lifted like static.

“Hyung,” Jeongin said, tight. “His pulse is—”

“Pineapple,” Chan said, calmly even though his eyes were blown. 

The ripple went through Minho and out of him. He let it go.

Nullification wasn’t a switch where he could just turn it on and off, just like that. No, it was a tide. It began in his ribs and moved outward, a low hum through his arms, the room, the nails in the walls . He didn’t reach for Felix with it, he let it wash over Felix slowly. Minho learned that lesson the hard way.

The spoon stopped straining toward nothing. The picture frame righted itself with a guilty tick. The room had settled. 

Felix breathed in like he had room in his lungs again. Then the blanket pitched forward, and Felix’s hand caught the hem and he dragged it off his head in one angry, graceless swipe, blinking in the lamp-light. His pupils were blown wide and not from the room. Water still clung to the ends of his hair where Seungmin had drenched him in water like an idiot, and his freckles stood out sharp against his pale skin. He was beautiful. And then…Felix looked straight at Minho like he was a stranger. And God…  

Though Minho nullified Felix’s power, the ground beneath his feet tilted and nothing felt steady. His chocolatey brown eyes, that once were warm now, were flat, unfamiliar, a bit angry . Minho used to be able to read the tilt of his head, he used to know the curve of his mouth. Now it was all foreign language that Minho wasn’t allowed to translate. He’s been reduced to a simple silhouette, a figure, a mere person. 

His stomach quenched as Minho searched for a trace of what once was, but it was like looking in a void. Minho moved a fraction behind the doorframe on instinct, but he was already caught.

Felix’s whole body stuttered. He looked at Minho’s mouth, at his eyes, at the shape of his shoulders. Felix’s lips parted and he shook his head. “No,” he said, so quietly Minho almost missed it. Then louder, jagged, “No. He’s not here. You’re… They killed him. He’s dead. Don’t. Don’t do that… don’t trick me.” The last words came like he’d swallowed glass.

Jisung was half on the couch now, half on the floor. “Sunshine, look at me. Not at the creep in the doorway.”

Minho didn’t disagree with Jisung, didn’t even utter a word. He kept the hum steady and felt sweat bead along his spine.

“I’m not…” Felix’s voice kept catching. “I am not failing this.” His eyes went distant for a heartbeat before he began reciting to himself…almost reminding himself: “When presented with fabricated stimuli, the agent will…will…” His hand twitched at his side. The two smallest fingers trembled. Minho’s eyes locked onto them, his stomach bottoming out. “Com-Compliant agents do not. They do not…”

Changbin’s arm tightened. “Hey, hey. You’re not being tested. Okay? It’s just us. We’re too dumb to design a creepy test like that.”

“Extremely dumb,” Hyunjin threw in, arm flung across his own face.

“Don’t you dare lie to me.” Felix hissed before his gaze snapped back to Minho. “You’re not him,” he said, certainly shaking. “You’re not. He’s…” He swallowed and looked like he wanted to scream, to cry, to hurt someone. He whispered it like it was a sin. “He’s dead. ”

Jisung’s eyes burned. “Sunshine…I don’t know who Lee Know is,” he said, so soft Minho barely heard it.

The low hum that Minho had been emitting wasn’t enough. Minho felt the floor under his boots start to rattle again. The air pressure tucked behind his eardrums and pushed. Felix’s pupils dilated another notch and then he blinked too slow.

“Seungmin,” Chan said quietly.

“On it,” Seungmin replied, already moving, already a shadow sliding along the edge of the rug. “Jeongin, left side. No touch.”

“I know,” Jeongin shot back.

Minho lifted his hand from the doorframe. He hated the next thing, hated it more than the voice that wanted to say I’m here, it’s me, your Lee Know . He stepped in. Three slow steps, eyes on the floor with his chin angled so Felix instead saw his cheek and not face. The hum rose deep from his chest and he’d breathed in. He felt Felix’s power meet it with a bright spark, and then he felt it fatigue.

Felix flinched like he felt the hum as if they were angry hands. He tried to breathe in properly. “No,” he said again, wild. “Don’t…don’t…” His left hand flexed and every pen on the coffee table rolled an inch toward him. “Pineap-” He swallowed the word, shook his head. “No, no, no, no.”

“It’s okay, I get it,” Minho said, and dialed it down a notch. “No fruit. Just the room is calming down now, all boring and shit.” He wished he could be boring. He’d prayed to God to give him boring for most of his adult life.

Felix’s throat worked as he squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re not him… but you… you sound like him…” he muttered to himself, his words soft.

“I know,” Minho said. The truth laid carefully between them, a tool, neutral. “I’m not him. Not right now. Not today.”

Jisung’s breath broke audibly and he covered it with a cough.

Something in Felix eased and then went taut. He let out a strangled sound and then everything pushed , the kind of push that decided whether a room broke or not. The mint pot skittered, toppled, and spilled damp soil across the table with a thud that made Hyunjin yelp. The couch springs groaned. Changbin didn’t move, rock-locked around Felix. Jisung stayed planted, head tipped, whispering just for Felix: “Four in,” he breathed, his hand intertwined with Felix’s right. “Six out. I’ve got you.”

Minho held the line. He despised this part. The necessary cruelty of turning a gift off. He wanted to take it from the walls , not from Felix, never from Felix. But the physics didn’t care about his feelings. He kept the weight slow, tried to make it not feel like a cage. He glanced at Chan, needing reassurance. 

Chan smiled softly at him and nodded. Minho sucked in a deep breath. 

“Look at me,” Minho said, and he finally let Felix see his eyes. “I’m real. I’m alive. I’m breathing.” He took half a step away to prove it. “No touching. No tests. If you want me gone, I’ll go.”

Felix shook his head once in a jagged line. “Don’t…” He startled at his own ask. “No. No, why do you sound like him ?” He looked sick, Felix blinked and blinked, a couple tears running down his cheeks. “Don’t go,” he croaked. “But don’t… I can’t… It won’t…”

“I understand, I got it,” Minho said gently. “I’ll stay and shut up. I’m very good at that.”

Hyunjin snorted. “Lies.”

“Shut it,” Changbin murmured, without heat.

Chan’s gaze cut to Minho, flicked to Felix. Minho could see the wheels turning in his head. The way his eyes lit up knowingly.

Jisung shifted, half on the floor, half braced on the couch. “Sunshine,” he murmured, catching Felix’s attention, “can I ask something?”

Felix didn’t answer verbally, but he nodded. Jisung waited for a few seconds before he asked. “The name you said. ‘Lee Know.’ Who is he?”

A pause, then Felix said, his voice rough. “That’s… This is… not a test?”

“Not a test,” Jisung assured him. “No right answer. Just you.”

Felix scrunched his nose as his gaze fell to his lap. “He was…someone. Important…” His throat bobbed, “he was nice and exceptional at combat. He helped me train…I think.” 

Minho felt the room tilt.

Felix turned his head and his gaze landed on Minho. He almost seemed upset, anguished. “He sounded like…” He trailed off, breath hitching. “Like you . Why does he sound like you? You are not him.”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!!!!!!!

Next chapter is in Jisung's POV, so hehhehe :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it :)))

Chapter 16: north

Summary:

Jisung and Minho have a much needed talk.

I am yours, even in this waiting,

I am yours

- unknown

---

Jisung finds him in the boiler room, where the pipes hiss and creak and the air is thick enough to chew. Minho sat on the edge of a fucking ugly chair with a quilt that doesn’t belong to any of them, the bulb above him barely even glowed in the darkness.

Jisung knocked twice on the doorframe so he wouldn't startle him. He stepped in anyways. “I’m not going to make a joke,” he said, and the words taste weird because what is Jisung without his jokes? He is built out of jokes. “I just… I need to be here.”

Minho lifted his head slowly, like it weighed another twenty pounds. He looked at Jisung, then passed him, then back again. “Okay,” he says. It’s barely a voice.

Jisung dragged over the wobbly chair and sat with a safe distance between them, trying to not crowd him. He pocketed his own hands because they’re jittery and they will reach for Minho without permission. His knee bounced.

“What happened upstairs was…” Jisung starts, and stops, he swallows. He tries again. “He said your… name ,” it wasn’t exactly Minho’s name, “I watched your face and Minho… you looked…” he trailed off. He didn’t know how to say it. Minho looked devastated but hopeful at the same time, he looked as if he wanted to reach out to Felix but held himself back for both of their sakes.

Minho huffed, a small broken thing. “I look like a lot of things.”

A beat. The boiler ticks. Jisung waits out the sound.

“You can tell me the truth,” he said. “All the ugly parts. I can handle it, I want to handle it. I want to help you.”

Minho’s mouth twitched. He stares at his hands like they could hold all of the answers. “I want him back,” he says at last, plainly, the way Minho does when he’s decided the time for pretty lies is over. “Not the agent they carved out of him. Not the… compliant thing. I want my Lix. The one who burned toast and laughed about it. The one who named strays kittens after constellations, baked brownies for anyone and everyone, and forgot his own gloves in his room every winter. I want him back and I can’t say that out loud in front of everyone because it sounds like I’m asking him to hurry up, to remember and be okay and I am not. I am not, I swear.”

“I know,” Jisung says, because he does. Wanting is not hurrying. Wanting sits over you like a cloud until it finally rains and you can breathe again. Jisung, too, wanted a lot of things in his life. 

Minho swallows. His throat bobs. “I need him,” he said, a confession. “Not to make me whole. I know the speeches, Jisung. I’m whole or whatever, I know. But Lix is like the piece that made the rest of the world make sense. A compass still needs its north.”

Jisung leans his elbows on his knees and presses the heels of his hands together. “Okay,” he says softly. “Okay.”

Minho’s gaze slides to the wall, to the small crack near the baseboard where a previous flood tried to break through the plaster. “People think I’m… I don’t know. They think that I went cold, mean, cruel. That I used up all my life on training and mission briefings and being useful.” He lets out a slow breath through his nose. “The friends I made when I first escaped to District Nine, they were…” Minho whistled, shaking his head. “You know District Nine. What it’s like at night. The shuttered storefronts with doors that aren’t locked if you knock the right way. The rooms below the rooms. They liked going to those places, specifically Wang’s place.” 

Jisung nods once. He knew those places. They are the kind of place where you’d go to forget your name, the place where you could be someone else for a night, drink and smoke your worries away. Nothing mattered those nights. Jisung once caught Chan trying to make some money at one of those places when they first had gotten out themselves, him, Chan and Changbin. And they were starving. Jisung was only thirteen and was so angry . 

“I went,” Minho said. “A few times. After… after he was gone. I stood in the doorway and watched. There were hands. Mouths. I could have. Y’know?” He swallowed again. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. It felt like… I was stealing from him. It was pathetic. I was being faithful to a ghost.” 

“It’s not pathetic,” Jisung said, and he meant it. “It’s you, you care Minho.”

Minho laughed, low and rough, almost as if he didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. “Everyone else slept. Flirted, laughed. And I went home and lay on the floor because the bed had too much space on it.”

Jisung felt the little catch behind his breastbone. The place where anxiety liked to sit and pick at him. He took a deep breath, smooth and steady. “Did you tell anyone that?”

“No,” Minho said, and the word is small and old. “Just you.”

Jisung didn’t say anything, he let Minho look down to the floor. Minho’s eyes went shiny and then not. “Sometimes,” he said, voice quieter, “I thought about… not choosing to be here or there. To just let myself thin out. Letting the days turn me into background noise. Until I was gone so that no one had to do the hard work of missing me.”

Jisung sat so still his knees forgot to bounce. He kept his panic folded small and tidy in his pocket.

“You didn’t,” he said, telling Minho that and assuring himself. “You stayed. And you’re going to stay. I’m proud of you for it.” Jisung told him, scooting closer. 

Once Minho had told Jisung that. About a year ago when Jisung was having a terrible anxiety attack. Jisung had locked himself in his room, struggled and struggled. Minho, somehow, got in. Always the anomaly. He sat with Jisung until he could breathe again, and then some. Before Minho left he told Jisung he was proud of him. 

Minho blinked, and he rubbed his thumb over the knuckle of his left hand. “I didn’t. Partly because I’m stubborn. Partly because…” He stopped. His mouth curved, it wasn’t a smile. “Because every time I couldn’t hear myself, I could hear him. Laughing at himself for burning brownies. Asking me if foxes mate for life because he read it once and wanted it to be true, he wanted us to be like foxes.” A breath shudders through him. “And sometimes I would think of you.” 

Jisung swallowed. “Minho.”

They let the boiler talk for a while. The room is warm and loud and somehow private.

“You were right, Ji. I am jealous,” Minho said after a while. “Of you. Of what he remembers with you. It makes me feel small and wrong and worthless. And yet I’m relieved because it means that there was something he could latch onto to get to himself. You’ve got him in your hands, and I trust you. I’ve never felt more relieved knowing that it was you.” He shakes his head once, then said, “It’s a mess. I am a mess.”

Jisung scrubbed his palms on his jeans, grounding himself. “You get to be a mess,” he says. “You also get to be loved while you are one.”

“I’m not good at being loved.”

“Well I’m great at doing it,” Jisung said simply. “So we can meet in the middle.”

A breath. Another. Minho’s shoulders sink down a inch.

“I keep seeing,” Minho said, voice distant, “that moment, over and over again. I can’t…get rid of it. The blanket. His voice under it. ‘Lee Know’s alive?’ I wanted to say ‘yes’ and I couldn’t.” He let his head tip back against the wall. “Chan’s right. My voice is the only semi-safe part of me right now. And I hate it. I used to be fully safe, all of me.” 

Jisung nods. “I’ll work on it. For him and for you. I’ll tell him about that cat you refuse to acknowledge that you feed in the alley.”

Minho’s mouth twitched, an almost smile. “His name is Deneb.”
“See?” Jisung said. “You know the good stories. You’ll be on the road back, whether he knows it or not. I’ll tell him stories like that and soon he is going to look at you again like he did before.”

Minho nodded. The nod is slow, deliberate. “I can wait,” he said, and Jisung heard the vow in it, the kind of vow that would wait years without complaining.

“Well, you don’t wait alone,” Jisung said.

Minho tipped forward, elbows on knees, and scrubs his hands down his face. When he drops them, his eyes are red around the rims. Jisung’s chest loosened an inch.

“Tell me what you need from me right now,” Jisung asked. “Right now. In the next hour.”

Minho thinks, really thinks. “Stay?” he suggested. “Just for a bit. Don’t talk. If I close my eyes I want to be sure that when I open them I will still have… this.”

“This,” Jisung echoes. He shifts the chair an inch closer and sets his sneaker so the toe touches Minho’s boot. A tiny bridge. He doesn’t reach for his hands. He doesn’t have to.

They sit like that for a while. Minho’s shoulders ease by the minute. Somewhere upstairs, they hear the others chattering away: Hyunjin complaining about how loud the building is, Changbin hollering to Felix about what he wants to eat (Felix doesn’t reply), Jeongin and Seungmin playing a video game, Chan bemoaning about how Jeongin and Seungmin left him out. 

After a long time, Minho spoke and his eyes were closed. “I didn’t touch anyone,” he muttered. “Not because I’m some perfect person. Trust me, I’ve done terrible things. It felt like I was cheating if I did, and it made me sick to my stomach..”

Jisung’s throat got tight. He keeps his voice even, steady. “You kept faith with something real,” he says. “That’s not a failing.”

Minho breathed in. Out. “If he never remembers me the way I remember him,” he said, and the sentence comes out ragged. “I’ll build around it. I will. I just… needed someone to know that the wanting doesn’t go away just because I’m being good.”

“I know,” Jisung said. “And I’ll remind you when you forget that I know.”

Silence again, and Jisung’s anxiety paces the edges of the room. 

Eventually Minho opened his eyes. He looked less exhausted, but still tired. Jisung considered that a win, no less.

“I’m going to go upstairs in a minute,” Jisung said. “Swapping with Chan to make sure the idiot plant squad hasn’t done another idiot thing again.” He tipped his head. “You coming, or you staying with the boiler a bit longer.”

Minho glanced at the door, then back. “Two minutes,” he said.

Jisung stands. The room tilts and rights, his body remembers he has legs. At the door, he looked back because you should always look back at least once, to make sure. “We’re getting his files,” he said, matter-of-fact. “We’re bringing home whatever bullshit they wrote about him, and we’re going to rip the lies out. He will come back to you. We’ll give your compass north.”

Minho’s mouth does something small and fierce. “Okay…good,” he said.

Jisung left him to the boiler and the ugly chair, and he climbed the stairs with his heart heavy in the right way. Full of someone else’s weight. He pressed a hand to the door at the top, counted to four in, six out, and went to sit by the couch, where a blanket rises and falls. 

Jisung smiled as he tucked a stray of blonde hair from Felix’s nose. “He’s waiting for you, Sunshine.” Jisung whispered to his sleeping form, a small confession. A secret. “And he loves you, y’know.” 

Someone cleared their throat and Jisung looked up to see Chan’s eyes on him, a small smile on his face. “He’s been out since this afternoon. Binnie’s food didn’t even wake him.”
Jisung snorted. “Not everyone can afford to eat like Binnie, all he eats is chicken breast . It’s nasty, I wouldn’t wake up either…” He scrunched his nose. 

Chan grinned as he shook his head. Then he asked. “Boiler room?”

“Boiler room,” Jisung confirmed.

“He didn’t seduce the chair, right?” Chan tried.

“Too late.”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Jeongin's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 17: the dying tree

Summary:

Jeongin, Changbin, and Hyunjin go and retrieve the files on Felix.

May you have the courage to 

go places that scare you

- unknown

---

Jeongin counted his steps on the walk over because Felix was on to something. About how counting calmed the mind. It calmed Jeongin. 

One, two, three, four, five, six…

The cold bit at his cheeks and turned the air into ice in his lungs. District Nine bled into District Eight like how one nasty bruise merged into an even nastier bruise. There were fewer street vendors, more shuttered grates, a lot more Enforcers at the corners pretending to not do their jobs. They were. The city’s streets all led towards The Capitol like the building was a star the whole shitshow orbited.

Hyunjin walked ahead with a hood up and that stupidly graceful gait that made him look like he was walking a runway instead of toward a building that would kill them for even existing. Changbin walked just behind Jeongin, he kept himself close to Jeongin, and the duffel’s strap cut a clean diagonal across his chest. They moved like they’d practiced. A loose triangle, space to pivot.

Chan had split from them about a few minutes ago, whispering to them that he was taking the north fire escape up to the roofs. “You’ll see me if you need to,” he’d said, and Jeongin didn’t know what that meant. How do you see the person who got very good at not being seen? But he believed Chan anyway. 

His pager buzzed once against his ribs.

MINHO: Three guards. South doors. Stop.

Hyunjin stopped without looking like he stopped in suspicion. He bent down to tie a shoelace that definitely didn’t need tying and tipped his head over. Jeongin listened to the guards footsteps: heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe. Then they were gone.

“Still got it,” Hyunjin whispered a smirk gracing his lips. Jeongin recognized the sound for what it was: nerves trying to save face.

The south side of The Capitol didn’t look like an entrance. According to Minho that was the point. The glamor was in the center where glass stairs coiled up in a lobby built to impress visitors from neighboring countries. The south wall was concrete and vents and a rectangle of a door labeled MAINTENANCE in chipped red paint. Two cameras stared at it from bad angles.

Hyunjin stood in the shadow of an HVAC unit and stilled, his ears twitching as he took in his surroundings. Jeongin stood with him, uselessly waiting for him to give Jeongin the go ahead. Changbin set the duffel down and unrolled a bundle: ceramic blades, chalk stub, a spool of nylon line, two folded paper maps, and a coil of wire stripped.

“No metal,” Changbin muttered, half to himself. “No radio. Just us.” He shuddered. 

“Useless,” Hyunjin murmured, and Jeongin saw the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

The cameras swept. Not in perfect arcs. Minho had warned them it wouldn’t be.

Now his pager buzzed again.

SEUNGMIN: Sweep 14 seconds. Then 6.

Jeongin counted to fourteen, saw the way the lenses in the cameras shuttered, counted to six, and he watched Hyunjin slip under. A hand mirror flashed once, too fast to be a signal to anyone but them. Jeongin and Changbin crossed just as fast and there they were. A door with a keypad that looked normal if you didn’t notice the symbols where numbers should be. Not a one through nine keypad. Instead it was triangles, circles, slashes, an odd square that looked like a warped  tooth, and a blank.

Hyunjin cracked his knuckles and then he was looking at the keypad, at the worn edges, the places where the black had gone slightly gray from oil. He leaned in until his hair brushed it. He inhaled. He actually inhaled like he could smell which buttons tasted like human skin.

“Index finger. Middle. Ring,” Hyunjin whispered. “Right-handed. Then it's triangle, slash, circle, tooth.” He tapped them, not hard enough to actually press them. He closed his eyes. “The triangle is shallow. The circle is deep. The order is wrong.”

Jeongin had seen him do this before with safes and cheap locks and a soda machine that ate away at Chan’s coins for a week. But never with pressure like this. Never in a circumstance like this.

“Time,” Changbin said, voice low. He was looking at the left camera. He had the count in his mouth.

Hyunjin’s fingers danced. Triangle, tooth, circle, slash. A red light blinked. Not the no. The please try again . He exhaled, shook out his shoulders, did it again: slash, tooth, triangle, circle.

The light went green with a quiet click. The door cracked open with a soft hiss.

“Never doubted you,” Changbin lied beautifully.

“Everyone doubts me,” Hyunjin said, slipping inside after Jeongin and Changbin went. “It’s the safest choice.”

The hallway smelled like antiseptic. His stomach flipped. The overhead lights hummed and flickered. It was cold and bland here. Unpersonable. Filled with nothingness. It was thin and clinical. A lab dressed as a hallway.

He flexed his right hand and followed Hyunjin’s back.

“Cameras every corner,” Minho had said. “Look for the ones that have the tiny blink. Those are the ones that record audio too.” Jeongin saw them now, the tiny little red lights that winked at them.

They moved in quickly and efficiently. The south stairwell was exactly where Minho said it would be because some parts of hell were consistent. A keypad waited there too; this one wanted numbers. Hyunjin handed the problem to Changbin with a pout, begging for Changbin to do it. 

Changbin had rolled his eyes as he dug in the duffel and came up with chalk. He dusted the pad lightly with chalk, then pressed a napkin to it and lifted. Four numbers were given. 

“Not in order,” Changbin said. “But these four are hot.” He wiped the residue off till it looked like a keypad again. “Give me their patterns. Fast.”

“People like birthdays. Start with years,” Hyunjin muttered. “Or they do the corner trick.” He danced it with two fingers in the air, he gestured to the top corners then to the bottom corners. “We try 1-3-7-9. Then 1-9-7-3.”

“Try 7-1-9-3, something unpredictable.” Jeongin said quietly. He didn’t know why he knew it; it just felt right, like the math of someone’s laziness.

Changbin pressed it. The light went green.

“I will never doubt your weird brain again,” Hyunjin said, shoving the door open. “Down.”

They didn’t take the glass stairs in the center where men in good suits could watch you and thought about ways to gain more control, more power, more money. They took stairs that smelled like wet dust. They moved down two flights, paused at each floor. Voices drifted through doors. Jeongin caught a flash of a jacket sleeve, the glint of a name-tag, the cadence of an argument about budget lines. He could have knocked them out, he could have also thrown up.

His pager ticked again.

MINHO: Two guards. Floor 8.

They were on floor seven. The Archives were on 8. Jeongin put his back against the wall and looked at the ceiling tile because if he looked at the door he’d imagine it opening with the guard and that would come true just to spite him. He was just that lucky. He circled four in his head. Six out. Like how Jisung did with Felix. He felt Changbin’s shoulder brush against his. He felt Hyunjin press finger to lips, not for them but for his own piece of mind.

Footsteps. The sound of agents heavy on their heels. They paused on the floor above, the air went still like it held its own breath, and then the steps retreated. There was a laugh. Then there was a cough. The silence came back.

Changbin put his hand around the stairwell bar, his fingers tight around it. “Ready.”

“Ready,” Hyunjin echoed.

Jeongin put his palm flat against the door to eight and expected cold air to hit them in the face. Instead it was warm. He pushed even further.

The Archives didn’t look like they did in Jeongin’s head. He’d imagined a vault, white walls, white books, white floors, white everything. He expected it to be sterile. 

It looked like a library after a long winter: narrow aisles of movable stacks, wooden shelves filled with orderly spines, a desk with cushioned chair, a dying tree underneath a hanging light that needed replacing. The nameplates were in neat rows with labels that were both precise and unhelpful: Training, Tactical, HR, Directorate, Compliance, Field, Medical, Archives A, B, C, and so on. 

Hyunjin went straight to the dusty touchscreens sitting on one of the desks. It had a password. He leaned toward it, inhaled, and grimaced. “I literally just inhaled dust.”

Changbin slid behind the desk, pulled a card out from under the screen. He tapped it to the reader. It chirped, then let them in. He rolled his shoulders and sighed, a smile on his face. “They never change.”

“Where?” Hyunjin asked, ignoring Changbin.

Jeongin scanned the rows upon rows of information. Until he spotted what he needed.

Medical Archive A. 

He moved like how he had practiced. Not knocking things. His hands remembered to hover and not touch. He scanned the spines of the books: patient numbers, codes. Minho had told them to look for the Director’s code. Minho had said the Director liked to label his things, especially if it were to be about his son. 

Jeongin found it three shelves down, a tag that said: LYF FILE NEUR/COMPL NSI MOD. He ran his finger along it, a hover, not a touch. Paperwork was a snake.

“Pull the third,” Hyunjin said quietly behind him, reading over his shoulder.

Jeongin slid the third binder by its spine, the way Minho had shown him so the camera didn’t see a hand grasping, stealing, a file. Inside were words that were just shy of medical, just shy of tech, just shy of something else. He skimmed. He put a finger on a line and let his eyes focus. 

 

Neural Shock Implant (NSI)

Located: left mastoid region. 

Remote trigger. Visual cue reinforcement optional. 

Notes: Efficacy increases when subjects is deprived of sleep and use of bright lights.

 

His stomach went cold. Behind his ear. He read it again and again until the words didn’t specify a person, until they were just words, not Felix’s skin.

“Jeongin,” Hyunjin said softly.

“I’ve got it,” Jeongin said, and his voice sounded foreign to his ears. He pulled it, taking the whole thing. The papers inside smelled like toner and the slow death of an air conditioner. He saw the ear map, a little black dot behind a sketched ear, a tidy line. He saw the dosage logs with dates that were too recent. 

He pivoted from the physical files to the digital ones, he moved with precision to get to the computers. He went back, closed the stacks like he’d never been there, and handed the binder to Changbin. He sat down at a computer, and pulled his small case of emptied drives. The cursor blinked in patient expectation.

“Search?” Hyunjin asked, eyes on the camera in the corner that blinked slower than the others.

Jeongin typed like his hands remembered the shape of the keyboard from typing up what Seungmin would be ranting about during some of his nightly rants. Jeongin typed in a couple of the titles he saw on the shelves. A list popped up, endless. Protocol videos. Lab logs. A PDF with a boring title, the same one Jeongin had spotted before. He clicked. Redacted black bars did their best to hide the face of a person. But Jeongin knew who the person was. He knew the shape of that person's body, memorized the way those two fingers twitched.

He slid a flash drive in. The system recognized it with a little chirp that Jeongin swore was too loud. He copied a lot. He picked three other folders on purpose, training logs for other assets, a maintenance manual, a memo about cafeteria protocols, as filler. Noise to hide the fact Jeongin was stealing files that had anything to do with Felix.

His pager buzzed.

SEUNGMIN: Two min window. Move.

Jeongin’s heart picked up and he breathed. Four in. Six out. He printed a single page because they needed a decoy for someone to get distracted by. A cover sheet of a file about fire suppression systems. He closed windows, wiped history, and ejected the drive.

“Got it,” he said, and stood.

He was halfway around the desk when the hallway door clicked shut. Not loud. Not a slam.

Hyunjin’s eyes snapped to Jeongin’s. His hand tilted in the motion to duck. Jeongin slid between stacks without thinking and pressed himself into the shelf. Changbin stepped into the aisle so he was what you saw first: a guy in a black hoodie with a clipboard he’d just stolen from the empty desk. He held it like he belonged to that clipboard and not the other way around.

Two men came in carrying the classic lazy walk of security personnel who’d been doing the shift for too long. Their chat died down as soon as they saw Changbin. It didn’t die because they were alert or nervous. It died because they had to run the script if someone didn’t belong here.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” the taller one said.

Changbin glanced up. “Maintenance. Fire code inspection,” he said, bored. He tapped the (blank) form with his knuckle. “You get the memo?”

They looked at each other and lost a second to doubt. The smaller one cleared his throat. “We didn’t get a memo.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Changbin said, sighing. “No one reads the memos. We’ll be about half an hour. You can stand here and watch me stare at the ducts if you want. Or you can go back to your break.” He looked at their hands. “Coffee time?”

The taller one bristled. “We need to check your pas—”

Hyunjin knocked over the dying tree.

He did it with confidence, a curse, and a flail like a ballet dancer taught to be clumsy. Dirt fanned across the floor. The pot broke in a perfect tragic arc.

“Who puts a tree by a door?” Hyunjin groused, kneeling, scooping handfuls of damp soil. “If I worked here everyday I would be writing an e-mail about this to the Director himself.”

Both guards’ eyes snapped to him, away from Changbin. Hyunjin looked like every idiot contractor and he sold the act with a grimace. “We visited twelve sites today,” he told them. “Half the buildings hide their valves behind ornamental bullshit. I’m going to sue trees on behalf of everyone.”

“Who are you with?” the smaller guard asked.

“District Maintenance,” Hyunjin said. “We got the call. Random inspection. The one you didn’t get the memo about. Want to help me sweep dirt into my hat?” He held out his knitted beanie.

The taller one reached the inevitable end of his patience, huffed, and jerked his chin at the door. “Come on. We’ll show you out and get someone to escort you back.”

Jeongin’s pager buzzed in his pocket.

MINHO: Don’t let them escort.

Jeongin swallowed. He stepped out into the aisle before he could overthink it and pasted on the face he used when he needed to be brave. “Sorry,” he said, pen tucked behind his ear. He held up a laminated card he’d made with the same printer that had spit out their decoy form. It said nothing but nonsense. “We’re on code thirty-seven.” 

The taller guard flinched at that. Jeongin wanted to know what code thirty-seven was and more than that he wanted not to ask and reveal he didn’t know. He looked at the smaller guard, who looked back at the taller guard. The taller guard sighed and gestured, “Fine. Be quick.”

They left without signing a thing. The door thunked closed.

Hyunjin exhaled hard. He wiped his hands on his jeans and shot Jeongin a look of horror and pride. “Code thirty-seven,” he mouthed. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Jeongin said, heart in his throat. “Sounded like something.”

Jeongin honestly couldn’t believe it had worked. 

Changbin snorted once and clapped Jeongin on the shoulder as he passed him the duffel. The weight was right. The drives were in their foam nest. The binder was tucked in the meat of the bag. They moved. They left the broken dying tree for someone else. Minho had told them to leave evidence that suggested they were idiots, not thieves. 

The stairwell was colder on the way up. They hit the top floor, then the door to the roof.

SEUNGMIN: Roof clean. West corner.

“How do you know that,” Hyunjin muttered, shoving the bar and wincing. The alarm didn’t wail. 

Chan waited in the west corner. He had a coil of rope and a cheeky grin. “Hey,” he said. “Brought souvenirs?”

“Nope, the tree broke,” Hyunjin said solemnly, and Chan didn’t even blink. He threw the rope over the parapet and wrapped it around a structural beam. The drop wasn’t insane. It was a clean knee-break if botched. A quick silence fell as they descended one after the other: Hyunjin as elegant as per usual, Jeongin stiff and careful, and Changbin went down quick and easy. The rope burned Jeongin’s palm through the glove.

They hit the alley and Chan pulled the rope down. Chan gathered it and they were just four men walking away from a wall, not like they had just stolen files from The Capitol. They didn’t speak until they were three blocks away and the noise of the city was back to being just noise.

“Drives?” Chan asked softly. Jeongin didn’t know how he could still be soft after just breaking into The Capitol.

“I have them,” Jeongin said. His throat was dry. He wanted water and twelve hours without thinking and Felix’s steady breathing coming from the room down the hall. He wanted the red light behind the ear to turn into a dumb coincidence that meant nothing.

Changbin bumped his shoulder into Jeongin’s. “Code thirty-seven,” he said, and the laugh under it eased something in Jeongin’s gut. “I’m framing that.”

Hyunjin shoved his hands in his pockets and let his head tip back to look up at the sky. “I am going to get a mint plant that is actually mint when we get home,” he announced. “To make up for… whatever the fuck we brought home last time.”

“No plants,” Chan and Jeongin said in the same breath.

They slid back into District Nine easily, found their building even more easily. They slipped inside, one by one, dropping their things by the doorway and kicking off their boots. 

The tree dirt on Hyunjin’s jeans left a little trail on the floor. Changbin’s duffel sagged open with the weight of the stolen things. The Den looked more tender than usual when they stepped inside. Jisung was half-asleep in the doorway of Felix’s room with his chin on his chest. Seungmin sat at the table with a mug and a note pad, eyes waiting. He floated off the chair.

“Give,” he said, not unkind.

Jeongin placed the drives on the table and they scattered before them. He added the thick binder.

Seungmin didn’t touch any of it yet. He looked at Jeongin’s face and he nodded, once. “Water,” he said. “Sit.”

Minho came in from the hall. He went straight for the drives and then stopped six inches short. His hands curled and uncurled once. He looked at Jeongin. The look wasn’t a question, it was gratitude.

“NSI,” Jeongin said quietly, and Minho’s throat worked. “That is what is behind Felix’s left ear. Remote triggered. Visual cue reinforcement optional.”

Chan’s jaw clicked. The room got smaller around the edges.

“Okay,” Seungmin said. “Then we start there.”

“Can you turn it off?” Hyunjin asked from the couch where he’d already sunk into like some cat. 

“We’re not cutting into his head tonight,” Seungmin said, dry. “But yes. Maybe. We can attempt to. We have to study it, learn about it.”

Minho leaned his knuckles on the table and bowed his head. For a second he looked exactly like someone praying without a god and then he straightened. “ Thank you ,” he told Jeongin.

Jeongin swallowed the lump in his throat. His hands shook for the first time since the maintenance door and he put them under the table because he didn’t need anyone to see them.

Through the cracked door, Felix’s breath made a small sound, a little sigh. Jisung tipped his head toward it on instinct. 

“You guys did good.” Chan said. 

Seungmin opened the binder and blew out a long breath, “wow this is…a lot.” 

“They’re poets.” Hyunjin snorted and Jeongin rolled his eyes at him.  

Jeongin ignored the little voice in his head that said that maybe it was a bit too easy as they got to work.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, we are reaching the end of the first arc! I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Seungmin's POV, finallly! So strap in y'all :)

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 18: the seam

Summary:

They go through the files and Seungmin goes to chat with Felix.

The truth doesn't mind being questioned.

A lie does

- unknown

---

The binder looked like any other binder. It had cheap rings, a smudged cover, the flex of plastic that never is perfectly flat. Seungmin turned it carefully anyway, gently, as if that could make the binder behave. The Den was quiet, in the way that no one was up yelling about dirty socks, instead it was the buzz of an old lamp, the radio’s soft hiss with the volume almost turned all the way down. Jeongin had the laptop angled toward the table, directory open wide on one side and a half-loaded PDF on the other. Chan sat across from Seungmin with elbows on knees, braced for the worst. Minho stayed at the edge of the room. His shoulder to the wall. Close enough to listen.

Seungmin tugged on a sticky tab, and the title stared, glaring, right at Seungmin.

 

CAPITOL INTELLIGENCE OVERVIEW

File ID: LY-0425-A

Clearance Level: Director Authorization Required

Subject: LEE YONGBOK, FELIX

Designation: Commander — Shock Unit

DOB: September 15

Ability Classification: Gravity Manipulation + Seismic Quake Induction

Status: High Value Asset; MISSING IN ACTION

 

His pen hovered. He didn’t write anything. It felt weird to mark the page before he knew where to put the marks, he was lost. 

“Start at the top,” Chan said, quietly.

Seungmin did. “The section early development. At age five, he was identified for an enhanced ability screening. He exhibited raw gravitational movements in controlled environments. He was selected for accelerated combat and obedience training…” He trailed off as his eyes swept over the next few words. His throat closed up and he swallowed it away, pushing himself to continue. “When he was seven he was placed in psychiatric observation following the death of his younger sister, Olivia Lee. She died during a Capitol exercise. He showed behavioral instability. He was released after four months. But his older sister, Rebecca Lee, stayed. The subject, Felix, had bi-weekly visitation until his access was restricted.” Seungmin’s fingers trembled as he turned the page. 

Jeongin’s fingers hovered over the keyboard and pulled up the companion scan. The PDF clicked  into focus. “That’s… early,” he said, throat dry. “Five years old…” 

“They didn’t wait to see who he was,” Chan said. “They decided.”

Minho’s hands were tucked under his arms. He didn’t sigh, didn’t move. He didn't do anything. But Seungmin saw the micro-tell anyway. How his left thumbnail pressed into the skin of his right forearm until the skin paled.

Chan gestured for Seungmin to continue. Seungmin nodded and began to speak, “The corrective history. From ages ten to twelve he showed disobedience. He had resistance to authority, episodes of verbal refusal, and non-sanctioned empathy…” what the fuck. “ He was assigned to correctional classes under the Behavioral Enforcement Wing. Despite the courses, resistance escalated.” 

“Non-sanctioned empathy,” Jeongin repeated under his breath, almost a laugh, disbelieving. 

“Imagine putting that on a chart,” Seungmin said. “Fucking insane.” 

Chan rubbed his thumb along his knuckle. “So they name the human thing they wanted to fix, and then they call it a diagnosis.”

Seungmin didn’t answer. He read. “His pairing with Lee Minho…” Seungmin shot a glance at Minho who had bristled at his name. “At age fifteen he was paired with Operative Lee Minho. Discipline and tactical execution improved during early missions. Observed stability and cohesion during training and deployment…rapport between operatives is strong, oversight is recommended.”

Minho’s eyes stayed on the floorboards as if someone had put a script there: do not react; do not give them anything . Seungmin wasn’t looking for anything. Still, his clinician’s brain took the note: rapport strong; oversight recommended. Translation: repress feelings .

He turned the page and continued, not waiting for anyone to jump in. “ages sixteen through seventeen, the Capitol surveillance intercepted plans of escape involving the subject, Felix, and Lee Minho. Subject was detained immediately. Lee Minho escaped detainment, flagged as Capitol Enemy Tier One. The subject was transferred to the Labs for reconditioning.” 

There was a click in the room that belonged to no one. The ceiling fan, probably. Jeongin’s scroll slowed to a crawl.

“Kids, literally just kids,” Chan said, rubbing his hands down his face.

No one answered him.

Seungmin’s eyes narrowed as he saw what he truly needed. “Lab history.” 

Jeongin perked up. 

“His duration was fourteen months. He had a Chemical Regimen done, which is multi-serum injections. Like neural inhibitors and conditioning drugs. He also had Neurological Alteration done. Sensory deprivation cycles. Delirium induction, electric neural mapping. And Psychological Conditioning which included daily simulations.” Seungmin squinted down at the page. 

 

Lee Minho = Enemy.

Narrative Implanted: “‘Lee Know’ persona terminated.” 

  “Minho designation = betrayal, Capitol fugitive.”

 Conditioning reinforced with visual cue substitution.

Rebecca Lee terminated.

 

Seungmin’s pen finally hit paper. He wrote nothing useful. The line he drew under Narrative Implanted wobbled.

Jeongin made a small sound. “It says… Lee Know’s persona was…” He couldn’t finish. His eyes ricocheted between the page and Minho’s shoulder.

Minho’s breath hitched. He didn’t ask for the line to be read. He didn’t move. His skin now had half-moon marks where a nail had been.

Chan’s fingers tightened together. “They’re liars,” he said.

“They’re also inconsistent,” Seungmin said, pointing without looking up. “This section says terminated . But it also mentions Rebecca as ‘ongoing psychiatric containment’. Those cannot both be true. Either the file holds old and new information, or they are trying to confuse, or they are just stupid about updating their files properly.” 

“Video logs,” Jeongin whispered, his eyes glued to the laptop screen as he clicked away. He clicked into a folder. The thumbnails arranged themselves from the most recent date to the oldest date. Each still had the status overlay from the camera in bright red.

Chan’s jaw worked. “Keep the volume low,” he said. 

Jeongin clicked one at random so it couldn’t be about choosing. The image popped up onto the screen. 

A white room with bright overhead lights, a chair that had restraints hidden on the sides. Felix sat inside it. Younger. His hair was shorter, his eyes had bags, his arm was hooked up to an IV line. His mouth was set in a line. The camera’s timecode rolled in the corner.

A voice off-camera, low and bored: “Begin.”

Felix’s chin tipped instinctively down, then up when a hand entered the frame and pinched his jaw. The status dot flared. There was no scream, just the jump in his shoulders, the way his throat worked once, twice, like he was swallowing stone. Whatever sound came next was complete static. 

“Stop,” Chan said, and Jeongin froze it. No one filled the room with words.

Jeongin tried again. A new file. The same room, the same cruelty. A card flashed in front of the lens: SESSION 39. 

The voice was the same, as if reading a grocery list. “Repeat what you said.”

Felix looked annoyed, he rolled his eyes and his lips moved. The audio caught it.

“Minho didn’t fucking betray shit, you fucking cunts.”

And then his body convulsed violently. A scream ripped from Felix’s throat, raw and animalistic, it echoed through the speakers. 

Seungmin’s hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles whitened.  He also heard Minho’s breath go quiet in the wrong way. 

The voice sighed. “How could you lie, Yongbok? Is this what we’ve taught you? Try again.”

Felix’s mouth didn’t shape a word for two seconds that took an entire day. Then he said, his voice hoarse, “he didn’t betray you, you hurt him.” 

Then muscle in his jaw twitched and Felix’s eyes widened in panic–

“Enough,” Chan said, suddenly, and it wasn’t a command. It was a mercy. 

Jeongin paused the video and clicked off the tab quickly. The desktop went back to still, bland icons.

Seungmin didn’t look up. He stared down at the files, at Lee Know persona terminated . The file’s language was surgical when it wanted to be and too broad at times when Seungmin wished it were precise. He turned the page.

 

Neural Shock Implant (auricular). Placement: left mastoid region.

Purpose: remote obedience trigger; pain compliance; execution failsafe.

Notes: Visual cue reinforcement increases success. Sleep deprivation increases responsiveness.

 

“Behind the ear,” Jeongin said. “I fucking knew it, the red blink.”

Seungmin nodded. He didn’t add anything. 

 

Outcome

Subject emerged fully conditioned and compliant to Capitol directives.

Emotional responses to “Lee Know” alias suppressed. Recognition rerouted to “Minho = hostile.”

Weekly laboratory re-conditioning required for behavioral maintenance.

 

“Rerouted,” Seungmin read out loud, because the word was doing more work than it had any right to do. “They didn’t erase his recognition. Essentially they just changed the sign on the door.” He blinked as he read the indepth notes. “He only recognizes your voice because they didn’t have your voice to use, they had photos. That’s why he isn’t hostile to your voice, but instead to the image of you. They couldn’t mimic your voice.” 

Minho’s head tipped a millimeter. “That tracks,” he said. A statement. The smallest permission for the rest of them to keep going.

 

Current Status

AGE: 18, The Commander, Shock Unit.

Oversees squads specializing in Shock Unit

Combat effectiveness: 100% success rate.

Weekly lab re-conditioning. Termination not advised.

AGE: 22, MISSING IN ACTION 

 

Jeongin’s mouth compressed. “They wrote his life like a yearly report,” he said. He didn’t sound surprised. He sounded like someone who’d hoped he would be.

Chan didn’t nod. Didn’t shake his head. He breathed and kept his hands in his lap.

They flipped again.

 

Risk Assessment

Strengths:

Superior ability control. Tactical leadership. Loyalty under current conditioning.

Vulnerabilities:

Residual memory imprints of pre-conditioning relationships (notably with Lee Minho’s ‘Lee Know’).

Familial trauma (Rebecca and Olivia Lee).

High risk of destabilization if exposed to former emotional anchors.

Recommendation: Strict monitoring. Condition reinforcement is non-negotiable. Exposure to unauthorized stimuli may compromise the program.

 

Seungmin watched Minho. The way Minho’s shoulders stayed too square; the way he refused to sit; the way his eyes stuck to the floor, wide and unseeing. Devastation, Seungmin thought clinically, could look quiet. There were no gestures in it. Just an absence where a body used to trust a room.

“Scroll,” Seungmin said. 

Jeongin scrolled. The next page was a memo header: Behavioral Enforcement: Corrective Classes. Columns of bullet points. Seungmin let his eyes run over the page. 

“‘Non-sanctioned empathy,’” Chan repeated, softer this time.

“It shows up a couple more times,” Jeongin said. “Pages ten to twelve. Then again at fifteen. Then in the lab note, but in the negative. ‘Empathic response suppressed during sessions three through seven, resumed session eight.’ ” He swallowed. “They treated it like it was a bad thing.”

“What about the pairing notes,” Chan asked. “What did they write about… about them?”

Jeongin nodded as he clicked away, relieved for the instruction. He found the Pairing Report and opened it. The text bloomed.

 

Initial Cohesion: high.

Communication Efficiency: high.

Mutual regulation effect observed. Operative Lee Yongbok exhibits reduced disobediance in presence of Operative Lee Minho. Operative Lee Minho exhibits increased restraint in presence of Operative Lee Yongbok.

Risk: attachment.

Fix: increased oversight; reassignments not recommended due to tactical efficiency.

 

Seungmin put the end of his pen against his bottom lip and didn’t bite. “Mutual regulation,” he repeated. “They saw it. They noticed whatever you two had. They didn’t like it.”

No one argued.

“A childhood written like a manual,” Chan said as he watched Jeongin scroll through the files.

“Several manuals,” Seungmin corrected. “Psych, neuro, operational, tactical.”

Jeongin found a final page that seemed pointless, which meant it was probably important to someone: Shock Unit: Tactical Summary LEE, YONGBOK FELIX. The file praised his ability to “destabilize ground under enemy positions,” to “control debris trajectories,” and “generate localized gravity wells to impede pursuit.” There were charts upon charts of success rates. There were no names. Just enemies, positions, and objectives.

Seungmin closed the binder halfway and left two fingers inside. He didn’t look at Minho again. He’d seen enough to know how much Minho was not having it.

“What we understand,” he said, “is the shape. Identification. Deaths Olivia and Rebecca. Correction. Pairing. Regulation. Attempted escape. Separation. Lab. Implant. Changes in narratives. Visual cues paired with pain. Repetition. Repetition. And maintenance through weekly sessions.”

Jeongin nodded along, quick and small. He added, tentatively, “And the thing with names isn’t random. They didn’t just teach ‘Minho bad.’ They went deeper than that. Made sure he knew the person he knew as his safe space was dead.”

“They cut off his anchors,” Seungmin said. They missed Jisung though… idiots . “Makes sense if your goal is severance.”

Chan rubbed the bridge of his nose without closing his eyes. “It says he is at high risk of destabilization if exposed to unauthorized stimuli.”

“They’re talking about us,” Jeongin said, and a small smile formed.

“They’re talking about him ,” Seungmin corrected, jerking his head towards Minho. “There are holes in Felix’s head. He remembers Minho’s voice, he remembers Jisung. His head is a jumbled up mess, and we need to fill in the holes.” He flipped the binder back. A page corner tore slightly and he smoothed it out. “They took your name out of his mouth,” he said. “And they put it back in as a weapon was pointed at him.”

Jeongin’s shoulders went up and down once. “So when he asked about Lee Know the other day…”

“It was a seam,” Seungmin finished. He didn’t soften it. “We saw the seam.”

Chan’s hands clasped together, tightly. “We don’t pull at it, not tonight.”

Seungmin didn’t look at Minho again. He didn’t need to. It was in the room. Minho’s silence spoke volumes, the way a man can yearn without moving at all, how devastated he was.

They stayed like that for a while, four people in a room. It was only when the radio’s static hiccuped, barely, that anyone moved. Jeongin shut the laptop. Chan eased back in his chair. Minho stretched his fingers and moved to sit down in a chair at the table.

Seungmin put the pen on top of the binder. “I’m going to speak to him,” he said, mostly to the page. 

No one argued as Seungmin got up and left the room with his things.

---

Seungmin lurked in front of Felix's bedroom for a while. He listened to the faint click of the baseboard heater, Jisung scraping his chair as he got up to pee, and the steady pace of his footsteps as he paced in front of Felix’s door, which was half-open. 

He knocked once on the door frame, quiet. “Felix,” he said. “It’s Seungmin.”

A beat of silence then the bed creaked. “You poured water on me,” Felix rasped.

“Yeah… that was me,” Seungmin said, barely even entering the room. “I was testing something.”

“On my face.”

“It worked.”

A huff, almost a laugh of disbelief. “You’re an asshole.”

“That tracks,” Seungmin agreed. “Can I come in?”

Silence, then: “The door stays open.”

“Deal.”

He stepped to the desk first, not the bed, and set down what he’d brought: a glass of water with the good ice, and the binder. The room used to be like a cell, but Jisung had made it his mission to turn it into a proper bedroom. The television sat on the dresser asleep, remote exactly parallel to the nightstand edge, a window cracked two inches to air out the stale heat, a plant on the window sill (not mint). Felix was pressed against the wall, his knees to his chest and his blonde hair all poofy.

Seungmin kept distance. 

Felix’s eyes flickered from Seungmin to the floor, and back. “What are you here to say?”

Seungmin nodded at the chair and got a nod back. He sat, knees angled away to make space. “We went through the files… your files,” he said. “We have documentation from the Capitol about your early assessments, correction logs, lab notes, a hardware spec for the device behind your left ear, and video. Some of it matches what we’ve seen when you get triggered.”

Felix’s fingers tightened on the blanket. “Just…” He swallowed, winced. “Just tell me, don’t sugarcoat whatever you're trying to say.”

“Okay,” Seungmin said. He didn’t lace anything together to make it prettier. “They identified you at five. Training started then. At seven, there was an exercise. Your little sister, Olivia, died during it. You were held for psych observation for four months after. They noted your ‘behavioral instability.’ Your older sister, Rebecca, was kept in the facility. You saw her twice a week until they restricted you.”

Felix’s face didn’t move, instead his body went rigid. Any fluidity he had, left his body. It felt like an argument anyway. 

“From ten to twelve,” Seungmin went on, “they wrote ‘disobedient’. They sent you to ‘Correctional Classes.’ Their bullet points list things like ‘Episodes of verbal refusal’ and… ‘non-sanctioned empathy’.” He let the phrase land and didn’t chase it. “At fifteen, they paired you with Minho.”

Felix flinched. “No,” he said instantly, automatic. “They paired me with Lee Know.”

Seungmin nodded. “A nickname you gave him, you called him Lee Know for months. The file calls him Minho. I’m going to say both.”

Felix blinked at Seungmin, disbelieving. Before Felix could argue with Seungmin, he continued. 

“They wrote that the pairing stabilized you, it helped you,” Seungmin said. “You both regulated each other. Then, when you two planned to run, you were caught. He got out and you were transferred to the labs.”

Felix’s breathing shifted in a way Seungmin had started to recognize: the start of panic. “You’re in your room,” Seungmin said, keeping his voice steady. “Window there, lamp here, me in the chair. The hallway door is open. Jisung is on the stairs, listening in like a schmuck.”

Felix’s eyes cut to the window and back. “Continue.” He barely whispered. 

“You endured a total of fourteen months of lab work,” Seungmin said. “Drugs to make you sleep and not sleep. Sensory deprivation.” He tapped the binder. “They installed a device behind your left ear. A Neural Shock Implant that can be triggered remotely. It’s designed for pain compliance and execution. It’s most effective in low-sleep, bright-light contexts. That’s why pen clicks and fluorescent lights freak you out. They recorded sessions, conditioning you. Reshaping you to be their…toy.” 

Felix made a sound like the beginning of a laugh and the end of a sob. He dropped his gaze to the floor. 

“They wrote a ‘narrative implant’,” Seungmin said, steady, not gentle, not cruel. “They made ‘Lee Know’ the name of safety and then they made you believe he was dead. They reshaped ‘Minho’ as an enemy. It is not random that you remembered a name that hurt you and couldn’t tolerate the face that goes with it. That’s not your fault. That’s conditioning.”

Felix barked a laugh then he said, sharp, humorless. “Hilarious. So funny.” He tipped his head back against the wall and stared at Seungmin, his eyes lacking anything. They were void. “You expect me to believe the traitor in the doorway is my savior and that the dead man is…what, a nickname? A joke?” He looked at Seungmin. “Do you expect me to thank you?”

Seungmin didn’t blink. “No,” he said. “I expected you to be angry.”

Felix stared at him another second and then looked away, the muscle under his left eye jumping. He scratched once at his temple.

Seungmin pitched his voice even lower. “You can ask me to stop.”

“I told you to just tell me,” Felix said, the words dry. “You can tell me the rest.” Felix’s throat worked. He held still with the discipline of a man who had had stillness beaten into him. “What about Minho?”

“Alive,” Seungmin said. “Here. In this building. He was the voice in the doorway when Jisung covered your head with the blanket. He’s been here with Jisung while you slept, making sure you were okay.” 

Felix’s mouth twitched, not a smile. “You say that like it’s something to be proud of.” Felix closed his eyes and he sighed, pressing his hands to his face. “They told me he betrayed us, a traitor,” he said. The sentence fell out perfectly. “They told me he ran and left me and that he’d kill me if he could.” His eyes opened. “Why would I choose your version of the story? I don’t even know this supposed older sister of mine, Rebecca.”

“Because your body already did,” Seungmin said. “In the infirmary, when the back of your ear was touched, you dropped into a script. When the pen clicked, you braced for it. When Jisung tossed that blanket over you and a voice you knew spoke, you followed it. You didn’t follow a face. His face is booby-trapped. But the voice? You found it and came back. I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m telling you your nervous system already knows that what The Capitol told you is a lie.”

Felix let out a long breath, then he shifted upright and took the water. His hands shook once, a small tremor. The ice clinked in the glass.

Seungmin slid the binder a few inches closer to Felix. “You can read it,” he said. “Or I can read you specific parts. I’m not here to force it into your eyes. I’m here because I figured someone should tell you so you don’t continue to believe the lie that is your life.”

Felix stared at the binder like it was a piece of literal shit. “Show me the part where they wrote I was… disobedient,” he asked.

Seungmin flipped, tab already placed. He angled the page so Felix could see the text. He didn’t lean. He didn’t point. He let the words show themselves. Felix’s eyes tracked them, back and forth. Something tight in his jaw softened, almost grief, almost relief, almost both.

“They punished me for…” Felix said, very calmly. “For talking back and… for giving a shit.”

“Yes,” Seungmin said. “You are here because they couldn’t kill that without killing you, and they needed you operational.”

Felix laughed again, more tired. He rubbed the heel of his hand over both eyes. “And the videos?”

“I won’t play them unless you ask me to,” Seungmin said. “I watched enough for both of us tonight.”

Felix’s hand dropped. He studied Seungmin. “Would you lie to me?” Felix asked finally, a little too direct to be a genuine question.

“I don’t see the point,” Seungmin said.

Felix’s mouth quirked, amused. “You’re very practical.”

“You know that already,” Seungmin said. “So let me say this.” He paused to take a breath. “Practically speaking… you can trust me to tell you what is real, what is known, and to say what is not real, what is unknown when we don’t know, and to stop when you say stop. You don’t have to trust my…interpretations or my methods. But I’m not going to move the furniture around in your head without telling you where I’m dragging it.”

Felix stared at him another beat and then looked past him, to the doorway, and he curled into himself even further. “You said… my body already chose.”

“It chose survival,” Seungmin said. “Every time.”

Felix swallowed. “And you think you can…what? Make me human again?”

“I think you are human right now. You are human, Felix,” Seungmin said softly. “I think a machine would be easier to fix and that’s not what you are. I can’t promise you a version of your fifteen year old self. But I can promise you less confusion, fewer traps, fewer nights hijacked by someone else’s words. I can promise that when you forget, I will not.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It had weight, like a heavy blanket. Felix stared at the binder. He stared at the lamp’s halo on the desk. He stared at the window where the city glowed.

“‘Lee Know is dead,’” he said, so flat it burned. “They liked making me say it. They would ask me, and ask me, and ask me. I wished they would stop, but they said that if I didn’t it would be like letting him die all over again, and I didn’t want that.”

Seungmin didn’t look away. “Minho is alive,” he said. “Lee Know is a name you gave him. They are the same person, Lee Know isn’t dead. He is right here in this building.”

Felix’s mouth opened; he shut it, annoyed at himself for almost asking something. He tried anyway, and it came out stuttered. “Is he…” He stopped. “Does he… hate me?”

“No,” Seungmin said instantly. “He talks to Jisung a lot, and he asks about you. That isn’t something someone does when they hate someone. I don’t think there is a piece of him that could ever hate you. And I’m saying this as the practical one, so you better believe me.”

Felix blinked and a small smile formed on his lips. “Jisung talks a lot.”

“He does,” Seungmin agreed.

A small laugh. Felix scrubbed his face again and then let his hands fall. “So what? You’re going to try and rewire my brain? Is this what you ultimately came to tell me?” 

“I came to ask for your permission to do so,” Seungmin said, tilting his head. “Plus, I’m very good at homework, Felix, so I’m a little excited. It’s my only personality.”

Felix huffed. “You’re also an asshole.”

“Sometimes.”

They looked at each other for a long three seconds then Felix exhaled. “Fine,” he said. “Give it your best shot, doctor. See if you’re right.”

“I’m not a doctor,” Seungmin said. “Which you’ll be grateful for when I don’t try to fix what isn’t broken.”

Felix glanced at the binder, at Seungmin’s hands steady on his own knees. “Not tonight,” he said, a little hoarse. “Tomorrow… we can start.”

“Tomorrow,” Seungmin confirmed. He stood, slow. “I’ll leave this here.” He placed the binder on the desk under the lamp, closed, and rested the pen on top. 

He reached for the doorknob and paused. He didn’t turn back fully. “Felix,” he said, to the room.

“Hm.”

“I won’t lie to you,” Seungmin said again. “Ever.”

Felix didn’t say thank you. “Don’t be late tomorrow,” he said instead.

Seungmin’s mouth tilted, almost a smile. “I won’t.”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed Seungmin's POV!! This is the offical wrap up to the frst arc :)))

Next chapter is in Felix's POV muwhehehe, stay tuned guys :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it
p.p.s I am SO HYPED for the comback omgomg

Another THANK YOU, I'm super happy you guys love it so far 🤍

Chapter 19: to choose

Summary:

Felix and Minho have a late night talk.

I have done bad things. 

I can't take them back, 

and they are part of who

I am. Most of the time, 

they seem like the only

thing I am.

- Veronica Roth

---

Felix woke up gasping for air. 

The after images of his dream lurked in his mind. The houses folded in like paper, people running and screaming. A child laughed, cutting short as the playground fell in on them. 

The order had been to clean up. Stop the convoy. Do whatever it took, no matter the consequences. 

The consequences had been innocent lives. Felix hadn’t cared then. He was the perfect obedient weapon. 

His mouth tasted like copper and his chest felt hollowed out, as if someone scooped him out raw. Sweat clung to him and the room was completely dark except for the one streetlight that glowed from outside the window. 

He lay still. 

Nothing in him moved. Not horror. Not grief. Just the old hum. The small voices that whispered in the back of his mind, the ones that were persistent and loved to mock Felix. 

He counted his breath. Four in. Six out. Four in, his chest stuttered, six out. He rolled to the edge of his bed and his bare feet touched the floor. He breathed in. Four. Out. Six. 

He went downstairs.

The kitchen was quiet. There was now a small collection of plants on the windowsill, a crooked magnet on the fridge that held up a piece of paper that said ‘CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF.’ Felix walked straight to the stove and stared down at it. 

Felix remembered a time when he was just ten years old,when he had tea with his father.  

They had sat across from each other at the long dining table that could seat a dozen men, but that night it only sat two. The silverware was polished. The napkins were perfectly folded and his father had brewed the tea himself. That in itself was a rare event. The steam from the tea had rolled off the porcelain cups heavily.

“Drink your tea, Bokkie,” his father had said, pinky barely even jutting out from the cup.

Felix had wrapped his fingers around the cup and felt the heat press into his skin. He had waited, because that was how you did it. You waited for the heat to subside. You waited for it to cool. “I’m waiting for it to cool down,” he’d said.

His father had smiled without humor. “Mine’s cool. I made ours at the same time. Yours should be good.”

Felix didn’t answer.

“Yongbok,” his father said when Felix didn’t move. “Drink.”

He drank.

It wasn’t a sip. It was a swallow that made his mouth go on fire. Pain erupted in him within the second. He sputtered and coughed and the tea went back into the cup and onto the tablecloth. “It’s… it’s hot .” 

“Hot?” his father repeated, voice amused. And then his hand closed around Felix’s wrist and suddenly they were up on their feet and Felix was dragged to the kitchen. The stove soon was staring up at them. “I’ll show you hot.”

Felix learned the rest with his palm pressed flat to a red circle and the smell of his own skin melting. He learned how loud he could scream when he was forced to endure excruciating pain. He learned how the Director’s gaze could replace his father’s in a blink and still call it a lesson. Felix also learned how that pain quieted all the voices in his head.

“That,” the Director had told him when he was panting on the floor, sobbing, begging, “is nothing. Do you think this is bad, Felix? Remember what you are, Felix. You are a weapon. Weapons do not weep. They do not feel .”

Now, as Felix stood before the stove he wondered. He wondered a lot of things lately, especially since Seungmin had cut him off completely from any and all sorts of drugs, the sedatives. Felix wondered and wondered as small memories would pop up in his head. 

Was his father right? 

Felix was a weapon and he did not feel. He does not weep. 

But all he did now was weep. All he did was feel. The voices were non-stop and Felix needed them to stop . They wouldn’t shut up . They wouldn’t leave him alone.

Felix was a weapon. He does not weep. 

Pain is what caused the voices to go away, pain kept him tethered, pain kept him being Felix, the Felix that made people proud. 

He turned the knob on the front-left burner and listened for the click-click-click before the ring caught. Blue flame bit the dark in a circle.

Pain was proof, the Director had taught him when he was ten and the lessons had stopped being about tea. Weapons don’t weep, he had said, and then he had pressed Felix’s small palm to the stove and held it there until all Felix could hear was white noise, until all Felix could see was a blinding light, until Felix’s skin had practically melted off.

Felix held his hand above the burner now, not close enough to hurt. He looked down at his hand, he pictured lowering it. He pictured how the fire would sting, the hiss of heat touching skin, the pain quietening his mind. He pictured the after. The aloe, bandages, Seungmin's disappointment, Jeongin looking guilty, Minho looking as if the room had tilted.

Minho. 

Felix swallowed. 

The name cut everytime it popped up in his head. Minho’s voice was like…relief.  Minho’s face…had made Felix want to crawl into the oven and get baked alive. He closed his eyes. 

He breathed in and held his hand steady in the heat. All he felt was the idea of pain, he needed it so badly. 

He needed to be sedated. He needed not to feel. He couldn’t do this anymore.

“Lix?”

The voice, his voice, came up from behind Felix. Felix didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t look. He didn’t need to. His shoulder slumped down a bit.

“What are you doing?” Minho asked.

“Nothing.” Felix replied, pulling his hand away and pulling his sleeve over it. He kept his eyes closed and thought about what Seungmin said: I won’t lie to you. This is real, everything here is real. You don’t have to listen to the thing in your head, you can choose what to do. Just take a breath . 

Felix took a breath. He took a moment to choose. To push down the little voice that whispered to him that Minho is a threat, eliminate him, deliver his body to the Director, kill him . He took another breath and pushed it down. He chose. He gets to choose.

Felix opened his eyes and looked at Minho who stood beside him. 

“I’m turning this off.” Minho said softly and Felix couldn’t take his eyes off Minho’s face. 

There was a click. The flame disappeared, the ring glowed for a few seconds then disappeared into the dark.

“Why?” Minho asked, not accusing. 

“Because I can’t hear myself,” Felix said, surprising himself as he didn’t lie. “It’s…too loud and  there is nothing at the same time. Pain makes it quiet.”

It was quiet for a moment. 

“What’s loud?” Minho asked.

“Everything,” Felix said. “The missions. The chair. The voices.” He swallowed. “Your face.”

He turned his head toward the dead burner, squeezing his eyelids shut. Felix thought of Seungmin’s voice again, steady: You don’t have to obey the first thought. Pick the second one. Or the third.

“So I was going to…” He flexed his fingers. “Just to make it stop.”

“I hate that for you,” Minho said, stepping a bit closer. “Let’s quiet it with something that doesn’t hurt you.”

Felix almost laughed. The kitchen smelled like old coffee and dish soap. Felix could name a hundred facts and none of them would prove that he was more than just a well-maintained tool.

“I’m sorry,” Felix said instead, and then the apology kept coming. “I’m sorry that I look at you and my head tries to…” he strangled the words, “I’m sorry you waited for something and got nothing. I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize to me,” Minho said, and there was a break in the sentence. “You didn’t do this to yourself. I’m not waiting for the ‘before’ to come back. I’m here because you’re here.”

“That’s not how this works,” Felix muttered. “You don’t get points for being kind to a malfunctioning thing.”

“You’re not a thing,” Minho was quick. “You’re a person having a bad night.” He said as he filled a glass up with water and set it by Felix. 

Felix slid his fingers onto the glass. He lifted and drank. It was cool. Not hot. Not burning. 

“Can you tell me something real?” Felix asked softly, looking down at the floor.

Minho didn’t rush. “Real,” he echoed. “Okay.”

He shifted his weight a little and let his voice drift like daylight under a door. “Real. Well, Chan fell asleep sitting up in the middle of a disaster pile of laundry, he tried to deny it even though his cheek had the indent of a sock.”

A breath. Felix didn’t move, he let Minho talk. He let his voice wash over him and something in Felix settled.

“Jeongin has way too many shoes and he likes to organize them in the order of a rainbow. He also pretends not to care which mug he gets, but he always reaches for the chipped blue one last. Seungmin is a terrible cook, he manages to burn water. Don’t ask me how, I barely even understand it myself considering how smart the guy is. Hyunjin loves to draw, he likes to leave small doodles around for us to find. Changbin loves the color pink, his bedsheets are pink and he has a glittery pink toothbrush. Jisung talks in his sleep,” Minho went on, warmed by the dumbness of saying it out loud. “He also drools on his sleeve.”

Minho went quiet and Felix could feel his eyes on him, the weight of them.

“I have an alley cat,” Minho added softly and Felix’s gaze snapped to him fully. “His name is Deneb, he is a very picky eater considering he lives in the alley.”

“More?” Felix asked, his eyes fluttering shut.

“Real is,” Minho obliged, “Chan pretends the neon ‘DEN’ sign doesn’t make him happy. It does. Hyunjin bought another plant, yes the saga continues, labeled ‘mint’ from a man who said bro three times in a row, and none of us stopped him. Jeongin stole Seungmin’s pen and put it back in the wrong place to see if he’d notice. Seungmin did notice.”

Felix’s throat worked again. “Okay,” he whispered. “That’s…real.”

Minho didn’t touch him. “It’s how the house sounds when you’re not in your head,” he said. “Just…us. You’re still here.”

Felix set the glass of water down and, without opening his eyes. “Can I…” he faltered, shame crawling up the back of his throat, “ can I hold your hand?”

“You can,” Minho said, and slid his fingers across the counter to meet Felix’s, careful as ever. 

Minho’s hand was bigger than Felix’s. Warmer. Alive. His thumb still had the small scar from the can-opener incident. The voices snarled at Felix, but Felix pushed it down. He thought of Seungmin. Of what is real. What is a lie. Felix chose. 

Minho breathed with him. “Real is,” he added after a moment, softer, “I’m going to make us breakfast in the morning. I’m going to make your favorite…which is not toast. I know you love sweet things, maybe chocolate chip pancakes.” 

Felix let out a breath, a huff, almost a laugh. “Okay.”

“And, also full disclosure,” Minho murmured, amused, “Seungmin’s going to be pissed we had some secret kitchen meeting without him. We’ll bribe him with coffee. But he’ll still be pissed.”

They slid down the cabinets to sit on the cold tile floor, side by side with their hands still laced together. They sat there in comfortable silence.

Felix didn’t suffocate in it. 

“Do you want a blanket?” Minho asked after a while. “Jeongin’s been trying to knit and made a really ugly but comfy thing.”

Felix snorted. “Yeah,” he said.

“Okay. I’m going to grab it, I’ll be back.” Minho eased his hand free from Felix’s. He moved slowly as if he were not trying to wake anyone else up, even though Felix doubted he would wake anyone up from just grabbing a blanket. The chair creaked from somewhere in the distance. Maybe he would. 

A moment later the blanket settled over Felix’s shoulders. It was heavy, ridiculous, and warm. Minho didn’t tuck it in, he just draped it over Felix.

Felix pulled the edge to his sternum and kept his eyes closed. “I’m still… sorry,” he said, the word brittle. “For not being…”

Minho lowered himself back down until his shoulder brushed up against Felix’s. He set his hand on the tile, open, palm up. He was offering, not demanding. “Don’t apologize to me for that, Lix,” he said. “Ever.”

Felix swallowed. The voice snapped in his head: traitor, eliminate, you’re failing. Choose, Felix. He slid his hand back over Minho’s and threaded their fingers. “Can I…” Felix cleared his throat,  “keep… not looking?”

“You can do whatever you want to do,” Minho said.

Another breath. 

Felix moved his thumb against Minho’s hand, he waited for the electric spike to erupt from the back of his ear. It didn’t come. The absence of it made him dizzy.

“Nightmare?” Minho finally asked.

Felix kept his face tipped away, eyes still shut. “Just a mission,” he said. “A town. School. There was a mural on the wall with small colorful handprints. They said that there would be no unnecessary casualties. They were wrong.” 

Minho’s fingers curled and he relaxed them before Felix felt the tightness. “I’m here,” he said.

Felix nodded. “I hate that I remember the colors,” he said, and hated how human it sounded. “A red coat. A green door. Yellow chalk that got into the cracks of the brick and stayed, even after…” He trailed off. 

Felix didn’t want to say how the yellow chalk stayed even after the school had been bombed. Even after Felix had listened to the small cries of young kids, begging for help…and how Felix had done nothing. 

“Real is,” Minho said gently, his thumb rubbing against Felix’s knuckles, “we painted over the chip in the baseboard by the stairs and the paint didn’t match, and Chan is adamant it does match. The man is going to dying with his last words being ‘the whites match.’”

Felix’s breath caught, softened. “You’re distracting me.”

“Absolutely,” Minho said. “I’m deviously softening your brain with odd domesticity.”

“You’re doing a good job,” Felix said, and then, too quickly, “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Minho murmured, there was no heat to it. “We don’t do that, Lix. You never apologize to me.”

Felix’s mouth went flat. The blanket shifted as he pulled it closer around him. They sat in silence. Felix flexed the hand that had hovered above the burner and felt, precisely, nothing of the old relief of pain. Nothing to fix the static.

“I don’t know what to do when it doesn’t get quiet,” Felix said, low and honest. “When the… voices are all over the place and I don’t have… orders. I don’t know how to be human.”

Minho inhaled, slow. “We can try small stupid things,” he said. “Not crazy things, like sky diving. But maybe like, playing Jeongin’s and Seungmin’s video games, or baking some brownies.”

Felix tried to picture it. Him doing those things now. The image didn’t make him feel better. It made the feeling worse. “I don’t deserve–”

“Hey,” Minho said. “We’re not doing that either.”

Felix pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and purposely held back an apology. 

“Tell me another real thing?” Felix asked. 

“Real is,” Minho replied without missing a beat, “Seungmin keeps a stash of candy in the second drawer, and he thinks no one knows, and everyone knows.”

Felix’s hand tightened, once, around Minho’s. “This helps,” he admitted.

“I know,” Minho said. “It helps me too.”

Minho shifted, just enough that his shoulder could be there if Felix wanted to lean. After a long while, Felix tipped his head. He let his forehead rest on the slope of Minho’s shoulder, eyes still closed. The blanket slid and before it could fully fall off Felix's shoulders, Minho caught the edge and set it back.

“Okay?” Minho asked, his voice barely even a whisper.

Felix nodded against skin. The voices and static didn’t stop. But lowered enough that Felix could ignore it, enough that Felix could hear the pipes hissing from downstairs and Minho’s heart when he pressed closer… something real.

“I’m going to text Seungmin,” Minho said quietly after some time. “So he doesn’t do the murder glare in the morning.”

Felix huffed. “He’ll do it anyway.”

“True,” Minho said, amused. “But I’ll have evidence we attempted to be responsible.” He eased his free hand into his pocket, typed out a quick message, and slid the phone away again without checking it twice. “Do you want to stay here,” he then asked, “or move to the couch? I can put that awful pillow under your head.”

“Here,” Felix said, immediately. The kitchen felt safe. Quiet. The couch felt…not safe, 

“Here is good.” Minho agreed, and he shifted the blanket higher, extra careful around Felix’s neck,

Felix’s fingers tightened again, then stayed. “If I fall asleep…?”

“I’ll wake you if it turns bad,” Minho assured him. “With my excellent bedside manner.” Felix could hear the cheeky grin Minho was sporting at this moment. “And if you don’t sleep, I’ll tell you about Deneb’s brattiness. I think he’s planning a coup.”

“Cats don’t do coups,” Felix murmured, sleeping tugging at him. “They do… dictatorships.”

“See?” Minho said, amused. “You get it.”

Felix didn’t smile, not fully. But something in his face softened. He pushed the nasty voice as soon as it arrived, enemy, eliminate . And he instead thought about the next morning, where he could maybe be a person, where maybe Minho’s shoulder would still be here when he woke up.

“Minho,” Felix said, before he could truly let sleep overtake him. His voice was sleepy. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Minho said simply “Rest, Lix. I’ll be here.”

Felix sighed, letting the words wash over him and not strike at him. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t need the face to know that this was real, that this was his Lee Know. He let the blanket stay heavy. He let the tile be cold. He let Minho’s hand be warm in his own.

When sleep finally reached him, it did it without tricks, or images of dying children. 

And Minho stayed where he’d promised to stay.

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for readingggg, I hope you enjoyed it!!

Next chapter is in Minho's POV, so strap in muwhehehehe :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it
And omg, this comeback??!! A masterpiece 😌

Chapter 20: sweetheart

Summary:

Minho has a great day.

To me, she was, 

those final steps

  the turn around the last bend,

the house, 

with a light on,

and a fire lit,

and a faint laugh in the distance on the warm wind. 

   That was she.

   She was my always coming home

- Atticus 

---

Minho had spent the better part of his morning staring up at the ceiling, at the stupid crack that Jisung swore looked like a butt cheek. He had kept staring and kept thinking about what had happened seven nights ago. Seven whole nights. When Minho was on the kitchen floor with Felix. Felix who had asked Minho if he could hold his hand in a voice that had Minho’s soul wanting to set fire to anything who threatened his Lix. 

But staring up at the ceiling and acting like some blushing virgin wasn’t going to help Felix. 

He rolled out of bed and he quickly crossed the hall and he listened. To the snoring just down the hall, it sounded like Hyunjin. To the rustling of papers coming from Seungmin’s room. To the low hum of the building. He listened. 

Felix hadn’t come down yesterday. 

Instead Felix had just drifted. He would disapear into the bathroom or the closet or even the roof sometimes. Jisung had been trying his absolite best trying to get through to Felix, telling jokes, talking and talking to him. Seungmin had been making sure Felix was drinking water and eating, checking in on him and whispering to him. Felix had followed none of it. Felix continued to move like he was an idea of a person and not the actual person. Minho had tried to help, but Felix avoided him like the plague after the night in the kitchen. 

Minho padded past the stairwell and stopped at Felix’s door. The door was ajar. The room was less of a cell now because of Jisung, who had tried to make it more bedroom than cell. He had put a plant on the sill, the small stack of books on the nightstand, and the fluffy rug. A lump on the bed barely even moved.

“Lix?” Minho whispered, peeking in.

The lump didn’t move. The blanket shuddered. Not a sound came from Felix. 

Minho sighed and then said, “I’m going to the kitchen.” He stepped back and went to the kitchen. 

He stood at the counter, filled the kettle, put it on the flame, and didn’t turn the flame on. Instead he leaned against the counter, his palms gripping the marble and squeezed his eyes shut. 

Felix wasn’t getting out of bed. 

And Minho was helpless. He was fucking powerless. He wasn’t who he was before, Minho wasn’t the guy who could hold Felix and whisper his worries away anymore. Minho wasn’t the guy who could protect Felix anymore. Minho wasn’t anything to Felix, and God …Minho wished he could be something. 

Jisung walked in, his hair an absolute mess (a sin to society honestly). His eyes looked Minho up and down, “did Deneb piss on you again?” 

Minho didn’t smile. “He’s not getting out of bed.”

Jisung’s mouth pulled down and they stood there. Just two men standing in a kitchen, which was what they were. 

“I can try again. Do you want me to try?” Jisung asked.

“He didn’t do anything when you talked to him last night,” Minho said. He rubbed his thumb along the kettle handle. “He… he’s shutting down, Ji.”

Jisung scrubbed his hands down his face and then perched on the counter. “Seungmin said it would be messy,” he offered, soft, useless and true.

“I thought messy would look like crying ,” Minho said. “Or yelling. This looks like…” He swallowed. “Like he’s almost not here.”

Jisung didn’t argue. He didn’t hug. “Do not do anything stupid without telling me first,” he said finally, which was honestly hypocritical considering Jisung’s track record.

Minho looked at the kettle and thought about a stupid thing. “Okay.”

Minho gave it a few hours, because waiting was the only trick he’d ever learned that didn’t cost them any blood. Changbin put toast crumbs all over the counter as h emade breakfast. Hyunjin floated through announcing that he would be in his studio painting all day. Jeongin and Seungmin sat at the table with the binder and whispered to each other. And Chan…he stood in the hallway and stared at the ceiling.

At noon, Felix finally appeared.

He didn’t step into the room, he kinda just floated at the entrance. He wore Jisung’s hoodie, sleeves swallowed his hands, and he had that faraway look in his eyes. A look Minho was beginning to despise. 

Felix went to the sink, turned on the tap, put a glass under, and forgot, midstream, what he was doing.

Minho heard the water hit the sink. He stood up and wandered over to Felix, just a couple feet away from him. “Hey,” Minho said. 

Felix didn’t turn. He watched the stream of water. A small tremor in his hands as he held the glass.

“Water’s on,” Minho added.

Felix blinked. He turned the tap off then he set the glass on the counter and stood there with his hands hanging in the air like he’d forgotten where they went.

Felix nodded once. Then he left the glass, left the sink, and left the room. He passed within arm’s reach, eyes unfixed. He didn’t inch away from Minho as he would usually do. He moved like a sleepwalker.

Minho let him pass. He counted to twenty, and then he went after Felix.

Minho found him in the corridor by the old storage closet, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Knees up. Sleeves pulled over his hands. Face lacking any emotion.

Minho dropped down, sitting beside Felix but a good few feet away, less suffocating. “Lix,” he said, and when Felix didn’t answer, he added, “Can I be here?”

Felix breathed in. Not yes. Not no. Felix stared at the baseboard. Minho took it for consent and stayed put, mirroring Felix’s posture.  

“Do you want me to talk?” Minho asked. “Or do you want me to shut up and just keep company?”

Felix’s throat worked, and he blinked and blinked as if what Minho had asked was some sort of intricate math problem. “Talk,” he said, finally. 

Minho talked. 

He said, “Chan accidentally put his notebook in the freezer yesterday.” 

He said, “Jeongin has been boxing with Changbin, he claims he is trying to build muscle.” 

He said, “Jisung was right, Deneb did pee on me again.”

Felix drew a breath on the last one that almost counted as a laugh. Almost.

Then Felix’s eyes did that thing. The focus, unfocus, into the wrong room and back. It had happened before, but today it seemed constant. Felix was sliding between the present and what was going on in his head. 

“Lix,” Minho said. He didn’t shift closer. He forced his voice to stay steady. “Come on, Lix, stay with me.”

Felix blinked like he was listening to something else. His head tipped as if someone had put a hand on it. His hands shook and shook. Minho caught the way the floor boards creeked.

“Counting,” Minho said, pushing himself to sit up more. “You and me. Four in.”

Felix listened. He breathed in. The out was too fast.

“Six out,” Minho said. “I know you can do it.” He assured Felix. 

They did that for three breaths. 

Then something in Felix’s face fell. His pupils shook. His mouth opened and no sound came out, and Minho knew the feeling too well, the moment before a room decided to break all the laws of gravity.

Minho didn’t yell pineapple. Minho honestly didn’t like alarms. Pineapple wasn’t necessary.

Nullification wasn’t light. It was a heavy pressure, suffocating almost. He exhaled and felt the room calm down with him, the floorboards settling, the hairs on his arms laying down. He didn’t reach for Felix. 

Felix gulped air and coughed like he had just choked on water. His hand clenched into his sleeve. Felix looked at Minho and his eyes stayed. They stayed locked onto Minho. 

He stayed…but the staying looked like it hurt him. It was supposed to. Existing had never been gentle for Felix. 

“Sorry,” Felix whispered, for absolutely nothing, to absolutely nobody. 

Minho sat there and didn’t move as anger moved through him. Not the anger Minho had for the world. But the anger that lived under his ribs, the one that snarled whenever Felix apologized for breathing. Terror ran through it. Terror at the thought that the night on the kitchen floor. 

“Felix,” Minho breathed, his eyes locked on Felix’s pretty brown eyes and his hands shaking just as much as Felix’s. “It’s okay, no need to apologize. It’s okay.”

But Felix’s breath shuddered and his eyes welled up as he took in Minho’s face, his eyes darting from Minho’s eyes, to his nose, to his chin, his ears, his brows, everywhere. Then a sob broke out of Felix as his head dropped forward. “I tried…” His breath shuddered. “I tried to kill you, Min. I can’t…that was real? I…” He hiccups as he scrambles towards Minho and grabs onto Minho. 

Minho was frozen. His eyes wide as the love of his life grabbed and pulled onto Minho like he needed him. 

Felix’s small, shaky hands are all over Minho, squeezing and roaming about, and he’s whispering and whispering between his sobs. 

And Minho was still frozen. 

“Please, please, Min. Please,” Felix begged, his cheeks red and stained with tears. “Is this real ? I can’t– I don’t know what…is Rebecca real? She is right? She’s not dead, she’s not– where’s Hannah? And Sungie, he’s here too, how did you find him? This is real right? It’s real right, not a dream?” He rambled on and on, clutching onto Minho for dear life.

Minho blinked as his arms wrapped around Felix, “Lix–”

“It’s too much ,” Felix barely gave Minho room to speak. “I keep on seeing these– these memories and I can’t tell. What’s real or not. I can’t—and it’s…I feel everything.”

“Felix.”

“This is real, right? Not a dream? Please Minho, please… you’re alive right ?” Felix asked again, looking at Minho, blinking the tears out from his eyes. 

Minho stared at Felix. How Felix looked at Minho with such warmth. How Felix’s hands gripped onto Minho as if it tethered him. How Felix was practically in Minho’s lap. How Felix called him Min. 

No. It couldn’t be. 

No. No. 

Rebecca, Felix had said. Said not as a word he’d never heard of before, but as a sister, like asking after someone you have been longing to see for ages.

Hannah, Sungie… names strung together the way they’d been strung together on the nights Felix would talk about his friends. Hannah, who Felix was training and helping out, and Sungie the boy Felix missed dearly, who Felix hoped was doing okay, who Felix hoped was still alive.

You’re alive right? in that exact tone, the one he’d used after that winter operation when Minho had come back late and bleeding and Felix had sat him on the bed and stitched him up…giving Minho a small kiss on the cheek everytime Minho accidentally let out a wince. 

“Is this real?” he kept asking.

And he wasn’t looking for an answer that could be found in labs. He was asking Minho, specifically. As if Minho’s yes lived in a place that couldn’t be tampered with.

No compliance. No substitutes. Just recognition.

Minho felt it click, clean as a lock turning.

He didn’t test it. He didn’t ask a year or a street or a color. Seungmin would strangle him and, worse, Felix would drown. He did the only thing that ever mattered.

“Yes,” he said, steady. “I’m alive. This is real. Rebecca is real. Hannah is safe. Sungie is here. You are here. With me.”

Felix sobbed out a laugh that hurt. His forehead knocked Minho’s jaw the way it used to when he forgot how close he was. His fingers tightened, then gentled, then tightened again, like they were relearning and remembering all at once.

Minho felt the old gravity of them reassert itself—their particular pull, the private physics that had taught him once that courage could be a shared organ. He breathed with Felix, four and six. “Hi,” he said into Felix’s hair, barely sound, the greeting they’d used on rooftops and in stairwells and in the backs of stolen vans at three a.m. Then, after a beat that felt like a lifetime coming home, “Sweetheart.”

Felix’s whole body stuttered and softened. No flinch. No recoil. Just a terrible, relieved noise.

That was the proof Minho hadn’t dared ask for. Not data. Not dates. A word that only made sense between them, answered by the way Felix moved toward him instead of away.

Minho closed his eyes and let himself believe it. Felix remembers. Not everything, not cleanly, not without landmines, but him. Them. The thing The Capitol tried to rename and bury and couldn’t.

“Okay,” Minho whispered, forehead to Felix’s temple. “I’ve got you. We’ll take the rest slow, sweetheart.”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading Minho's chapter and I hope it was worth the wait!! I have been super busy so the chapter was a bit delayed, which I am so sorry! I had work, a fire extunguisher blew up on me, a baby shower, school started and well...there was a whole lot of mess (I lost my shoe guys...I LOST MY SHOE)
But anyways, I hope you enjoyed it!!!!

Next chapter is in Felix's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it

Chapter 21: to drown

Summary:

Compared to Minho...Felix does not have as much of a great time.

Notes:

trigger warning!
references to suicide, suicidal ideation, torture, drowning.

You don't need

water to feel like

you're drowning,

do you?

- Jodi Picoult

---

It had started with a dream Felix had when he fell asleep the day after Minho caught him in the kitchen with the stove. It was a dream…one where Felix found a secret stash of candy in his fathers drawer when he was little. Felix found chocolates, sour candy, lollipops, any possible candy. 

Felix picked out Rebecca’s favorites. He was visiting her. 

It was a dream . 

It wasn’t real. 

It wasn’t real when Felix had practically run down the halls towards the psych unit. It wasn’t real when Felix ignored the nurses yelling at him as he sprinted past them to Rebecca’s room. It wasn’t real when Felix burst through the doors and saw his big sister hanging. It wasn’t real when Felix screamed and screamed . 

It was not real. It was a nightmare . 

Felix had woken up with a start. With the taste of copper and chalk in his mouth. 

The images didn’t arrive as clean as the nightmare did. They bled into his mind, forcing them into his head, forcing him to see: the dull empty playground, a red coat on the cold ground, the candy scattered on the floor. He waited for horror, for grief, for anything honest. Instead his chest felt scooped out and rinsed. The dull hum returned. The little voices set up their chairs.

Four in. Six out. He counted with his eyes squeezed shut. 

 

The straps burned into his wrists and ankles.

Felix could feel them now, leather digging his wrists, ankles raw where the buckles dug in. His body jerks and the old phantom pain of electricity surging through his head exploded. A hum grew and Felix swore his head would explode. It was going to—

His head— oh god. 

“Again,” a voice commanded. 

Felix thrashed, his throat tearing out a scream as the shock slammed him back into the chair, his head snapping forward against the brace. Saliva leaked down his chin, blood coating his tongue. 

Lee Know is dead. He is dead. Minho is the enemy, he betrayed you…he betrayed us. You have to kill him. 

Over and over and over again. The words drilled into his head, each and every syllable said with another pulse of blazing white-hot pain. 

Felix tried. God did he try to deny it, to hold onto the warm laugh, his bunny teeth, the memory of Minho sneaking into his room through the window just to see him, to—

“Pleasepleaseplease no, I’m sorry, I am so sorry. Please no. I won’t—”

“That’s not what I asked of you Felix.” 

“I am sorry!” 

“You sinned, Felix. Men are killed for this. You know what you did, you’re lucky your father is letting this slide. If my son had slept with another man? He would be dead. You are so fucking lucky Felix.”

Felix sobbed. 

“Now say it Felix. Say it.” 

“Minho is a traitor to The Capitol, he is to be killed on sight.” Felix croaked out, his body trembling.

“Good boy, say it again.” 

 

Felix stayed in bed until the sun began to set. He peeled himself up and looked around before he trudged to the bathroom. The mirror had fogged, from what? Felix didn’t know. He didn’t wipe it. He didn’t want to see it. See the thing that has become. 

Downstairs, there was a low thrum of noise. Voices, music, bickering. People. 

Felix hovered at the doorway, staring at the people there. Laughing, smiling, talking. 

Felix blinked and blinked as he stared at the people. 

Maybe…maybe this…

Was Felix dreaming? 

He looked down at his hands, they were shaking and Felix drew in a short breath as the walls seemed to move on their own. 

Maybe he was dreaming. This…this wasn’t—

Felix spots the bunny teeth and he squeezes his eyes shut. This wasn’t real . 

He turns and goes back to his room.

He ate nothing. He told himself he preferred nothing.

Felix cried without a sound and with his face pressed into the pillow so that he didn’t have to get up and grab any tissues.

Felix fell asleep with his ear burning into his skull. 

 

They lowered him into the tank again.

His hands bound behind his back, lungs straining as the water washed over his head. He kicked, thrashed, screamed bubbles. But the lid was locked above him. Darkness swallowed everything but the pounding of his own heart.

Sometimes they left him under until his chest burned with fire, until the black spots began to flood into his vision. It was only when his body went slack would the mechanism crank him back up, sputtering and vomiting water onto the floor.

The scientists would scribble notes. “Improved by two minutes, forty-seven seconds.”

Then they would lower him again.

 

They strap him down to a chair, bare-chested. Felix was heaving, screaming and thrashing against their hold. “Let me go! Let me go!” He yelled. 

A hot iron with the Capitol seal hisses in the corner of the room. He thrashes so hard two guards have to pin him by the shoulders. Felix watched as the man holding the seal walked towards him. 

Felix laughed as the man said, “this is what you are. Not some…diseased thing.” 

The iron burned through this skin. 

 

Felix stared down at his socked feet. 

He blinked and blinked down at his feet. The socks weren’t matching. 

One was a dark green and the other was blue. 

Lee Knows favorite color was green. 

Lee Know was dead. 

Was he?

No. That couldn’t possibly…no…he was alive… Felix had heard him .

He didn’t sneak. He just moved. And somehow Felix ended up on the roof.

The wind was biting. His cheeks were cold and inside his nose was numb. The city lay below, humming as it usually did. Nothing different. But out there was the building that had built him, created him. He knew how many guards stood under the south camera on a Tuesday night. He knew which guards were nicer and which were unforgiving. He knew which rooms his team had slept in, Jay and Yuri. He knew. 

Felix went up to the ledge because it was there. He put his toes just shy of the tip, the gravel digging into his heels. 

Gravity had always been a friend first, before it was a weapon. It was one of the few honest things in his life. It didn’t lie. It didn’t blame. It pulled. He could press his palm down and feel the shift in concrete. He could lift and listen. He could make the air fail to hold a mug and, sometimes, he could make it hold a person.

He wondered for a brief and dangerous moment what it would feel like to step and not be caught; then wondered, equally dangerous, how precise he could be about catching. The voices said choose the first thing. But Seungmin’s voice (annoyingly calm) said pick the second or third. 

Was Seungmin real? 

Felix picked stillness. It wasn’t brave. It wasn’t a victory. It was just…stillness. Nothing.

He thought about the Director teaching him a lesson over tea. He thought about the stovetop and the sizzle and how pain quieted everything until there was only light and heat. He thought about heat and wondered if the wind could do the same thing the heat did. He blew out a breath and watched it disappear. The wind didn’t burn. He decided to count his breath as he stood here at the ledge. He got to fourteen and lost count when a memory from the labs slipped in sideways, unrelenting and forcing its way into Felix's head. Session 39, a card held up for the camera, a bored voice, his own anger like a flare and then he startled almost slipped from the ledge. 

Somebody padded up. Felix didn’t stay to see who it was. He stepped back from the edge and went inside. 

After that, the days tipped like dominoes. He ate what was put in his hands if someone was looking and forgot how to chew when no one was. There were no pills anymore and his head felt like it had become a radio that wouldn’t settle on a damn station. Jisung told a joke from the doorway and he didn’t laugh. He couldn’t laugh. It was tiring to laugh. 

He checked whether things were real with small tests. 

He pressed his thumb into the dent in the kitchen counter. Real. 

He touched the fluffy sock that was left in between one of the couch cushions. Real. 

He dug his nail into his thigh just to see if he was real. Real. Not real. Real. 

Then he would go back to bed and stare at the ceiling, at the crack. He tried to remember if Jisung had called it something. A butt cheek, yes. He wanted to smile at that. He didn’t.

Once, he took a shower as hot as he could make it, scalding to a point Felix could compare it to the tea lesson. He wanted the voices to back away, just a little. Steam filled the air. He stood under it until his skin turned blotchy and he felt the pulse in his muscles. He turned the water cold to see if shock would knock the voices out of his head. It didn’t. He turned the water off and stood dripping and listened to the low hum of the fan.

That night he dreamed he was sitting cross-legged on a cold hospital floor and breathing shallowly as he watched someone’s blood seep into the cracks of the tiles. Felix had thought of them as a friend. 

When Felix woke, his pillow was wet and he couldn’t remember if he’d drooled or cried. He rolled onto his back and watched the ceiling crack drift into focus, which made the voices feel louder, which turned the nothing into a roar.

Four in. Six out. He counted.

He stayed there long enough for the light at the blinds to change from blue to gray to black. When he couldn’t stand the sound of his own breath anymore, he got up. 

In the bathroom, the mirror had fogged again. He didn’t wipe it. He turned his head just enough to see the edge of the scar at the hairline. He lifted his fingers and did not touch. The phantom lit anyway, a bright heat behind his ear that wasn’t heat at all but the memory of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited it out and, when it was gone, he turned on the tap and let the water run cold, cold, colder. 

Then, he went back to bed instead of going into the room where they were. He let the noise in the den turn into ocean again and then into nothing again and tried sleeping on his side, then on his back, then pressed into the wall until the coolness of the wall seeped into his bones.

That night, Felix left his room twice without going anywhere. Once he made it to the end of the hall and watched dust float in a strip of light. The second time he made it to the kitchen and stood where everything seemed to stay quiet.

On the third try he went all the way to the den, not in, just by the doorway. He watched as Jeongin had his laptop open with the volume low. Seungmin had his notebook open with the pen where it belonged. Changbin had a bowl and was eating. Hyunjin had his feet on the arm of the couch and a sketchbook in his lap even though he wasn’t drawing. Chan was at the window folding some blankets. Their mouths moved. The sound of them was not like the sounds from The Chair. Felix should have been relieved. He was not. 

“Hey, Sunshine,” Jisung said from somewhere behind him, too soft and it made Felix’ sick. 

Felix went back to bed.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep. 

He dreamed again. But it was not like the dream with the candy. 

No, there was a hand tapping the window twice in a rhythm that Felix knew to open the window to. A boy climbed in, pretending the drop from the floor above hadn’t scared him, laughing into Felix’s shoulder and calling him sweetheart like it was nothing. Like they couldn’t be killed for it. 

Felix dreamed of a boy. A boy who was dea–

No. He was not dead . 

Lee Know was not dead. 

He—

He was…Felix had heard him earlier…he had…

Lee Know was alive… Lee Know was Minho. 

Felix squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the palms of his hands to his ears. Where was he?  

Images flashed in his mind of those bunny teeth. Of him holding Felix close, of him being so warm and so safe . Where was he? Where the fuck was he? 

Felix got up fast and the room tilted. He put his palm on the wall to steady himself before he drifted down to the kitchen, forcing down the sweethearts and the phantom kisses to his skin, down…deep in his mind, where it wouldn’t see the light. Because it wasn't real.

He opened the fridge and stared at the light inside. He shut it. He opened the freezer and found a notebook with Chan’s handwriting on the cover because of course it would be there.

Felix didn’t say anything as he went to fill up a glass of water. 

Then…before Felix knew it he felt it. 

The warmth swallowed him up whole. The heavy weight dulled the tightness in Felix’s chest. The nullification. No one but… Lee Minho.

Felix’s eyes snapped to the person, to Minho, counting his breaths and his eyes stayed on him. On Minho’s cat-like eyes, on his bunny teeth, on his perfectly bridged nose, on the dark hair falling over his forehead. 

“Sorry,” Felix managed to croak out.

“Felix, it’s okay…” God, he sounded just like Minho. This was him, this was his Minho. This was—

No. 

This wasn’t real. This…this had to be a test, a dream . Something. 

Minho…Lee Know…he was dead. He was…they said…they—

Felix’s chest constricted as he gasped out, “I tried… I tried to kill you, Min.” He swallowed as wetness trailed down his cheeks. “I can’t…” God… was this a dream, he can’t live if this is a dream . “That was real? I…” Felix hiccuped before he could say anything else and he reached for Minho. 

He needs to touch. To feel. This needs to be real, this has to be real. 

“Please, please, Min. Please.” Felix said, delirious. “Is this real? I can’t– I don’t know what…is Rebecca real? She is right? She’s not dead, she’s not– where’s Hannah? And Sungie, he’s here too, how did you find him? This is real right? It’s real right, not a dream?” Felix asked and asked as he practically climbed onto Minho, gripping at his shirt, his fingers turning white from how tight. 

“Lix–”

Felix sobbed at the sound of his voice, of the sound of his name on his lips.

“It’s too much,” Felix said, shifting even closer hoping Minho could feel how it felt . “I keep on seeing these– these memories and I can’t tell. What’s real or not. I can’t–and it’s…I feel everything.”

“Felix.”

“This is real, right? Not a dream? Please Minho, please…you’re alive right?”

Felix stared at Minho, at his eyes that were real . Felix swore this was real, something this real couldn’t be a dream. It couldn’t. 

“Yes,” Minho finally said and Felix sagged into him. “I’m alive. This is real. Rebecca is real. Hannah is safe. Sungie is here. You are here. With me.” Just like how they had planned. 

Felix sobbed as he dropped his head, knocking it into Minho…a very real Minho and he felt Minho’s real arms wrap around him…and something in Felix’s gut loosened. 

Minho dropped his nose into Felix’s hair and breathed in, before whispering, “hi…sweetheart.”

And finally Felix felt like he could breathe again. 

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for readingggg, I hope you enjoyed this chap!!
This chap was kinda like a flashback with flashbacks in it...so I hope it isn't too confusing. It does overlap with Minho's previous chap, if you didn't notice the conversation at the end is the same exact one from Minho's chap...just in Felix's POV, so...yeah!
If you guys need any clarification or anything, please lmk and I will try to clear it up :)

Next chapter is in Minho's POV, so strap in guys :))))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about ittt 🤍

Chapter 22: wet cement

Summary:

the boys talk, and well things get a bit bloody.

"'You,' he said, 'are a 

terribly real thing in a 

terribly false world, and

that, I believe, is why

you are in so much

pain.'"

- nietzsche

---

Minho felt the moment Felix’s body gave up. 

It wasn’t dramatic. It was just a gradual loosening, his fingers gripping onto Minho’s shirt, his jaw unlocked, and the sobs that escaped from Felix for a solid hour thinned out to mere hiccups, then to silence.

 Hours had drifted by Felix muttering words too small for Minho to catch, words like: “tank,” “Rebecca,” the barest “Min.” Minho had answered with what he could, keeping himself steady for Felix.

Now the weight on his chest shifted from desperate to sleeping. Felix’s breath was a slow, uneven rhythm against Minho’s sternum, it was warm. His freckled cheeks had dried sticky where tears had been running down. Minho’s neck ached. One leg had gone pins-and-needles long ago. He didn’t move.

The building, however, did.

Minho kept his eyes on the ceiling as he heard the others shift inside, Minho knew they were hovering. They had been for a while, Felix wasn’t quiet and he had gotten their attention. “Don’t wake him,” Minho said. “But…yeah. We should talk.”

Chan crouched by the fridge, forearms on his knees, gaze flicking from Felix who was folded into Minho and to Minho’s face. Chan gave Minho a look, his eyebrows raised. A check-in, quiet: You good?

Minho answered with a small tilt, hoping it told Chan: I’m fine as long as he is.

Seungmin walked so slowly, and he carefully slid two fingers to the inside of Felix’s wrist. Jeongin lingered behind him, wide-eyed. Hyunjin was all worry, mouth a tight line; Changbin’s shoulders were stiff; Jisung slipped along the wall, far away almost as if he were scared, his eyes didn’t leave Felix for a second. 

“Living room,” Chan murmured, but Minho shook his head.

“He doesn’t like couches,” he whispered. “Here’s better.”

Seungmin nodded once. “How long?” he mouthed.

“A couple hours crying,” Minho breathed back. “His ability went a little haywire before that.” Minho let his fingers trail against Felix back, “he remembered.”

Jisung’s hand covered his mouth. “What?” too loud, too hopeful.

Minho kept himself steady. “Not all at once. But…he called me Min. Asked if I was alive. Asked for Rebecca, Hannah, you. He…climbed on me like gravity didn’t exist.” The corner of his mouth twitched and died. “Then he…” he looked down at Felix hoping it could explain what had happened.

Chan slid closer and spoke softly. “What did he say exactly?”

Minho’s brain sifted through the last couple hours. “Bits. ‘Tank.’ ‘Chair.’ He apologized for trying to kill me.” Minho’s throat thickened, and he swallowed it down. “He…asked if this was real. Again and again.”

Minho swallowed and felt how raw the swallow was. “Why? Why now? Why like this?” He asked.

“Because he’s been away from the machine long enough for the glue to weaken.” Seungmin muttered, looking carefully at Felix. His lips were pursed as he looked, his eyebrows drawn tight as he tried to solve whatever this was. 

Chan’s brow creased. “Plain language, please.”

“Plain,” Seungmin said, and tilted his head back with a long sigh. “Active conditioning is like wet cement. It needs constant pressure to keep its shape until it dries. Pull the pressure, and the grooves don’t vanish, but they stop getting reinforced. They begin to sink without the pressure. Felix is like wet cement, we pulled his reinforcers months ago. Since then, he had no bright rooms with the chair, no daily scripts, no weekly resets. Even with the implant reacting, he’s been… unlearning.” He tipped his chin at Minho. “Add in a voice that doesn’t fit into all that shit that has been put in his brain… It's a fault line in their story.”

Hyunjin blinked. “So… that’s it? He just… remembers because we didn’t torture him?”

“Not just ,” Seungmin said. “Layer it. No sedatives for the first time in years. His brain's finally coming back online and it’s messy. Insomnia. Flashbacks. Then you put him in the safest room in the building at the worst hour of the night with Minho's voice , a voice that he remembers.” His eyes dropped to Felix’s face, went soft in a way he would deny later. “The nervous system needs balance. So far it has been holding two statements that contradict: Lee Know is dead, and Minho is an enemy. But since Felix heard Minho’s voice…who is Lee Know…he crashed. Felix found you and he crashed.” He further explained. 

Jisung hummed. “So it was… always going to happen.”

“Yes,” Seungmin said simply. “Not this hour, not this exact way, but yes. You can’t keep a story glued to a person if you take away the glue. He was bound to start remembering.”

Hyunjin’s head tilted against the cabinet. “So… we didn’t make him remember.”

“No,” Seungmin said, flat as stone. “We made it safe enough that he could. There’s a difference.”

Jeongin’s voice was small. “What if it flips back?”

“It will,” Seungmin answered, with brutal honesty. “More than once. That’s what this is. He’ll wake up and be here and then a shadow will move wrong and he’ll be in a room we can’t see. You…” Seungmin’s gaze slid to Minho, “will anchor him, with Jisung.” A beat. “He doesn’t need perfect recall to heal.”

Minho looked down at Felix. The tear-stiff lashes. The mouth finally slackened. The way his hand still found Minho’s shirt even asleep. “He asked me if I was alive,” Minho said, more to the hair under his chin than to the room. “He was terrified.”

Jisung made a wounded sound.

“Shh,” Chan reminded them. He leaned his forearms on his knees. “Okay. So we know why . What do we do tonight?”

“Nothing dramatic,” Seungmin said. “Just don’t push him, I guess.” 

Hyunjin sighed, scrubbing a palm over his face. “I hate that you’re right.”

“You love that I’m right,” Seungmin murmured, and Hyunjin, to everyone’s surprise, didn’t argue.

They drifted into the kind of hush that only happens when everyone is too wrung out. The neon DEN sign painted its sideways halo over the far wall. Somewhere beyond the window Deneb yowled, offended as per usual.

Minho felt it first. The little change in Felix’s breathing that meant he was more awake than asleep. The weight on his chest shifted, the damp cheek that was glued to him peeled away. Felix’s fingers tightened in Minho’s shirt like they were testing whether the fabric, and Minho underneath it, would still be there.

“Hey,” Minho said, softly. “You’re okay.”

Felix didn’t flinch at his voice. He blinked up, eyelashes stiff and eyes glassy. He looked around without moving his head, the way he used to do in The Capitol. Cataloging exits, corners, hands. The others had stayed where they were, small and far: Chan crouched by the fridge; Seungmin a few inches behind him; Jeongin folded under the window; Hyunjin a slouch against a cabinet; Changbin in the doorway like a doorframe. Jisung sat cross-legged on the tile, close enough.

Felix’s gaze slid past everyone and landed on Jisung. The tight line of his mouth changed. Not a smile but some gentler shape that belonged to him. “Sungie,” he rasped, voice scraped thin.

Jisung’s eyes blew wide with relief. “Hey, Sunshine.” He didn’t move in.

Then his attention snagged somewhere else entirely. He went very still. He looked at Chan. Not near him. At him. Really at him. For a heartbeat he went very still. Minho felt his body decide something. Felix pushed, awkward and determined, off Minho’s chest.

Felix got his feet under him and stood, wobbly. He didn’t look at Minho again. He was looking at Chan like a compass finding north. Chan didn’t move. He just held his spot. 

Felix walked right up to Chan, and then, without any warning, he stepped into Chan’s space and wrapped his arms around him tightly.

Chan’s mouth fell open, then shut. He froze just for a moment then he folded his arms very carefully around Felix. No squeeze, no clutching. Just held.

Felix’s cheek pressed to Chan’s shoulder. His voice came out low and raw against cotton. “You’re Chris,” he said, “Hannah’s brother. I knew I could trust you with Jisung. Thank you so much, just… thank you.”

Jisung made a sound that wasn’t a laugh and wasn’t a sob. “ What? ”

Chan’s eyes shone in that strange way Minho rarely saw. The look he wore on the phone when Hannah’s name lit the screen. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. “I’m Chris. Most people call me Chan now.”

Felix leaned back just enough to see his face. “She talked about you all the time. About how you’d keep her safe if…” He stopped, swallowed. “If it ever got bad.”

Jisung slid closer, eyes wide, voice shaking. “Felix, what are you– what do you mean trust him with me ?”

Felix turned his head a fraction, enough to let his gaze catch Jisung, then drift back to Chan as if the thread ran through both of them. “They were going to reassign you,” he said, like it was so obvious. “ To a different wing. Different handlers. They didn’t like that you had anxiety and that it affected your ability to do your job. So I snuck into the file room using my dads keys and switched your file so that you would get assigned to 3RACHA, Chris’ unit. I knew he would protect you. I also signed the forms to get you that pill to help you, the Hydroxyzine. I stole my dad’s stamp that had his signature. No one noticed.” 

The room fell into a stunned silence.

Jisung’s mouth opened; nothing came out. His eyes teared fast. “You…” He swallowed hard and tried again. “ You did that? It was you?”

Felix nodded once, like it was obvious and too small to make a fuss about. “You were on the preliminary roster for this program, and if you failed you were going to be scheduled to be euthanized. Christopher Bahng and his unit needed a third agent, and so I switched you with someone else.” He looked at Chan again, steady. “Hannah said you were the best person.”

Chan huffed a broken sound that almost was a laugh. He blinked a few times and then reached up, thumb hesitating before he caught a tear track at Felix’s jaw. “Thank you,” he said. “For trusting me with him. For trusting us.”

Hyunjin, who had been trying very hard not to vibrate out of his skin, put a hand over his mouth. “I hate that I’m crying,” he announced, voice muffled. “You ridiculous, genius criminal.”

Changbin slapped his palm gently against the doorframe. “That’s the cleanest heist I’ve ever heard.”

Felix shifted, suddenly a little unsteady, and Minho slid to his side without thought, his hand at Felix’s elbow. Felix didn’t flinch. He let himself lean back into Minho a hair, then looked up at Chan again.

“She talked about your hands when you played piano,” Felix added, softer now. “Said you kept a steady presence so everyone could breathe and feel safe. I… guessed you’d do that with Sungie.”

Jisung’s face crumpled. “You saved me,” he said, stunned and small. “Felix, you–”

Felix shook his head and then corrected himself. “I put you where you could find safety,” he said. “Where they could find you. That’s all.”

“That’s not all ,” Seungmin said.

Felix’s shoulders dipped, the closest thing he had tonight to a shrug. The adrenaline that had lifted him off the floor was already draining; he sagged a little. 

“Come on,” Jisung said, breath hitching on a laugh. “Let me at least be dramatic about this on a couch. My knees have been on tile long enough to form a union.”

They migrated slowly. Minho guided without corralling, felt the moment Felix’s balance hiccuped and steadied him with a palm at his back. The couch took them all in. Felix took the corner with his back to the armrest; Minho folded beside him. Jisung slid into the opposite corner and pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then at Felix, then at his heart. It was so stupid but it made Felix’s lips pull up in a small smile.

Seungmin set a glass of water on the table. “Drink it, but please don’t chug.” 

Felix actually listened.

Chan settled on the floor, forearms on his knees, eyes still a little wet. “Just so we’re clear,” he said, and the steadiness was back in his voice, “Hannah is safe. She’s out there parading around, she’ll want to see you. She’s missed you.”

Felix’s mouth twitched, barely. “I want to see her too.

Felix blinked long, then shorter. He didn’t flinch at the faces. He looked at Minho first, checked the door second, and then let his eyes settle on the water. Minho tipped the glass toward him. Felix took a sip, his eyebrows drawn tightly. Then he set the glass down on his knee, balancing it with absurd care. “The day you ran,” he said to Minho, licking his lips. “It was so loud and also… it was quiet. Inside. You said you’d be back in an hour. You weren’t. Thank God.” His throat worked. “They were going to kill you. My father…” he corrected himself, “the Director. He wanted to set an example. His perfect soldier goes rogue? You cut off the head. He didn’t know… all of it. Us. Not then.” A breath that wobbled. “He found out days before. We were already planning. Too late to pretend it was a phase or just a rumor.”

Minho kept his eyes on Felix’s hands, not his face, as his jaw clenched. He remembered that day like the back of his hand, remembered all the things he should have done but didn’t. He wished he could go back and be louder, be braver. He wished for all the useless things.

Felix’s hands reached for Minho’s hands and he fiddled with Minho’s fingers. “Seungmin…I know you said you looked through my file, right?” 

Seungmin looked startled as he nodded. “I did–”

“What’s in the file isn’t everything, Seungmin.” Felix interrupted. “Yes, the Director was pissed when he found out about Minho and I, and our plans to run away. But–but he wasn’t that mad –”

“He wasn’t that mad ?” Minho interrupted, “Sweetheart, he brainwashed you and tortured you and–”

“That didn’t happen until after Minho. When he found out, all he did was his usual yelling, hurting, and stuff. Yes, he messed with my head. But the bad stuff wasn’t until after, after…” Felix trailed off his eyes going distant.

“Okay, we need to break for tonight. Felix you need–” Seungmin cut in before Felix’s gaze snapped to him and he shook his head.

“No, no. You guys need to know, before I forget. What he’s capable of, he’s plotting something. He’s a monster, a fucking monster and he– Hannah didn’t tell you? She didn’t–” 

Chan shifted closer, resting a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Okay, Felix. Breathe for a second, we’ll get there. Just take a second.”

Felix sucked in a sharp breath before he released it shakily. His eyes locked onto Minho. “You remember Rebecca, right? My sister?” 

“Of course I do.” Minho replied, Felix had told him about her. About the time they were kids. 

Felix swallowed, “she didn’t kill herself Min.”

Minho paused as the room went taut around them. “Lix, sweetheart, you told me–”

“I know what I told you, but it was a lie . She didn’t kill herself.” Felix cut in firmly. “After you…after you left, after all the shit my dad did. I was a little fed up and so Hannah and I went snooping just to piss him off. Maybe put some pickles in his desk drawers…” 

“ Oh my God .” Jisung breathed, barely even a laugh. 

Felix snorted, “yeah I know . But we found Rebecca’s file. She didn’t kill herself, Minho, it was staged and–and he killed her . They were doing something to her…like something more extreme than just making humans enhanced… she apparently lost control and so they killed her.” He explained, “My father was planning on overtaking the Western territory, still is from what I last heard.” 

Chan’s mouth opened like he had something sensible to say and then shut again. 

Felix didn’t make them wait. He looked at Minho first and said, “He wants an army he doesn’t have to feed,” he said. “Not with food, or stories, or whatever. Just orders. He didn’t want agents or soldiers. He wants pets, human pets. He wants the citizens to worship him like a God, to obey him and cherish the ground he walks on. Rebecca was his first experiment in creating these pets, his first failed experiment.”

Hyunjin’s whisper was all spit. “Jesus.”

“He’s bombed cities, killed people, children…anything that breathed wrong.” Felix muttered. “He’s a killer, a fucking psychopath. After I found out, he created this- this device called the Neural Shock Implant, NSI for short I guess… to help me, that's what he said. He was delighted it worked so well, that it could control and make his experiments like Rebecca listen to him. So now every agent in The Capitol bears one. And it shocks, you know? Any little thing, any little sign of disobedience, it shocks you. There are levels, going from a small buzz that disorients you…to something that kills you.” 

Minho felt cold go through him in a clean line. He thought of all the times he’d seen a flinch and told himself it was wind.

Felix blinked as his hand slowly reached up to the back of his ear, “you guys took it out, right?” He asked just as his hand grazed against the area and his face fell. Minho watched the way realization built and how Felix angled his body without thinking.

Jeongin cleared his throat, “it blinked everytime someone got close to it. We had no idea how it worked, or if it would hurt you if we tried to take it out. We were still running diagnostics and–”

“Oh…” Felix’s voice fell.

It was silent for a moment. Minho’s eyes hadn’t left Felix’s face for a second. 

“I’ll…I’ll be right back. Water…” Felix muttered as he pushed himself up, grabbing the barely empty glass. Then he trudged towards the kitchen. 

Seven pairs of eyes followed Felix. 

“Lix,” Minho called as he too rose from the couch. “What–”

The drawer shrieked open. Steel flashed.

Felix jammed a steak knife toward the soft skin behind his ear, unforgiving, relentless. 

The world tunneled…and Minho moved. Sound crashed in: chairs, startled swears. Minho caught Felix’s wrist with one hand and the dull spine of the knife with the other. He felt the tremor travel through bone to bone. Minho had always been faster when it mattered; he hated knowing why.

Minho’s eyes bore into Felix. “Felix, look at me. Come on, look at me.” Felix’s eyes flickered up to Minho's. “Sweetheart, what the fuck ?” He asked, his heart pounding within his chest. “Why would you- why…” 

Hyunjin slammed the drawer shut with his hip. Changbin hovered close just in case Felix tried again. Jeongin yanked the first-aid kit from above the fridge, a dish towel in his other hand. Chan anchored a palm to the counter by Felix’s hip, close enough to catch a fall, far enough not to crowd.

Felix’s breath tore in his chest. “He’ll use me,” he said, words breaking apart. “He’ll use all of us. You don’t– he wants people on leashes– he wants to be a god–”

“You are not his to use,” Minho said, calmly. “ You are your own person, you–"

Felix shook his head, “no, no, no I’m not .”

Minho pursed his lips trying to think…to think of something that Felix would accept . Then he said, “fine. If you have to be anyones, you’re mine.”

The blade trembled within Felix’s loosened grip. Minho slid the knife away and out of reach, tucking it behind the coffee canister. 

“It’s still in me,” Felix whispered, devastated.

“Yeah, it is,” Seungmin said. “And we will take it out without you bleeding out on this terrible countertop. I need you alive, you need to be alive, Felix. We can do this without any unnecessary blood being spilled, we can do it where you won’t have to tear yourself open. We can do that,” Felix looked unsure, but then Seungmin barreled on. “Remember what I said? I won’t lie to you. Never. So, can you give me that? Give me a couple days and we will get that thing out of you, okay?” 

Felix’s eyes jumped from face to face. Jisung’s wide and wet, Chan’s set, Jeongin’s bright with anger, Hyunjin bristling, Changbin coiled. Then his gaze landed back on Minho. He nodded once, a hard, helpless tilt.

“Good,” Seungmin said. “Jeongin, can you please do your fancy magic on him?”

Jeongin nodded as he moved towards Felix. He was slow and careful when he pressed the towel on the back of Felix’s ear.

Felix’s chest shuddered, “I’m sorry.”

Minho sighed, pressing his lips to the top of Felix’s hair. “Just don’t do it again, okay? No need to apologize.” 

“If he calls,” Felix whispered, shame and fury tangling. “If my head…”

“Then I’ll be louder,” Minho said, running his fingers through Felix’s hair and pulling some of it out of Jeongin’s way. “I will be so boringly, relentlessly loud you’ll want to punch me.” He managed the ghost of a smile. “You have permission.”

Felix’s breath shuddered into something almost like a laugh and then wasn’t. He blinked hard. “He’s taking more children, he’s bombing towns and cities…he’s– he needs to be stopped, killed.”

“We heard you,” Chan said, voice soft. “We believe you.”

“We’re going to stop him,” Jisung added, rough, wiping his face with his sleeve. “But we’re starting with you.”

“Sit,” Chan then instructed. “Not a suggestion.” Then he continued on, “ You need fluids and sugar, we really don’t need you fainting on us. Jisung, soup. Hyunjin, hide the remaining knives in fucking Narnia or something. Jeongin and Seungmin, print the schematics pulled on the NSI; I want them spread out on the table in ten. Minho…”

“Here,” Minho said, already easing Felix onto a stool.

“Keep doing that,” Chan finished.

Felix tilted his head, cheek brushing the fabric at Minho’s shoulder. The contact was ridiculous and holy.

Jisung set a spoon in Felix’s free hand. “This is the worst soup you’ll ever love,” he said.

Felix stared at it, then at Minho, then, slowly, let the spoon rest in his palm. “Okay,” he said, voice scraped thin, but there. “Okay.”

---

 

Notes:

Thank you guys for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!! Also! Updates may slow down a little bit since I did start school again! But don't worry, there should be at least one update per week if anything!!!!!

Next chapter is in Jisung's POV, so stay tuned :))

p.s. Please comment! Any thoughts, predictions, feedback, anything. I would love to read about it