Work Text:
Luka thought that joining the rebellion, being close to Hyuna, holding her, breathing her in, crawling into her bed at night, would be enough happiness to quell the pain that tormented him every waking second of his life.
And in those moments… it was. But when Hyuna was gone, everything was so much worse.
He was useless with his hands, and so he was excluded from building and bomb-making. He was untrustworthy, and so he was banned from the rebellion meetings. He was a familiar face - a celebrity - and so everyone avoided him like the plague. Maybe he had killed someone they knew or someone they loved. Maybe knowing he was a beloved pet-human to the elite class was enough to send shivers down their spine, nevermind that he was a runaway. Maybe it was just him. It always had been, hadn’t it? He had been created wrong. An uncanny imitation that didn’t understand how a human should act to fit in, and had given up on it long ago. That was just fine by him, though. None of this rebellion stuff meant anything at all. He didn’t care about their plans or their bombings. All he needed was Hyuna, anyway.
On the days that she was away on missions he satisfied his craving for her by sneaking into her room and breathing in her scent left on the clothes in her closet.
Until one of those hulking rebellion guys caught him in the act and began locking her door.
The withdrawals were awful. Knowing that her essence was rubbed across every corner of that room and yet being barred from entry almost drove him insane. He wanted her to come back and hold him so badly it hurt. Relief only came with the thumping of his head against wood, the physical pain dulling the ache of longing until his skin split and stained her door bloody. Those days she returned, successfully surviving another expedition, it was as if the world’s axis had righted and he could finally breathe through the fog in his lungs again. He ignored her grumblings about needing to sleep and cuddled against her warm chest until she rose at dawn. A scar-faced brute locked her door every time she left the base from then on, but Luka was prepared.
He had carefully tucked away fallen stray strands of Hyuna’s hair and tied them into a knot at his wrist. It comforted him some to see it as he hunched over to tap his fingers one to five.
Everyone was free to leave at will. If he deigned to view the sunlight, the faceless guards exuberantly stepped aside and opened the door. He knew they wished he would. Wished he would vanish and never come back. Fools, all of them. As long as Hyuna was here he wouldn’t ever leave. But the sunlight pained him. It stung his skin and pierced his eyes, so the first time he walked the perimeter was his last and he quickly returned to their disappointed gazes.
Why did he exist? Why did he live? Why did his heart continue to beat its constant steady rhythm if it wasn’t to claw his way up a mountain of pitiful, fallen bodies and stand in the spotlight?
Why was he human?
Was he human?
There was something fundamentally missing in these ramshackled walls of an underdog rebellion, where he was given a room and nothing more; not a command nor a purpose. Not even a beating or a rainbow of bruises. It made him feel empty. Numbers ticked by in his head as he played with his fingers, counting them over and over again.
He was allowed to eat as much as he wanted, but his appetite had been left behind with Heperu. The cafeteria food was tasteless. These walls were bare. His body was uninjured. This prison of a room wasn’t a stage.
Missing, missing, missing. It was all fucking missing.
In his sparkling, gory dreams was where he found that missing piece.
Luka sank further down into its familiar embrace, down into the furthest depths of his subconscious memory.
Searing heat from floodlights warmed his chilly fingers as he raised them into the domed sky. One hand reached aimlessly for holographic stars with an operatic flourish, while the other held a microphone up to the curve of his smiling lips.
Thump. Thump.
Buried in his chest, his heart beat at a perfect 80bpm to match the andante music echoing across the stage and over the crowd of twisted, grotesque lifeforms. Their desire for perverse entertainment was repugnant, but he couldn’t deny their eyes on him was his own brand of toxic addiction. Their emotions were at his mercy. He was the Ruler of the Stage. He was in control.
He was in control of his duet partner, too.
Poor little thing, she had given up rather quickly. Just a little taunting was enough to make her voice quiver and her rhythm falter. That slip up had cost her, and she knew it. She wasn’t embracing the stage, and so the stage rejected her in turn.
Ah, the fall was always so invigorating. Fear more, cry more, rage more! Show him more of those uncontrollable emotions bursting with life!
Did she really think she could beat him? This was what he was made for; every inch of his body carefully sculpted to stand on this stage and win. These spotlights were the womb he had been cradled in, and the audience his demanding caretaker. He wanted to hear her heartbeat - he was sure it would be fluttering wildly out of range, and he knew how sweet the panic when it began to slow would be.
Don’t worry, pet. I know exactly how you feel. We are together in this moment: the final moment.
He felt the most human in their final moments. A shared experience, a shared connection, someone to learn his pain and prove that he was strong and worthy. Because they hadn’t survived it, and he had. Luka had survived it his entire existence, with each cut into his skin and machine mimicking his death.
The screen flashed his victory: Luka Win. This is why he was alive, why his heart beat so unwaveringly.
He stroked her hair through her last breath. The crowd roared with thundering applause.
When he awoke in the middle of the night, confined inside the dark walls of the rebellion base, he found his hand itching with want. He lowered his eyes to examine his fingers in the moonlight. Still purple, still cold. And yet, he could feel the warmth of a microphone gripped tightly in his palm.