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bodyguard: the first guard | part three | chan/reader

masterlist.

(part one of the previous story.)

part one | part two | part three | tba

( read on AO3 )

A sequel to the Bodyguard. Miroh’s daughter is assigned a bodyguard of her own. The past is confronted when old friendships and new enemies are pushed to the brink.

pairing: bang chan/reader content info: sequel to the bodyguard (felix/reader). this is a new reader perspective. the previously established story dyanmics: explicit violence, mentions of torture. mentions of past sexual abuse, detailed descriptions of needles. chapter word count: 12,525 words.

B E F O R E

“Happy fourteenth birthday.”

Felix looks up from his work. He underperformed in training today and landed himself a punishment. His good record spared him anything too painful, but he has been assigned cleaning duty. Taking apart, cleaning, and reassembling weapons is not difficult work – he could do it in his sleep – but it is tedious.

Tedium is its own kind of torture, especially these days with his mind in a state of tumult. He has grown closer to Chris with each passing day. Felix knows they are not meant to think of each other as friends, just fellow soldiers, but that is the word Felix uses.

My friend.

That is who stands over Felix now. Chris is smiling and holding something wrapped in what looks like a kitchen napkin. Felix blinks at it, then furrows his brow.

“Huh?” Felix says. “It’s not my birthday.”

“Could be!” Chris says.

Felix supposes Chris has a point. Felix does not actually know his own birthday because he bounced around foster care before he found himself in Miroh’s program. If his birthday was recorded anywhere, no one told him what it was. So it could be his birthday. The odds are not great but not impossible.

“Um,” Felix says, because no one has ever wished him a happy – or happy possible – birthday. He guesses the best reply is, “Thanks?”

“It’s not a trick, man,” Chris says, smiling. He laughs at Felix, though it doesn’t feel cruel, and ruffles his hair before shoving the little wrapped item at him. “Here,” Chris says. “Got it especially for you.”

Felix unfolds the napkin and finds a cookie. It’s not the kind of food that is served at the regiment because their diet is so strict. Food is a sustenance and not a pleasure.

“Wow,” Felix says. It is a genuine surprise. Chris had to go out of his way to get this.

Felix feels embarrassed. He still struggles to cope with feeling in general. He almost yearns for a simpler, more naïve time, when he didn’t have to think or feel, just trust and follow. Now he is a flustered knot of embarrassment because Chris is giving him presents just because Felix mentioned he had never received one. It was an off-handed remark a few days ago, that he didn’t know his birthday and had never received a present but that it didn’t matter because he didn’t deserve it.

And he didn’t, he doesn’t, deserve any of it. Not a birthday wish or a thoughtful gift or Chris’s friendship. Felix has so much blood on his hands and he doesn’t how much of it is innocent. He never counted his kills like some other agents, stupid kids bragging to seem bigger and more powerful than their circumstances. Felix never did it for glory. He knew his place. Now he doesn’t count them because it doesn’t matter. It all comes back to him when he closes his eyes. He remembers what they were wearing, what they said before they died, the things they begged to a naïve, indifferent child.

He doesn’t count them because he doesn’t need a number to know it’s too much and he will never be able to take it back. He doesn’t deserve birthdays and friendships and Chris. He never will.

He doesn’t say this out loud. He knows Chris will argue with him, belligerent in his kindness and reassurance. Felix won’t listen in turn. The conversation would be useless. Rather than bother, Felix asks, “Where did you get it?”

“Hey, I know I’m trouble,” Chris says, still smiling, “but I got connections too, you know?”

Felix guesses he means Miroh’s daughter as she is the only agent with outside connections. They seem to have a tenuous understanding because she and Chris get in the most trouble. Chris, because he still bristles at commands and steps out of line. Her, because she’s Miroh’s daughter and held to a higher standard than the rest of them.

Chris can befriend almost anyone, garnering admiration in his peers if nothing else. His rebellious streak means no one wants visible association with him, but in the quietest of corners there is a whispered respect for the First Guard. He is as notorious as he is skilled and he has a natural leadership.

Felix supposes it is not outside the realm of possibility that even Miroh’s daughter would consider Chris a friend – but only somewhere even quieter than most.

Felix does not consider Miroh’s daughter a friend and he doubts he ever will. Her proximity to Miroh makes her an even bigger liability than Chris. Felix would never get close to someone like that, born into their position and too close to power for his liking.

“Miroh’s daughter, you mean,” Felix says.

Felix might keep his musings close to his heart, but that doesn’t mean Chris can’t read them anyway. Chris is a soldier by instinct if not choice. He is always one step ahead. It’s like he is inside Felix’s head. He seems to know what Felix will do before Felix does.

“Yeah,” Chris says. He rubs the back of his neck, breathing deeply. He looks almost sheepish, as if admitting he knows better. “She’s not that bad when you get to know her. Really.”

Felix is certain he looks unconvinced. It makes Chris laugh.

“You look worried,” Chris says.

“I do worry about you,” Felix says. He looks down at the cookie in his hand. It is hard to say out loud, but he manages a weak, “You’re my friend.”

Chris is suspiciously quiet. When Felix looks up, Chris has a determination to his countenance.

“Find me when you’re done here,” Chris says. “I wanna show you something.”

Felix, as usual, does as he is told. When his punishment ends, he tracks Chris to the barracks where the older boy is patiently waiting. He claps Felix on the shoulder but otherwise doesn’t stop to greet him. He is a little skittish as he leads Felix to their mysterious destination.

It is not so extraordinary in the end. Nothing around here is. Everything is cold chrome and sleek silver, one room much like the next, branded by Miroh as surely as its occupants.

Chris knocks out a ventilation panel then leads Felix to what looks like an unused crawl space, forgotten and collecting dust.

“Welcome to my office,” Chris jokes, still with that nervous laughter. It is putting Felix on edge.

“Is everything all right?” Felix asks.

“Well, no, Felix,” Chris says. “It isn’t. You know that now, don’t you?”

A couple years of shared assignments between the best and second best, the rebellious and the reluctant. A couple years of watching Miroh bludgeon his way through the world. A couple years of regret.

A couple years of friendship to change everything.

“Yeah,” Felix says. It is all he needs to say.

“Sit,” Chris says. There is a corner of the room that has been cleared of dust, this part of the hideaway evidently well-used. “Let’s talk.”

Whatever conversation Felix expects to have, it is not the one he gets. He sits and watches Chris, watches him breathe and measure his words. Chris is usually confident in what he has to say, even when staring down a barrel of a gun. This is more than disconcerting.

“I’ve been talking to some others in the program,” Chris says. “We’re all growing up. I’ll be eighteen soon. If we’re already strong, we’re just gonna get stronger. Miroh has complete control over us. I’m scared that if we don’t do something about it soon, then everything is going to get worse. A lot, lot worse.”

“Do something,” Felix says, his mind going a mile a minute. “What do you mean? Who else have you told about this?”

“People I consider friends,” Chris says. He puts a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “People like you, Felix.”

He thinks of the cookie in his pocket. His heart punches up with alarm.

“Miroh’s daughter?” Felix asks and this time he knows for certain his thoughts are very clear. He says her name – not even her name, her position, the daughter and heir of the very thing Chris wants to fight – and he says it with the obvious inflection of what-the-fuck-are-you-thinking?

“She’s a friend,” Chris says in a voice he usually reserves for an enemy. It startles Felix into silence. Seeing that, Chris smiles, trying to lighten the mood. “You don’t have to trust her,” Chris says. “Just trust me. Felix, I want to get us out, all of us. I don’t want that man or any other man like him to hurt anyone else. Not kids, not adults, not anyone. I won’t put you in more danger, I swear. That’s the opposite of what I want. I’m gonna protect you, okay? I’m gonna protect all of you. When the time comes to take a stand, I just want you to be ready. If something happens, if it all goes wrong…”

Felix looks at him, alarm and worry plain on his young face. Chris squeezes his shoulder again.

“If…” Chris swallows then continues, “If it is all goes wrong, I’ll pay the price alone. But I’d rather die trying to save all of you than live another day hurting innocent people for Miroh.”

“Chris—” Felix starts, an argument on his tongue.

“Don’t,” Chris says firmly. “If there was anything worth dying for, Felix, then it’s this. I’m gonna get you out. I’m gonna get you all out. I swear. Just be ready for when I say. Just trust me. Just be my friend.”

Felix spends a week after that in a state of restless turmoil. He sleeps poorly and fights worse and even spends a night in the Cell for his mistakes.

He doesn’t know what to think about Chris and his intentions. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. But if it worked…

It wouldn’t take the blood off Felix’s hands, but it would be a start to something better. Felix has little thought for his own fate, undeserving as he is, but he thinks about Chris. Chris, the First Guard, who has been here the longest, who has watched the most people die, who has been punished the worst.

Chris deserves better.

Felix believes in Chris. He believes if Chris made an effort, then he would have what it takes to make a difference. Felix knows Chris is capable. He could do what he sets out to do.

It is not Chris that Felix worries about.

Felix observes Miroh’s daughter, studying her more closely than ever before. Felix trusts Chris’s general discretion but he worries Chris has a blind spot concerning her. They are the only two in their age category and they share a small barrack, the forced proximity undoubtedly creating a semblance of intimacy. Chris might trust her but Felix is not so biased. All he sees is Miroh.

Felix watches her. She doesn’t spend much time with Chris in public, her only close relationship with Seo Changbin. They are a bit notorious together. Felix would not call them the best fighters but they are tricky. He is pretty sure they throw their fights with each other and embellish more than necessary. Both like a good skull crash, more brutal than efficient. The trickery and brutality makes Felix more wary of her.

At the same time, her obvious friendship with Changbin shows she can care about someone else. The pair throw a mean punch but always patch each other up after.

Chris catches Felix watching them. They are having a go in the ring, punching and flipping, grinning when they think no one is watching. They have smiles just for each other.

“You look really deep in thought, mate,” Chris says, laughing. He hands Felix a water bottle while toweling down his own sweaty neck.

“Huh?” Felix finally breaks his concentration. He takes the water and smiles one of his instinctive but fake smiles – the kind he uses on a mission, when he is trying to convince an adversary that he is an innocent, unassuming kid.

Chris sees through it, of course. He lifts an eyebrow at Felix then follows his line of sight to the ring.

“What?” Chris says, laughing again. His own ears turn a little red as he teases, “You got a crush on her or something?”

“Ew, shut up,” Felix says, throwing his own towel at him. He feels flushed despite the fact it is vehemently untrue. He is not used to being provoked with that line of teasing. “No,” he says certainly. “I have no feelings for anyone. But I think they might.”

“Huh?” Chris looks between Felix and the ring. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, look at them,” Felix says. “They’re a little too close, don’t you think?”

Presently, Miroh’s daughter has Changbin pinned to the mat. She is on top of him and whispering something that makes them both snicker.

Chris stares at them. After a beat of contemplative silence, he laughs. Felix recognizes the fake sound, the same disarming humour Felix uses when conning someone.

“Yeah,” Chris says. “Hey, I’ll be right back, yeah?”

Felix watches Chris amble over. He says something to the duo and Changbin retaliates with some non-descript shouting and flailing. Miroh’s daughter rolls her eyes. She grabs Chris by the collar and yanks him into a fight.

The rest of the day progresses without much fuss or bother. Miroh has no jobs for them today so the schedule is just training and recuperation.

Felix manages to avoid punishment today. He tries expelling his anxiety in a fight but it does not fully work. Felix has come to realize he is not very good at letting go. Belief, emotion, the good, the bad: all of gets clutched in his fists and held to his heart.

Fighting tires him but it is not a satisfying tired, of exerted muscles and a pumping heart. He feels weary and everything everywhere is so loud, the chrome and steel of the Miroh facilities like an echoing dome. It cycles all that noise in an agonizing reverberation. It feels inescapable. He goes to the barracks which are smaller but it makes the claustrophobia worse.

Laying in his bunk, rubbing his temples, Felix dreams of a quiet room of his own.

It is then he remembers Chris’s hideaway. Chris miraculously dodged punishment today so he retreated to the barracks a while ago. Felix doesn’t want to disturb him but he figures Chris won’t mind him using the hideaway on his own if he’s careful.

They are permitted access to the training room for the few hours between work and mandatory repose. The hideaway is en route so it is easy for Felix to stealthily retrace his steps without raising suspicion. He disappears in the security blind spot the way Chris showed him.

Felix is in the tunnel when he hears a noise. He worries he was followed despite being so careful, but then he realizes the noise is ahead of him, not behind him.

He freezes in the crawl tunnel, trying to discern the sound. It doesn’t sound like talking, more like… breathing? Heavy breathing.

Then he hears a laugh that he recognizes as Chris. And he is not alone. The other noise is a sigh, a lighter, more feminine sound.

Oh.

Apparently, Chris’s hideaway is not just for talking to friends. The sound of kissing and sighing is more friendly than his conversation with Felix, that’s for sure.

Felix is frozen for a minute, too stunned and embarrassed to think of moving. He has to shuffle backwards to escape because he can’t turn in that part of the crawl space. If this was a mission, he could do it, but this is personal. He doesn’t want to get caught but it’s not because it will compromise any job; it’s because it will be awkward.

He scuffs his shoe in his backwards shuffle. It clangs, a subtle sound, but one that makes him wince.

It goes quiet around the corner. Felix knows he was heard and there is no time to escape. Seconds later, a frantic looking Chris is in the tunnel, red-faced with a line of sweat on his brow. His uniform is clearly dishevelled and Felix gets even more embarrassed.

Those feelings need somewhere to go. It comes out of him in a burst of frustration.

“What are you doing?” Felix demands, his voice breaking.

“Nothing!” Chris says, clearly a knee-jerk reaction. Then he takes a breath and says, “Look, I can explain—”

“It’s not Miroh’s daughter,” Felix says. He can’t even pose it as a question because he refuses to believe Chris could genuinely be that reckless and stupid. Befriending her is one thing – a stupid thing – but fooling around with the daughter of the powerful man who owns them is begging for tragedy.

“I’m not stupid,” Chris says.

“It doesn’t matter,” Felix says. “Whoever it is, you need to stop.”

“Look—”

“Seriously, Chris!”

“Felix—”

“It’s not worth it!”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Chris snaps. “You’re not normal and you don’t understand what it means to care about someone like that.”

It is obviously thoughtless, blurted in the head of the moment. It hurts anyway. Felix wonders if Chris can see the pain on his face because Chris looks immediately remorseful.

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that—” Chris starts.

“It’s fine,” Felix says. “You’re right.”

“Felix—”

Felix pushes backwards and leaves without waiting for any protest. He does not stop, marching all the way back to this bunk. Anger and embarrassment have finally dissipated by the time he returns. It has been replaced with determination.

Chris is the best, but he has been compromised whether he wants to acknowledge it or not. He feels too much, for everyone and everything, and it will get him in even more trouble than he is already in. if he retaliates with thoughtless provocation when it’s just Felix confronting him, then what will he do when it’s Miroh and the stakes are even higher?

Chris said he would protect them all. He swore to succeed at any cost, including his own life. There is no one swearing the same for him. No one has ever protected him.

Felix is the second best. He has never left a job unfinished and for that he is not deserving of the protection Chris is offering.

It won’t clean the blood on his hands, but if Felix can save a life worth more than his own, then maybe it will start to justify all of this, all of him.

Chris was right. Felix is not normal. But he was wrong say that Felix doesn’t know what it means to care about someone. Because of Chris, Felix knows how to care. He knows what he has to do.

Chris can try and save them all.

Felix is going to save Chris.

P R E S E N T D A Y

Miroh’s main facility has fallen.

It sounds so dramatic for something so anticlimactic, like you are describing the collapse of a kingdom and not the shutdown of his main office operation.

It feels like an apocalyptic demise.

You and Chan fight your way out of the building, taking on the people who fight in your name. Your father’s name. Miroh.

Miroh is dead. Irrefutably broken, little more than a heap of meat on the tarmac. With him gone and the only named heir on the run – you – this facility will shut down to maintain security.

Miroh ran a meticulously compartmentalized business. There is protocol for everything so even if one part of his operation fell, the rest could continue unimpeded. Miroh tried to establish a legacy that could rival old money like his enemy, going so far as to predict his own demise. Miroh has long braced for the eventuality of his end, so he made sure his business could fracture and run without him.

He did everything in his power to make you just like him, a little broken fracture of himself to ensure that legacy. But then he could not actually face what he created. He could not actually let go. He was the only one with the perspective and power and he had to keep it that way.

Miroh would not have accounted for your rebellion, not for the sake of someone else. For a friend.

Flashes of the last twenty four hours play in your mind. You can hardly pinpoint the change in yourself. It feels like this was somehow inevitable, despite how much you would have balked at the idea before. But now it is all that matters. It’s all that makes sense in this chaos.

You have to find your friend. This facility will be empty in a matter of hours, but there are others. Changbin is in one of them. You have no idea where to start.

One thing at a time, you tell yourself. Before you can ruminate on anything behind or in front of you, you need to fight. You do not have time for introspection or planning. You need to get away. Away from this place, away from your dead father.

Away from his soldier, the First Guard, Bang Chan, who for some reason is helping you escape.

You don’t know why. You seriously doubt your barely coherent pleading broke the conditioning and literal torture that made him into this thing.

You don’t have time to find out. At the first opportunity, you break away, leaving him with a handful of operatives to fight. It should keep them all occupied while you escape.

You do not want to risk trapping yourself in an enclosed space, so you do not venture to the parking garage where the company vehicles are stored. Some of them will be programmed and bugged. You feel bad targeting a civilian, but stealing one of their cars is the safest bet. There are some administrative employees who complete menial tasks for the company, those with next to no clearance level. They park their personal cars around the facility. You pick one that is easy to reconfigure without a key to boot.

Minutes later, you are driving for an exit. Your whole body is aching but you push through it. There will be time to recuperate when you are in the clear.

Sirens wail and alarms blare, every security measure in action. Your escape is certainly not a clean one but it doesn’t matter. You just need to get away.

If you can get off the facility grounds, you can lose any adversaries in the back country roads. The route to the facility was intentionally designed to be a convoluted labyrinth, making it difficult for enemies to approach without giving the facility ample preparation time. You know the paths better than anyone. You can get away.

A soldier marches right into the middle of your escape path.

It is too brazen for a regular agent. They would not be so stupid to try that, knowing you would just barrel into them.

You speed closer and recognize the First Guard. Chan is unflinching as ever, standing in the middle of the road as if he intends to stop your car with his body. He is strong but not that strong. You know that. But he looks like an inhuman phantom, looming there in his combat gear and mask, unphased and unharmed despite the hour of nonstop violence.

But that’s not the reason you stop. You think about him in that van. You could only see his eyes but they were expressive, the tilt of his head inquisitive.

You slam on the brakes. The car stops inches from his body but he doesn’t even blink.

Your heart is racing, breath bursting in gasps. He strolls around the car as if he was just waiting for his ride.

Soldiering instinct propels your hands. You draw a gun as he opens the passenger-side door. He bends down and looks at you, his brow quirked with a silent question. Your hand shakes and he is too good not to notice. You know that, but a regular person would never guess because he does not take his eyes off yours.

He disarms you, faster than a blink. He drops into the passenger seat, then slams the door and shoves the gun in its storage compartment.

You stare at him. Your gaze follows the line of his stark profile. His hairline is a little sweaty but he doesn’t look out of breath.

You don’t know what to think.

This is the longest you have been in his company since you were kids in training. Your memory of him is insubstantial, having spent little to no time with him personally. But it hardly matters what he was. Now he’s a soldier above all soldiers, a shadow filling this small civilian car. He’s not the biggest man in the world but he’s overwhelming all the same, partially because of his uniform and partially because of his posture. He feels too big for this little human space. His knee hits the gear shift, his thighs bulky in the small seat, his shoulders broad where he leans back.

He looks across the car and meets your eyes. You think about how many people have met this gaze, maybe in a moment just like this, sitting across from Miroh’s asset in a little civilian vehicle before he put a bullet between their eyes or snapped their neck. You have seen the results of his missions even if you were not involved in them. The statistics and numbers speak for themselves. Those eyes have seen more death than life and right now they are resolutely focussed on you.

You jump when he lifts his hand. He says nothing but turns the rearview mirror in your direction. You reluctantly peel your gaze away from him. You see what he sees: a vehicle in rapid pursuit of your own.

“Shit,” you say. You shove the mirror back into place. Your hands collide for a split second.

You can’t linger on the weirdness of this moment, that the First Guard is your ally, sitting in the passenger seat and helping you escape.

You drive. The other vehicle chases you down. You get past the easy security measures, blowing past gates and guards. When you approach the last gate, Chan rolls down the window and twists his body. He pulls the stashed gun and aims somewhere. Your eyes are on the road so you don’t see exactly what he does, but the gate slams shut between you and the pursuing vehicle, trapping them on the other side.

Then it is just you, him, and the road.

He puts the gun away. He sits back. He rolls up the window. He makes it seem like a routine, still unphased while your heart pounds with adrenaline.

You do not look at him. You do not speak. You focus on escape, taking a convoluted path through the countryside just in case. When the facility is far, far behind you, you take a back road and pull into a shadowed space between some trees.

You slam to a stop, shift the gear to park, but keep the engine running. You clutch the steering so hard, you imagine it cracking beneath the force of your grip.

Chan still does not speak. The last time he spoke was on that rooftop. What now?

A damn good question.

You look at him. He is not sitting the way you would expect a machine of a man to be sitting. You would have thought the First Guard would sit straight-backed and braced for confrontation, but his slouch is almost insouciant. He sits with his knees apart, his body slanted where his elbow rests on the door. One gloved hand strums the door and the other is draped over his thigh. He looks at you without any expression you can interpret.

You are tired. Your body hurts. Your father is dead and the operation is changing and your only friend is suffering and you can’t do anything about any of it. This morning you held a modicum of control over your life – or you thought you did – and now everything has spiralled.

You know logically that Chan is a victim of Miroh, but right now it does not matter. He is an infuriating figure of composure, not to mention your father’s greatest weapon, and that combination snaps the elastic thread of your patience, already stretched to its limits.

“Take off the fucking mask,” you say.

He stares at you, his expression still unreadable. You are tempted to reach across and rip the mask off his face. You would definitely not succeed, no match for his reflexes on a good day, but logic is inconsequential in the face of your emotions.

He doesn’t test you. He stares for another moment then raises one gloved hand. He unhooks the mask and peels it off. He runs the other hand over his face and through his hair.

You are not sure what you were expecting. The same brown eyes stare back at you, lined with a smudged shadow to look as dark and intimidating as possible. His brows are thick and dark, his hair as black, sweat loosening the slick style so a single curly tuft falls over his forehead.

You follow the slope of his nose down to his mouth. His mouth is closed and he is not smiling. He has full lips, almost too pretty for what he is. Glancing at that mouth on that too-pretty face, you picture a dimple smiled. The memory is almost a blur, a smear of an image over his face. You blink and it’s gone, his stoic face staring back at you.

“What is it?” he says. His voice is like the rest of him, too big in this small space. You swear it shakes the car and the earth under it, though that is ridiculous. It’s just a voice. He’s just a man.

Except he’s not. He’s something else, something that should not have done what he did. You have a million questions. You need those answers before you can continue but it all jumbles together in your head. It’s all too much, the flashes of today, of the past, of an uncertain future full of even more violence.

You finally turn off the engine and get out of the car. You have no intention of going anywhere, but you need space.

You pace in a long line, breathing in and out, using every trick in the book to ease your racing heart. After a minute, you hear the passenger door open. You look over your shoulder at Chan.

You can’t help the instinctive reaction to measure him like an adversary. It doesn’t help he has pummelled you twice in the last few months, not to mention his horrid reputation in an already horrid place. It would be stupid not to brace yourself.

He approaches you cautiously. He has the gall to raise a hand like you are the wild thing and he is the tamer.

“Easy,” he says. His voice is not so booming out here. Other than the dark combat uniform, he almost looks normal, his whole face open to you, eyes narrowed with intense focus.

It makes you breathe harder, the exhale shaky. He notices because he tries to placate you.

He smiles.

It is forced and unpracticed, but there are those dimples, just like you thought. You would have been less startled if he bared his teeth like an animal. The smile unnerves you, undoing all the calming work of your exercises.

“It’s all right,” he says in a frighteningly gentle voice. He tilts his head as he looks at you. “It’s just me, yeah?”

Just him. Like that should comfort you. You suppose you can marginally see things from his perspective, that maybe he has proved himself. After all, he helped you escape. It is obvious he is not doing this for your father or he would not have let you kill him. This is not part of a grand plan. There is no strategy. It’s all over.

It’s just you and him.

It does not comfort you the way he evidently thinks it should. Now is the time to ask those million questions, but you are beyond words. You are a live wire and that pitiful attempt at a truce ignites a flare of angry sparks.

You were built to fight. It punches out of you. Literally.

Chan is faster than you. He dodges your swing with ease, fast as an electric current himself.

“Hey now,” he says, holding out both hands. “Don’t—”

You know you can’t win this fight. You know it’s stupid to try. But each swing flies out of you, instinctive as breathing. He catches every blow, bats your hands out of the way, but he doesn’t swing back. His refusal to fight infuriates you. It makes you feel as helpless as you are.

An aggravated cry spills out of you, a strain behind your eyes as you take another swing.

“Stop it,” he snaps, his smile gone.

He finally goes on the offense, catching your hands and pinning them down. There is a moment of struggle before you feel the driver door at your backside, his body caging you in. You rear up against him but he holds you down, hip to hip, hand to hand.

“I said stop it,” he says. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” you ask, voice breaking. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Your chest is pressed against his, moving with your breath while he stands like an ungiving wall. You glare at him and he stares back. His brow furrows in seeming confusion. He closes both eyes and breathes out, a steadying breath.

You thought seeing him lose composure would make you feel better, but you feel worse, more unnerved than before.

He looks at you, a muscle in his jaw feathering when he clenches it. You stare at it as he releases you.

“You must know I can’t trust you,” you say.

You make the mistake of lifting your hands to shove him away. You do not intend to punch him again, the worst of that aggression gone, but he doesn’t know that. You suppose you can’t blame him for his instincts after your demonstration.

When you lift your hands, he grabs your wrists. Swiftly and effortlessly, he pins your hands by your head.

“Oh,” he says. His eyebrows lift and his face is far more expressive than you expected. “I’m the one who can’t be trusted, right?”

“Excuse me?” you snap.

“I’m doing my job, yeah,” he says. “Yesterday you were running jobs for Daddy and today you shot him dead. Wanna talk about erratic behaviour? Wanna talk about who’s unpredictable? About who can trust who here?”

Your mouth parts with a useless, breathless rebuttal, stammering and empty. You didn’t expect that many words from him, not when he has been a silent shadow for so long. Never mind the easy, casual speech, every colloquialism and the taunting hurl of daddy. It makes you think of that scathing, troublesome boy he once was, as sharp with his tongue as everything else. But he is not that boy. You know for a fact he was broken. He has done all those jobs for Miroh without causing any strife in the operation. He is a weapon and nothing more. He exists to follow orders.

Until today. Until you.

“So?” you finally say, because what else can you say?

“So?” he repeats.

“So.” You have those million questions, but there is only one that really matters. “What are we? Soldiers without a general? Because right now it seems like we’re two people who have no reason to trust each other and no reason to work together.”

Your gazes are locked and you measure each other. Not that you are much of a threat to him. He has you pinned with very little effort. If you were at your fighting best, you like to think it would be a little challenge, but right now you stand no chance against him.

But he doesn’t want to hurt you or he would have done it already.

He drops your hands. He doesn’t step away, still regarding you with that scrutinous eye, but it is a menial demonstration of trust.

You drop your arms. You stare back at him, refusing to show the depth of your weakness. You think his body might be keeping yours upright, your legs so weak. You do everything in your power to keep your wild emotions in check, to keep the tears in the back of your eyes. You breathe deeply.

“I’ll help you find your friend,” Chan says, the last thing you expect him to say. You can only watch as he sighs and speaks. “You were my last mission,” he says. “Miroh told me to bring you in. I did. He wanted me to watch you. I am. He wanted me to be your—” He laughs but it is not a happy sound, dry and devoid of pleasure. “Your bodyguard, I guess.” He shakes his head. “Consider this me following orders,” he says. “That’s what I do, yeah? I follow orders. And I don’t leave a job unfinished. Ever.”

“And Miroh?” you say tentatively. “The fact I killed him?”

He shrugs dramatically, hands open in surrender.

“Miroh didn’t make me his bodyguard,” Chan says. “He made me yours.”

It is such preposterously simple logic that you laugh, a disbelieving bark of a sound. You look around at nothing, like the answer to your ridiculous circumstance is in the trees or the road.

When you look at Chan, he is still looking at you, his brow quirked inquisitively.

“Well?” he says. “Is that enough? Can we work together to finish this last job?”

“Your job,” you say slowly. You meet his eyes. “So that’s what I am to you?”

It’s meant to be an easy question with a reassuring answer. He is a soldier. You are his job. He will do what you ask. It’s as simple as that.

He tilts his head as he looks at you. His contemplation is too heavy. It was a simple question for a simple soldier who should speak no language outside of missions and reports.

His gaze is searing and it makes your heart skip a startled beat.

“Yes,” he says. He speaks the word like it’s exhausting to say out loud. It lands with a thud on an exhale. “My job.”

His forearm is planted by your head. His other hand grips your bicep. He is keeping you in place with his hips and thighs. You can feel the tension in his body.

You have no idea why you do what you do. It comes from the same place as those desperate punches. You know it’s useless, you know nothing will come of it, but you ride the propulsion of adrenaline. Your body, on the brink of desperation, has been pushed to its utmost capabilities in the last couple hours. What does it want? What do you want?

What did you ever really want?

You kiss him.

It shocks you both. Unlike the punch, he does not know how to retaliate. He stands there, breathing into your mouth. He is neither encouraging nor withdrawing.

You stop quickly and wipe your mouth. Mortification sets in.

None of this is like you. You blame stress. Your body is confused and hurt. You need recuperation. Whether you like it or not, you need comfort too. It is a deep internal call, only human. But you won’t be getting that from the solid, inhuman wall around you.

You push at that wall and it finally gives. Chan steps back. You doubt a punch would have moved him so easily as that kiss.

“Ignore that,” you say. “Adrenaline. I’m still – not right.”

He just stares, once more a silent shadow. You breathe out in a huff.

“Okay,” you say. “And we’re back to the staring. At least I know you’re still working.”

You turn to open the car door, effectively ending the tense exchange. Chan walks away. He silently circles the car to reach the passenger door. You look at his face, once more stoic and expressionless. He doesn’t look at you, dropping into the vehicle without another glance or sound.

You close your eyes. You take another deep breath of fresh air.

Maybe this is good. Maybe Chan is the ally you need right now. Someone level, someone only concerned with mission parameters. Someone who will not become compromised because of emotion.

Because you are very compromised.

You are not thinking clearly. You need a plan and some water and rest.

You get in the car. You start the engine. You don’t speak another word.

You drive for hours, wanting distance between you and the destruction.

The silence in the car is piercing, your head aching after the first hour. The little space acts like an echo chamber for your tumultuous thoughts. You keep replaying the day, every death and cry. You think about your security team strewn across those stairs, just another casualty in Miroh’s game. You think about your father, the unplanned murder but the utter lack of regret in your heart.

You think about Changbin. Your reckless side wants to look for him right now. You cannot stand to waste another second. Based on your father’s words, he could be anywhere, subject to any number of horrors. But despite the whirlwind tempest of your mind, there is a soldier inside you and she is more pragmatic. You are in no condition to fight. Even if you knew Changbin’s exact location, you would be no use to him. You need to rest, formulate a legitimate plan, then attack.

You can’t afford to make any mistakes. Better than anyone, you know the forces you are up against.

You pull into a highway fill-up station at dusk. The car needs fuel and so do you. There is a little shop near the fuel pumps, the place deserted other than the bored cashier behind the counter.

There was some cash in the glove box, enough for necessities. You will inevitably need to steal or manipulate, but you prefer to lay low tonight. You were careful to avoid traffic cameras and security tv as you exited the previous city. By the time the car is reported and Miroh’s operation works out your connection, you will be off the grid.

You turn off the engine and reach for the wallet. Chan snatches it first.

“What are you doing?” is spoken in unison.

“I’m going to buy us some fucking water and food,” you say.

“Are you? Really?” He gives you a pointed up-and-down look. “You gonna do that looking like you just played cannonball with a cement wall?”

You have not gotten a good look at yourself, just a flash in the rearview mirror, but he is probably right. You feel like utter shit so you must look it too.

“Well, you can’t go in there either,” you say. Even without the mask, he is clearly in an unusual uniform. A bored clerk will remember a terrifying soldier in combat clothes marching through his shop.

Chan flashes you a dimpled smile, frighteningly charming.

“Sure I can,” he says. “Just have to blend in.”

Your eyes widen as he discards both gloves then opens the neck of his shirt. You stare as he efficiently strips off his top layers.

If he looked powerful in the uniform, he looks as just as intimidating without it. He doesn’t boast gargantuan proportions but he doesn’t need it. There is lethal strength to the rolling musculature of his sturdy body.

You shouldn’t care. Soldiers strip all the time, long assignments and shared compartments making it an inevitability. But Chan is not just another soldier. In your head, he is that living shadow, covered all the way up to his eyes in the Miroh black and blue. Seeing all that skin is a startling reminder of the man under the mask.

You find Chan watching you, amused. That stupid eyebrow is quirked again.

“What?” you snap.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Be right back. Don’t miss me too bad.”

You roll your eyes, slumping in your seat as he gets out of the car. You have half a mind to drive away but you are pretty sure he would find a way to manifest at your destination anyway.

You watch as he enters the shop in a nonchalant stroll, wearing just his pants and boots. He waves at the cashier and says something that makes him laugh.

To his credit, Chan looks like a regular guy on a hot day, casually perusing a gas station shop. He makes small talk with the cashier and they laugh some more.

You knew Chan was a good soldier but you didn’t expect him to be such a good agent too. He is probably better at the civilian act than you. You are standoffish and opt for a quiet demeanour, blending in through invisibility rather than a persona.

Chan walks in and out, the cashier unaware of the nature of his customer. You return to the road with a full of tank of gas and some sustenance.

“Are you going to put your shirt back on?” you ask.

He gives you a side-eye as he shrugs the outermost layer back on. He doesn’t do it up. You refuse to act like a glimpse of his bare chest means anything to you.

Except it does. When he sits there with his knee against the console and his skin showing and a tuft of hair over his forehead, he looks like a person. He is a person, one who has been subject to some of the worst horrors of Miroh’s operation.

There is no denying Chan is a complicated figure, unwillingly complicit in atrocities. He acts like a normal person with a fully cognizant mind, but you just witnessed for yourself how easily he can fake that. You do not know how much of the real Bang Chan is actually inside him.

“Chan,” you say after a long time. The sun has almost fully set, the sky in its navy gloaming.

“Yeah?” he says.

There are no words that suffice. You could give an entire speech and it would be virtually meaningless.

“I’m sorry,” you say, leaving the breadth of the apology up to his interpretation. You keep your eyes on the endless miles of highway that stretch ahead. There is a long journey in front of you. There is a longer road behind you.

The car is illuminated with golden light from passing cars and overhead lamps. It flashes over his face in the deepening darkness.

“Don’t be,” Chan says. He crosses his arms in a protective position, looking out his window though there is nothing to see but the highway and passing cars. “None of this was your fault,” he says.

You laugh, a similar humourless sound to his earlier laughter.

“That’s not entirely true,” you say, thinking of all the missions you deliberately ran for Miroh. You thought you could make it mean something. You were just like your father, believing the ends would justify the means. You never tortured Chan yourself, but you were part of the operation that kept him in chains. There was nothing you could do to save him, but you certainly never tried.

He looks at you. You hear him move, the crinkle of his clothes, the water bottle he twists in his grip.

“I don’t blame you, you know,” he says. “Seriously. Today was crazy. Everything’s crazy. You’re not responsible for it.”

“I’m not not responsible,” you say. “My team is dead. My friend is gone. My dad – well, you can’t say I didn’t do that.”

“He had that one coming,” Chan says, his laugh a little more real. “No offense, but your dad kinda sucked.”

You find yourself laughing more genuinely too.

“Yeah,” you say. “I think we can agree on that.”

You fall into silence but it is more comfortable than before. There has been an undeniable tension since the moment he climbed in this car, looking at you with questioning confusion as you pointed a gun at him. You were panicking but he must have been equally bewildered. To him, you were a mission. He lives by his orders.

“I should apologize to you,” he says.

You look at him with obvious surprise. He meets your gaze, his expression sincere if not a little chagrined. His dimples show with a faint smile but it is not very happy.

“I’ve been an ass,” he says. “Today was – well.” He runs a hand through his hair.

“Trust me,” you say. You try to lighten the mood with your tone. “I’m a Miroh. You will never have to apologize to me for as long as you live.”

He doesn’t laugh or even force that pretend sound. He stares ahead, his gaze sorrowful and faraway.

“Sorry, that was—” you begin.

He forces a smile and shakes his head.

“Nah,” he says. “Truce?”

Smiling feels awkward and your injuries probably make you a terrifying sight. But he accepts it, nodding at you. The car does not feel like such a claustrophobic space after that. The air is clear as it can be, considering who you are.

Neither of you has an identity right now. You were tethered to the same monstrosity and now it is gone. Everything is different.

You are too tired for another late-night heart-to-heart. It is time for rest.

There is enough cash for a cheap motel room. You find a quiet inn off the highway, sequestered beyond trees and countryside fields. You finally look at yourself properly in the bathroom mirror. You decide Chan’s earlier remarks were a severe understatement. You look like a battleground more than a soldier.

You injures will repair themselves with time, but it is a grisly sight. You shower for now. The soap and water helps.

You don the same shirt and underwear. New clothes will be a necessity. You mentally plan tomorrow, everything you will need to accrue before you formulate an attack. You have already mentally plotted the closest facilities, but you will need to verify their function and security protocol before striking.

You are mentally strategize as you exit the bathroom. You are distracted, thinking nothing of the fact you are wearing underwear and a shirt.

Chan already showered because you insisted, knowing you would take longer with your injuries. He is sitting on one of the single beds, sorting through his weapons. There is the gun you stole from Miroh plus his own array of armaments, things so well hidden you did not realize he even had them. They are laid out on the bed. He sits at the foot in his combat pants and nothing else, his dark hair damp and face bare.

You stroll past him, feeling his eyes as they lift from a gun to your bare legs. Now that you have scrubbed the worst of the brutality from your body, you feel like something of a person again. His flicker of attention ignites an undeniable spark in your belly. At first, it startles you, because the First Guard is the absolute last person you should ever think of like that.

But then you look at him. He has turned his eyes back to his work, saying nothing as he reloads the gun with second-nature efficiency. He is holding a weapon but, despite his conditioning, he is just a man.

You are a grounded person. You keep your head down and go about your tasks with confident certainty. He is here, you are here, it has been a long day, and it is not unusual for soldiers to seek comfort before the dawn of a new fight. Comfort is as important in healing and recuperation as anything else.

You sit on your own bed and look at him. He is effortlessly attractive with his dark hair and dark eyes, the sloping muscle of his firm body. You trace his chest and abdomen with your eyes. He does not lift his gaze, his attention on the gun.

“Do you want to fuck?” you ask.

Bang Chan is the best soldier in the force. You are pretty sure he has never fumbled a weapon quite so spectacularly. It clatters to the floor and he kicks it under your bed.

“What!” he says. He doesn’t look at you as he retrieves the gun, laughing a comically nervous giggle. “Um… what?” he asks again. Before you can answer, he shakes his head. “That’s uh, wait. Um. No. Bad idea, right? I mean—”

“It’s just a suggestion,” you say, not really offended. “It’s been a long day. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re both adults here.”

As you say it, you consider his circumstances. Chan has spent his entire life in the house of Miroh. He is not innocent but he might be inexperienced. This man has killed dozens of people and worked dozens of dangerous operations. His body is built for violence, not pleasure, and certainly not his own.

You find yourself blurting, “Have you ever…?”

“Yes,” he says firmly, brow furrowing with annoyance.

“All right, all right, just asking,” you say. You decide not to push the topic because it clearly makes him uncomfortable. You just cleared the air and you don’t want to muddy it again.

You change the topic swiftly. You make some empty remark about the weather as you turn on the small television. It’s an old contraption, buzzing with static as it flickers to life.

Chan resumes his work. He puts his head down to concentrate.

Your gaze inevitably strays to him.

His hair dries curly. It feels like an unusual thing to know about the First Guard. He looks so much younger with a clean face.

You jump when that face lifts. He looks at you.

“It wasn’t… you know…” There is a hunch to his shoulders, his eyes dropping to his work. “I just did it on missions, ya know?”

“Did it,” you say. “On missions.” It doesn’t register right away, partly because you are tired and partly because you did not expect him to continue this conversation. “You mean sex?” you ask. “You had sex on missions?”

“I had sex for missions,” he corrects, eyes on the weapon he is disassembling. He is acting like the conversation is meaningless, his attention divided, but you know his task does not require that degree of concentration. He could take that thing apart in perfect darkness.

“For missions,” you repeat. “What, like a honeypot type scheme? You?”

It seems ridiculous at first. You picture the First Guard smashing through windows and tackling you in stairwells. There is nothing seductive about that raw violence. But then you look at the man in front of you, young and handsome, the one who so easily charmed that cashier while pretending he was someone else. You picture him in a suit and tie, maybe a t-shirt and jeans. He would be devastating with the right preparation.

Chan is the best. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise you he would excel regardless of the scheme.

“Something like that,” he says. He finally loads the magazine. “It wasn’t so bad, though. Seriously.” He twirls the gun with an effortless flourish. The grip finds his palm like the pistol is a part of him. “Trust me. My body was used for worse things. You get that too, yeah?”

You suppose you relate well enough. You were raised in the same program, put through the same grueling regimen. You have done things and you are not proud of them all. Your circumstances are not the same, though. You are each uniquely situated in your positions, even if you started in the same place.

We’re all that’s left.

Changbin’s voice in your head causes your mind to drift.

“What about you?” Chan asks, drawing you back to the conversation.

“Me?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “You.”

The First Guard is asking you about your sex life. You woke this morning in a safe house and put on combat gear, ready for another mundane day of field work. Somewhere in the middle of that was a cascade of violence. Now Bang Chan is asking about your sexual proclivities. If you weren’t so exhausted, you would laugh.

“I mean, nothing special,” you say, sufficing for the boring truth. “Mostly just this. Sex doesn’t really mean anything to me. It’s like exercise. Long nights on a job. You know. Fellow soldiers on a mission. Sometimes a civilian hook-up.”

You can’t parse the expression on his face. His gaze is somewhat judgemental, or maybe it is just scrutinizing, intensely focussed. It bristles your nerves. Your tone is more derisive when you say, “I’m not a romantic.” You hold his intense stare in your own. “Sex is just a bodily function to me. Sometimes the body needs the release or the pleasure or whatever, so I satisfy it and move on. That’s who I am. I work. I get the job done. That’s what I have always done.”

What you always did. You are not sure how to describe yourself anymore. You nonetheless punctuate that definitive statement. You assume that is the end of the conversation.

Then Chan asks, “So there’s… no one… for you?”

If he was any other soldier, you would think he was angling for flirtation, but he just turned down your very blatant offer. You do not know why he has any motivation to ask such personal and irrelevant questions.

It is not worth the argument. You conclude with a simple, “No.”

He nods, rocking his whole body with the force of his too-casual gesture. The tips of his ears are red, though your gaze does not stay there. You are quickly distracted by his bicep. He lifts an arm to rub the back of his neck, muscles softly rippling. His brazen questioning coupled with his awkward shyness is incongruous.

You think it is unlikely you will ever understand this man. He has been taken apart and put back together too many times. Fragments of him seem to fire all at once and in great contradiction.

“What about Changbin?” he asks. “He must be pretty special to you. Ya know, for you to have done all this for him.”

You are simultaneously struck by repulsion and sentiment. Changbin is very special and you regret not realizing it sooner. He has always been at your side, taking hits to protect you well before he became your bodyguard. He is the person who kept you smiling. You understood each other on a different level. His friendship was a rare gift and you took it for granted. Now you would do anything to have it back.

But also…

It’s Changbin. Ew. You are an only child but you feel a brotherly affection for him. Picturing him in any other context is nauseating. It just feels wrong.

You have such a visceral reaction of disgust that Chan laughs. He puts up his hands as if in surrender.

“Sorry, sorry, my bad,” he says. “Just friends, then?”

“Yes,” you say. “Though there’s nothing just about it.”

You have replayed that rooftop exchange a hundred times, torturing yourself with every possible outcome. If only you did this, if only he did that. You rearrange every second, trying to find a version with a different ending.

You wonder how he will react when he finds out what you did. Aha, murder princess living up to her name! he might say. The old man should have seen it coming. I knew you could it, but of course I did. I’m so much smarter and better looking than everyone else here.

You smile at the idea but it fades quickly.

Changbin was with you last night. He was sitting within arm’s reach, his scar under your fingertips. Now he could be anywhere and it’s all your fault. Not just because of the rooftop mistakes, but because of every mistake you made before that.

You exhale. Your shoulders shake. Chan watches you close a fist around a pillow.

“You all right?” he asks.

“I’m ending it,” you say.

“Sorry, what?”

“I always thought Miroh was an inevitability.” You are speaking out loud but mostly to yourself. Your gaze is fixed on some distant point, your mind and heart miles away. “But he wasn’t,” you say. “No more soldiers. No more experiments. No more bribes and theft and terror. My father is dead and I am going to do what I should have done a long time ago. I am going to make sure his work dies with him.”

You look at Chan. A day ago, you both existed for Miroh. Now you are two people planning to dismantle an empire from a motel room and a stolen car.

“Do you have a problem with that?” you ask.

A part of you is braced for the worst, that he will reject it, that he will revert to some kind of conditioned programming and drag you back to a facility for condemnation.

Even while you think it, you know it won’t happen. The eyes staring back at you are as clear as your own.

“I’m just the bodyguard,” Chan says. “I go wherever you go. Always.”

You feel invigorated to start now, but you are tired beneath the burst of adrenaline. You need to let your body heal.

The room is dark and you doze in the light of the television. After a couple hours, you roll over and find Chan is still awake. He is laying on his bed, arms crossed and eyes open. He is watching the shopping channel, ad after ad after ad, with far more intensity than it merits. His mind must be somewhere else. You can only imagine what he is thinking about.

You wonder how much he knows about himself. He responded to your half-coherent treasonous pleading. Does he remember hating Miroh? Or is he truly only helping you because of mission parameters?

It is easy to forget when he is a bare-faced, curly-haired young man slouching in a motel bed, but Bang Chan is lethally competent. He knew all of Miroh’s innermost schemes. It will come in handy now, but it makes him an irrevocably dark character, whether it was willing or not.

You wonder how much Changbin would trust him.

Wait.

You were so distracted with your plans, you did not question a moment in your conversation.

Chan mentioned Changbin.

You never told Chan the identity of your friend. When you were pleading with him, you just called him a friend.

Maybe Chan heard you talking to your father. Maybe he knows about your relationships because that was his job. Maybe he just guessed because Changbin volunteered himself in the ring.

Maybe Bang Chan remembers more than he is letting on.

You fall asleep to the soft drone of the television. Your mind is walking in circles and you dream of similar rings. Nightmares of chrome cages and steel traps, a suffocating helplessness squeezing your ribcage.

In your dreams, the room fills with smoke, a charcoal smog that chokes you as quickly as the compression on your chest. You look down but you can’t see your body, only feel it. Your invisible body struggles against invisible bindings. You gasp for breath.

Your father appears. It is him holding you down, a heavy hand in the middle of your chest. You cry out. You want to move but your body is trapped.

You close your eyes. When you open them, Changbin is there. He is still a teenager. His head is bleeding – why is his head bleeding? – but he wipes the blood as if it’s nothing more than sweat, all his focus on you.

Of course it is. He’s your friend. He’s here to save you. How did you not see it before? It’s like you have been moving through the world in a fog, the same grey smoke that envelopes you now. His face is the only clear image, gawky with youth but alive and real.

The weight is lifted off your chest. Black spots swarm your vision as you suck in a lungful of air.

When you look again, Changbin is grown. He looks like he did a day ago, dark bangs in his eyes, stocky build ready for a fight.

“I’m not leaving here without you.”

Not leaving here.

His voices dances around you. You are trapped in your body, a screaming, shrieking force, watching through dead eyes as the world spins. People pass but they don’t hear you. You try to reach for someone but your body doesn’t respond to your thoughts.

A labyrinthine stretch of road unfurls then disappears. You are standing in the infirmary at the main facility. You stare at yourself, the younger version of you. You are already dead behind the eyes, resigned to your situation. There are masked doctors around you. A tray full of needles. You watch as the long point penetrates your skin. You’re just a child, arm so small in comparison.

Your child face contorts with pain, an expression your adult face cannot mimic because you cannot control your face.

You remember the pain, even if you cannot cry. It was like nothing you had ever felt. The pain meant it was working. The medicant was only administered to you when it had been thoroughly tested. The first injection killed every subject except one. The second program was a success.

The children were writhing in pain for weeks, screaming and crying, begging for parents that never came. Yours did, looming over your bedside, touching your feverish forehead and speaking through the fog of pain.

An investment, Miroh called it. You’ll thank me one day.

Changbin is there. He is a child too. They put a needle in his skinny arm. He winces but he doesn’t cry. He isn’t scared of the needles or the pain, but he isn’t eager either. He is just there, his head down.

You blink and he is grown. The needle is still in his arm, only it is not an injection but an extraction. You watch the fullness of his face wither. They are taking too much. He becomes a child again, screaming in pain.

The same pain moves inside you.

No, worse.

Worse.

You never could have imagined a worse pain. It courses through your whole body, peeling apart your insides while you lay there, helpless, watching.

Your father stands over you. You’ll thank me one day.

He disappears. For a flickering moment, you see Bang Chan. Curly-haired, dimpled cheeks. He stutters and shakes like a bad film projection. His face contorts, changes. Wide dark eyes stare at you, his face covered in rain – water – tears? Pouring down his cheeks, mouth open and a mute cry in the grey.

You want to touch him but you cannot move. His face flickers again. You feel a tiny, infinitesimal twitch in your pinky.

Then he disappears altogether. Your father is there. He grabs you by the shoulders and slams you down, straight through the earth, holding you there in the darkness where no one can find you and you cannot move.

“Hey—” comes a voice, somehow reaching you in the depths of that pit. “Hey, hey, hey, wake up.”

In your dream, your father shoves you.

In reality, you are thrashing in a motel bed.

It takes a minute to realize you are awake, that everything was just a terrible dream. Your adrenaline is a white hot heat in your chest, your voice a strangled shriek as you clamour around the twisting sheets.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Chan says. “You’re just dreaming, whoa, easy, c’mon… It’s all good. Easy now. Breathe for me, okay?”

It feels like your first breath in years. It goes down shaky, your vision blurry. You realize Chan is holding your wrist, lightly but carefully. You blink up at him. He turned on the bedside light at some point. Half his face is lit in gold as he looks at you with concern. It is such a strange expression to see on him. These were the same eyes glaring at you over that uniform mask. Now that brow is pinched with worry, his own breath a staggered thing.

“You all right?” he asks.

You are sitting upright. You look at your wrist in his hand.

“Did I try to punch you again?” you ask.

“You missed,” he says, smiling. Then he shakes his head and says more seriously, “It was my fault. You were yelling in your sleep so I woke you up. I guess it was too fast or something. Just, you know, I don’t think the walls are very thick here.”

“Right,” you say. Your heart is still stampeding. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he says. “You… you good…?”

“Yeah,” you say. You are too weary for patience, so sarcasm spills out of you. “Peachy.”

He opens his mouth but you don’t wait to hear it. You slide out of bed and land on shaky legs. Your whole body is covered in a sheen of sweat. You want to shower, wash away the nightmare and the terror.

You are a light sleeper. You never dream like that. It is a testament to your exhaustion that you fell into such a deep sleep.

You tell yourself it was a dream, but your reassurances don’t work. Because it wasn’t really a dream, was it? It was flashes of real moments, real faces, real pain.

You stand under steady stream of hot water. You watch as the heat and the torrent opens a few scrapes, the water at your feet turning red. You think of Changbin with a needle in his arm, all that red pouring out of him. Standing there, helpless to do anything, like you are right now.

You have no idea where he is. You look at the scar on your palm and think of him in the moonlight, him in the ring, him at your side. A smile, a joke, a reassurance. A hand in yours, a promise.

He knew you better than you know yourself. He predicted this exact crisis of identity.

When it’s just you and you’re trying to decide who you want to be, not who your father wants you to be… When you’re trying to remember everything and you can’t decide what was real and what was just training and what was Miroh…

He drew that line across his palm. You picture a chasm of a wound, gaping and red, rushing red at your feet.

Just remember me, he said. I didn’t bleed because I believe in Miroh. I’m your soldier, not his.

True to his word, a man of principle to the end, he is bleeding for you right now.

In all your years of training, fighting, and soldiership, of missions and schemes, tricks and plots, you have always kept composure. Now it all weighs on you at once, every single second of your life, and it’s too much.

When was the last time you cried? You can’t even remember. It pours out of you now, big ugly gasping sobs that spill into the shower. You sit down where the water is pooling in pink. You wrap your arms around your legs and draw them up to your chest like a child.

You do not know how long you sit there, crying until it feels like there is no more water left in your body. It must be a long time because the water runs from hot to lukewarm. It feels strange to heave dry sobs with the shower still pouring down on you.

The water abruptly stops. You lift your head.

Chan stands there. He doesn’t look at you directly, his expression solemn, but he turns off the water and gets you a towel.

It feels surreal. Bang Chan is moving around a small motel bathroom, helping you like he has helped you all day. You stare at him with scrunched, sore eyes, your throat too strained to speak. You drop your legs and let him wrap the towel around you. Your heart kicks with momentary fright when he scoops you up, an effortless sweep.

No one has ever done something like this for you. You wouldn’t have let them, even if they tried.

You need it. You never realized how much you needed it. You are certain you will feel embarrassed in the morning, but right now you put your arms around his neck and cling for dear life.

He says nothing. He hooks an arm around your back and the other under your legs. He carries you back into the room and lays you in your bed, adjusting the towel for your modesty before pulling the blankets over you.

You continue to sputter and hiccup, looking at him as he moves. You wonder if he looks like this on a mission, determined and swift.

No. The First Guard wouldn’t fix the pillows under your head. He wouldn’t tuck the blankets around you.

Bang Chan stands over you, wearing nothing but his combat pants, no weapons or masks or piercing stares. He has curly dark hair and a soft face. When you touch his bare shoulder, he looks at you with a heart-shattering amount of tenderness. You didn’t know anyone could look at somebody that way, never mind him, never mind at you.

There’s a person inside him. There’s a person inside you. You don’t know who either of those people are, but you want to know. You need to know.

You curl your hand into a fist and feel the scar on your palm. A day ago, none of this would have mattered, but you know why it matters now.

“We have to find him,” you say. Your rasping voice is barely above a whisper.

Chan slowly cups his hand over yours, his palm to your knuckles, holding your touch against his shoulder. He squeezes your fingers. He nods.

“We will,” he says.

“You’ll help me?” you say.

“Yeah.” His own voice is a rasp, skirting the edge of emotion too. He swallows it down and smiles at you. “Like I said. I go wherever you go. Always.”

He sits with you in the soft golden light of that small bedside lamp. You do not think you can sleep again, but then exhaustion settles over you.

You are on the cusp of sleep when he touches your forehead. Your eyes meet briefly. It wakes you with a heart flutter, similar to a dream that drops you into reality. It is the heart-racing thump of a sudden fall. The kind that feels so real, more like a memory than a dream.

#i will answer some asks in a bit but wanted to say thank you so much to everyone reading and commenting 💕#i am working on the next part right now 🤭

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skzdarlings · 1 day