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evdarcy · 3 years

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An Unusual Hero C10S3

Please remember, this is unedited and unfinished, but will hopefully fill in the holes that were left and answer some questions without leaving too many others. HOWEVER I will answer all and any questions if you want to leave me a comment.

Next update - Tuesday 22/06/2021

Sarah was going to kill him.

It was the thought that ran over and over in Luc’s head as they hightailed it up the highway. They were going to get to the cabin and she’d shoot him there. Plenty of places to hide a body in the woods. Hell, she wouldn’t even need to lug him outside, she could just leave him in the cabin. By the time anyone checked there she’d be long gone.

He’d thought she was going to smack him back in the library, he’d braced for it, ready to take the punch, but she’d surprised him when she’d just let go of his hand and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration before ordering him out. But it wasn’t as if he’d done it on purpose. He’d only ever used the damn thing as a watch; he’d never really looked into the ins and outs of it when Linda had thrown it at him a few months ago. He’d always dismissed his suspicions as ridiculous, a page from a Glynn West novel or something.

‘We won’t have long,’ Sarah told him, interrupting his musings of how many ways she could probably kill him. He blinked as he realised they were at the cabin and she was already half way up the path to the cabin. The engine was still running and she’d left the doors open. Clearly the mad dash had wiped away her fear of bears and wolves.

‘You grab the bags,’ she shouted over her shoulder as he climbed out the car. ‘And shove them in the boot—the trunk!’

‘What are you doing?’ he asked as he stepped inside the building. She was riffling through the drawers in the kitchen, hissing and cursing as she went. He grabbed the bag from the sofa and hoisted it over his shoulder as he moved to the bedroom to grab the others.

‘Destroying the evidence of us being here,’ she finally replied a second before he heard a match strike.

No. There was no way she was—

He stepped out of the bedroom and turned to where she stood in the dinning area, holding a match to the curtains that decorated the window frame. He swallowed as he watched the yellow flame jump from the match and race up the drapes, consuming them hungrily and leaving nothing behind. The flimsy nets that covered the window caught easily as the curtains crumbled off their pole and fluttered to the floor in a shower of ash and sparks, like a cheap firework.

‘Get going!’ Sarah was pushing him out the door before he realised what was going on, hypnotised by the dancing flames as they rushed to find new food to consume. They leapt across the top of the bookcase next to the window, feasting heartily, while another line meandered across the rugs towards the small sofa.

Luc stumbled outside, the door swinging closed behind him, and he dashed toward the stolen Excel. His feet brought him to a halt as he reached the driver’s door and a choice appeared before him.

He could run. He could jump in the car and leave Sarah behind. Head back into town where the watch had shown him to be and await rescue. He had no idea what Sarah would do, she’d probably run through the forest, head north as she planned, but on foot this time. Bears and wolves be damned.

The image of her squaring off against a bear and coming out victorious sprung to mind. Fucking failed trainee, as if. She certainly didn’t look like a failure when her eyes became hard, her face devoid of emotion, and she snapped out orders as if he were her servant.

He threw the bags in the back before glancing back towards the cabin. The curtains framing the window of the bedroom that looked over their little parking space suddenly caught fire. He had seconds to make a decision. He had the weapons, the clothes, her IDs…

He slammed the lid of the boot closed and hopped in the car a moment before the cabin door swung open and Sarah jumped out, over a licking flame that had wound its way towards the front of the cabin. She ran towards the car and yanked the driver’s door open, cursing up a storm as she jumped in the seat, threw the car in gear and sped out of the clearing. She carried the smell of burning; like a campfire on a cold night, and something about that settled Luc’s mind.

This woman, failure or not, hadn’t hurt him. She hadn’t shouted at him, hit him, or shot him. She could have done any or all of those things, but she’d done none. Hell, she was well within her rights to have left him sat in the library and gone off on her own. Instead, she hadn’t thought twice about him not being part of her hastily thrown together plan—as insane as it was.

‘Promise me there are no more surprises,’ she begged as they joined the 191 again and headed north. ‘You don’t have an implant or something do you?’ she scoffed, glancing between him and the road.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the tech didn’t yet exist to do such a thing—to his knowledge, at least—he would have paused over that question rather than shake his head immediately.

‘Alrighty then, so we’re good to ditch this’—she tapped the steering wheel—‘grab another and get the hell of dodge.’

Luc nodded, not really knowing what else to say.

‘Hey,’ Sarah said, a few minutes later. ‘We all make mistakes. We’d have had to leave that place shortly anyway, it would have just been better to not do it in such a rush… I feel bad I had to torch their home.’

Luc turned to look at her; she had an oopsy face, her bottom lip pushed to the side as she grimaced.

‘I don’t get why you did that. Are you going to do that to every place we stay?’

‘What? No,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘If we’d have had time, I’d have scrubbed the place, but we didn’t. I don’t know when that message was sent to your watch; was it sent as soon as they located you, or was it sent hours later? Maybe it was sent when we were in town days ago and it only picked it up today when we went back there.’

Shit, he hadn’t thought of that.

‘But that’s more unlikely,’ she said as she relaxed back into her seat. ‘I imagine if that had been the case they’d have used it today to pinpoint you exactly and caught us at the library.’

If Sarah had genuinely been classed as a failure, Luc would hate to meet those that passed whatever test she hadn’t.

‘Also,’ she continued on. ‘Torching it makes them focus there for a while. Was it us? Was it someone else? Deliberate or accidental?’ Luc relaxed back in his seat, his gaze alternating between the scenery flying past them and the woman next to him as she continued on with her reasoning.

He’d made the right choice, he decided as Sarah leaned forward and switched on the radio, scanning the airwaves for news segments between songs. Other than inviting the Demon to them, he didn’t think he could screw up any bigger than he had today and Sarah hadn’t lashed out at him. She’d been disappointed, yes. Perhaps even angry, but none of that had transferred into any form of abuse towards him. If he’d gone back…

He shuddered to think what would have happened if he’d returned home, to LA, to Linda.

‘Oh, I love this song,’ Sarah said as she tuned into another station. It was disconcerting to know that the woman beside him had gone all pyromaniac on him ten minutes ago and was now singing along with an oldie station, but he felt safer with her than almost anyone else he knew.

He rested his head back against the chair and watched Sarah drive. Her head bobbing and swaying, fingers tapping in time to the tune, and her slightly off-key singing was at odds with the straight line of her shoulders, her rigid back, and her eyes snapping to the review mirror every ten seconds. She threw him a tight smile as she caught his eye in the mirror, turning her head to sing at him as if nothing was amiss. He returned her smile, a big easy grin he’d perfected over the years for convention weekends and posing with fans when it was the last thing he wanted to do, and she turned back to the road, her voice a little louder.

Luc’s smile immediately turned to a frown. Perhaps, she was telling the truth that she’d failed, but maybe he’d also been right; she could only turn into the a success when the chips were down.

An uneasy feeling settled in Luc’s gut. If she could only react like an action hero when they were threatened, how much danger would they face before it was all over?

Any questions, please drop them in the comments. Next update on Tuesday!

#AUH #fangirl #Unpublished #unedited #luc's story #destiny

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complexmagrparchive · 7 years

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A RETROSPECTIVE’S BLISS

NAME › Ji Sungjoon D.O.B. › 07 05 1985 (32) OCCUPATION › Creative Director at Complex INSTA › @57jsj

content warning: mentions of death

PORTFOLIO

ACADEMIC

central saint martins, london (BA with hons)

INTERNSHIP

high cut –– general / editorial intern ( may – sep 2009; 24 y/o )

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

vogue –– assistant to content manager ( oct 2009 – oct 2010 )

arena homme –– assistant to production manager ( jan 2011 – sep 2011 )

elle –– production manager ( oct 2011 - nov 2013 )

grazia –– fashion market director ( dec 2013 - dec 2015 )

complex –– creative director ( feb 2016 – present )

OTHER INVOLVEMENT

london fashion week, sep 2010 –– sep 2015

asian fashion week london, 2011 –– 2014

seoul fashion week 2016 & 2017

DETAILS

the change in scenery wasn’t unwelcomed, but it did take sungjoon a little longer than expected –– to settle in, to knock apart old habits. his mother spoke words of promises, of a fresh and better beginning, and this was what he would remember. his stepfather was a nice man albeit a tad withdrawn from personal relations.

he was (barely) remembered as the reticent kid through high school, always seated alone at the back of every class. they were his only friends, only companions that made tedious days tolerable.

graduation, military service and college –– distance was inevitable and contact was at the minimal, with everyone moving onto different trajectories, and him moving to another country.

art school wasn’t unexpected, considering his forte for sieving through the seemingly mundane and common for something that had potential to be the next trend-setter. grades and (what little of his then) portfolio worked in his favour to land him in a prestigious school in london.

the competitiveness within the curriculum unearthed him, yanking old habits by the roots and planting unfamiliarities. gone was the boy who’d always been meek and hesitant with speaking his mind, and in its place was someone unforgiving, ruthless, and with a tendency to burn through his short temper fuse.

the internship with vogue in his last year of college kickstarted his career with an offer upon graduation. and he’d soon come to realize that there was absolutely no space for contemplation, any moment of soft-heartedness could have him thrown under the bus instead.

moving onto grazia was by choice –– surviving in and adapting to new environments were never really much of a problem. moving back to korea, though, was by chance. sooyoung’s untimely death had shaken him to the core, so much so that what was meant to be a brief trip back for the funeral ended up as a prolonged stay.

wanting to pick up where she’d left off, accomplish what she’d planned to, he accepted an offer shortly after and began work as a production manager in one of south korea’s most prestigious fashion publication, COMPLEX. three years later he was promoted as the creative director and had been in the position since. life was what he’d begun to know it to be: tedious routines and grooves, working in tandem as gears in a cut-throat industry.

things appeared to be on track, right up till his ill-fated meeting with nara. for all thirty-two years of his life, he’d never met someone who’d grated his nerves in all the wrong ways possible. with his stepfather’s career switch from a businessman to running a campaign for the office, everyone remotely related to him was trapped under a microscope.

the marriage wasn’t so much romance than it was terms and conditions marked out in black and white, and all of a sudden words of congratulations had never appeared this dreary and meaningless.

( I. ) LESSON ONE: two beginnings.

the redacted: shabby walls, air heavy and congested, burnt out cigarette stubs hidden in every nook and cranny of the apartment –– responsible for the residual and suffocating scent of smoke, empty cans stacked in a corner with no order whatsoever, cold and clammy hands that brushed against his albeit rarely, deadweight like winter was trapped within, hushed whispers that were probably not meant to be heard (he couldn’t understand what they were talking about anyway), sullen eyes holding more than he could comprehend. the replacement: a fresh coat of paint, polished jade and wood embellishing shelves, their voices echoed within spaces (too much of it), unfamiliar hands with a different kind of warmth, tranquility like fresh spring — promising albeit a tad distant, sense of normalcy reconstructed and years of childhood redefined.

( II. ) LESSON TWO: blessing in disguise

––– in a year’s time, he’d forgotten how his father looked. in two years’ time, he’d forgotten the warmth of his father’s hand, how the rough creases used to rub his palms and cheeks as though in unspoken apologies. –––

his stepfather was very much a nice man, just a tad too withdrawn from anything too close to heart. having been sloughing through years of business management and socialising on a corporate basis, he had simply never gotten out of playing the ideal businessman role enough to indulge and engage in the ways of a father. joon liked him –– the man had his heart in the right places but had never lifted the barriers of his work enough for joon to be completely comfortable with him.

nonetheless, the simplicity of things sat well with sungjoon; he reckoned this could’ve ended up much worse.

( III. ) LESSON THREE: patterns

“c’mon, i promise i’ll stop asking if you come with us once, just once, please? they’re nice, i promise, hm?”

high school was characterised simply with the same routine of: books, exams, late nights, and repeat. he was (barely) remembered and spoken of, always the same reticent kid seated in the same corner of the library and always alone. they were (she was) his only companions that made tedious days tolerable, only friends that filled lonesome school years with something memorable.

sooyoung was amiable, warm, outspoken, humorous and everything he wasn’t. her inherent ability to effortlessly coax him into just about everything and anything was frustrating to say the least, yet most of the time he found the results to be tolerably satisfactory and at times, rewarding.

it was one too many late nights spent in empty classrooms and the art room, the occasional chanced glances that he could’ve sworn were not wholly just coincidental. she’d never asked, but he’d always walked her home afterwards, hands in his pockets and heart remaining in his own chest, beating, beating, waiting.

***

the tool in mind worked faster than the hand, always steps ahead with what he’d attempted to translate into actuality, in which encapsulated unvoiced words. coherency and sanity were found in the simplest of sketches and varying intensity of strokes, shifting his mind into an ideal state of tranquility, in between consciousness.

it was therapeutic: the seeking and creation of patterns, seeing things neatly arranged and categorised in a way that few others could echo with. in these lands that he’d created for himself ( and occasionally for an audience ) — projected from a fraction of reality, fantasised and malleable, he learnt to find comfort in solitude.

( IV. ) LESSON FOUR: wolves without teeth

what had begun as an interest throughout his high school days had grown to become a steering force, directing him onto this trajectory that he’d adamantly embarked on despite his stepfather’s initial wishes of a business major.

college was far from home and cold, and he was alone once again.

***

trust didn’t come easy in an industry that gave little to no room for mistakes and hesitation. the ebb and flow of things rinsed out the outdated and slow, and he had to learn fast. a sticky situation with a fellow intern was resolved with the immediate termination of the other’s contract. sungjoon had justified it as such: it was the right thing to do when one’s idea was on the verge of being plagiarised, the only thing to do. perhaps he could understand where the other was coming from, but as the field expanded, it had in place this bottleneck filter that retained only the minority, the cream of the crop, and the only direction sungjoon knew was up.

––– savagery was inevitable; it was fangs kept hidden from plain sight until the right moment, always a game of waiting for the right timing, and finding the perfect opportunity to strike. –––

( V. ) LESSON FIVE: the hardest part about you leaving is that i lost all the words i had to say

in place of the usual messages, this particular one was succinct.

date: xx/xx/xx venue: xxx, seoul attire: formal suit

it hadn’t wholly sunken into his head yet, not even when he boarded the flight back to seoul. he’d been expecting to hear from her, from them, but not like that.

silence reigned in a way that it’d tuned out the mourning and the tears. words of condolences were ready on the tongue, but were never spoken –– he couldn’t. a neat little frame with a photo that was likely to be taken recently, he mused at how time had been kind of her as though she was still seventeen. for the longest time he stayed in front of it, wordlessly, knees sore and chest heavy; as though he was still seventeen, still the same boy who’d always been waiting, waiting, waiting for her to lift the silence for the both of them ( and his heart along with it ).

***

resigning from grazia for an extended stay in korea, the following months were spent in absolute agony, dwelling on the uncertainties and the could-have-beens. though if there was something he could do fairly well, it’d be to translate negativity into motivation –– wanting to pick up where she’d left off, accomplish what she’d planned to but couldn’t.

spring, 2012: he moved back to korea and officially commenced employment with complex.

( VI. ) LESSON SIX: another chapter, a different beginning

a seemingly unrelated career switch by his stepfather, had an unpredicted implication of sort on sungjoon. having a member of the family run a campaign for the office meant that everyone remotely related would be trapped under a microscope. the media and opposition were more than prepared to magnify any bit of flaws that could possibly taint the campaigns and effectively swayed the voters’ minds to their favour.

an almost hook-up, booze-fused words with the heavy, bitter taste of regret on his tongue. granted, she was one of the most stunning women he’d ever met and she tasted of cherries and rum with a tinge of honey; granted, alcohol and a lightened mood had lowered his inhibitions enough for words to run loose, unguarded, unfiltered; granted, he could’ve apologised but he refused to compromise his own standards. in his defence, he’d thought that’d be the last of it ( of her, of them ).

they were but a product to be exchanged, manipulated; chess pieces placed rather strategically such that there was meant to have two winners. it wasn’t romance as overly depicted by the media –– it was terms and conditions in black and white and a deal meant to benefit both parties.

and all of a sudden, words of congratulations had never appeared this dreary and meaningless.

#cx:accepted #ji changwook #ji chang wook

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