fic: blackout, spotlight (sunhak, maverick/battle royale au)

[moriendum]

fandom: tbz
pairing: sunwoo/haknyeon
rating: E (for graphic depictions of violence + gore)
wordcount: 8800 words
tags: battle royale au, high school au, heavy angst, major character injury, minor character death, ambiguous/open ending, ambiguous relationships, everything is ambiguous here. no explanation we die inferring
a/n: [2023 edit] this was hilariously unplanned and just a spur of the moment thing, please don't take it too seriously! I wrote it before maveric MV dropped, going off the teasers alone. very vague plot and even more vague worldbuilding but hey, battle royale au!!!


a/n 2.0: everyone is the same age because battle royale. I made it sort of a squid game fusion because the battle/game here isn't government-funded but privately funded instead. also, this video!

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Haknyeon can’t stop staring at the blood.

It must be a trick of the light—or lack thereof—but he thinks it looks black. Definitely not red like the kind of blood he sees from a scraped knee, a paper cut, a broken nose. This one is dark.

He wonders briefly if that means anything. Either for him or for the person who lost it. If he is the one going insane, or if the kid lying in a heap next to him just had a different kind of blood.

Is that even possible?

There’s nowhere to really wipe it off aside from his own clothes, which can hardly be considered clothes at this point. Tattered, dirty, bloodied; the only thing still mostly intact are the calf straps, and those are useless. He doesn’t have anything to put in it.

Steps. Someone is running towards this room, making so much noise Haknyeon is sure, absolutely positive, that it’s one of the psycho kids. The ones who have been collecting weapons from dead bodies, throwing axes and piercing people in the skull with knives, the only ones who don’t care about being heard.

The ones who want to be heard so you will run straight into them.

So Haknyeon stays still and doesn’t dare breathe when the person reaches the door and looks inside. The room is too dark to see anything. The only light comes from somewhere to the right of the person standing there, but even that is not enough.

“Haknyeon?”

Haknyeon’s heart jumps to his throat. He knows that voice.

“Haknyeon, are you there? I’m not gonna hurt you.”

It’s been a couple years since he talked to Sunwoo. Really talked, had a conversation, and not just the awkward single words they share when they have to sit together for a group activity in class. But it’s his voice, and Haknyeon is so sure of it that he doesn’t know how to react.

Is Sunwoo here to kill him?

“I saw you come in,” Sunwoo says, as if hearing his thoughts. He walks into the room slowly, looking around, looking for him. Haknyeon regrets now not looking for a weapon on the dead body next to him. “I swear, I’m not gonna kill you. Here.”

He crouches down, deliberately, setting down whatever he has in his hand. From this angle, and with this little light, Haknyeon guesses it’s a blade.

Maybe he could reach it. If he could outrun Sunwoo, he could grab it and use it to stab him, and then—

No. Isn’t that the whole point of hiding in a dark room next to a corpse? Because he refuses to play in this bad joke of a game?

“If you’re gonna kill me, just do it already.”

Sunwoo freezes, looking straight ahead, following the sound of his voice. “I’m not gonna kill you. I promise.”

“Hard to believe in promises here.”

Haknyeon makes it easier for him. He stands up, his bad leg shaking with the effort. He limps closer to Sunwoo, who is just standing there, in the middle of the room. Waiting.

Like this, he can’t see Sunwoo’s face. The only source of light is coming from behind him. Haknyeon tries not to shake too hard as he stands in front of him, waiting for the pain that is sure to follow.

Instead, what he gets is Sunwoo’s hesitant fingers on his face. Touching him like a newborn who doesn’t know yet what a face is, discovering Haknyeon’s cheeks, the bridge of his nose. Haknyeon wishes he’d get it over with already.

“It’s really you,” Sunwoo breathes out. 

Haknyeon is about to say who else would it be? because he’s scared, and Sunwoo is taking too long to kill him, but he doesn’t get a chance to. Sunwoo brings him into a hug with a choked out sob, unexpected enough that Haknyeon just lets him.

Just as soon as it happens, it ends. Sunwoo pulls away abruptly. “We gotta move. Someone might’ve been trailing me.”

He picks up what is now visibly a sword and takes Haknyeon’s hand, but Haknyeon doesn’t budge.

“Move where? There’s nowhere—What are you doing?”

“Taking you out of here.”

Haknyeon can’t help it. He laughs. He might be really losing his mind, at this rate.

“Sunwoo, there’s no way out. Either kill me or leave me alone.”

“Do you have any weapons?”

“No.”

Next thing he knows, Sunwoo is reaching behind him and pulling a gun out from the back of his pants. He hands it to Haknyeon, grip first.

Haknyeon takes it, because he’s not an idiot. But he’s also shocked speechless, because Sunwoo is doing the unthinkable here. If anything, Sunwoo is the idiot, because he’s handing a gun to someone who has every reason to kill him. Unless it’s faulty, or just not loaded, this is a risk Sunwoo should just not take. Period.

Fuck, Haknyeon could just hit him over the head with it, and it’d work just fine.

“There should be three bullets left,” Sunwoo tells him, turning to the door again and peeking down the hallway. “I’m not sure, though, so don’t count on it.”

He has his back turned to Haknyeon. This doesn’t make any sense.

“Why are you doing this?” Haknyeon asks.

Sunwoo doesn’t answer. He comes back inside to take Haknyeon’s hand and pull him with him outside the room, and this time Haknyeon goes. They eye the empty, decrepit hallway up and down before finally stepping out. Sunwoo takes the lead, holding the sword with both hands. Now that they’re out, walking in the direction of the light source, the door that leads out of the ruins of whatever this building used to be once upon a time, Haknyeon sees it’s a real sword. It looks heavy. It looks bloodied, too.

Ever since they were let out, Haknyeon hasn’t seen Sunwoo. He has seen some of his other classmates—most dead, some doing the killing—but he hasn’t seen Sunwoo, not even once. Haknyeon can’t be certain what he has been up to. 

Killing? Joining forces with the worst people here to draw out the weaklings like him? Surviving by stealing from the mangled bodies of what used to be their classmates?

It doesn’t sound like him, any of it. But up until two days ago, Haknyeon would be hard-pressed to say that about any of his other classmates as well.

They stop right before the door. Sunwoo brings one finger to his lips, asking him to be quiet as he peeks outside. It’s the first time Haknyeon sees Sunwoo’s face in the light. His hair is wet and he has a broken lip, but he seems to be faring better than Haknyeon himself. At least there is no blood on his uniform, the black and yellow plaid only a little worse for wear.

Haknyeon holds the gun with both hands, too, and follows him out of the building. They sprint towards the trees before Haknyeon can get a good look around, Sunwoo slowing down every so often when the pain in Haknyeon’s leg makes it impossible for him to keep up the pace. They’re running for at least a couple minutes, putting distance between them and whoever might be lying in wait outside of the building, and Haknyeon tries not to think too much about how much faster Sunwoo could run without him.

Suddenly, Sunwoo stops, spins around and pulls Haknyeon behind the trunk of a tree. He presses his back against the tree and pulls Haknyeon to himself, the hand that is not holding the sword locked around Haknyeon's waist. There is no time to question it, because Haknyeon hears it right away—someone is running towards them, coming from the direction they were heading to. Whoever it is, they’re crying as they stumble over their feet, the sound growing louder and louder the closer they get. It takes Haknyeon another moment to recognize the crying as belonging to a guy he used to partner with for biology class last year.

He meets Sunwoo’s eyes. They’re so close, pressed together like this, that Haknyeon can feel Sunwoo’s breath on his upper lip. Sunwoo shakes his head minutely.

We can’t save him, his silence says.

Haknyeon hears him fall again, stand up, and continue running at an angle away from them. It doesn’t take long for his pursuer to follow, much quieter and much more careful but just as fast, and Haknyeon gets only a glimpse of the spear she’s carrying in one hand before she, too, is gone.

They don’t move just yet. Haknyeon strains his ears for anyone else coming, but there’s nothing. All he hears is the gentle breeze on the trees, and all he feels is Sunwoo’s chest against his, rising and falling quickly, a sign that if he’s not outright scared, he’s at least on edge.

“Let’s go,” he whispers, gently nudging Haknyeon away from him. He doesn’t look him in the face again before he continues in the direction they were heading before.

Haknyeon can’t tell how much time it takes them, but his calves are burning and he’s limping heavily on his right leg when Sunwoo finally leads them towards a hidden path, so tiny and filled with branches that Haknyeon wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. It feels like a trap. It feels like the most stupid thing Haknyeon has ever done, just following Sunwoo blindly into god knows where, knowing that any second now, Sunwoo could just turn around and slice his throat open with a flick of his wrist.

Maybe he should’ve worked harder to forget him. There’s something seriously wrong with the wiring of Haknyeon’s brain if he still trusts Sunwoo like he used to a lifetime ago.

The strange path ends at the edge of trees. Haknyeon can feel the sea breeze from up here, because now he knows where they are. Staring at the lighthouse, he knows they’re right by the cliff, east of the map...

In a forbidden zone.

Haknyeon gasps and clutches at his collar, already backing away again, terrified, wondering why he can’t hear it, why he can’t hear the beeping that announces the explosion, wondering if he still has time to run and go back—

Then Sunwoo is there, holding his wrists and looking him in the eye. “It’s fine! It’s fine, you’re safe. It’s not going off, you’re fine.” Haknyeon is still frantically pulling at the collar around his neck, so Sunwoo shows him his own collar. “Look, it’s all good. The collars have been turned off, you’re safe. Look at me, you’re safe.”

Slowly, Haknyeon’s panic subsides. He stares at Sunwoo’s collar, since he can’t look at his own, and sees that he’s right: it’s not going off. It was supposed to, this has been set as a forbidden zone since the first announcement at midnight last night, but—

“How?”

Sunwoo opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, Haknyeon catches movement with the corner of his eye. He turns and points the gun at the guy wielding a crossbow loaded and poised to send an arrow right through Haknyeon’s skull.

“Wait, don’t shoot!” Sunwoo steps between Haknyeon and the crossbow. “I brought him here, he’s with me.”

Now that Sunwoo is in the way, the guy lowers the crossbow, though he keeps it at the ready, only pointing at the ground instead. Haknyeon recognizes him now—Choi Chanhee, top of their class and one of Sunwoo’s closest friends.

“Why would you bring him here?”

“He can come with us,” Sunwoo says, which is a non-answer. “It’s fine.”

Chanhee eyes Haknyeon up and down. “How do you know that?”

“I trust him.”

Haknyeon still considers that a non-answer, and a weak one at that. Of all the unexplainable things he’s done so far, this might be the most baffling. Trust him? Why would Sunwoo trust him? It’s been far too long since they had any reason to trust each other. Chanhee seems to share the feeling.

“I don’t,” he says. “This is stupid, Sunwoo.”

“It’s not. Please.”

“He’s gonna kill you the moment he has the chance. He has a gun!”

“I gave him that, it’s my gun,” Sunwoo explains, and Chanhee’s eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets. “Please. It’s either both of us or none of us.”

Chanhee asks the question Haknyeon wants to ask. “Why?”

Sunwoo doesn’t answer him. The way he’s standing in front of him, Hakneyon can’t see his face, but he can see Chanhee’s. He knows they’re staring at each other, a silent conversation that ends when Chanhee sighs.

“If you get me killed I’ll come back to life just to kill you.”

He starts heading to the lighthouse. Sunwoo turns only long enough to take Haknyeon’s wrist and pull him after Chanhee.

And really, what choice does Haknyeon have at this point?

“Why are you doing this, though?” He asks in a low voice, knowing Sunwoo will hear him over the whisper of the sea because they’re walking close together. When he doesn’t get an answer, he presses. “Sunwoo.”

Sunwoo pauses and turns around. It’s too quick for Haknyeon to react in time, so he ends up walking into him, narrowly avoiding bumping into his chest. 

“I couldn’t leave you behind,” Sunwoo says, looking him right in the eye, as if that explains anything.

Then he gives his back to him and continues to follow Chanhee.

Haknyeon swallows dry. He’s trying his best not to place his trust in anyone here, has been doing exactly that ever since he watched that damn instruction video and realized he was doomed to a horrible, painful death, but Sunwoo makes it so hard for him to keep his resolve. It’s so much easier, and so much more familiar to Haknyeon, too, to just believe him.

That’s what their friendship hinged on years ago. When they still had one.

Chanhee leads them to a door that looks too small to be visible from a distance, with only the moonlight as their guide. Curiously, Haknyeon looks up and around. There are exterior lights lining up the walls of the lighthouse, but they’ve been turned off. All they have is the moon, and it’s thankfully full and shining bright tonight.

Once they’re inside and have closed the door behind them, however, they’re in pitch black darkness.

There is a brief, hissing sound that Haknyeon takes a moment to understand is being made by Chanhee, like he’s trying to get the attention of a cat. He repeats it one more time before a light comes on ahead, the strike of a match announcing it before they can discern a face behind the flame.

The white blond hair is a dead giveaway. Kevin Moon, the transfer student Haknyeon never exchanged more than two words with, is sitting on a staircase. Haknyeon’s gut instinct is to raise the gun, but Sunwoo puts a hand to his arm. Haknyeon notices Chanhee’s crossbow is still pointed at the floor, too.

“Took you long enough,” Kevin whispers. The flame makes his face look phantasmagoric, the usual kind eyes morphed into something much more sinister. “This way.”

Chanhee leads them up the stairs, after Kevin, who keeps striking matches everytime the one he’s holding burns out. It’s barely any light to see the steps ahead of them, but Haknyeon figures that’s the point. Like this, they’re nothing more than shapeless shadows going up, up, up...

They reach a landing and cross what seems to be a walkway, though they can’t see shit to any side. Haknyeon tries to look down, but there’s only darkness past where the feeble light of Kevin’s match can reach. Next to him, Sunwoo takes his hand.

Haknyeon considers pulling away, but decides against it. At least if he’s pushed off the edge, he won’t be going down alone.

That’s an awful thing to consider, and he knows it. But he’s had enough time alone, between running for his life and getting slashed in the thigh, to get angry. At the game, mostly, and at his classmates, but at himself, too. For refusing to play the game that could save his life. 

And now at Sunwoo, too, for making him play it. Or whatever the fuck is happening here.

As Kevin opens a door and they all file into it yet another dark room quietly, Haknyeon thinks that it doesn’t help that he’s scared. Terrified, more like. Of all the ways he imagined dying some day, this was not it. A violent death didn’t ever occur to him, and now he knows that’s how he’s gonna go. Sooner rather than later, as well. All of it makes it hard for him to rationalize his anger, because it’s either this or curling into a ball and crying. And he can’t exactly do that now.

So anger it is.

The room they’re in now has windows, so the moonlight makes it a bit easier to see. They’re still only shadows, but Haknyeon can see the upturned desks, the papers scattered around, the broken computers. It’s doesn't look abandoned either, like the buildings he has seen so far on the island. This room looks... modern. Lived in until recently. The struggle was recent.

“Wh—” 

Just as Sunwoo squeezes his hand, Kevin turns around and puts a hand to his lips to shush him. He meets Haknyeon’s eyes and points to the ceiling. Haknyeon follows his finger and sees nothing. But then he hears it.

Voices. Coming from above.

Who is hiding here? What is this place?

Before he can ask that, another door opens up, almost straight ahead of them and across the room. They pull up their weapons, Kevin stepping aside to get out of Chanhee’s line of fire, but they slowly put it down again when another student comes in. 

This one is covered in blood, with a wild look in his eyes and a machine gun in hand. He makes Haknyeon look clean in comparison, and it takes him a second to place him, because the image Haknyeon has of Changmin at school is of a quiet kid who wears hoodies big enough to fit two of him. Whatever he’s been through here makes him almost unrecognizable. A wild thing ready to strike at any sudden movement. The dry blood on his upper lip and chin makes Haknyeon think he might have a broken nose, to make matters worse.

Kevin must mouth something at him, because he makes an "ok" with his hands. Kevin nods, and they all start heading towards the only staircase in the room, a spiral one that leads to the floor above. Or at least, that’s what Haknyeon thinks is happening, but Sunwoo tugs his hand and takes him to a corner of the room that seems far enough away from both doors and the stairs. He gets Haknyeon to crouch down behind a desk that has been turned on its side, and crouches down with him.

“Wait,” he mouths.

For the first time since getting here, Haknyeon can see the fear swimming in Sunwoo's eyes. It’s so blatant, and so unexplainable, too, like all of his actions so far. He didn’t look this scared running through the forest, or stepping in front of Chanhee’s crossbow.

It’s as if he knows this is different.

Haknyeon’s stomach drops. Fear is contagious, apparently, because suddenly he’s even more scared, too. And not even for him, but for Sunwoo. What are they doing? Somehow, he doesn’t think the people hiding up there are students. Which makes no sense, because if they’re not students—

His hands find their way to Sunwoo’s face, cupping his cheeks. Sunwoo has lost weight since the last time Haknyeon was this close, the skin stretched thin over his jaw, his cheekbones. With the touch, Sunwoo’s lips part open in a soft exhale. His eyes well up with tears for a second before he jerks his head away and stands up.

Haknyeon tries to grab his hand, but Sunwoo is gone before he can begin to process what just happened.

There is no time to do anything. As soon as Sunwoo reaches the stairs and walks up the steps until he’s up front, right next to Changmin, Haknyeon hears it: the weird whooshing sound of something fast approaching.

He looks to the window just in time to see the bright light of the projectile before it explodes against the lighthouse.

Haknyeon ducks, feeling like the whole building shakes on its foundations with the hit. Through the window, he can see the smoke and the debris raining down from above—whatever it was, it hit the room right above them.

Not an "ok", then. Changmin made a “three” with his fingers. Three minutes. This was planned.

The screams are piercing when Changmin shoots the lock and kicks the door open. Between him and Sunwoo, they manage to push past whatever barricade was right behind the door, and then all Haknyeon really hears is screaming and the sounds of gunshots echoing from the room above.

It feels like mere seconds later when he hears Changmin scream “no!”. Haknyeon’s blood freezes. He can’t just stay here, waiting, hearing his friends—are they his friends?—die one by one. He’s up before the part of his brain that wants nothing to do with this can convince him otherwise, running as fast as he can with his bad leg, up the stairs, towards the door—

The room above is something of a control room, Haknyeon sees now. If the downstairs looks like an office, this looks like the control room in a broadcast station, with wide screens and several tables with levers and buttons of all kinds. 

But most of it has been destroyed, charred and melted to smitherness by whatever came flying from the west, through what used to be a window but is now just a hole on the wall.

There’s also a lot of blood, and several bodies on the floor.

Chanhee is blocking the door, crossbow at the ready, covering for them. From his position a few steps below Chanhee, Haknyeon can see there’s people fighting back—adults, but not a lot of them. Kevin is trying to garrot one who’s on his back on the floor, struggling and trying to fight him off; Changmin is behind one of the control tables, peeking out from time to time to shoot across the room, at someone also hiding behind something and shooting his way with a pistol.

But what punches the air from Haknyeon’s lungs is the body lying limp in the middle of the room, in a pool of his own blood.

“Sunwoo,” he breathes out, climbing the last few steps and squeezing past Chanhee. He doesn’t have a chance to get any closer before the person shooting at Changmin stands up from her hideout and points the pistol at him; Haknyeon drops to the floor, heart on his throat, but doesn’t hear the gunshot. He looks up and sees she’s gurgling on blood, an arrow lodged in her throat.

She falls dead right away.

Someone else picks up the pistol she dropped, but by then Haknyeon has crawled behind a table. From across the aisle, Changmin looks at him like he’s insane.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Haknyeon opens his mouth to scream back “Sunwoo!”, but before he can, Chanhee shouts “Drop it!” and they both turn to look.

The man, or the most pathetic version of one, in Haknyeon’s opinion, is sweating all over his bald head. Seems ridiculous to think, even now, that the one was once their teacher has chosen to send them off to fight for their lives; his laughter while they all cried and begged to go home during the introduction to the game is still sickly vivid in Haknyeon's mind.

Fuck that man, Haknyeon thinks. 

But the pistol their teacher picked up from the floor is pointed at Sunwoo, who’s still lying on the floor, bleeding out. The only sign he’s still alive—the only thing keeping Haknyeon’s mind sharp, forcing him to focus—is that he’s whimpering in pain, quietly but distinguishable enough even in the midst of chaos.

The man—Mr Seo, fuck him—sneers. 

“No, I don’t think so," he tells Chanhee. "You little shits, you think you can just fuck up the game like this? You think you’re getting out of here alive? You’re fucking dead already.”

Changmin stands up with his machine gun pointed at him. “He told you to drop it.” 

The look on his face is murderous. Haknyeon looks back at Chanhee, an arrow locked and pointed straight at the older man.

Between those two, there is no way he can get out of it alive. The question here is if he’s taking Sunwoo with him.

“Or what?” Mr Seo spits out. “Fucking teens, I swear. You’re so fucking stupid. All of this, and for what?” He gestures with his free hand to mean the room. “You’re all gonna die, anyway!”

The hysterical, verging on psychotic smile on his face ices Haknyeon’s blood.

“See you in hell, fuckers.”

And that’s when he pulls the trigger.

Haknyeon’s heart stops, but nothing happens. The trigger clicks, but there is no gunshot.

The gun is out of bullets. The smile falls from Mr Seo’s face. “Oh, motherfu—”

There’s not a lot left of him after Chanhee and Changmin have both fired their weapons. Haknyeon’s stomach revolts at what he sees when he stands up, the carcass of what was once a human now just a bloody pulp after Changmin finishes with him, shooting him continuously long after he’s dead.

But his attention is drawn elsewhere.

They’re around Sunwoo in a second, even Kevin. Haknyeon feels relief to see him alive but doesn’t really acknowledge it when he kneels down on a pool of Sunwoo’s blood. He doesn’t know what to do. It’s Chanhee who takes action, crossbow set aside as nimble fingers work on opening Sunwoo’s jacket, then his shirt, to take a look at the source of the bleeding.

“Someone should keep an eye out,” he says without taking his eyes off the wound that they now see is a small bullet wound on his stomach, a little above and to the left of his navel. “Just in case.”

“On it,” Kevin says, picking up Chanhee’s crossbow and walking back to the door.

Haknyeon hears the tremor in his own voice when he asks, “How bad is it?”

“I’m no doctor, but this doesn’t look good,” Chanhee says. Even he, with his levelheadness and quick wit, sounds shaken. “We need to stop the bleeding. Changmin, get me a shirt, a jacket, anything.”

They find a shirt that Chanhee bunches up in a makeshift gauze, pressing against the wound. Sunwoo cries out in pain, and Haknyeon takes his hand, leaning down to press a kiss to his cheek.

“It’s ok,” Haknyeon whispers to him, even though Sunwoo’s eyes are closed and he looks too out of it to hear it right now. “It’s ok, you’re gonna be ok.”

He is not expecting to see Sunwoo’s eyes open. But Sunwoo looks at Haknyeon, gaze only a little unfocused, and blinks slowly.

“Don’t leave me alone,” Sunwoo begs, a single tear running down his temple.

Haknyeon chokes on a sob, feeling his own eyes filling with tears he can’t keep back for much longer.

“I won’t,” Haknyeon tells him. He squeezes his hand, brushes the sweaty hair out of his face. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

He realizes he means it.

Sunwoo’s eyes slip shut again. Haknyeon tries calling his name, but he doesn’t wake up this time.

“Here, you do it,” Chanhee tells him. Haknyeon is surprised to see there are tears running down his face too, only silently. He does as instructed and lets go of Sunwoo’s hand to press the shirt to the wound. “Keep it there, make sure you’re putting pressure on it. He’s lost too much blood already. I think we still have some bandages stashed away, I’ll run over there to grab them.”

“What about the bullet?” Haknyeon asks. He looks from Chanhee to Changmin, who’s just standing there, staring at Sunwoo with glassy eyes, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Should we take it out? We need—He needs—”

Chanhee shakes his head and stands up. “He needs a doctor and a hospital. We can’t do anything without risking killing him.” He touches Changmin’s arm, “You coming?”

Like snapping out of a trance, Changmin nods, a little jerkily. They walk out of the room promising to be back soon, Kevin following them on their heels.

Haknyeon is left alone with Sunwoo.

He wishes Sunwoo would open his eyes again, talk to him. That’s the only way Haknyeon can be sure he’s not dead, and that he won’t be dead within the hour. The thought alone sends a shiver down his spine, more chilling than the sea breeze coming through the destroyed window.

And to think that he considered killing Sunwoo not too long ago. Haknyeon can’t say he wouldn’t have gone with it, because after what he’s seen in the last thirty hours, he knows morality is a really, really fragile thing. He has seen colleagues turn into blood-frenzied monsters as if by the flick of a switch, and he doesn’t think of himself better than any of them. Hell, maybe if he had more of a will to live, he might’ve joined them in the mayhem.

As it stands, his only reason to keep going now is bleeding out in front of him.

That’s what the fear in Sunwoo's eyes was all about. He knew this was a suicide mission on his part. He gave his gun to Haknyeon. He stormed this room knowing he’d be jumping into the fray as their front line. He knew his chances were small.

Haknyeon cries. He cries because he can’t do this, he never wanted to do this. Killing, dying. Losing the one person who thought to come look for him, because Haknyeon is not the only one who still remembers a time when they promised to always be there.

To never leave each other alone.

They have now both broken that promise. And so Haknyeon cries, hard enough that it feels like his soul is breaking in two. Maybe it is. If there can be something so unfair as Sunwoo’s life slowly seeping away in front of him, then souls might just be breakable, too.

When Chanhee comes back, he tells Haknyeon to take a moment to breathe. He starts working on Sunwoo’s wound, cleaning some of the blood before dressing and bandaging it. Haknyeon sits to the side, watching, the worst of his crying subsiding until he feels drained, head throbbing in time with the cut on his thigh.

“That’s the best we can do for now,” Chanhee announces, pulling his hands back and staring at the bandages. “At least I think we stopped the bleeding. That’s a good thing. Here, let’s move him.”

They carefully pull him away from the pool of blood, closer to the back of the room and a little more protected from the chilly wind. Haknyeon sits down next to him without another word.

There’s a knock on the open door, so they turn to see Kevin there. “They’re going in,” he tells them.

“Who is?” Haknyeon asks.

He sees someone behind Kevin, face covered in cuts and bruises and what looks like soot. Bae Junyung has always been kind to Haknyeon, and a constant project partner whenever Haknyeon found himself without a group to work with. Right now, he spots Haknyeon and gives him a smile.

“Good to see you, Haknyeonie,” he says.

“You too, Junyung.”

“The other half is going in, the ones who are actually gonna get us out of here,” Chanhee explains to him, but he’s suddenly distracted, worried. To Changmin and Kevin he says, “We should go.”

As they prepare themselves, checking weapons and assessing injuries, Changmin looks at Sunwoo, then at Haknyeon. It’s obvious he’s considering the risk of leaving Sunwoo with him, but there’s no way in hell Haknyeon is leaving Sunwoo's side now, and Changmin must see that, because he rests his machine gun on his shoulder and turns to Chanhee.

“Let’s go.”

It’s Kevin who tells Haknyeon, “We’ll be back soon, if everything goes according to plan.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Kevin hesitates. He glances at the others.

“It will,” Changmin answers for him.

No one argues. He has that look about him again, the slightly vacant one, like he’s not actually present. Haknyeon feels cold watching him, wondering what Changmin had to go through to get this far in the game, and just how painful those experiences were to snuff out the brightness in his eyes.

Junyung sends another smile his way before they all leave, and Haknyeon tries not to think that this is the last time he might see any of them. He almost wants to run after them and ask what is this plan they’ve been talking about, what other half, how they could possibly leave now, but he’s too tired for it.

Tired, and still too scared to create expectations. Maybe not knowing is better. There’s no way he can trick himself into believing the plan is going to work if he doesn’t know what the plan is.

He looks at Sunwoo, still unconscious and deadly pale, and feels the tears welling up again. He looks away, and his eyes land on the sword, discarded on the floor not too far from him. Crawling over, he picks it up and brings it back to his spot next to Sunwoo.

It is heavy, he was right about that. It looks almost too good to be true, like a historically-accurate replica he imagines actors would use on the set of a fantasy production, though Haknyeon doesn’t really understand much about swords to conclude anything past that. He can’t imagine Sunwoo lugging this around, much less using it, but there’s caked blood near the hilt, so it has been used.

Haknyeon doesn’t want to think about who he might have used it on, so he just sets it down on the floor next to the gun.

The night is too quiet. With everyone gone, all Haknyeon hears is the rustling of the wind and the trees outside. Even the sea is quiet from up here. His thigh is throbbing again, something he has been able to ignore so far, but that proves very annoying when he doesn’t have anything else to do. In a way, it’s like he’s back in that dark room. Except the body next to his is warm, and he’s not necessarily counting the minutes until his own death.

Fuck. That’s hope, isn’t it?

To fill up the silence, he starts humming a song, the first one that comes to mind. He can’t really place it—it’s one of those cases where he knows the song, and he knows he likes it too, but can’t really think of the artist or title just yet.

“You still like that song.”

Haknyeon startles and looks down. Sunwoo’s eyes are open, but barely. His face is so pale, drained of blood, that he looks like his own ghost.

But he’s awake, and oh, god, Haknyeon never felt something so strongly as the relief he feels now. It brings it all back—which song it is, what artist, why it’s the first thing that comes to his mind. 

“Of course,” he says, a little wobbly with emotion. “It’s a good song. How are you feeling?”

“Cold.”

He looks cold, too. Haknyeon looks around, at the bodies still surrounding them, trying to figure out if he can find anything for him. Worst case scenario, he can give Sunwoo his own jacket. Haknyeon isn’t too cold, anyway...

Sunwoo touches his hand. It’s weak, like he doesn’t have the strength to do any more than that, but it serves its purpose.

“It’s a joke,” he croaks out. “’Cause the window is open.”

It’s stupid enough to make Haknyeon laugh. “I’ll excuse the terrible joke since you’re in pain.”

He gets a small smile for it. Sunwoo looks weak, like even doing this, keeping his eyes open, is too much of an effort. But he still musters up the strength to say, “You still like the movie, too?”

“Spirited Away?”

Sunwoo nods, or tries to.

It feels weird talking like this, with Sunwoo lying down and Haknyeon sitting up. So he lies down next to him, turns on his side so he can look at him.

“I do,” he says. “I watched it again on New Year's Eve.”

“Of course you did. Remember...” Sunwoo pauses to let out a pained grain, making a face for a second before he continues. “Remember when you tried to convince me we should watch it every month?”

Haknyeon smirks. “I still think that was a good idea. That movie teaches you different things at different points of your life, everyone knows that.”

“I don’t think that means every month, though.”

There’s warmth here, and Haknyeon hopes Sunwoo can feel it, too, because he doesn’t think the cold thing was entirely a joke. He hopes that these silly memories of a time long gone can warm Sunwoo as much as they do him. Because what else is there to hold onto now, if not good memories?

“Sunwoo, how are you feeling?”

Sunwoo just looks at him. It’s so painful to see him like this that Haknyeon reaches up to brush his bangs away from his face, wipe some dirt from his forehead. Meaningless gestures that won’t really help, can’t help, but that he needs to do. If anything to remind himself that Sunwoo is still here, and not gone. That they still have these few minutes left to reminisce about the friendship they left in the past, and to remind Haknyeon of what was once his safest place in the world: right by Sunwoo’s side.

“You know why we had to hit this place first?” Sunwoo asks, eyes slipping shut momentarily while Haknyeon is fixing his hair. “Why we couldn’t just head to where we knew we had to go?”

“Why?”

“Because they made it so one system can’t be messed with while the other is up. This was their failsafe.”

“Their backup?”

“Sorta.”

Haknyeon pulls his hand back and Sunwoo opens his eyes again. Stares right into his, more lucid than he has been since waking up. Haknyeon is expecting an explanation as to why he brought it up, why he mentioned the storming of this place at all. If Sunwoo is trying to justify the situation they’re in right now, that is so very stupid...

“I’m sorry,” Sunwoo whispers, derailing his train of thought. “For leaving you back then.”

Oh, fucking hell. Haknyeon feels his eyes sting, the treacherous tears coming back immediately. He wishes he could stop crying for once. It’s not like it’s helping.

“It’s all in the past,” is what he manages to say. Bullshit, because it never really made the transition into past for him. It’s his present. He’s still living it, the distance, the emptiness that Sunwoo’s friendship left behind. “It’s fine. I left you first, anyway.”

Sunwoo shakes his head, the most vehement gesture he’s managed so far. “No. You needed me. You needed us.”

The tears break free.

“Forget about it,” Haknyeon insists, sniffling like a loser, like the absolute idiot he is for crying over something that really doesn’t matter anymore when they’re surrounded by charred bodies and might not live long enough to see the sunrise. “Shut up, stop—Stop apologizing. It’s gone, those days are gone. It doesn’t matter.”

“Matters to me,” Sunwoo says. 

He tries to sit up, and the sound he lets out is so heartwrenching that Haknyeon puts a hand to his chest to stop him. Sunwoo gives up, lies down again, panting, panicking. Haknyeon starts worrying that maybe he’s having some sort of reaction to the wound, maybe going into shock—that’s a thing, right?—but then realizes that’s not it.

Sunwoo is crying.

“It matters to me, Haknyeon. Because you matter to me. And I can’t believe—”

“Sunwoo, stop, we don’t have to do this now,” Haknyeon says, because Sunwoo is growing agitated and that can’t be good, can it? What if he starts bleeding again? What if he wastes what little energy he has left on this, and then he goes out like a light again, only to never wake up? But Sunwoo ignores him.

“If not now then when?” He asks, choking on tears, breaking Haknyeon’s heart all over again. “I left you then, I can’t leave you again and not tell you how fucking sorry I am that I was such an asshole, leaving when I promised not to, when all I ever wanted was to be with you, to be there for you, but I was—I am such a fucking coward, and I can’t just let you—”

Haknyeon leans in and kisses his lips, desperate to shut him up.

He tastes salt from their tears but it works, Sunwoo does shut up. What it doesn’t help with, however, is the slow but very painful cracking of the protective shell Haknyeon put around his heart. It crumbles away the longer he stays here, pressing his lips to Sunwoo’s, feeling the cold hand on his cheek, feeble and barely making any pressure at all, like Sunwoo doesn’t have the muscle strength for more.

When Haknyeon breaks the kiss, he whispers, “Shut up. You’re not leaving.”

Sunwoo doesn’t argue this time.

Not long after that, Sunwoo is overcome with this terrifying shivering that scares the living hell out of Haknyeon. He finds Sunwoo a jacket that’s not covered in someone else’s remains and covers him with it, then lies down next to him to offer him his body warmth, too. Carefully, making sure he’s not touching him anywhere near his stomach where he has been shot, he wraps an arm over his chest.

When Sunwoo’s eyes slip shut and stay that way, Haknyeon begins humming “Always With Me” again.

It feels like too much time has passed when he finally hears footsteps on the stairs. The thought of going down without a fight doesn’t even cross his mind—he sits up immediately, grabs the gun and points at the door.

Junyung halts and puts his hands up. There’s someone else with him—Haknyeon hasn’t seen Sangyeon since the instructions, but he’s glad to see he made it. Or as glad as he can bring himself to feel, depleted of everything that is not survival instincts at this point.

He lowers the gun again, and the other two immediately walk over. Junyung says, “They’re on their way. We should make sure he’s outside when they get here.”

Haknyeon doesn’t question him. Who they are doesn’t matter, because Haknyeon is so exhausted, all his brain registers is that they need to get Sunwoo somewhere, so he stands up and tries to figure out how they’re gonna do this. Between Junyung and Sangyeon, they manage to lift and carry Sunwoo away, while Haknyeon trails behind them with the gun and the sword in hand, eyes on Sunwoo the entire time.

The world looks a little too surreal outside, because it looks pretty, and that rings like an offense to Haknyeon. A slap in the face, almost. He wonders how the sun just starting to peek out in the horizon has the nerve to give the ocean so many beautiful colors when they’re covered in blood, hurt and scarred in more ways than one, to such an irreversible degree that it doesn’t feel fair that the world should go on the way it always has been, unscathed.

The others are there, too, scattered on the grass surrounding the lighthouse. The only thing that stands out to Haknyeon is Chanhee’s crossbow, because that clues him in to the fact that they’re back from whatever mission they had to complete. Everything else seems irrelevant. Everyone else is a blur. Haknyeon doesn’t even know why he’s still alive when there’s so many people still armed and capable of taking him down.

He wouldn’t even try to fight it, honestly.

Sunwoo looks even paler outside, however, and that’s what Haknyeon can’t stop thinking about. He takes Sunwoo's hand as soon as they put him down on the ground again. He tries not to think about how cold it is; they’re all cold. This doesn’t mean anything. Haknyeon himself is cold to the bone, and he thinks he might never feel warm again, for as long as he lives, be it twenty minutes or twenty years.

Lost in thought, staring at Sunwoo’s face, he thinks he’s imagining the sound at first. It takes him a while to understand that what he sees when he looks up to the sky are real helicopters. The large, official-looking kind. Three of them, coming from the east, and getting closer.

Haknyeon looks up at the others. They’re watching the helicopters, too; most seem relieved. Chanhee and Changmin are the only ones who look worried, still clutching their weapons close to their chests, but no one else pays that any mind.

Next to him, Lee Jaehyun—who Haknyeon didn’t even notice was there until now, with a badly bruised cheek and an ugly cut above his right eyebrow—nudges him.

“If shit goes down,” he tells Haknyeon. “We carry him towards the trees.” 

Haknyeon nods. He doesn’t tell him he doesn’t think they would get that far, much less carrying someone unconscious between them. Optimism can go a long way now, he imagines.

But shit does not, as it turns out, go down. The helicopters land somewhere on the opposite side of the lighthouse, and when the soldiers come running their way, their guns are not pointed at them. How his classmates managed to send a distress signal, how they managed to ask for help and get it there so fast, he only learns much later, when he thinks to ask. For now, all he can do is watch the terse interaction between Changmin and the soldier who steps forward first, and then Changmin turning to them and nodding.

From there on, it’s like his brain hits fast-forward, because it all happens too fast.

Haknyeon makes a fuss about not wanting to leave Sunwoo’s side, but eventually they coax him into letting him go so he can get transported away immediately, and Haknyeon files into the other helicopters with his friends. The word “friends” feels spongy in his head, like it’s somewhere it shouldn’t be, and he should be using another one instead, but he’s too tired to correct himself.

As soon as they take off, with Junyung on his left and Sangyeon on his right, he falls asleep.

Maybe he passes out, he concludes later, when he wakes up in a hospital bed. He’s connected to an IV drip, and his thigh is bandaged. It’s not throbbing anymore, and it doesn’t hurt, though it does feel weird when he tries to move it, like his very skin is sore under the bandages. To his left, he sees Jaehyun fast asleep in another bed. To his right, Kevin is sitting up on his own bed and sketching on a pad, seemingly mostly unscathed despite also being connected to an IV. The infirmary—or whatever this place is—is big, all pristine white walls and big but comforting lights, with two rows of beds on either side. Most of them seem to be occupied, too.

Haknyeon sits up, groaning when he notices how sore he is overall, and not just because of his leg. That gets Kevin’s attention. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

Kevin looks much more like himself now. Without the fear of imminent death rattling around inside Haknyeon’s skull, Kevin's eyes are back to kind.

“Fine,” Haknyeon says. His voice is so shot that it's comical. He’s obviously not that fine. Kevin chuckles as he clears his throat. “You?”

“Oh, I’m alright.”

Kevin looks at him, as if waiting for the next question he knows is about to come. So Haknyeon gets to the point. “And Sunwoo?”

“Just out of surgery, last I heard. You should probably be able to see him, if you want.”

Haknyeon does. With a promise to be back in bed soon, because he should be resting, the nurse tells him, he’s pointed towards a door, then down a hallway, and then through another couple of doors. This is a hospital, alright, he can see that much now.

But the uniformed officers at every corner and the empty hallways make him think that maybe this is not a civilian hospital.

Opening the door to the private room and seeing Sunwoo on the bed unlocks something in his chest. Relief, mostly, but not just that. It’s like the cloud dissipates, and Haknyeon feels real again. As if waking up in that bed didn’t count—now he’s awake.

Sunwoo looks asleep when he comes closer to the bed. The cuts have been cleaned and bandaged, the blood washed away. He's alive, which is such a stark contrast to the state Haknyeon last saw him in, that he sniffs, unaware of his tears until he needs to will them away, wiping angrily at his eyes. 

Enough crying, what the hell.

“Do I look that bad?”

Haknyeon pulls his hands away from his face, surprised to see Sunwoo looking at him. Grinning.

“You do. Like shit,” Haknyeon says, but it comes out so watery and pathetic, they laugh. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“I’ve been in and out, I think.” Sunwoo reaches for his hand. Haknyeon just lets him. “I’m not sure. If this is a dream, at least it’s a good one.”

It’s the meds, Haknyeon thinks, eyeing his IV drip. He must be tripping on anesthesia, painkillers, and who knows what else. It’s hard to believe the horror is behind them now, even though all evidence seems to point to that so far. Still, Haknyeon smiles.

“I can’t believe you’re still this cheesy.”

“And I can’t believe you’re here,” Sunwoo says right back. The cheekiness gives away to something more vulnerable. Something more open, distressingly so, until Haknyeon needs to grit his teeth to keep the tears at bay. “Thank you. For coming with me. For trusting me even though you had no reason to.”

Haknyeon can’t dispute that, even though he wants to.

“Thank you for coming back for me,” he says instead. “Even though you had no reason to.”

Now, it’s Sunwoo who looks like he wants to argue. They’re treading a dangerous line here, between saying too much and not saying enough. Absolutely not the time, Haknyeon thinks, staring into Sunwoo’s tired eyes, feeling his own body sore in ways he can’t even begin to explain. And he hasn’t been through surgery—at least not that he knows of—so he can’t begin to imagine how Sunwoo can be so present now.

Still holding his hands, too. Playing with his fingers, like he used to ages ago.

“Do you think it’s over?”

He means the game. Haknyeon knows that because he's picturing those helicopters approaching again, such a quick response to the distress call Changmin and the others sent into the world, as if they had been close by, just waiting for it...

They have enough reason to be suspicious, Haknyeon thinks. They didn’t see it coming the first time, there’s no reason they should see it coming a second time.

“Who knows,” he says. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Sunwoo squeezes his hand and tugs it towards him, silently asking Haknyeon to come closer. And because he’s tired, and his first instinct is always to follow Sunwoo, anyway, he does. He leans down enough that Sunwoo can bring his other hand up to the back of Haknyeon’s neck, bringing him down all the way until he can kiss him.

Maybe there is a way to describe the kind of kiss that leaves you aching for a time that still hasn’t come and missing a time that never was. Haknyeon tries to think of words for it, but nothing quite fits. All his mind can come up with, in a race against his heart, is that whatever time they have left will have to be enough.

“I’m not leaving this time,” Sunwoo whispers.

Haknyeon has a choice here. Unsurprisingly, he lets his heart decide again. “Neither am I.”