Chapter Text
By some metric, Joonghyuk truly is 12 years old. That metric, of course, would then pull into question whether age is of the conscience, the body, or the memory.
His first memory is not of childhood and family as it should be. Instead, it’s of the weeping sky, torn open as if ‘it’ were the womb which birthed him. However, the limitless sky held no sentiment for him though it tore his heart to stare at it. His lineage both began and diverged from the tears it shed. His is made of mortal flesh just as much as the immortal stardust. And so, his first memory defined him as something other.
That sky.
That glorious, glorious sky.
What a comfort and a dagger lodged straight into his heart.
It looked like someone gouged into the inky black, revealing something indescribable beneath. Perhaps a child might be able to imitate it in the craft room, merging glitters and inks into something dreamy and imbued with a little too much imagination. No adult could even breach into the sphere of wonder. But someone - there was someone who could - No. There was no one. His first memory is of the stars and his second this very moment. He knew nothing else.
And he had breathed in at the strange absence dawning on him. This isn’t right. Something is missing. His memories. His fingers danced against the dust and stones beneath him, dipping in something sticky, searching for something. But nothing emerged, and the absence only grows more threatening. His breath shuddered frantically, dust clogging his throat and the deathly echo now turned silent except for him. The brief peace fled just as quickly as it had settled.
He moved, desperate to find - and found himself seated in a pool of cooling blood.
That was his first memory.
Then came 12 more years of memories till his experience at long last matched his appearance.
Of course he'll soon gain another year, and his memories will out pace his body. Therefore, ‘age’ is truly meaningless for the incarnates. It's simply an incompatible waste of time.
But occasionally, the need to define it comes along and even Joonghyuk ponders it.
Dokja is simultaneously the type to overthink everything and nothing altogether. It's truly bizarre, but somehow harmonious.
Joonghyuk never realized how little he mulled over things until he saw Dokja hyperfixate on a single sentence for 2 weeks straight. (That was utterly maddening) It's not that Joonghyuk doesn't think; he simply values action. A thought is a moment wasted, especially on the streets.
Joonghyuk expects Dokja to have a menagerie of thoughts, theories, and facts about age locked away in his head. He'd be the type of person to pin down its meaning. The keys have simply been shattered, and the process to piece them all together takes time.
Later-
Later he’ll ask…
(...They have all the time in the world. Right?)
***
Joonghyuk didn't make it before Dokja seized in his arms and started spewing bile and blood onto the floor. Half of it doesn't manage to clear the distance and spatters over the both of them. The moment Dokja begins sputtering and choking, Joonghyuk drops, ignoring the original goal of the restroom. Within moments the only thing Joonghyuk can do is hold him up as he chokes and writhes.
Dokja's face has gone bone white. Even the relentless fever has rescinded its flush. The spill of red liquid mars his gaunt face. The little bit of life Joonghyuk fought for has slipped right from the bone, and he looks worse than before. A delirious light peeks out from the glaze of Dokja's gaze. When he stills a small grin graces his face as he stares into nothing.
Joonghyuk turns away and shakily brushes the gruesome evidence from Dokja's face.
He pulls Dokja to the restroom, working around his limp companion to clean up the mess. Then he brings them back to bed, swiping the sweat from his brow, whispering stories, easing delirious rambles and frights. He drags Dokja to the restroom. He gets sick and helps calm him when he writhes.
They take Joonghyuk.
They take Dokja.
Handle the fever. Whisper stories. Ease the fear.
They pull Joonghyuk away as Dokja spews red.
Sick, seizures, and pain.
Screams in a silent room and threats towards demons.
Fever, stories, deliruim, and pain.
Joonghyuk.
Dokja.
Lab. Room. Lab. Room.
Stories and fever, hand in hand, and a frantic pulse he tries to quell as he feels everything slip through his fingers like sand.
Time races urgently, punctuated by the ragged huffs his room mates breath. It chips away at the ultimate clock, slipping seconds and minutes from his life. It rapidly diminishes until he’s staring at broken shards devoid of all original form.
The body grows hotter and hotter. Quieter and quieter.
It becomes as absent as death’s hanging promise.
Joonghyuk is pulled away. They don’t even bother waiting for him to fight. They drug him before he even arrives.
Dokja, pulled while he’s forced asleep.
They can't keep this up forever.
They can't.
They can't.
Not unless they want to kill him.
(He’s too important too die)
***
Every single one of them recoils at the sight. One by one as they arrive they find him trenched on the couch and freeze, and like clockwork, their faces warp and stretch like taffy. Joonghyuk watches as their skin pulls of into infinity and shock fills the room with noise. Movement quakes the air, buffeting him in a tornado. He resists the force of it, weathering it hunched over to protect the treasure in his grasp.
Words buzz around him. The crackle and tempo reads like a live wire. Only a semblance of rationality convinces him they aren’t active threats. He clings to that thread like it’s the boundary of life and death.
He can’t slip away. He can’t.
He needs to do things perfectly the first time.
The vulnerable one in his arms seems all the more fragile, balanced on the edge of a knife.
Someone bubbles at him, hovering dangerously close. He snarls through molasses, baring his teeth and bristling. Dokja’s so weak in his arms; he can’t risk disturbing him for a moment unnecessarily.
The threat is pulled away and settles in the corner where they scheme.
The whisper and whisper.
It doesn’t matter what they do because he won’t let them anywhere near.
***
Everytime Joonghyuk slips away to sleep, he wakes in a fright. He’s terrified to find Dokja gone. It’s a relief when he finds his companion catatonic, staring foggy eyed at death. The thread bare sign of life pulses beneath his skin is the only promise of life most times. Joonghyuk hooks his fingers at Dokja’s carotid artery every waking moment.
Often he finds himself disposed of on the ground without a clear memory how he got there. Just the absence of Dokja and the life-ending anxiety. At times, his brain putters to a stop, dragging him into the dark without his consent. Moments later he’ll jolt awake, finding demons lurking to strike and Dokja utterly vulnerable.
***
He flutters awake on the floor growling. His body is already lunging while his hand darts out to snatch his cargo tight.
“Yangah!” someone cries, yanking the looming threat away. The danger, had pressed to attack mere moments ago, now flutters away with a hand still out stretched.
“Joonghyuk,” she yelps. “It’s okay.”
The world lurches without his control, yanking him into gravity’s hold. He falls face first, fluttering almost immediately to sleep.
Only the threat’s remaining presence provides him the strength to peel himself up.
“Shit,” someone else hisses venomously. This figure poised to strike just out of distance. A single step would cross the distance and begin a melee.
He growls, tensing. He’ll strike first.
Someone else moves, and the plan falls to pieces. Multiple enemies. It’d be better to play defensive to prevent there being any chance of anyone slipping by.
“Joonghyuk,” the world whispers.
And the world kisses him goodnight moments later, and he slips away.
***
The knife rests nestled in his grasp. Normally it rests chucked far into the far corner, disposed of the first moment he gets. Today, he woke up with it caught between his fingers. He’s not sure what devil did that, but he’ll regret that very moment.
The blade sat with a devilish command lingering unvoiced. A timer clicks unheard, counting down until the intercom will chime and this hell sinks even further past bedrock.
It simply holds no purpose, he tells himself. The hand shakes violently around the blade.
Dokja isn’t even conscious enough to be a danger to anyone. He’s utterly inert. Whatever purpose, surely is merely torture at this point.
He doesn't need it.
And he can’t bear it.
Hell cracks its maw opens and croons. A piercing ring disguises its voice, but he hears it in his bones. His palm sweats. His muscles spasm.
He can’t let go.
No matter what he tries. His fingers remain fixed in place. He can throw his arm aside, intending to send the blade through the wall but the knife remains glued to his palm.
He can’t.
“Do it,” the devil crackles from above.
He can’t.
Not to -
He can’t.
“He doesn't need it,” Joonghyuk gasps, pleading with the demon.
The devil croons impersonally, spelling doom and a pressing compulsion.
“He doesn’t need it!” he screams. A litany of other words and sounds escapes soon after, but the meaning begins to slip his grasp.
A final command leaves no room for leniency.
‘Dokja's too valuable,’ Joonghyuk tells himself quietly in the night hugging Dokja's fever burning body. They wouldn’t leave him to die. They wouldn’t risk his death.
He’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. Nothing-
He sobs at the first press of the blade. He gives up, attempting to toss the blade aside again only for it to remain eternal.
There truly is nothing he can do.
So…
He…
The assault of the devil and its magic…
Dokja.
In the absence of evil and the cover of the plastic sheet he adds something else. ‘Subject 001, Dokja, gets better,’ he writes preternaturally steady. The words lie crammed tightly into Dokja's hair where he knows no one will think to look. He clutters dozens of wishes there.
He stares religiously at it as Dokja lies still. The plastic sheet pools with blood then stills and goes cold. Joonghyuk’s own heat falls into the void.
But a pulse still exists.
He watches, praying it'll remain every time he blinks.
He fights for it, but sleep takes him unwillingly. He'd refused it too much before now, and its patience ran thin.
He cries when he found the words altered and the world colder still.
***
There’s a sudden moment he realizes it.
The moment cracks into an eternity as he stares, mind having gone utterly, terrifyingly blank. His fingers flutter, praying to have made a mistake. Something frigid bends under the pressure. The motion ripples through the body in a stiff and strange rock.
He pulls back, staring - staring at…at…at the thing that’s replaced Dokja.
At the corpse he clung to all night, praying as it began to stiffen. The sarcophagus he created buries the body in its shadows as he inches away.
Something removes him from his body as it breaks itself apart. He doesn’t panic afterall. His heart remains steady. His breath controlled. Nothing out of the regular occurs, but something achingly painful strikes his soul.
The body stumbles further away. The sensation of a corpse clings to him. Hours. It was hours.
He thought for hours.
When did it - when did he stop breathing.
He feels his pulse beneath his fingers. Phantom heat pulses in a feverish high he only imagined. Blood stains his fingers like an accusation. Blood pools the floor in frightening strikes.
Dokja -
That body leers from the shadows, head twisted strangely. It doesn’t even look at him, but that deathly gaze pierces him with betrayal.
He simply slip-slipped away.
WhenHOwHeWasJustAlive
He was just…
Then, he’s alone. A void gaps where a star fell and Joonghyuk lies collapsed across the room. Several world pass, blinking and finding reality all the same. A neverending trail of blood drags to the door. There isn’t even a body anymore. Nothing. Utterly nothing remains of the one who meant everything to Joonghyuk.
Used to be invincible.
That’s how he survived on the run for over a decade. Nothing can defeat you when all you need to try again is a single sigh. They never even remembered him. But eventually minute little hints and ghosts garnered enough details to capture someone impossible to catch.
He grapples with that thrumming power breathed into his bones so long ago. He wrestles and claws for it to be freed. He screams and tears.
It bucks, answering to his call…but a lid stops its flow with a pressing power.
‘No.’ It demands.
There’s nothing more powerless than that.
***
An eternity later, after the universe has been rewritten and the world falls gray, the door opens.
He knows he’s delusional when the monsters deposit a star upon his bed. It is simply impossible.
He must’ve broken entirely.
It took hours for him to notice… I took him a moment to notice this though.
He’s gone utterly mad now. Hallucinating is merely a confirmation to a dissertation decades in the making. Dokja’s phantom form swims like oil in the water, swirling with the mess in Joonghyuk’s head.
He gags, jolting with revulsion.
It took him hours…
It must be some cardinal sin he can not name, but he stares aghast in the corner at the ghostly corpse laid on the bloodstained bed.
What did they do with him?
He’s not sure if the delusion is a comfort or whether he is simply too broken to change his grisly form.
Why?
So he stays, staring at the relentless taunt.
He could still feel Dokja’s fluttering heartbeat engraved in his memory.
What was he going to ask him later? Age?
He doubts a wraith could answer.
He once lived eleven years alone. Utterly alone. Now he understands that he’s always been a dead man walking. His heart only learned to stir to another’s command, and it dies again in that person’s absence. He’s simply returning to form.
Born from a corpse. That’s what he was. A ghostly fragment of someone’s corpse. This…this feeling is normal.
Hours…
Dokja…
Abruptly a gasp echoes aloud.