adrenaline ,

>> tunnel vision

BARAM !

her heart breaks for him anew as he stumbles towards her, her little brother that she’s loved more than her own life for so many years. the little brother she had thought of every night before falling asleep, the boy who once used to only be able to find sleep in her arms after a hard day. she remembers how small he had been back then, the first time their accursed father had targeted baram for his experiments. she remembers how he’d been so insistent on playing still, up until he’d collapsed into his building blocks and haneul had panicked. he had laid there in bed after she’d forcibly tucked him in, his exhausted body suffering from fever, watching through barely open eyes as she flew the airplane for him with tears in her eyes. in her mind, while she had been gone, sometimes he had still been that child.

but the boy stumbling towards her is no longer a child, and that also hurts.

but when he buries his face in her side, her hand slips into his hair naturally, smoothing down the faded red strands and she wants to cry, because this feels right. this is what she had dreamed of, had fought to come back to.

’my little love,’ she thinks fondly, the longing in her thoughts almost tangible as she fights the tears that slip down her face despite her best efforts, ‘i’m so sorry… i’m so sorry i left you for so long… i fought every day to come back… you were my strength when i thought i couldn’t carry on, little wind.’ when he tells her that their father is dead, the sharp stab of vicious pleasure that courses through her is almost startling.

but the vehemence shines through even in her thoughts. ’he deserved nothing less. it’s okay to be scared… it’s okay to be scared. but we’ll protect you. i’m never going to let you go again,’ she declares, grateful that she doesn’t have to say the words out loud. with the tears slipping down her face and the hitched breaths she’s softly gasping for, she doesn’t think that she would be able to say it out loud.

her hand strokes through his hair, comforting and steady, just like she had when she used to lull him to sleep.

'my precious little brother… i’ll love you even after the world ends.’

cw: implied child abuse; needles/syringes; hospitals; parental death

but i'm black and blue, from bleedin' for you you strike the match, burn me out so fast look what we had, now it's turned to ash

                                                          a flashback with @miahelios​

cw: blood, gore, family death

he’s dead.

baram knows he’s dead before daesu’s blade even slides out of his chest with a wet, metallic sound.

“no-” his own hands are still clinging to his father’s shirt, where they were shaking him vigorously only moments before, demanding answers, full of pain and rage, “NO!”

he topples awkwardly to the ground, the cumbersome weight of his father’s bleeding body dragging him down with it. his knees dig painfully into the uneven terrain of a city ravaged by an apocalypse, and still he doesn’t let go, even as he turns his head, trains his red, enraged gaze on daesu.

“what did you do? WHY DID YOU DO THAT!? dad. dad. you son of a bitch, don’t you dare die on me-” baram shakes him again, ignores the way the man’s lips curl into the last breaths of a smile, the way his skull thuds grotesquely against the crumbled pavement underneath him. the world is blurry through his tears, through his fear and his anger, through his grief and his pain, “where is she? WHERE’S MOM?”

he's lost count of how many times he’s shouted at the man for answers he will never have. his voice is ragged, his vocal chords, already ravaged by the unpredictability of adolescence, rubbed raw with the animalistic instincts coursing through his veins.

“you son of a bitch,” he repeats weakly, long after the cruel man’s punctured heart has stopped, red-stained smile glued into place by his death. there is no love for the man in baram’s voice, no grief for his father’s death to spare. there is only hatred, and loss, and rage, knowing he will never see his mother again, knowing all he has left are the memories of countless jabs and a merciless experiment and an unending headache and no more family. haneul, he thinks, sobbing once, and then twice, haneul i failed. please. where are you?

his fists untwist from bloodied fabric only to bang against the dead man’s ribcage, over and over, the corpse jerking unsettlingly with every impact. the lump in his throat grows so large it feels like he might suffocate, and his heart pangs so fiercely he is certain it’ll implode any moment, a grenade of grief swallowed whole.

just like that, he has lost everything. he has lost everyone. he is left behind on this doomed planet with poisoned veins and a broken brain and no one left to love. and he will never see them again.

artemisxmia​:

>> tunnel vision

be strong and hold my hand // time it comes for us, you’ll understand // we’ll say goodbye, today // if i could be with you, tonight // i would sing you to sleep // never let them take the light behind your eyes >>for @lunaxmia

she’s restless in her bed, her eyes open but unseeing, staring blankly at a ceiling that holds no interest to her. she’s been allowed to see daesu, even seb has dropped by briefly, but the other piece of her heart, her precious brother — they haven’t given him… or her, clearance to meet each other yet. she knows. of all people, haneul well understands the reasons why she cannot be allowed to meet other agents freely until she’s been vetted. her power is dangerous, useful, irreplaceable — and untraceable. of all people, haneul certainly knows the best why she hasn’t been allowed to see baram yet. 

but at the same time, ignoring all logic — it’s baram. her little brother, the only part left she has of her family. ( here, she staunchly ignores the fact that their father is still somewhere out there. that person barely even deserves the label of human, let alone father. what kind of father experiments on his six year old son? what kind of father experiments on his children? ) it’s her precious little wind, her baby breeze, and she needs to make sure that he’s okay. that she hasn’t let him down irreparably. 

she hears him before she sees him, his racing thoughts and desperation nearly tangible, and when he bursts into the room, panting, fiery-eyed and fiery-haired, she feels that abrupt change as he sees her. he sees her, and she can hear the moment that he registers she’s really there — but she’s distracted, because that’s baram in front of her, so grown up. he’s so different from the teenager she’d left behind, and yet, when she looks at him, the tears already pouring down his face, it almost feels like he’s still the teenager she knew. 

‘baram — my little wind,’ she reaches out for him, still physically weak, still recovering, and she can’t help the tears that well up in her own eyes to see him really there. she’s waited so long to see him. it’s been more than four years since the last time she’d seen him in person, and he’s so different but still the same — still her little brother. 

‘come here, baram,’ even in his mind, her voice is pleading, soft and full of longing, a slim, frail hand stretched out towards the brother she’d longed to see for so long. ‘i missed you so much… i love you so much…’

right now, she can’t see or hear anything but him.

it all overcomes him so suddenly, like the ghost of a freight train hitting him square in the chest and tossing at him all the grief he’s accumulated over the years she was missing in action. from daesu, his mentor, he had learned how to take every minute of devastation and rage at his loss and bottle it up into a small red capsule, carried under his tongue like a concealed weapon, unleashed only when it came time to destroy their enemies. but there is no room for fury here. 

baram...

my little wind...

tw: implied suicidal thoughts

be strong and hold my hand // time it comes for us, you'll understand // we'll say goodbye, today // if i could be with you, tonight // i would sing you to sleep // never let them take the light behind your eyes >>for @lunaxmia

agent artemis report to civilian medical wing at 09:00 hours.

early. that's his initial thought when he squints through the muffled darkness of his covers pulled snugly over his head at the pinging notification projecting itself onto the underside of his duvet. that's in less than fifteen minutes, and he only fell into bed to sleep a few hours ago. he's supposed to be recovering - that shrink keeps telling him as much - and he's pretty sure recovering doesn't involve work tests at 8:49 in the morning summoning him to the most depressing, most traumatizing meia structure still standing.

but he knows better than to push his luck with the higher-ups, who don't need much reason to assign him some torturous physical conditioning under the guise of 'discipline.' he drags himself out of his bed, tugging off whatever he happened to sleep in and throwing on the first set of mission-friendly clothes he pulls out of the trunk at the foot of his bed just as haphazardly. it's a hasty teeth brushing and a careless handful of water splashed over his face that precede a few lazy drags of a brush through his hair, and then he is on his way, with three minutes to spare before he has to report.

"i'm here, what is it," he murmurs flatly through half-lidded eyes after a half-assed salute that earns him a warning glance from the stationed agent.

"agent luna has returned."

four words uttered with a certain confidential quiet terseness make baram's face go pale white and then flushed pink in a matter of moments. he feels the world tilt under his feet, and then a strong arm at his elbow, keeping him upright, pulling him back to reality. he isn't dreaming this?

"what did you say?"

"agent luna has-"

"haneul-"

he is all tunnel vision, nevermind the tunnel spinning in unsteady blacks and whites around him, like some tormenting funhouse that's moved itself into the folds of his brain. his eyes are wide and wild, and suddenly everything physical between him and his sister is an obstacle, an enemy, even the air molecules themselves.

"where is she?"

the agent barely gestures down the hall before baram is bolting, darting past medics and patients and agents in a blur, until he spots one of the few closed doors, guarded by another flat-faced senior agent.

"agent artemis, you have clearance to-"

"move!" the world around him has disappeared, he doesn't care about the eyes on his outburst or the cameras parked in every corner. his goal is clear, and he knows he wouldn't even let celest stop him from it if she tried.

"there's a preliminary briefing-"

"i said move,"

"agent, you are out of line-"

he'll regret it later, maybe, the mostly harmless swing he takes at the agent blocking the door, the closed fist that won't do much more than startle him. but right now, in this moment, with his heart pounding so hard it hurts, it is his way in, a window of distraction to grab hold of the door handle and ram his shoulder against the door.

it's unlocked, and he all but topples through it, barely gaining his footing. then he sees her. he sees her. he sees her and she's real.

immediately his eyes well with tears, and his energy shifts, revealing some version of the frightened teenage boy she left behind years ago. he can do nothing but stand there, weeping silently at the sight, because she's here and she's real and she's alive.