simulacrum.

@laidure || because I hate it when you’re sad and hurting and feeling all kinds of overwhelmed. But also because I love you and you will always have me, no matter what. Forget the bad times, forget them, forget everything. Tomorrow will be better, I promise. So here’s a small thing, even though I told you my writing is shit. It’s just a small glimpse of some of the things we headcanoned between these two. I also have something I’ve been working on for ages now. It’s gonna be a big thing and I hope to have it completed in time for your birthday. (Yeah, it’s two months away but I’m telling you, once I finish it and post it, you’ll see why I’m taking my sweet ass time.) But in the meantime… have this. Love always, your wife ♥

(And I want to go back to feeling human. But we don’t always get what we want. This is our life.)

He remembers this retort once upon a time. Remembers when she’d sobbed in the dead of the night, face pressed into the pillow, her hands fisted into the cotton when he did. He remembers wincing with his back turned towards her–a piss poor semblance of privacy; something he felt he owed her, given how often he’d intruded, how often he’d robbed her of an opportunity to wallow in her perpetual grief, her lingering misery.

Now, though, he can’t quite bring himself to commiserate with her. Can’t quite let himself be taken by nostalgia, be stolen by sentiment and what-could-have-been’s. He’s not capable of reminiscing when They keep stealing memories, hoarding them like kitsch collectibles in a junkyard antique shop. He’s not capable of entertaining what if’s when the present he’s been so terribly (and painfully) thrust into is too concerned with advocating for the future.

He just can’t afford to be swept away by moments of blue, of melancholy. He can’t afford to linger because lingering will get him killed. There has never been a time for him to slow down. Not in the past, definitely not in the present, and there won’t ever be in the future.

But the boy who fell in love with a girl who refused to die, refused to give in, just plain old refused just because? He understands why Jisoo craved the little things, held fleeting moments in the palm of her hands, wished for the mundane. 

But the soldier they’ve carved out of him by peeling the skin of his naive, little church boy self from his boys? He doesn’t understand. Doesn’t care. 

Sentiments mean nothing in a world of war. Nostalgia is a hindrance when a split second’s hesitation can get you killed.

Minho didn’t survive this long because he remembers. No, he’s survived this long because remembering no longer matters.

“I don’t.” 

(He understands it all comes down to preference. But in a world as cruel as theirs, there is no such thing as preference. Choices, desires, wishes–those were things left rotting in the hollow of their rib cage, left bleeding in the hole humans called a heart. 

He holds her gaze for only a moment before he turns away, locking the door behind her with a definite clang.

It’s time to move on dies a half death, trapped between closed lips and a dry throat.

(He’s two flights up from the basement when he hears the echo of her sobs. When They ask him what she’d whispered to him during their usual twenty minute session, Minho lies. 

jisoo has never been the type to play it safe -- she’d sooner die than let someone snatch away her control, her agency, her will. she refused to let anyone contort her, mold her, into something inanimate and unresponsive, only moving like a pawn across a chessboard. 

(she is not a thing. she is not.)

but there she is, pinned to a wall. vulnerable and caught on the defense. for a moment, she had to wonder what exactly raina was playing at, what rin was doing leaving her with the likes of him. on a baser level, she knew this was a game (everything was a game to Them). humans were nothing more than chess pieces, their lives flimsy and tossed away at a whim. people: they were only valuable for a limited time. human lives operated on a strict expiration date and cataloged in order of value. jisoo herself was somewhere in the middle -- a precarious position, dangerous and fluctuating. The Organization hated undefined variables, hated outliers like her with a passion. 

it’s why pitting the two of them together was a match of a lifetime. a predator vs. a predator has never ended well. the rules of the jungle always dictated a survival of the fittest mentality. and jisoo (for all her strengths and weaknesses) has always been plagued by sentimentality, by nostalgia. 

it manifests in the way he presses her against the wall, his body trapping her, pinning her in place. close but not quite touching. she’s well aware of the implications, the methodology behind his looming frame, his arms caging her, his body coiled as if anticipating an attack. a game of who gives in first, a neverending battle of push and pull, a psychological warfare of will.

jisoo almost smiles because it’s not the first time -- hell, it wouldn’t even the last. the only thing that keeps her from cracking under the weight of scrutiny is the reassurance that rin is around (if the mental nudge she gets from her is any indication). and that this is nothing more than a show, a performance.

so she tilts her head up, catches his eyes, and cups his cheek. the slow spread of her lips is deliberate, mocking. the cant of her head to the left, a gesture of warning (number three, if he were counting and paying attention). “then burn me alive, minho.” 

she smooths a thumb over his cheekbone (a mirror of his own gesture, a mockery), her smile softening in false affection. toss me in a ring of flames and cauterize my gaping wounds. slaughter me with expectations and illusions of power. kill me three times over with manufactured love and false sentiments. then set me on a bed of roses after you’ve murdered me again with empty promises and robbed me of myself, my dignity, my soul. she shifts up on tiptoes and brushes a barely there kiss to the shell of his ear, fingers curling into his hair, and whispers softly, wickedly. her voice tinged with contempt. a challenge. “set me on fire and watch me as i take the world down with me.”

go on... kill me with kindness, kill me with affection, kill me with love. and watch as i love you back with ten times the amount of softness, ten times the amount of hatred, ten times the amount of agony, ten times the amount of guilt. 

watch me burn as you fall in love so hard, you lose yourself.

Save Me | English Rewrite

for my wife @laidure​ // ya know sometimes i wonder if your penchant for angst is a disease bc holy shit is this jisoo x minho dynamic killing me slowly. but damn if they aren’t devastatingly beautiful together, all chaos and destruction and warped affection. literally, im so??? i want a refund !!! a divorce !!! 8(((

Summary: Three times he tells a lie and the one time he tells her the truth.

ONE.

The first time he kisses her, she’s crying something fierce. It’s none of that one tear bullshit depicted in those tortuous dramas. It’s not even the full-blown ugly wails of heartbreak or heartache. 

It’s quiet; she’s shaking, her body curling in on itself like she’s trying to disappear, make herself as insignificant as possible. As if the act of showing sorrow is something shameful, something to be hidden.

It’s private. And he feels like a voyeur, watching her press her hands to her face, watching her lips tremble, her eyes water, the tears spill. She’s devastatingly beautiful even in the midst of agony, shaking in the wake of submission and vowing allegiance and swearing absolute fealty (it’s not the first time; it’s not even the fifth. she won’t remember, anyway). 

He kisses her on impulse. 

It’s ugly. Raw. Teeth scraping on swollen lips, noses bumping awkwardly, tiny hands shoving at his chest.

“Mine.” A vow. It is the same one he will be forced to repeat in a room full of Lab Coats two days later. It is an empty promise she will loathe him for because he won’t remember. Remember this. Remember her. 

She slaps him after.

(He pretends it doesn’t hurt.)

TWO.

The second time he kisses her, it’s during a mission. She’s dressed to the nines in silk and brand name jewelry, hair dyed an auburn brown and lips blood red. She’s teetering on unsteady feet, her head resting against his chest in a mockery of an embrace as they sway gently in the middle of the ballroom floor.

She’s the vision of a damsel bordering the line of distress (alcoholic at that), head over heels swooning into his arms in a mastery play of overindulgence and a planned ploy to lure the unsuspecting accountant for a Fortune 500 company into the suite for a little rendezvous, ménage à trois style.

He’s maneuvering them toward the shadowed corner where the nameless accountant waits with a glass of aged whiskey to his lips when she leans in close, lips skimming the curve of his ear and whispers a you’re playing with fire so softly he almost misses it when he backs them into a corner, a scant three feet from the pair of watching eyes. 

(So baptize me in a ring of flames, love.)

He kisses her hard. It’s demanding and heated, all tongue and promises of sex and a good time.

He kisses her and it’s all a game. A charade.

He kisses her thrice and he gets greedy.

“Mine.” 

(He pretends the startled protest he swallows is the yours she sighs into his mouth.)

THREE.

The next time he kisses her, he forgets about it a mere four hours after.

“Who are you?” It’s cutting, a knife edge away from demanding – his slew of Russian asking for her identity, his orders; his subsequent litany of prescribed functions a sharp contrast to the dead silence that rings around them. She’s deceptively quiet, her face blank, the look in her eyes distant. There’s a twinge of something that strikes him as familiar beneath the ache in his chest and he finds that he has to catch himself from rubbing a palm over his throbbing heart. 

She doesn’t look at him. Hasn’t looked at him since he’d pinned her to the rickety cot beneath him, her wrists caught in his hand. The implication had struck him dumb and in the split second of surprise that flashed across her face and the hint of defiance in the purse of her lips, he’d almost surrendered. Almost.

She’d closed her eyes after, a scant thirty seconds after the Lab Coats arrived, needles in hand and a grin behind their white masks. 

When they leave, he kisses her and he thinks he might’ve fallen then – hopelessly, helplessly, painfully.

Yours comes in the dying embers lit beneath his skin. It’s the same kind of fury he buries deep underneath a facade of calm, of distilled violence, of tempered control. 

Yours becomes his undoing.

When he whispers mine into the curve of her shoulders, she turns her head away and cries, silent and broken. 

(Shame burns him alive.)

FOUR.

The last and final time he kisses her, he mouths I love you into the skin of her neck.

There are eyes watching – there are always eyes watching. He knows to their audience that this is nothing but a game, a warped vision of power play. Stripped of their dignity, robbed of their identity, and placed in a room on display like an exhibition – this is every bit a performance.

He’s got her pinned beneath him on a bed of silk, his body covering her from the blinking red lights watching, recording, judging their every movement, every word spoken, every minute exchange. She’s shaking, body trembling as she tries desperately to keep the ugly sobs locked in the cavity of her lungs.

“Shh…” He’s surprisingly clear-headed today, none of that haze clouding his mind. None of that residual rage boiling under his skin. In its place is something more poisonous, something deadlier than violence. 

Lust: it burns him from the inside out, tormenting him with every touch of her skin against his. He closes his eyes against the sight of her staring up at him. Innocent and afraid. 

And he hates himself for what he’s about to do.

“I’m sorry.” It’s a whisper against the corner of her lips, an apology for the violation of privacy, for the suffering she’s about to endure in the supposed name of Science. 

He is begging for forgiveness when he leans in and swallows her muffled cry.

(Forgive me for what I’m about to do. Forgive me for what I’m about to take. Forgive me for being selfish and greedy.

Forgive me for loving you.

Forgive me, because I will love you raw.Forgive me, because I will love you whole.Forgive me, because I will love you broken.Forgive me, because I will love you again and again.

Forgive me, because I will never stop loving you.)

“Yours.”

It’s a vow. A promise, eternal and self-righteous.

I am yours.

(And he will forget this. Forget her. And she will forget this. Forget him.

Over and over and over again.

An endless cycle.

He will love her. He will break her. He will ruin her. He will put her back together.

“Jieun?”

(Concept: His heart is a front door.)

maybe it’s the city streets, empty, save for the few lonely stragglers who have nowhere to go, no place to call home, no half to return whole to, wandering aimlessly in a metropolis half in rest, half awake. 

there’s something a little bit sad about the undercurrent of tension, of loneliness, of isolation in a city so vast. it makes the notorious anonymity amongst its people nothing more than a worn second skin everyone wraps around them first thing in the morning. 

anonymity is dangerous. lethal and poisonous.

it renders people into mere faces, gestures, minute facial expressions, clothing -- something small you notice, something that barely piques your attention from across the street. something you notice in a split second and forget about soon after: a fleeting laugh, an angry tirade, cursing, lilting whispers...white noise.

it turns people into nothing more than byproducts, bystanders, of the City. 

people, other people, become relative -- insignificant and utter useless.

you are the most important thing in the world, is something rin loves reminding her. jisoo doesn’t disagree. she’s sure everyone thinks that at some point in their lives. human beings, after all, are selfish creatures. but it’s not why jisoo becomes so calculating, so analytical about everything and everyone she encounters.

it’s self-preservation that has her scrutinizing, second guessing, questioning. 

it’s what makes her stop dead in her tracks, halfway into the elevator, mind half gone. her name (Hers). but it’s not her name. not anymore. she is jisoo. jisoo. nothing more. nothing less.

she steps inside anyway, her gloved hand reaching out to stop the doors from closing between them, and settles in the far corner opposite him. for a moment, she is content to ignore the question in his voice (ignore the way he folds himself into a corner, makes himself as small as possible) and the unmistakable flicker of dread that seizes her by the throat.

it makes her wary, suspicious.

but it is curiosity that has her shifting half a step forward, body half turned towards him in a gesture of polite openness. hello, is what her raised brow conveys, quiet and demure. the folding of her arms, however, belies her discomfort, the insecurity at having been caught off-guard, vulnerable and cornered. how do you know my (Her) name? who are you? who are you? who are you?

“jisoo,” and she’s proud of the way her voice doesn’t waver. it’s calm. firm. steadfast. do not presume to know me. her head tilts and she smiles, close-lipped and cold. “i’m jisoo.” a pause. and she has to wonder if it was taboo to break her silence, to shatter her anonymity. had rin (raina, especially) been by her side, jisoo would’ve never had the opportunity to speak to him. she wonders if her hard won freedom makes her that much more forthcoming because the next thing that comes out of her mouth might just be her undoing.

[ ... ]

He bares his teeth.

He’s felt this before. And the thought alone sends him reeling because she was dead. It couldn’t be – it wasn’t possible.

she can’t say she’s ever come for any reason other than being the bearer of pain and destruction, a trail of dead bodies behind her. that’s not her function -- not their function. 

it’s why the two of them were partners (are partners, infamous and coveted). she hunts the prey and he takes them out, plain and simple.

but her presence tonight is no accident nor is it a courtesy call for a mission to some third rate town in the middle of nowhere. no, she’s here because she itched. her very skin crawling, her blood humming in anticipation, her heart thrumming an off-rhythm beat because she’s infected.

the dull ache around her neck barely registers beneath the burn of his touch and the way her body trembles. she hates this. hates Him for doing this, for stealing away her choice, her freedom. she loathes Him for robbing her of agency and dignity, rendering her a physical caricature of submission and absolute subordination in the most animalistic and primal of ways.

she hates and hates and hates.

still she swallows, inhales deeply, and smiles. slow and full of false bravado. “your Maker,” she says, laying a hand on his cheek. neither cupping nor caressing. her fingernails digs into skin, pressing crescents behind the curve of his ear. jisoo isn’t suicidal. she knows very well physical touch is taboo (for him, for her) and how no one has ever dared to lay a finger on the resident ghost haunting the basements owned by people playing God for profit and infamy. 

but jisoo isn’t just anyone.

she’s different than the others. she’s Marked.

and that makes everything she says and does a calculation borne out of self-preservation and the scraps of a tarnished reputation and the remnants of her own humanity she fought tooth and nail to regain. 

it makes everything a warning.

and this is his first -- she slaps him. hard. (for his audacity, for her own shame.) don’t touch me.

“are you functional, Soldier?” and therein lies the command beneath the facade of a question. 

things you said at 1 am

things you said through your teeth

things you said too quietly

things you said over the phone

things you didn’t say at all

things you said under the stars and in the grass

things you said while we were driving

things you said when you were crying

things you said when i was crying

things you said that made me feel like shit

things you said when you were drunk

things you said when you thought i was asleep

things you said at the kitchen table

things you said after you kissed me

things you said with too many miles between us

things you said with no space between us

things you said that i wish you hadnt

things you said when you were scared

things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear

things you said when we were on top of the world

things you said after it was over

things you said [make your own]

His lips pull back, hard, stretching the skin around his mouth taut with tension. The grin he shows is more bared teeth and silent screams than mirth. Am I a sinner she asks. Ah, my child, if only you knew—if only you could see how your ‘God’ is no better than the most common scum of the earth beneath your feet.

something acidic burns at the pit of her stomach, making it roil; reflex almost making her gag at the sudden rush of emotion choking her. she laughs, a horrid wet little sound somewhere between the tail end of an ugly sob and a harsh whoosh of bated breath.

(she knows this feeling -- longing. 

it is what the They call bacteria, the first symptom of nostalgia.

a disease that festers in the beating muscle humans call a heart. day after day after day passes and still she aches. if she were more naive, she might have diagnosed herself with heartache, might have reasoned that her sternum was shattered; her rib cage bent out of shape.

sometimes, in the dead of the night, she wonders if her heart has long since escaped from the gaps in between her bones. if twenty years was long enough to trick herself into believing that she’s grieved enough. that she’s suffered enough. sacrificed enough. lived and sinned enough.

that it was time.

but it isn’t. it never is. never was.

because whoever said time healed all wounds was a liar. 

the truth is: her heart hasn’t escaped her; her bones are just broken beyond repair.)

yes, child. you are a sinner.  you are a dirty, despicable, wretched thing.

(she already knows that.)

still, His affirmation twists like knife stabbed deep into the center of her chest. but the subsequent pain is expected, secondary; the feeling practically grafted into her bones, her mind, her soul -- it’s nothing new. what she does not expect is the hysterical giggle crawling its way from belly deep towards her parted lips.

forgiveness? she scoffs, fingers digging into her bony knees. she does not deserve an ounce of it.

“no,” she answers firmly, a wisp of a smile curling the corner of her lips. there is blood smeared on the tops of her knees; the bloom of red seeping through the white cotton of the blanket grounds her, anchors her as the voices housed in the back of her mind begin stirring, scenting Death and tragedy in the wake of her denial.

(ask for His love. ask for His guidance. ask for His mercy--)

“no,” and this time her smile turns feral, lips bitten red. “i seek punishment.”

raina had slapped her silly, the crack of her hand reverberating in jisoo’s ears even after the clock tolled twelve, three hours since her mentor had gripped her chin in her hand and snarled at her to focus! 

the second time she finds herself there again, the heavy door clicks shut behind her; the cold trailing their fingers up her spine, making her tremble, half in fear, half in agony. it is the second time she arrives in nothing but the scratchy blanket, lips blue and eyes wide, do the bodies cease their mourning.

hello, she’d greeted, her voice quiet and tremulous.  hello, the dead answered in unison, voices overlapping one another. there’s clamoring and murmurs, hissing, and then--Keeper?

she pauses, thinking. 

Keeper? they press, desperate and needy. 

she knows what it is they’re looking for: an anchor; these poor, unfortunate souls were looking for a tether, a Messenger. they needed Someone.

jisoo smiles. yes, i am your Keeper.

when she jolts awake, raina has her hand around her throat, squeezing. They like me, is all jisoo says. raina leaves her dreams alone after that.

six months and she’s always in that rickety old house with the chipped white paint and the lopsided windows, the creaking front door, and the seemingly endless corridors. the first floor disappears the second her bare feet crosses the threshold, the door bangs shut, rotting wood smacking against the small of her back, followed by the hush of anticipation, of distilled silence.

the fifth step on the spiraling staircase creaks as though someone had descended and forgotten the fissure at the center, weak and brittle. the second floor shimmers eerily, flickering in and out of existence. she never goes up there. she’s unsure of what she might discover. something heavy sits on her chest and she always finds herself turning around, feet carrying her to the second set of stairs leading down to the basement, to the morgue.

this time, the morgue isn’t there. the house is eerily quiet. the voices that used to accompany her in her little cold room are silent. not a peep to be heard except--

something is wrong. something is amiss. 

the empty picture frames hanging at a peculiar forty-five degree angle shudder and then swing to and fro like a mockery of a pendulum--tick tock...tick...tock. the ground rumbles, splitting the foundation beneath the little old house haphazardly in two. then, everything falls apart. 

jisoo, though, doesn’t move. not even when she hears the roaring in her ears and the whoosh of flames (where it came from, she’d never know. it doesn’t matter, anyway. dreams were dreams. just dreams. there was nothing to be afraid of--nothing.) the air crackles around her and soon she can’t breathe, her lungs squeeze painfully and her legs fold under her. she lays there like a rag doll abandoned, still and painfully alone. 

the house crumbles, turns to ash. the dead never return (they’ll come back, she knows. they always do). she remains there until the world disappears, lays there with her eyes wide open, waiting. always waiting.

then something crests far in the distance, a sliver of a Something (of a Someone) shimmers through the Divide. she feels his foreignness like a knife to the stomach; his presence a stab to the sanctity of her self-imposed one woman pity fest. go away, she thinks, forming the words into spiraling flames, turning her anger at his intrusion into daggers she sends flying towards the Barrier that separates her...and Everything else (other dreamscapes, other people, other secrets--Others).

but then the Thing speaks and its like someone shoved a hand into her chest and ripped out her heart. fire erupts in the hollow of her rib cage, scorching her from the inside out. she curls into a ball, knees drawn close to her chest, chin pressed to the tops of her knees. she closes her eyes. it’s nothing--nothing to be afraid of...

the Thing says something--a name. Jieun.

jisoo freezes and the subsequent pain forces the air out of her lungs. her body locks, then arches, her joints cracking, protesting, at the feeling of being tugged into midair, pulling and stretching every which way.

Jieun.

her spine snaps. her bones fractures, shatters.

she can’t feel her body anymore--she knows she has seconds before she wakes (this is a dream, she’s sure. she’s positive. just a stupid dream). but she wants to know.

“who are you?” she whispers, her hand pressing against the Barrier, reaching, reaching, reaching before the world bursts white, and the Void swallows her whole. (helpmehelpmehelpme). she expects to wake with a hand outstretched, and raina sitting vigil as usual, watching her from the corner of the room. she only falls. and falls. and falls.

where she lands is a labyrinth of broken glass. the pain--it hurts. she doesn’t want to get up. her body aches all over; there’s a burning beneath her skin, a dull throb that makes her breath hitch. but a clock ticks somewhere in a little corner of her mind, its incessant countdown to the Unknown forcing her to stagger to her feet. it doesn’t hurt, becomes a mock funeral march; the mantra timed to each drag of her bare feet, the trail of blood she leaves behind her red string.

it’s too bad she’s no ariadne (she’s no guardian, no guide to heroes. she is nothing but a hollowed out shell--a body) and here in this physical manifestation of The Point of No Return, she seems destined to be led astray, over and over again.

so she walks and when her legs can no longer support her weight and she falls, she crawls. and when she can no longer move, her body growing sluggish, her vision blurring grey, jisoo prays.

“please,” the World shimmers, flickers in and out of existence; its Barrier appearing and disappearing, mocking her with open doors and plausible escape routes. she knows she’s doomed to fail, doomed to die in Dreamscape before she can fully awaken in the prison they call her home, but still she reaches once more, fingers trembling as she reaches across the Divide, trailing blood across the Barrier. drawing a shuddering breath, jisoo begins to write as her eyes flutter closed as she attempts to find the Catalyst--the Thing from Before, the Someone.

how dare he presume to think he knew her, knew her fears, knew what made her tick?

the surge of anger that rips through her burns; it pulses like an aching wound, the phantom pain a constant irritation. she grits her teeth when he says her name. always mocking, always baiting. (what did he want? what did he really want? she’d never know.)

she will not rise to it, will not give him the satisfaction of coming undone. jisoo had been trained for this -- countless hours of pushing and pulling (though, there’d been significantly more pushing by Her than anyone else. “mind over matter, pandora” -- as if she’d wanted her mind to be ravaged, as if she’d asked to be put through the wringer over and over again, as if she’d snatched her mind free at zero cost), the relentless rounds of play-by-play interrogation (“how do you feel?” “what do you remember?” “do you know who you are?” these were the questions that whittled her down from a cohesive whole to a mere fragment, a tiny little piece of what used to Be and now merely Was.), and the perpetual isolation (god, it was so cold. so mind-numbingly cold). if it was not a survivor the gruesome training forced her into becoming, then what exactly was she? 

who was he to demand answers from her when none have ever been given to her, no matter how much she’d pleaded, no matter how pathetically she’d begged. (why are you doing this? who are you, really? why me? did i do something--? why?why?why?) where was he when she was the one asking the questions, looking for an answer, looking for a hand to hold, looking for a face to anchor her to reality?

where was he when she was so hollowed out, she thought she was only still alive because of the wires and tubes tethering her in place?

where was he when she was this close to giving it all up (the fate of mankind, the secrets she kept for the living and the dead, her. her own self: her mind, body, soul. everything)? where was he?

jisoo straightens then, her body uncurling, and closes her eyes. she can feel him pressing, persistent and borderline painful. (he was never gentle. no one was. it was nothing new. and yet, the carelessness of his actions still stung.) she senses the moment he begins to retreat from her mind, catches an opening, and slips inside.

it’s a mess -- his mind. a blatant and rather unexpected contradiction to his orderly, perpetually fastidious, ways. a cacophony, really. jisoo almost feels sorry for how hard it must be to remain so composed, even while his mind was under so much distress. almost.

there’s a flicker of something that distracts her -- it’s a maelstrom of things: a flash of honey blonde hair, the heady scent of apples and something darker, musky and warm, a tickle of skin, a lingering caress here, and there. ah... jisoo smiles. she knows what this is.

her eyes snap open, mind still lingering on the precipice between reality and memory. there’s a hum beneath her veins and she’s sure she’s practically shivering in excitement and perverse glee. her head tilts and then she attacks, hurling the flicker of lust that simmered beneath images of bare thighs and red lips, the momentary string of pain at a half-buried rejection, the lingering winter chill of loneliness and prolonged isolation (she hears the trail ends of commands, orders to put him down), the glow of completeness, of feeling whole and happy and loved (how pathetic, jisoo almost rolls her eyes). she flings the mass of devastation pulsing deep within the back of his mind, that tremor of guilt and helplessness and plunges her hand into the ache in his soul. and squeezes.

“tit for tat, seungho.” she doesn’t do him the courtesy of pretending she hadn’t just violated him, hadn’t stolen a piece of him, and turned it into a knife to stab him with. no, mercy did not work with people like james. she did not survive by merely playing by the rules. no, she survived because she didn’t. war was about victory, not the casualties. jisoo knows this--as does james, she’s sure--only the victors wrote the stories. and jisoo -- she was going to be a victor. one victim, one pawn, at a time.