new seasons;

Sameen Shaw in Razgovor (3x05)

he scowls at her in confusion, because nothing about her response makes sense to him, to the young man who was a boy only months ago, who grew up in a world where words were simple and actions were complex. she’s speaking in riddles, and he doesn’t know why, can’t think past the surface, past the fear welling up in him, the dread of the dead body he’s being ushered toward, the knowledge that behind him, there is only one exit, flanked by law enforcement at every turn.

so he doesn’t reply to her. instead his feet carry him quietly toward his haunting destination, the air around him feeling eerily still, as if it’s thick, as if he has to physically push through it to get where he’s going in slow motion. there is already a lump in his throat. he’s never seen a dead body up close, especially one he knows is so gruesome and mangled, especially one of someone he knows so personally…especially of someone he killed himself. every muscle that can be is tense under his skin and his jaw hurts from how hard he’s clenching it. he’s starting to hold his breath, as if there might be a smell, because there always is in the movies.

but the only thing he smells is formaldehyde, chemicals of preservation, a convenience for the relatives sent to identify the corpse. haneul doesn’t make much note of any smell, really. there isn’t much room in this moment for that. not when he’s inches away from the body, staring that ruined face in the eye. the body has certainly decayed since he saw it. of course it did, if it took them this long to find it. his heart thuds painfully in his chest, quickens in fear, and his eyes rake down to the lower half of the body bag, where he knows his father’s rough, meaty hands are tucked away. he imagines, for a horrible moment, that corpse coming to life, lunging at his neck again, sinking decaying grey fingers into the skin of his neck.

he lets out the breath he was holding in an involuntary dry sob, stumbling back from the table and bumping into the police officer waiting behind him respectfully before pushing away from the officer. he hasn’t eaten much in the past few days, but there is enough in his stomach to make its way back up through his esophagus. he barely makes it to a trash can on the edge of the room in time.

his ears are starting to ring again, and it’s harder to breathe than it was a few moments ago. the eyes he can feel on his hunched back are no help. i shot him. i shot him i shot him i shot him.

“it’s him,” he manages through a ragged break in his voice, once he’s certain there is nothing left in him to throw up, “that’s my dad.”

“thank you,” one of the cops sounds from somewhere in the room. haneul’s stopped keeping track. he just wants to be as far away from here as possible. he flinches at the hand on his shoulder, a polite act of guidance from his accompanying officer, who offers him a bottle of water before gesturing to the door, “we need a couple signatures from the pair of you, and then you’re free to go.”

the coroner turns to seoah then, “we’ll contact you when we have clearance to turn over the body to you. there’s no telling how long the investigation will take, but shouldn’t be longer than a couple weeks. if you want to start…” there’s a tentative glance at the boy still leaning on a wall with one hand, bent over a trash can, clutching a water bottle in the other, before she looks back at seoah, “making arrangements.”

seoah has seen enough of life to have known death, been too close to its beckoning embrace and acted as reaper himself on one too many occasion. her skin is exceptionally thick, though one would doubt that it wasn’t scarred- along with her psyche and any sense of optimism or hope for the world to be set on a better path.

working so closely to death, she knows how to read a reaction; that’s not just experience, but training. and the boy that now stands across from her looks like he’s seen a little too much too fast. he’s nearly as pale as the corpse between them, and it doesn’t look like he’ll last long on his own feet.

perhaps that’s the underlying beauty of death, she thinks, that underlying every mortal man is a incorrigible fear of its simple unknowns. and instead of focus on the body, the father, that’s supposed to be hers, she peers over at a boy that though taller than her, looks much younger, and much more ragged and war torn.

she doesn’t know his name, his story, or what he did with her sidearm, but the way that the boy’s admittance of identity spills from his lips causes a stir in her core; the same stir that was piqued the moment she locked eyes with him in a bomb torn ballroom, bloodied hands and emergency tourniquets and screaming pleas of mercy and heartbreak surrounding  the two of them. seoah surrendered a weapon that in right thinking, she never would have, yet a pull, a nagging feeling pushed her to help.

seoah watches as he moves away from the corpse as quickly as he can, spurred to much livelier movement than she’s seen since he was escorted through the door. there’s bruising, faint, but not incredibly, and the way that even in death, the man can elicit what looks like ghostly faintness and fear, her mind can only imagine, and it’s then that she feels regret- for not knowing there was another, that they were ever stupid enough to conceive again, that she hadn’t found him earlier and spared him from what harm she doesn’t dare acknowledge aloud.

and here he is, a brother, shared blood and lineage, bent over a garbage can as if his insides are about to be outsides, and she’s only about to make his world worse. it’s a sad sight, and if seoah were to look at her expression in a mirror, it’s surely a mixture of sorrow and pity for him and everything he must have suffered. her gaze lingers on him just seconds longer until she acknowledges the coroner’s words with a nod.

@miseoah

{ ... }

“…and identify a body.”

what? is this a test? some sort of reverse psychology? a test of his guilt? perhaps to goad him into confessing, or to catch him in a lie. but he squeaks out a small, nervous, “what?” and nothing else.

“we believe your father was the victim of a homicide a few nights ago. if you’d like, you can ride with us.”

he agrees before he knows what he’s doing, only because he doesn’t know how to say anything but “okay,” through the terrified black hole opening up in his stomach. it’s not his first ride in a police car, but he still feels like he might vomit across the backseat nonetheless. he is almost numb the entire way there, but dizzy, light-headed with anxiety as they lead him through the lobby, into a part of the station he’s never seen before. a morgue, wall lined with huge metal doors. he can already feel the horrified dry sob waiting for him at the top of his trachea as he anticipates the inevitable.

when they turn the corner, he is confused. there is the coroner, standing over a half-open body bag with gloved hands and a cold, stoic expression. but there is another figure in the room, a woman. he pales, more than he already had, if it’s even possible, and his head swims. he knows her. she’s the one who gave him the gun that did his father in. but-

“what’s she doing here?”

seoah can almost hear the conversation that must have occured in the hours before being contacted by the precinct. see if he has any next of kin, just the one sir but we don’t know where he is, the frustrated expression of an overworked and underpaid detective as he peers over a forensic tech’s shoulder, the way this one now escorting her to the morgue must have rubbed his face as he said run it, to searching the system for relatives, a way to contact someone, somehow, to confirm the partial face that matched a name. one of many overused resources in myeongcho.

what role is she supposed to play for this? for identifying the body of a man she never knew? to play the grieving descendant of a man not worth even a cent of the resources it took to find her to identify him? the forgotten memories of a street life, of years of being burdened with a lack of identity- of wondering why she wasn’t good enough, of untouched anger all churning within her, yet strangely absent as she peers down at a father.

the years of substance abuse are evident, the way that it’s worn a stranger’s body down to the shell of a man and now a hollowed cocoon for any type of soul he once had. her eyes trace over his remaining features, noting the similarity to her own, though the anger that has had years to etch lines into his expression, as if even in death, he’s scowling.

she wonders if, in a way, his apparent murder was an unexpected mercy though likely a just cause. in his own death, she sees her life, wonders if the added flourish to the end of a birth certificate that branded her song was a small mercy of her own, a form of ensuring a life spared from the hardship that would have been. it awakens a part of seoah that hasn’t stirred in over nearly two decades, and she feels, if anything, only a pity, for a hopeless cause of a man who was apparently as alone in life as he is in death, and the debtors that will never be repaid.

she sighs, though it sounds more like a weighted exhale from her nostrils, and nods at the coroner- because though she never knew him, is glad not to have, years of training, of studying her own face too, tell her enough, and the loneliness feels that much heavier on her shoulders.

when she turns, adjusting her jacket in preparation to go, a voice meets her ears, pulling her attention from the corpse below her, and the coroner beside her. it’s not a stranger’s, but certainly one she never expected to hear again. for a moment, she’s taken aback, the surprise clear on her face as she connects the dots and the clues lying in front of her- a small part of denial rising in spite of the obvious. the boy could be here to identify another body, there were enough open drawers and sterile blue facial covers to attest to it, but her gut tells her differently.

still, not one to show all her cards, a brow raises, cool and calm demeanor in place and in contrast to the slightly flushed, panicked expression on the boy’s face. her mind comes up with scenarios, various ideas to play and to hope that the boy would play along with, but in the end, she settles for the one being painted in front of her- obliviousness.

This is a randomly generated sentence starter meme for everyone! You’ll be able to reblog this meme until June 6th starting today, but feel free to continue answering memes after that if need be. Go wild with them and have a good time! Also feel free to use this for sentence starters or drabbles; the most important thing is to get everyone writing. Hopefully, it’ll spark some new plot ideas and interactions too!

Remember to reblog this if you’re interested in receiving a meme, and to send some to everyone that reblogs it, too! You’re welcome to skip over this if you’d like to; it’s by no means mandatory to reblog and participate. Most importantly, though, have fun!!

“I’m glad you didn’t change”

“You could be wrong.”

This is a sentence starter meme for everyone! You’ll be able to reblog this meme until March 7th starting today, but feel free to continue answering memes after that if need be. Go wild with them and have a good time! Also feel free to use this for sentence starters or drabbles; the most important thing is to get everyone writing. Hopefully, it’ll spark some new plot ideas and interactions too!

Remember to reblog this if you’re interested in receiving a meme, and to send some to everyone that reblogs it, too! You’re welcome to skip over this if you’d like to; it’s by no means mandatory to reblog and participate. Most importantly, though, have fun!!

whaddya say? @miseoah

the bombing was more than unexpected. if anything, it was terrifying. even if it was nothing new, it still shook him to his core. as soon as the building was starting to fall apart, taehyung found it more difficult to get out in one peace, especially with the panicking crowd running all over the place. the entire situation was overwhelming to begin with. the last time he experienced something just as extreme as this? he wasn’t even sure because all he could think about was what’s happening now and he had never felt so much fear until this point that it was hard to think of anything else.

that’s when he hurts himself. with the darkness of the daengom, he’s unable to see what’s around him. so when he feels something suddenly fall on top of him and crush his foot, he couldn’t help but scream in pain because fuck did it hurt. he manages to be able to move a little away from what caused the pain, but he ultimately he gives up because it felt awful trying to move with his leg. he falls to the floor and shouts for help, hoping someone would find him and bring him out of his misery. 

and thankfully, people did. he sees a face before his vision fades to black. 

as he regains consciousness, he looks around to see his foot with some sort of cast on it. it definitely wasn’t the best material, but he was sure the paramedics would come over to take care of that soon enough. he thinks he’s outside of the daengom and he looks around to see a bunch of people either standing, sitting, or lying down. there are all sorts of emergency cars here, but they were the least of his concern as much as he wanted to get the foot checked out. 

he sits up, ignoring the pain n his head, to look around for her: the last face he saw before he blacked out (haha) in the daengom due to the smoke. as soon as he spots her, he tries to stand up and he hops with his one good foot towards her, dragging the broken right foot. “hey!” he tries to get her attention. as soon as he’s close enough to her, he lowers his voice down. “hi. can we talk somewhere private?” he realizes how off that sounds so he later tries to defend himself. “i mean no harm. i’m not going to hurt you. i’m technically crippled right now. but i need to tell you something.” 

he’s got a crazy idea in his mind and he hopes that it’ll work. 

by the time the daengom is (mostly) clear of living bodies, and seoah is able to make her way outside to view the carnage, she’s tired. it’s definitely been hours, though it feels like only minutes between the flurry of activity, the running back and forth across the once-fancy structure collecting broken boards and tablecloths for emergency boards and splints, and helping free others buried from rubble with the few unharmed and capable there were at the beginning of the night, and it’s taken a toll on her. 

if she could see her reflection better than the one in the ambulance and patrol car windows, she would laugh at the dirt and blood smeared across her brow from pushing back the strands of hair that had come loose from her meticulous pinning earlier, and her own cut across her shoulder-blade, long forgotten about now, to the ‘borrowed’ cocktail dress that was definitely beyond repair, and her feet that in spite of all the glass shards and wood splinters, don’t look too bad (her favorite pair, she’d have to come back for them later). the whole situation is eerily reminiscent of previous missions gone sideways, and as seoah stands with the other EMTs surveying the damage, she kind of misses it. 

clutching the cheap coffee cup in her hand, she notices a man attempting to gain her attention, which he accomplishes pretty well considering the state of his pitiful hobble. seoah sets her cup down on the hood of the patrol car and closes the distance, hand instinctively going to her sidearm before remembering that she gave it to some kid earlier. even as tired as she is, she’s still alert, ready as she can be for anything else. sure, he doesn’t pose much of a threat now, but seoah knew too well that it could just as easily be a tactic, hoping to prey on shreds of sympathy she really didn’t have.

( tw: allusions to suicide, depression, death )

he feels like he’s lived in a time capsule for the past month. he buried himself, only to be dug up far in the future. he feels like a different person, trying to return to the life he lived before, out of his apartment– out of the infrequent gym trips with wooseok and unfathomable amount of movies –and back out into his world. it’s a dark one, still, and he wonders if he’s ready for it, and if he’s built to survive it, or if he ever was. he can’t forget seeing jeongwoo, and you still need to do better, and can’t stop wondering if he made it up or if he was really dead long enough for it to be real. 

all this time, seungwoo pursued strength, and he was still too weak in the end– too weak to live in this world and too weak to really die. he can hear jeongwoo’s voice in his head: you still need to do better, and he wonders if he’ll ever know what it means.

for now, he’ll have a drink, and visit some old friends in a place he hasn’t shown his face in in too long. it’s only been a month or so, but still; he’s usually in more often. 

as soon as he walks through the door, his eyes settle on the bar, and when he sees seoah behind it, tending to a customer she’s undoubtedly already gotten drunk off his ass, he can’t keep the widening smile off his face, relieved. 

he could say his and seoah’s relationship is complicated, but it isn’t, really. bravado typical of seungwoo, a girl that could go toe to toe with him, escalating flirting and refusal to back down that led to the inevitable. if seungwoo minded being used for his body he wouldn’t be in the business he’s in; it’s better when it’s mutual, and when he can annoy the living hell out of the girl when they’re not in bed together.

he doesn’t know what his motives are when he slides into his seat at the bar, but he grins at seoah when she finally comes over, his elbow on the bar, chin in one hand, fingers drumming on the countertop. it’s a lazy smile, not so unlike his usual self. 

it takes a little too long for him to think of  something witty to say in greeting, aside from the easy and incredibly crude, but he’s in the market for a little more subtlety. “been a while. did you replace me yet?” he asks, eyebrows raised, before he laughs, playful smile that turns sly before long. “just kidding. we both know you could never replace me.”

                                                                                                           ☯ —— @miseoah

there’s a certain charm that the monotonous job at the crow’s nest provides- there’s several factors that seoah can, for the most part, consider unchanging- the staff, the regular patrons whose faces are long memorized and yet forgotten again until they’re back, the ones that eye seoah as more than what she presents herself as every time they come in and warily seem to prefer another serving them than herself. it’s easy to get caught up in the mundane, for normalcy bias to lull to sleep the hushed whispers of doubt and question that lie in her mind. (if only that ever really went away.)

seungwoo’s presence had become just that- expected, more or less, especially as the days grew shorter in the winter season and traffic into the restaurant slowed. which is why seoah notices his absence nearly right away. they weren’t anything more than friends, depending on who you asked, but given that seungwoo was one of very few who toed the line between the two halves of herself, it took  a little more self-control not to become concerned when days grew into weeks, and there was still no sign of him. 

she didn’t miss him in the normal way that people miss their friends, no. her concern was more a longing to know the why than anything else. myeongcho grew worse by the hour, but if their moments behind closed doors had shown her anything about him, seungwoo possessed his own kind of strength that she thought made him capable of weathering the city; though she didn’t know if he was alone, or at least in the same way that she was. 

and that was where their friendship differed- neither of them dared reveal too much personal information about themselves, but they were a certain sort of close in spite of it, morbidly dark humor and sarcasm to boot. 

almost to the day, one month later, seungwoo returns, and even an untrained eye can tell he’s worn, weathered down by something, and a part of her wonders if they shared another aspect of personality- if seungwoo took the kind of jobs that seoah did, and if she oft looked just as haggard upon return. 

the late night hours at the crow’s nest are peaceful for jihoon, even with it bringing in some of their grittiest customers, working out their dark deals kept far from the light of day, underwraps and under the table. the most common, jihoon has found, is actually exchanges of information between people of different affiliations that shouldn’t be speaking to one another. he learns who their regular customers are loyal to through observation, and through conversation. 

seoah calls for his attention, and jihoon gladly makes his way over to her. he’s happy to speak to seoah under and circumstances, her company always appreciated– one of his favorite people, actually, though he doubts she’d be able to guess. she might joke about it without expecting any truth to her words. maybe one day he would admit it. she looks troubled, however, and jihoon raises an expectant eyebrow. he doesn’t even need to ask; she explains, never one to beat around the bush or be anything other than straightforward. he frowns, because her frustration is evident, not so much because he’s displeased himself, though it’s not ideal. “soju is popular,” he reassures her. “it’ll be alright. i’ll call the distributor tomorrow and see if we can work something out.” it’s not that jihoon doubts seoah; it’s just that he has some certain abilities to persuade. “otherwise, just order more specialty and keep the extra soju in the back until we need it. i’ll man the bar myself next time.”

he sighs, because it is unfortunate. “in the meantime, why don’t you pour me some of that extra soju we have,” he says, grinning.

despite their age difference, and definite life experience, seoah can’t help but appreciate how jihoon somehow always seems to have an answer.  he was raised well, she thinks, and for a heartbeat she almost wonders if she had been raised by his parents, by any for that matter, if she would have turned out like him too. (not a bad thing- of course nature versus nurture would definitely be put to the test.)

“so popular i’m going to drown in it,” she quips, though not without a hint of a smile. optimism is something she tends to lack, despite the ever popular saying to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. “oh i’m sure they’ll talk to you more than they did me- why would a woman know anything about alcohol.” her eyes roll as she turns to retrieve two bottles, popping the caps on them with practiced ease.