#!th

it was dark, the sun hidden and the sky tainted and the streets lit with flicking yellow blubs. it was always night, a preferred time of operation for the arachnid children, and soojung had often found herself fighting to remember the touch of sunlight and what it had been like to live a life that did not burn on moonlight and stardust alone.

behind her, her teammates swear and it pulls her from memories ( her brother smile still burns her chest with a sick twist of longing, like a heavy, cotton blanket, wrapped over her face and pulled tight against her mouth and nose ). one female, like she, and the other male. the female is pressing against his wound, a hole that had torn through his chest and left his black shirt glistening with red. he is pale, sweat pilling at the top of his forehead and down his neck. it takes soojung a single glance, at him, a take on his features as they pull from the pain and the large swimming pool of life underneath him, and she knows he will not live. but the woman fights beside him, fingers stained with his life and vicious tears swelling at the corner of her eyes.

soojung crawls—keeps her back low and her shoulders tight, towards them. behind her she hears the scanning voices of the police members, calling commands in codes the three recluse members do not recall, demanding for them to be found. their guns slap against their thighs as the march through the halls—the warehouse crumpling around them and empty excluding the criminals and their pursuers. it makes the woman sigh before she turns her face to the man.

she didn’t learn their names, she never does. the members come as quickly as they go and soojung had never been one to attach herself to another. they were not her brother, with pure faces and eyes that fold when they smile—so she does not care.

“you need to get the information—“ she shoots the other female a look of dismal, and when she raises her lips to snarl a protest, soojung is quick to shoo her once more. “get the files from their cars, then go get help. protesting burns time, which we lack. the longer you play around here, the more likely he is to die.”

he will die, soojung knows it. but hope and fear are a powerful play, and it gives the woman enough of a push to gather her limbs, nod, and kiss the man hard on the mouth before streaking through the shadows once more.

it’s quiet, only his labored breathing filling the small space of the room, and the occasional click of an officer’s gun or an echo of their boots. soojung pulls her medical kit—a basic and small box she carries in her bag on every occasion she leaves her home. quickly she lifts the lid, dumps it contents across the dirt floor and begins to work on the wound. she strips a knife from her belt, cuts open the shirt of the man and squints through the dark of the room. several bullets had pierced through his stomach, the metal as unforgiving, leaving his skin in a rupture of red and yellow.

she gags back her disgust, finds the small bottle of alcohol and a cloth. she tears it in half, stuffs one part in his mouth ( because whether he bites his tongue from the pain or screams, the enemy will hear and soojung does not plan to die beside him ) and wets the other with the liquid. she dabs it at his wound, and sure enough he groans into the cloth, letting the fabric catch his pain as his fingers reach for soojung. he grabs at her sleeve, squeezing the fabric in his palm.

“i know—“ she whispers, hand still blotting as her free hand moves to brush the beads of sweat from his forehead. “it’ll be over with soon.”

he doesn’t hear her, all he knows is pain, that soojung knows. when the wound is clean, or as clean as it will allow, she begins to press cloth to the bullet holes in small hope it stops it bleeding. they fill with blood quickly, and it paints her hands ( days after, when she’s home and resting, her fingernails will remain stained and she will look at them and remember and she will frown ).

she leans her weight into his wounds, relaxing against him and letting him calm. after moments of silence and shaking breathing, spits the cloth from his mouth and allows himself to calm.

“where did she go?” he’s hoarse, and is stomach moves when he speaks from under her.

“i made her finish the mission.” she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want to. it is hard enough to stare into the eyes of those who have passed, but harder to lie into the eyes of the living.

he’s quiet, but for a moment, before taking another shaking breath that moves her.

“she’ll be back soon though, right?”

soojung just nods, fingers moving to pluck the loose threads of the bloodied cloth. the blood still seeps, its on her clothes and in her hair by now and she knows even the hottest of showers will not wash him away from her skin tonight.

a small part of her feels the guilt, but an even larger part of her commands her to be unmoving. unchanged. he is a person, and people die. it is a part of the life she lives, a life he and the others around them had sworn upon. she should not pity a man because he is dead, rather she should pity the ones who live.

it doesn’t stop her chest from caving in, weak under the weight of her own emotions ( the very emotions she had sworn to rid herself of years ago ), when he dies. his chest heaves, stills, and does not rise once more moments later. the night air was colder in that instant, colder than when the snow falls in the winter months and colder than the nights she had spent curled against the porcelain bathtub of her foster home. she, with limbs that prick at movement, stiff and awkward, rises. her fingers find his neck, waiting for the beat of a pulse that never comes. she shuts the lids of his eyes, gathers her blood stained medical box, shoves it into her bag and slowly makes her way through shadows to the front of the building.

when she sees the other female return, her frame so much small when painted against the street, she no longer fears the gaze of the officers and their guns.