#*( backdated )

(one missed call) (one missed call) (unknown number left a message) “Good afternoon Han Rowon-ssi. This is Nurse Kim from Seoul General Hospital. We’ve been trying to contact you concerning Kang Minjun. He got into an accident and you were informed to be his emergency contact, so if this number still belongs to Han Rowon and you know one Kang Minjun, we would like you to come to the hospital. If you do not know this person, we’re very sorry to disturb you with this information and you can ignore this message. Thank you, have a good day.”​

rowon can count the number of times he’s felt true fear on one hand.  the first was when he lost someone he was asked to keep a close eye on.  the second was when he saved another from going over a cliff.  and the third … is hearing this.

his heart sinks to his stomach.  his mind goes blank.  he barely registers what’s said beyond kang minjun and accident.  not that it matters;  he doesn’t need the details.  accident is enough to have him grabbing his keys, pulling on his shoes, his jacket — where the hell is his — no matter, there’s no time to waste.  he can deal with the cold.

rowon doesn’t know when he gets here, or how, really, but none of that matters either.  the only thing that does is that he’s here, breathless, eyes blown wide, asking for which wing, which room, yes, i’m family.  unfortunately, the receptionist recognizes him from the times he’d swung by to visit his brother.  fortunately, months of making small talk pays off;  she slips the room number.

when he first walked these corridors, he was light on his feet.  he let the nurses sweep him left and right as they tried to sugarcoat what happened to robin.  all he remembers is the feeling of annoyance lodged between his teeth.  the same annoyance now clings to a twisted gut and a parched mouth.  his steps are heavier this time around, as if they’re telling him stop, don’t go, you don’t want to see.  but he has to.  he needs to.  he needs to make sure that minjun’s okay, that he’s all right, that he’s —

Laeponia was taking the long way home tonight.

Normally coming home after Starfleet training was a triumph at best, excited for the day’s work, or a mundanity at worst; but this was the first time Laeponia was truly dragging her feet. Part of it was her own fault, her own stubborn refusal to back down from an unfair fight she knew she couldn’t win, but was determined to try anyway. The teacher had let her; not in an unkind way, but in the way that fighting a losing battle was just as valuable a lesson as fighting one she could win. And Laeponia absolutely lost that battle.

She knew Marcelio would clean her scrapes and put together a compress for the bruise blossoming thickly on her high, proud cheekbone, but Laeponia didn’t think she had the fortitude to be fussed over yet. What most people found a comfort easy to sink into, Laepona couldn’t help but view as a weakness. That was thanks to Caesius’ influence, Caesius who, she knew, would offer some token words of reassurance even with shades of disappointment in his eyes.

It was the thought of that disappointment — something Laeponia wasn’t often on the receiving end of, but when she was, it was crushing — which finally prompted a few hot tears of frustration to spill down her cheeks as she walked, refusing to favor her left leg even if it ached. She barely even noticed the extravagant park to her left, full of the kind of greenery most Venpalans weren’t used to and occasionally took for granted — but came to an awkward, stutter-step stop when she noticed a figure just down the path.

As was very much her way, Laeponia was quick to swipe away any evidence of the tears even as she bore her bruises with pride in the dim light. She cleared her throat and, slightly less steadily than she might’ve liked, called out, “I’m just- passing by, I don’t want any trouble.”

To say that Milo had grown braver with two weeks at the Institute behind him would be a grave misnomer, but at least it’d gotten to the point where he felt slightly more comfortable going outside. Or maybe he just felt more comfortable here than in the dining hall; it was absolutely nothing like the cafeteria at Essex House, large, warm, and ornate instead of fluorescent and sterile, but even as a number of students started to head home for the holidays, the concentration of people was still too much. Or maybe more specifically, Milo’s paranoia with that many people was still too much.

He’d found a spot he liked a few days ago: an enormous weeping willow out towards the hedge maze, the branches of which still felt like they offered some kind of cover, even in the absence of leaves. Milo had an oversized coat pulled around his shoulders, something one of the staff had given him, and a plain paper bag in hand. One of the ladies in the serving line always snuck him an extra cookie, and Milo wondered if it was because she knew, too, or if he just looked like someone who needed an extra cookie.

Lost in quiet thought as he climbed the hill, the sun warming his back even with the chill in the air, Milo didn’t notice the spot was occupied until he was already too close; he’d been noticed, and it’d be odd if he turned around now. So instead he hesitated, uncertain. “Sorry, um- I can…” Milo trailed off, gesturing vaguely with one thumb over his shoulder.

After close to a year in Essex House, Milo started to realize that the best ( and likely only ) method of escape was going to be movies.

Most of the other inhabitants seem to have realized it, too; the single VCR in the common room was frequently argued over, something Milo rarely had the temperament or the energy for. That was where Elliott came in handy. Granted, tonight they’d had fewer people to fight as so-called ‘leisure time’ drew closer to closing, but together they’d managed to snag a copy of one of the newest movies.

Now that it was over and the credits were rolling, Milo… wasn’t sure what to think. He sat curled at the far end of the couch, picking self-consciously at the frayed edge of a bandage poking out of his sleeve, and finally glanced sidelong at Elliott — who he’d resolutely not been looking at for most of it.

An incredibly stupid idea, Levi’s realizing in the clarity of hindsight: leaving the apartment without his gloves, even if it’s just to dip downstairs and around the block to the convenience store on the opposite corner. He and Riley had gotten in late and drunk, and with a hangover throbbing in the back of his skull this morning, Levi hadn’t cared to look for wherever his gloves had gotten thrown as they’d tumbled into bed at 3 A.M.

After a couple of years in the Essex House, everything started to blur together. There wasn’t any realistic need to keep track of the days anymore, or even the month at this point; there was only survival, and for Milo and the other captive mutants, that was a simple day-to-day struggle.

With nothing but a pair of thin, scrubs-like pants, there was little between Milo and the cold, clinical press of the experimentation table against his back. A trickle of blood was drying down the side of his ribs, and he kept his eyes closed against the buzzing fluorescents overhead.

He could hear Lara’s soft breaths on the next table over, at least; it was a twisted, cold comfort, the days the Essex experimenters opted to be efficient and practice on both of them at once. There were only so many ways to experiment on skin, and Milo was always kind of hoping they’d run out of ideas. Now was a brief moment of respite, the so-called doctors having left to get coffee, or something, small-talking about the families they had at home as they left the room. It’d be a little time until they got back, in Milo’s experience; Lara needed time to heal, and Milo needed time to… who knows. Collect himself.

The clouds were low and a soft velvety gray, the sharpness in the air a subtle warning of snow. Milo was outside anyway, half-eaten sandwich perched on his lap and backpack on the ground at his feet. The iron slats of the bench were only slowly warming up as he sat and ate, but Milo didn’t seem to mind.

It was less because he hadn’t yet made any friends with whom to sit and have lunch with, and more because he still liked to take advantage of the fact he could go outside whenever he wanted. He wasn’t collared, he wasn’t closely monitored; he could walk out those enormous, ornate iron gates whenever he felt like it. Sometimes he thought he might, but it’d been a particularly harsh winter that’d driven him to the poor choice of showing up on the Essex House doorstep to begin with.

So he scratched at the bandages poking from his sleeves, adjusted his scarf, and figured he’d stay at Xavier’s at least another couple of months. No one looked at his bandages strangely, anyway. There were a lot of unique abilities here that manifested in bizarre ways, like the man who was wrapped in a thick black fabric all the way to his nose and seemed to glow softly from underneath. Or the young woman he could see from the corner of his eye now, who seemed like a subtle beacon all her own in the otherwise bleak, monochrome landscape.