#p;self

     her class is starting soon but there’s some unknown force that enroots jisoo’s feet into the ground, making her unable to move. she’s jus staring at the enormous building of the university, still not quite wanting to believe that she’s really here. reapplying for the scholarship after last year’s failure was completely on a whim – jisoo never actually believed that she would be awarded it. sure, she did work for it, but everyone else who applies for scholarship is in the same shoes, aren’t they?

     nevertheless, it’s silly to contemplate such things now, causing herself an unnecessary drop in her mood. she did it, she is here, that is all what matters. she knows it’s going to tons of fun even if she would have to study twice as much as before and she never liked that, so why is she even here in the first place? that’s a rhetorical question, and jisoo knows that, too; she may need to learn more at a university, but at least, she will study only things she’s actually interested in. no more korean literature, no more torturing history classes.

“Daddy, I”m ready for school!”

Dalton, in the middle of doing his eyeliner, looked away from his bathroom mirror to see Malina at his doorway. About to tell her to go eat some of the breakfast he made, he notices her outfit and smiles. 

Red jeans, plain black shirt, and black converse. 

The exact outfit he was wearing.

“I’m almost done, sweetie. Why don’t you go to the kitchen and eat? I made your favorite. Chocolate chip pancakes!” Her smile widens as she gasps in excitement and runs out his room, then turns back to the mirror to finish getting ready.

--

Both still in the same outfit, it was now dinner time and the two were eating Lina’s favorite meal. Well her current one anyways. Bacon Mac N’Cheese. They were watching Big Hero 6 as they ate, sat on the floor in front of the TV. 

“Daddy?” His attention snaps away from the screen, giving Lina a gentle smile as his gaze falls to her. “I know you says they don’t matter very much...but...does I have a present?”

“Of course. You always get one from me. I thought you’d never ask,” he chuckles, reaching to a spot behind them to get the neatly wrapped box he had somehow successfully hid. “Happy birthday, princess.”

Her giggles filled the air as she put her plate next to her and took a hold of the box. She shook it slightly before taking the bow that was taped on it and placed it at the top of her head. “Pretty?”

“Very.” He gives a thumbs up and takes out his phone to take a picture.

Tearing away at the paper and opening the box, she gasps excitedly and takes out a lavender dress. It was simple yet elegant enough for her birthday tea party. “I loves it! Thank you da-” Her attention gets caught by another thing in the box and moves the tissue paper around until it reveals a small leather jacket.

“It’s a dress for your party. I know you don’t have a dress that color and you can wear this one whenever you’d like unlike the other ones you have. And the jacket is so you can still be like daddy. Princess with an edge,” he smiles.

Lina picks up the jacket and tries it on. But not before carefully placing the dress back in the box. “It fits! And looks like yours! Thanks yous!” She tackles him into a hug, his own arms immediately wrapping around her.

“Don’t thank me, thank Uncle David. He helped pick it out. The dress I mean.”

“Is Uncle David coming?”

“He’s gonna try, sweetie. Work got him super busy.”

“Oh. Okays.” Her eyes go back to the screen on the TV just as Tadashi mentions his and Hiro’s parents. “Daddy?”

“Yes, princess?”

“Where’s mommy?” Dalton froze at the question. “I always sees my friends with their mommies. And I gets asked where mines is. They sees Freya and Bryce sometimes. And they think they’re my mommy. Are they?” Her blue eyes look up at his sea green ones, filled with curiosity.

“N-no, sweetheart. They’re just friends of ours.”

“Oh...then where’s mommy? Is she here when I’s sleeping?” 

With every word she spoke, his heart sank a little. 

He couldn’t tell her that her mother had literally left her. Gone with out a trace. 

He couldn’t tell her that she was cliche-ly left at her father’s doorstep. --Even if he could, it wasn’t his doorstep. It was David’s. 

Then he would have had to explain how he wasn’t biologically her father, and that technically both her biological parents didn’t want her.

He couldn’t tell her any of this. 

Not yet anyways.

He shakes his head slightly. “Lina, sweetheart. Mommy...Your mom...she...” Dalton couldn’t find any words to say. Couldn’t even try to make up a lie.

However Lina seemed to pick up the general message and looked down, a frown evident on her face. “ I don’t have one...”

Tears started to form in his eyes as he heard soft sniffles from her. “I’m so sorry, Malina,” he whispers, his hold on her tightening a bit. “I don’t understand what happened. But she’s...she’s just gone.” Kissing the top of her head, he rocks them back and forth slightly.

Little sobs escape Lina’s lips as she tucks herself into Dalton’s chest. “I wants a mommy...”

“I know, baby girl. I want you to have a mommy, too. --Do you wanna share a mommy? I’m sure grandma won’t mind,” he says, joking slightly.

Though Linda shakes her head no. “Who gonna be grandma then?” she ask after a few moments.

“You know, if you think about it. I’m kinda both daddy and mommy.” He explains to her how he’s always taken care of her, how he’s able to pick all her clothes without too much trouble, does most things that “only mommies do”; just basically everything he’s ever done for her.

She nods, somewhat understanding, and calms down a little. “Can I still has a mommy though?”

ii.

outside yourself, this dimension is a rhythmic thudding, cement so cold it numbs your muscles and feels like cotton. behind your eyelids, a world is dreaming for you.

a wooden closet door slides open in the early morning. you are four, living in a large cardboard box with cut-up memory foam bedding and downy quilts. an older boy smiles at you.

“help my pick out my outfit, soosoo! did you prepare my bag last night? did you see the books i brought you? am i going to be late?”

giggling, you push open the closet door and slip clothes off their hangers, throwing them at the boy's face, singing hyungie! over and over again at the top of your lungs. “hyungie, you should really wake up earlier!”

before he leaves for school, you hug his legs; he ruffles your hair, kisses your forehead.

“i'll miss you, hyungie!”

“i'll be home before you know it.”

the door slams shut and the ground dissolves into the golden frame of a polished chandelier. twelve now, looking down at your human family, your mutant family, each and everyone with an aluminium death sentence clasped around their wrists. the end happens so quickly, and everything in the middle is a fast-forward blur of smiles and pillow fights and reading aloud in dramatic voices and asking questions and homework together, curled up under the blankets to watch lightning perform from the window, hyungie, what does this word mean? and neatly wrapped books every weekend. none of this you can hold onto; the picture that sears itself into your mind is the end, the one that happens so quickly but so clearly. those warm brown eyes overheating, on fire; nothing left to do but be the first to march in the front lines of a war owed to a con artist who demands one.

iii.

the war is a call to duty, one that teaches you how powerful your mind can be, how knowledge is the ultimate weapon. you learn yourself through and through and the scar on your left index finger tells you that you are weaponized to win. the venom in your teeth and the silk concealed beneath your fingertips tell you you are here to fight, and that the only fuel you need is revenge.

brains and hearts, you learn, are too different to function together before desire and brokenness bring them together. you meet love incarnate visiting a child in the hospital, collateral damage you've bandaged up and dropped off. he catches you sleeping against the wall in the hallway, and you catch him following you out the hospital. he knows you are the one who saved the boy with spidersilk bandages, and eventually, lets you know his own secret. yet again, everything in the middle passes so quickly and you wish every day that you could've held on better, but it's hard to keep a hold of those seconds when you focus too hard on the boy whose apartment you've made your home, and whose smile makes your heart his. time slips from between your fingertips until the wall against your i love yous becomes too much to bear and you ask him to show you he cares.

“leave,” he tells you. somehow you expect this from him, but hearts and brains never agree outside of longing and heartbreak, and with every pump of blood through your veins you were hoping for something else. the hours pass by and you don't move a muscle.

finally, you look him in the eye and ask, “... forever?” not sadly or angrily, but just to know.

“yes. forever.”

the world shatters for the first time, glass hitting glass inside your eardrums, static crackling like transparent screens embedded in your eyes, heartbeats tearing themselves in half, pursed lips like sharp plastic shoved into position on your face. you pack. you leave. forever begins when the door closes behind you, a daunting stretch of nothing that even you, with every fighting cell in your body, cannot defeat.

the definition of forever is written in your dictionary as for all future time; for always, and you mean to do exactly as he asks. you wait by yourself until you know there is no future time left, until you know that if you do not see him for another second you will not wake up the next morning. and then, to be sure, you wait one day more. forever and a day, you can tell him. he will not say he loves you, but this is no longer of consequence. in the end, he does not need to resupply the love you give away by giving you any of his. you have waited forever and a day, and the love you give him knows no bounds.

the world shatters for the second time when you tell him you've come back after forever and he doesn't answer the door. you knew this would happen but not now, not now, not when time ceases to be a continuum without the boy you came here to see. you check the hospital every day, sit in front of his apartment and make his hallway your home. the receptionist tells you he hasn't shown up for a month, and when you go back to his door, the rent is overdue. the world shatters, shatters, shatters. first your brother, now jongin. time and space are but pieces strewn across the floor, irrelevant.

you will not wake up tomorrow.

iv.

alas, the heart and mind agree only after fate beats love into a bloody pulp on the floor and you are no longer a weapon, but a force. you seek not revenge, but justice; you pursue not destruction, but the recovery of love. your brother and jongin—you will not believe they are anything but dead, and you will fall with them in the name of bringing them back to life.

you open your eyes to wet grass soaking into your clothes, stars spilled out over the sky, the distant sound of ocean meeting shore. your name rings loud in the sky and you think about the one who must have killed your brother, the one who must have killed jongin. you wonder how ugly their names will ring on your tongue; you wonder how ugly this feeling is, the feeling of wanting to kill. neither of them as ugly as war, and war not as ugly as the man who enjoys it.

pushing yourself from the ground, you take the backpack next to you.

     He stood over a dirt plot in the middle of a dark forest, knees weak as he took deep breaths to try and even out his racing heartbeat. He felt tired and sore, like he had just finished a marathon; scared, like he had been chased by his demons for miles with no chance of escaped; restricted and trapped, because he couldn’t move. He stared down at the ground, eyes shutting tightly as his heavy breathing seeming to echo in the silent forest and his heartbeat beat loudly enough to hear from a mile away.

     It’s just a dream.

     The blonde reminded himself over and over again. Whispering to himself as he tried to convince himself and wake himself up without calling attention to himself. He could feel it— the looming presence that hid behind the circle of trees behind him— the murderous intent that oozed from whatever lurked in the shadows.

     It’s just a dream...

     A heavy breathing could be heard approaching him from behind, an intense gaze causing his goosebumps to form as the hairs on his arms stood. “You’re not real. It’s just a dream—”