storymonger (80s child) 🔞

Admittedly, you don’t react as poorly as Jeonghan expects you to.

Not that he says this, of course; you can tell by the slight incline in his eyebrows and the look on his face that’s tempted to ask you out loud why you aren’t freaking out. It’s a question you’d like the answer to as well, considering—

“Let me get this straight,” you begin, flopping sideways across one of the plush yet offensively uncomfortable armchairs in Jeonghan’s office. “He”—you jab your thumb backwards to point in Junhui’s general direction—“found where Wonwoo’s ship crashed, which is apparently on a hostile planet, and… let me check my notes here… has taken him as a prisoner of war. Am I correct so far?” Jeonghan nods. “Now you two”—your brother and Seungcheol, otherwise known as Dumb and Dumber—“want me to go undercover and pose as him”—Jeonghan—“because my brother is… checking… quote-unquote ‘too important to die,’ which is where I come in.”

Now it’s Seungcheol’s turn to nod. “Yeah, because you’re twins. You look the same.”

“Is he pretty or am I handsome?”

“Um—”

You sigh. Ever since his promotion, Seungcheol isn’t much fun anymore. Takes everything far too seriously. “Forget it. I’m not really all that inclined to do this, anyway.”

“You don’t really have a choice,” a new voice chimes in.

You roll your eyes at the ceiling. “I always have a choice, Captain Hong. For example, I can choose to get up and walk out of here right now, leading you to presumably shove me into a travel pod and force my hand, and when I land on this hostile planet to rescue Jeon Wonwoo, I can choose to walk in there and give them my actual identity, and they’ll either laugh me out of the room or I, too, will become a prisoner of war.” You pause, lolling your head to the side to look at the man in question. “All hypotheticals, you see, unlike you, who chose to become a narc-ass space cop.”

Joshua huffs. “Fuck you,” he fires back, “I had to arrest you. You gave me no—”

“Choice?” you finish for him, looking far too smug. “That’s what I call full circle, piggy.”

If your brother hadn’t spun around in his chair to hide his laugh, he would’ve seen the exasperated look Joshua was sending him, but both he and Seungcheol have devolved into mouth-covered laughter, their shoulders shaking under the weight of it. The four of you—well, five, counting Wonwoo—have grown up together, yet Joshua still seems unwilling to accept that despite his accolades and status, you and your brother are two sides of the same coin. That the two of you not only look alike, but your mannerisms are the same. Your natural instincts are the same, too, only Jeonghan’s have been bred out of him, having sat through too many lectures on tact and professionalism.

Here, though, in the safety of his office, surrounded by paperwork you’d be executed for peeking at and so many medals of honor the walls are nearly glistening gold and platinum, he reverts to those baser instincts. Here, he’s safe. Here, just like anywhere, he wouldn’t ask you to do anything he didn’t believe you capable of doing, so you’ll give him a hard time, maybe brood about it in the privacy of your own space, because who are you if not someone living six feet under his massive shadow, but you know you’ll do as he asks.

Because you trust him. Because you’ve only lived three minutes of your life without him. Blah blah blah.

You still think Wonwoo is a fucking idiot.

You say as much. “Wonwoo is a fucking idiot, so I say we let him rot there.” You wave your hand to emphasize how unbothered you are. “If he was stupid enough to get himself into this mess, he should be smart enough to get himself out.”

“Literally how does that make sense to you?” Joshua huffs.

There are a multitude of ways you can answer: that this plan—posing as your brother—is bound to fail; that not only is Wonwoo the most capable person you know, his wiliness is second only to Soonyoung’s; or that asking you, of all people, to come to his rescue is cruel. But if there’s one person who doesn’t deserve your vulnerability, it’s Joshua, so instead of saying any of those things, you scowl and go, “Oink, oink.”

It has the intended effect. Joshua’s face flushes with frustration and anger quicker than Jeonghan and Seungcheol can hold in this round of laughter. Even Junhui, who you’d forgotten was even present, snorts from his tucked-away corner of the room. “You know what—”

“That’s enough.” Anywhere else, Seungcheol’s voice is booming and commanding, demanding the undivided attention of whatever room he’s in. Here, though, amongst old friends, there’s a hint of humor in it, like he’s scolding playground kids. He turns his attention to you and nods his head. “State your piece.”

“That’s what I was trying to do before—”

“State your piece,” Seungcheol repeats, effectively putting an end to any ideas you may have about baiting Joshua further.

“Fine,” you huff. “No one’s going to buy it. Everyone would know this is far below someone of Jeonghan’s rank. Shit, it’s even below Jihoon’s rank, and supposedly he’s second-in-command when he’s not busy watching millennia-old cartoons.”

Jeonghan studies you for a beat. “It’s well-known across the galaxies that Commander Lee has been away on a peacekeeping mission for the last few months.”

“The only peace he’s able to keep is between his dick and his hand—”

Joshua grimaces. “Can you not be serious even for a minute?”

You pretend to pout. “No, sorry; I was neglected as a child.”

The room stills at that. For your brother and Seungcheol, it’s one of those self-deprecating jokes that hits a little too close for comfort, no secret between the three of you that your brother was the favorite, your parents’ golden child. Fitting, you think, once again looking at the walls of his office, your brother’s white-blond hair looking more like a crown reflected in the gold and platinum. Joshua had been there, too—enough to find inspiration in your father and follow in his boot-licking footsteps—but not like Seungcheol was, who had practically grown up in your home. Junhui spent most of his time staring at screens.

And Wonwoo—

Well, Wonwoo did a little bit of everything, and did it quietly. He listened to your brother complain endlessly about his lessons and peeked over his shoulder at his books. Listened to your father’s stories about corruption and intergalactic relations and politics. Watched your mother weave her magic into fabrics and doughs and anything else she could get her hands on, learning the importance of patience and gentleness. And, when he was old enough, he’d disappear with Soonyoung and put it all to use, finding quiet, abandoned corridors to practice building and blowing shit up.

Maybe that’s why the two of you were always so drawn to one another. He had the same rebellious streak and anarchist spirit you did.

“Not to mention,” you continue, wanting to ease the awkwardness that’s suddenly grown over the room like algae, “he”—you point at your brother—“has decades of this shit in his head. There’s no way I can pretend to have all that useless knowledge on etiquette and space law and diplomacy and whatever-the-fuck else.”

You can tell by the incline of his head that Seungcheol wants to agree. Your brother has been primed for this life since the second he was born, having had the privilege of being your parents’ first and only son, so even if you started now, there’s mathematically no way for you to catch up. “You’re more capable than you think,” Jeonghan says, and you can tell by the steadfastness in his gaze that he truly believes it.

That’s your brother, all right. Always your biggest cheerleader because he needs something to relieve the guilt that sits in his chest.

“Oh, I’m fully capable,” you agree, because you are (to some extent), “but that doesn’t really matter, does it? I can put on the performance of a lifetime and they can still send someone here to confirm.”

One of those intergalactic agreements you can all thank your father for. Except in times of war or otherwise dire emergencies, a planet’s governing body cannot refuse to hold court with another’s once requested, and since your planet is not at war and Jeon Wonwoo being held captive on a hostile planet does not constitute an emergency, Jeonghan, as Ithea’s High Council, would not be able to dismiss them without having to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions… and risking all-out war.

Jeonghan grimaces, hoping that fact would’ve escaped you. “At the present, we don’t believe Dredelea has the manpower to spare for such a—”

“Dredelea?” you sputter uncharacteristically. “Gods above, you must truly hate me and wish to see me killed.”

Dredelea is a place of legend, and none of them good. Ithean’s elders loved using the hostile planets as a threat: behave and listen to your parents, or you’ll be sent to Pallorth or Sulniri or Kotov, but you only knew the threat was no longer idle when Dredelea was mentioned. A blight on your galaxy, if not the entire universe, Dredelea’s terrain is just as hostile as its inhabitants: largely swampland with gaseous craters emitting a foul mist liable to knock a grown man on his ass in seconds. Not much survives there, but what little manages to thrive is dense and covered in a thick layer of moss, perpetuating the seemingly never-ending darkness.

“You’re sure?”

Jeonghan nods, as solemn as his position requires. “Junhui confirmed the calculations himself.”

Junhui is smarter than all of you combined, so there’s little room for argument if that’s the case. Still, to think Wonwoo had crashed there, of all places; that they’re the ones holding him hostage… it has bile rising in your throat, but also a sense of indignation. Very few people would care if Dredelea ceased to exist altogether, and you’d be tempted to make such a suggestion to your brother if Joshua wasn’t in attendance to rat you out. But despite his inclination toward mischief and subtle manipulation, your brother is fair and kind. Ithea truly could not have asked for a better High Council, and his temperament would never lean towards violence and war.

Unfortunately for Dredelea, you are not your brother.

“Well, shit,” you whistle, and all four heads spin in your direction at the sheer giddiness in your voice, staring in alarm at the rogue grin you’ve adopted, “why didn’t you lead with that?”

Before you’re authorized to board a travel pod and arrive, guns blazing, on Dredelea, you’re required to sit through all those same lessons Jeonghan had as a young child.

It’s not that Ithea doesn’t trust you, Jeonghan delicately tries to explain, but his attempts fall apart rather quickly when Seungcheol dumps a thick stack of paperwork onto Jeonghan’s desk that contains all of your transgressions, causing your brother’s cheeks to color. “Never mind,” he relents easily. “They absolutely do not trust you. Here’s your schedule.”

You have diplomacy and etiquette lessons four times per week, which are more than your brother was ever required to attend. Given your proclivity for trouble, your hand-to-hand and far-range combat lessons are waived, though everyone refuses to disclose if that’s more for Dredelea’s benefit or Ithea’s. In their place, you’re given political theory and history tutors you’re expected to meet with twice per week in the evenings. In your free time, you hover behind Junhui like a shadow, eager to pick up anything you can from watching him work.

You never know what you’ll need to know.

Which also leads you to track down Soonyoung.

“Been a while since I’ve seen you,” he snarks, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. “Captain Dong lock you up again?”

You snort at his nickname for Joshua and shake your head. “Nah, they’ve got me training for a super secret mission.” It’s a safe enough admission. No one in their right mind would believe Ithea’s governing bodies would tap youto serve them lunch, let alone impersonate the High Council.

Soonyoung rolls his eyes and tucks the cigarette behind his ear. “And you’ve blessed me with your presence to… what, make me complicit in your schemes?”

“Sort of. I want you to teach me how to blow shit up.”

So, behind your brother’s back, you meet with Soonyoung in secret on the nights you have free. In the absence of his partner in crime, he’s all too willing to lend you his knowledge, which is shockingly and concerningly extensive. You have no doubt that Kwon Soonyoung could rig half the galaxy to explode with his eyes closed if he wanted. The only problem is that he’s constantly on the brink of blowing up Ithea, too, considering he rigs all of his explosives with a cigarette stuck between his lips.

Regardless, in the weeks you spend with him, all you suffer is a singed eyebrow.

(“Anything you want to tell me?” Jeonghan asks one afternoon, easily playing the part of concerned younger brother. Fresh out of another torturous diplomacy lesson and blinded by hunger, you had accepted his lunch invitation, foolishly thinking he’d extended it out of the goodness of his heart rather than the keen suspicion he’s currently eyeing you with.

Without thinking, you run your pointer finger along your half-gone eyebrow. It’s prickly where the hair is starting to grow back. “No, not really,” you answer, knowing he won’t buy it. That doesn’t bother you—you’ve been in far more trouble for less—but Soonyoung had agreed to stop asking questions so long as you promised to keep him out of whatever mess you were in.

Jeonghan rolls his lips, blink and you’ll miss it, and hums an approval, blessedly dropping the subject before it has time to grow roots. Any other time he’d call you on it, blatantly manipulative as he whines that there aren’t supposed to be any secrets between the two of you, but not now. After all, a lot—too much—has been asked of you. You’ll be risking your life to spare his, so it’s the least he can do, he reasons.

Besides, if learning from the planet’s top-secret demolition expert keeps you safe, he’ll turn a blind eye every time, even if he hadn’t been able to ignore that a certain Kwon Soonyoung was also sporting half an eyebrow.)

A month passes before you know it.

You’re progressing well in your lessons, even if you’d rather be anywhere else. Every second you spend sitting in those stuffy old classrooms has anxiety blooming in your gut as you think of Wonwoo. Does he think no one’s coming? That Ithea has doomed him to his fate? Worse, does he think no one’s coming because none of you care?

In a rare moment of vulnerability, you’d asked Jeonghan once how he deals with the guilt; how he’s able to go about his duties and not collapse under the weight of it. His smile had looked more like a grimace, pained and rueful, but he still spoke as if he was telling you a secret. “I got really good at compartmentalizing a long time ago.”

But you aren’t bound by the same rules Jeonghan is. Don’t have his title or duties. Truth be told, you also don’t have his code of honor. Not the same one, anyway: you definitely have one of your own that pointedly does not include twiddling your thumbs in etiquette lessons, being taught which utensil to use for fucking soup while Dredelea does gods-know-what to Wonwoo.

However, try as you might to insist all of this is useless, the fact you’re still attending proves they’re doing you some good. The you of a month ago would’ve boarded a ship in the middle of the night and went in guns blazing. Even if the guilt feels like an albatross, the you of right now has begrudgingly accepted that patience is a virtue, so you show up on time to your lessons, dye your hair the same pale shade as your brother, even copy his way of speaking: the inflections he uses, the syllables he emphasizes, the deep timbre he adopts when the mischievous facade fades away and he grows unexpectedly serious.

The evening before your final lesson, you find yourself sitting on the couch in your brother’s office in complete darkness. There are four sets of eyes on you and the men they belong to haven’t uttered a single word.

Finally, after what feels like eons, Seungcheol clears his throat and says, “It’s a little freaky.”

“Yeah,” Joshua agrees, sounding unnerved. “She sounds exactly like you.”

Jeonghan, always the epitome of a shithead younger brother, merely scoffs. “No she doesn’t.”

“She does.”

“Maybe she sounds like me before I hit puberty. If I’m being generous.”

“No, dude, she sounds exactly like you.”

“Don’t insult me—”

“She even nailed that way your voice kinda cracks whenever you talk about—”

“Am I speaking another language? I said don’t—”

From his cobweb-encrusted corner of the room, Junhui says, “Has anyone considered that she’s been replaced by a doppelgänger that’s, like, also a mimic? I read this ancient Earth book about them once that said if you meet your doppelgänger it means you’re about to die.”

He’s met with a stunned silence. A beat passes before your brother says, “An optimistic and sobering suggestion. Thank you, Junhui.”

And because he can’t help it, Joshua tacks on, “We’d all be so lucky if she was replaced. It’s not like a doppelgänger could make her worse.” A pause. “I say we try it. The only way is up.”

You scowl. “Isn’t it about time they stuck you on a spit and slow-roasted you over a fire?”

“You know what—”

“Oink oink oink oink oink oink—”

“I hope your ship crashes, too—”

“I bet you’d taste disgusting. No one would even eat you—”

“Fuck you—”

“Big words from someone who’s not even edible. You’re cafeteria slop at best. Everyone would hate you so much they’d put you under the heat lamps and you’d sit there uneaten for so long you’d get so overcooked you turned into dust. And then they’d dump you in the trash, because even as dust you’re worthless. Not even good enough to be seasoning. Just disgusting, overcooked trash dust.” You suck in a breath. “Bitch.”

Another stunned silence.

“Gods above,” your brother mutters in exasperation. If it wasn’t pitch black, you’d see him pinch the bridge of his nose. “So much for those diplomacy and etiquette lessons.”

With absolutely none of the tact this moment requires, Seungcheol pours an accelerant all over the tension as he says, “I’d be nice to her if I were you, Josh. Soonyoung taught her how to build bombs.”

“He fucking what—”

That night, sleep seems to evade you. Every time you think it’s within arms reach, it escapes again, leaving you tossing and turning, frustrated and exhausted. Leaves you too much time with your thoughts, too much time to think about every little thing that can—and most likely will—go wrong.

Logically, you know you’re as prepared as you can be. Despite your stubbornness and reluctance, your instructors were the best the galaxy had to offer. You’ve learned more in the last few weeks than you ever thought possible, sparing a second of sympathy that this was what your brother’s childhood had been filled with, rather than the rebellious youth you experienced. Your experiment earlier had proved what you hoped it would: that, in the dark, not even your closest friends could distinguish between the two of you. It’s this, more than the weeks of intensive tutoring, that calms your erratic heartbeat.

No one knows your brother better than you.

No one else shares his face.

Which is how you know it’s him that knocks on your door before he bothers to announce himself. Granted, your brother carries himself with an importance that he wears like an aura—one that’s become tangible over time, the longer he wears it—but there’s also your “freaky twin thing,” as Seungcheol so tactfully puts it: finishing one another’s thoughts long before either of you have arrived at a point; having entire conversations with one brief, inscrutable look; adopting one another’s moods.

His knuckles rap on your door in the pattern you two made up as kids. “It’s—”

You snort. “I know. What d’you want?”

Jeonghan lets himself in. The dark bags beneath his eyes tell you he’s just as anxious as you, and when he sits on the edge of your bed, his energy is frenetic and uneasy. The kind that’d flood your room if you wrung it out like a sponge. The kind that feels like livewires beneath his skin, unable to settle.

After a brief silence, he says needlessly, “You should be asleep. Long day tomorrow.”

As if you don’t know that. As if you wouldn’t be long asleep if you could be, blissfully occupying a dream world where all of this was simple; where you were long past it, everyone unharmed and safe, all of you gathered in Jeonghan’s office as you shared alcohol and laughed, cheeks flaming red, about the time you had to go to Dredelea to rescue Wonwoo.

“What about you?” you lob back. “You don’t even have anything to do.”

Your brother scoffs and rolls his eyes, teeth immediately moving to worry at his cuticles, his nerves laid bare. “What’re you talking about?” His brows pinch. “Don’t be obtuse. You really think I’m going to get anything done under the circumstances?”

Under the circumstances. Seems like neither of you are able to come out and say it—what you’re doing, what’s at stake—but Jeonghan’s always been better than you at toeing the line of vulnerability. Doesn’t recoil at the prospect of it the way a pacifist does a war. Still. “You’re in charge of governing an entire planet,” you insist, not trying to make yourself small, not really, but to emphasize that he has other allegiances. Other responsibilities. “You can’t get caught sleeping on the job, Hannie.”

He sighs. Once again, you don’t envy him, because he wants to argue his point, that he’d sacrifice all of this to ensure you came home safe, but he’s not in a position to do so. Can’t even joke about it. “I’m sending Seungcheol with you.” You open your mouth. “Don’t bother. You think Ithea’s High Council would show up on a hostile planet without him?”

“And you? Who’s staying behind to protect you?”

Your brother huffs a laugh. “New guy. His name is Mingyu.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I do,” he assures you. “Seungcheol vouched for him personally and Joshua didn’t find anything untoward during his background checks. Not to mention he’s larger than any human has the right to be. He towers over me. Makes Seungcheol look like a child.”

A soft exhale of laughter from you, too. “What pilot are you sparing?”

“Junhui,” he answers, voice deadpan like it’d been a stupid question. “The Elder Council and I are in agreement that I will not be doing any travelling while you’re gone, so I can spare him. Not that I would send you off on a mission like this with anyone else—he and Seungcheol are the best team I can give you.”

“They’re your best friends,” you agree.

“And yours. You know they’d die before they allowed any harm to come to you.”

You roll your eyes. “Gods above. Can you imagine if Seungcheol died protecting me? Even from beyond the veil I’d never hear the end of it.”

Jeonghan smiles, but even in the low light of your room you can tell it doesn’t reach his eyes. Surely there’s some combination of words you can string together to lighten the burdens he’s carrying, but your mind is blank. While you may be fixated on the same fears your brother is, only one of you shoulders the guilt. He’s sending you into battle. He’s sending you into battle because his life is too important and yours has been deemed less so, and there’s nothing either of you can say that makes that any less true.

Moments pass in a tense, solemn silence. Jeonghan hangs his head, pointy elbows planted on his knees, and suddenly it’s hard to remember what he was like as a child. Did he used to laugh with reckless abandon as the two of you ran around your mother’s feet? Did he used to sneak into your bedroom long after the two of you were meant to be asleep, finger pressed to his lips as he wordlessly asked you to keep a secret? Was he ever allowed to just be a child, or had he only ever been the heir?

Similarly, had you ever been more than the spare?

“You’re sure it’s too late to write a strongly-worded letter demanding Wonwoo’s release?”

“Did I not tell you I tried that? They sent it back with a flaming pile of excrement.”

You swallow. “...A second one, then?”

Jeonghan flings himself backwards, his lithe frame somehow taking up the lion’s share of your bed. You swat at him in annoyance—that particular brand only a younger sibling can pull out of you—and he swats back, and before you can even register what’s going on, Jeonghan has grabbed a pillow, laughing wildly as he swings it directly at your head.

“Oh, you fuck—Jeonghan—”

“Regretting skipping all those combat lessons?”

It’s both the incorrect and correct thing to say. You really should rest so you aren’t exhausted and useless during your expedition, but allowing your moment of vulnerability to devolve into a childish pillow fight is exactly what you need to remember why you’re doing this. Who you’re doing it for. Not just your brother, but Wonwoo, too. On those rare occasions Jeonghan had been allowed to be a kid, both your friends and his would have sleepovers, crammed into rooms no bigger than this, and you’d tell truths and do dares and the boys would hit each other with pillows until they exploded with feathers.

Wonwoo had been there through all of it. Laughed along with you. Helped you and Jeonghan come up with lies to tell your parents about why your room was covered in feathers and what had happened to their pillows.

It’s with these memories in mind that arrive at the hangar bay the next morning, eyes burning from lack of sleep, limbs heavy. Seungcheol stays dutifully at your side while the Elder Council repeats the details of your mission; the rules and stipulations and what to do when things inevitably go wrong. Junhui ignores all of this and boards the pod with a brief salute, star-shaped sunglasses perched atop his head, uncaring of anything except piloting.

Your brother approaches you last. He’d slept on the floor of your room and the two of you had shared childhood memories until sleep ensnared you both, and although you can tell he’s still lugging around all that guilt and fear and apprehension, he looks lighter than he did last night. “Sister,” he says, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards just slightly.

“High Council Yoon,” you lob back, not bothering to hide your shit-eating grin.

The more staunch and professional everyone around becomes, the less serious you begin to take it. You can’t help it: you’ve never shied away from who you are, the way people treat you, and you’ve grown into your role as The Spare. Where others see danger, you see opportunity. You actively seek it out, chasing chaos until there’s nothing left to run after. It’s what makes you who you are. It’s what’ll ensure this mission is successful.

Jeonghan wraps a well-worn cloak around your shoulders, enveloping you in the smell of his cologne. “Ithea bids you good fortune and good luck on your mission,” he says, voice steady and experienced, giving you the standard departure speech he’s given countless times before. “May you return to us unharmed.”

The same speech Wonwoo had gotten before he crash-landed on a hostile planet and didn’t return at all.

“And if I don’t, may you wage war and pillage the universe in revenge.”

A member of the Elder Council chokes. The look Jeonghan gives you is severe. “We will not be doing that.”

(He would, if it came down to it.)

“A girl can dream.” You wave him off easily. “Anyway, are you done lecturing me? I promise I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I’m suddenly having second thoughts.”

“Aht-aht!” You shake your finger at him. “No take-backsies,” you joke, throwing him an exaggerated wink. With every second that passes, your confidence returns to you tenfold, apprehension melting away under the fluorescent lights of the pod bay.

You stand taller as you lean in, allowing yourself a brief moment of raw honesty. “I will return,” you tell your brother, giving him the assurance he clearly needs. “I can’t promise I’ll be unharmed, given my track record, but I certainly won’t be dying on Dredelea, of all places.”

“You are the most formidable soldier Ithea has ever seen.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, yeah. When I get back, I better get one of those fancy bronze statues with the huge plaques talking about how brave and strong and cool I was on such a dangerous mission. And I want it installed right outside of Captain Hong’s quarters so he has to see my ugly mug every time he opens his door.”

“He would hate it,” Jeonghan remarks, eyes still glittering with devilry, “and yet there would be no better place for it to go. I’ll have it commissioned immediately.”

“Then I have even more of a reason to return safely.” You suck in a breath and wrap your arms around your brother. You can feel the erratic beat of his heart. “I’ll be okay, Hannie.”

He strengthens his embrace but doesn’t say anything further. Seungcheol clears his throat and informs the two of you that you’re all now running late for your departure. Not that it really matters—no one would question the High Council—but Seungcheol is nothing if not perceptive. Knows it’s better to nip this in the bud before it devolves into uncomfortable shows of emotion or dramatic, ugly crying and accusation-slinging.

Or worse: politics.

Because there’s a lot you could say to the Ithean Elder Council about why your brother’s life matters more than yours—more than the lives of any of his constituents. That it’s written in the coda of your planet’s Charters of Freedom that the High Council is not a dictator or a monarch, that they’re on equal footing with their people, and should they ever rule as such, it is not only the right of the Ithean people but their responsibility to depose them immediately.

Not that you’d ever incite a rebellion against Jeonghan (because he’s your brother and you’re a hypocrite, and by every metric he is an outstanding ruler) but you do love to be a thorn in the side of the Elder Council, considering your father is the Head of it as the former High Council.

Also considering his absence is looming over the festivities. Neither of your parents are here to see you off on a treacherous and potentially life-altering mission. You shouldn’t be surprised. You know exactly who your parents are and where (and with whom) their priorities lie, but it stings nonetheless, and what does a wounded animal do when it feels threatened?

It strikes.

And Seungcheol can see all that simmering just beneath the surface, so he bows to Jeonghan and Mingyu behind him, ignoring the Elder Council altogether because he doesn’t serve them, and he places a gentle hand in the small of your back as he guides you onto the travel pod.

“They really rolled out the red carpet for you, huh?” Seungcheol jokes, veering left down a long corridor. “I haven’t been on this pod since your brother’s trip to Omia.”

“Gods, that was right after he was sworn in. What useless clankers do they usually have you traveling in?”

He stops outside of a large metal door, gesturing for you to put your palm against the scanner. It opens to reveal a small cabin, just enough space for a bunk, a wardrobe, and a desk, with a tiny bathroom off to the right. All of your clothing has already been hung up, but not before being steamed and pressed to the ends of the galaxy. There’s so much starch in a pair of your pants you swear there’s a real pair of legs fitted inside of them.

“This one is yours,” Seungcheol says, ignoring your earlier question. Everyone knows the High Council travels on his own special pod and that this one is just the second-best. The Spare. “I’m right next door. Jun opted to sleep in the navigation bay.”

You step inside, falling backwards onto the bed to test the mattress. Feels more like a slab of concrete, just as you expected. “I think there’s something seriously wrong with him.”

“Goes without saying. Now get up, I have to finish the tour.”

You groan and stick out a hand. “Must you? It’s at least a day’s journey to Dredelea; surely we have more than enough time.”

As if you weigh nothing at all, Seungcheol pulls you easily to your feet and guides you back into the corridor, your complaints be damned. The two of you walk the length of it in silence, taking a left when it dead-ends. There, you arrive at what the plaque outside the door calls a mess hall, which is simply a table with four chairs and cabinets stocked with an assortment of ready-to-eat meals and fresh water. Your eyes glimmer at the sight of such luxury.

Beyond that lies a small medical bay. It isn’t very technologically-advanced and certainly nothing compared to the facilities back on Ithea, but it’s enough to treat minor injuries and quell the nasty side-effects of interstellar travel. You duck inside and grab an anti-nausea tablet, letting it dissolve underneath your tongue. Not that you travel much these days, but you learned as a kid on all the trips you and Jeonghan used to take with your parents that you, unfortunately, are not immune to motion sickness.

You and Seungcheol circle the perimeter of the pod. You pass the cargo hold and maintenance areas, additional fuel storage and the reactor. Most surprising is the next stop on Seungcheol’s tour. Automatic double doors whirr open. Unlike the rest of the ship, only one fluorescent light hangs from the ceiling, and it takes a second for your eyes to adjust to the low light of the room. Once they do, you have to mask your surprise. A combat training room is the last thing you expect to find in the center of an Ithean travel pod, but it calls to you like a siren song nonetheless.

“Your father didn’t have much use for it, hence why it’s so outdated,” Seungcheol begins to explain, “but Jeonghan thought it’d be best to keep it.”

You think of your brother. Probably the closest a person could come to being a pacifist without outrightbeing one, opting to use mind games and his trademark charismatic manipulation rather than brute force. Why would he keep a training room on a travel pod?

As if he anticipates your question, Seungcheol simply says, “He knows his weaknesses.”

The thought of your brother, whose figure can best be described as a stick on two legs, using this—of his sweat imprinted into the canvas mat; blood from his nose, his teeth in drip-drop patterns across the yellowing floor; of him throwing a strike at all—makes you laugh. You can’t help it. Jeonghan has risen to heights you could only dream of, but this may be the only place you cannot imagine him. “Who does he even spar with? You?”

Seungcheol shrugs, circling the room like a viper. A million memories dance at the edge of his vision. “Sometimes. Depends who else is around.”

“And I’m assuming my father knows nothing of this.”

Before he can answer, Junhui’s tinny voice comes over the intercom. “Lauch in T-minus five minutes.”

“Time for the final stop of the tour.”

Hidden within a labyrinth of corridors, the navigation bay is purposefully hard to find and nearly impossible to breach. A series of biometric scans are required for entry: ocular and fingerprint to start, then a pin-prick of blood if those are to fail—a series of scans that would prove insurmountable to any non-Ithean.

Inside, Junhui lords over the room from an elaborate console in the center. Even with the extensive tutoring you’ve recently undergone, you can’t even pretend to know what all of the nozzles, knobs, and levers do. Ithean protocol demands they be left unmarked so only those your planet trains are able to pilot them. You’ve always known Jun was blisteringly smart, but a brand new appreciation for his intelligence blooms within you at the sight of him in the cockpit, not even piloting the most technologically-advanced ship Ithea has to offer.

Constellation Marshal Castellan would not have taken him as a recruit if anything less had been true.

You approach his side, taking in the view of the bridge. Jun straightens as you approach, pressing a button to launch the transparent viewscreen. An interstellar map appears before your eyes, overlaid onto the last view of Ithea you’ll have for a while, and you try to commit it to memory as you take the seat to Jun’s left. “Welcome!” he chirps, gesturing for you to buckle in. “T-minus two minutes to launch. Would you like to see our intended route?”

“Anything to take my mind off of warp speed,” you mumble. Jun holds out his hand. At least fifty anti-nausea tablets sit within his palm. You quirk an eyebrow. “How many of these do you take per flight?”

“No clue.” He shrugs, popping two more into his mouth. Fuck it, you think, and do the same. Satisfied, he stashes the remaining tablets in a drawer and gestures to the screen. “T-minus one minute and thirty seconds to launch. We’ll need to be a ways away from Ithea to initiate the warp drive. The warp bubble is marked here,” he explains, pointing to an X on the display. At the blank look on your face, Jun devolves into physics babble. “Einstein wrote about the link between space and time in the Earth Year 1905 and came up with the theory of special relativity, which basically states—T-minus one minute to launch—that travel at the speed of light is impossible for objects with a nonzero rest mass. But then, in Earth Year 1994, a guy named Miguel Alcubierre proposed what is called the Alcubierre drive or the Alcubierre metric, which basically proposed that—T-minus thirty seconds—instead of trying to accelerate normal objects to the speed of light, which you can’t because it’s impossible, you can bend space around an object instead, which doesn’t break any of the laws of physics. That’s why we have to be clear of Ithea before initiating warp. If we’re too close, we risk creating a black hole for it to get sucked into.”

It’s obvious you don’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about, but you understand his next two words very clearly: “Launch time!”

Jun flicks a switch and you sit there, entranced, as the ship truly comes to life. The lights on the navigation panel flash; the bolsters roar with the metallic thrum of electricity. There’s an exhale of gaseous steam as the ship rises from its stationary position, and your stomach drops to your ass before you can even complain about the lack of warning, feeling unmoored. Behind you, Seungcheol isn’t faring much better, knocked off-balance as he teeters into the wall, but at least you aren’t burdening everyone else by voicing your displeasure.

“Gods,” he grumbles, clawing his way to the nearest chair with a fastening device, “a warning would’ve been—”

What you’re sure would’ve been a resounding grievance is cut off as Junhui gently inches a lever forward. The ship lurches in response, tossing Seungcheol a few feet to the left, and his protests become more emphatic, also growing more colorful as the seconds pass. Junhui is none the wiser as he navigates the ship to the launch site with an unbothered, childlike grin, only serving to further incense Seungcheol, who finally finds a way to put his ass in a seat, taking on a glower that’s destined to become everyone else’s problem.

Things settle once your journey begins in earnest. As you’d mentioned to Seungcheol—who has seemingly forgotten he’s supposed to be angry and is snoring away—it’ll take at least a full day to reach Dredelea, assuming the universe is in a cooperative mood, so there’s no reason to try and rush the passage of time.

Jun is a talkative pilot. He doesn’t spill the secrets of the navigation consoles, but he does his best to explain what he’s doing and why, kindly pretending not to notice your glazed-over expression. But you’ve got to admit it’s nice to simply listen and not be expected to comprehend or answer. Junhui intrinsically understands things you could never dream of, but he never, ever speaks to you in a way that feels condescending. Instead, it’s simply the sharing of information; it’s seeing the way his eyes light up and the knowledge that there is nothing else in this universe he was meant to do.

However—

“This ship, for example, has a hypergolic propulsion system which eliminates the need for an ignition system or any other type of catalyst, because hypergolic propellants are a combination of rocket fuel and oxidizers which spontaneously ignite upon contact with one another.”

You hum. “And that means…?”

“Well, they have their advantages and disadvantages, as everything does.” That was not what you meant. “On the plus-side, it’s quite rare that a ship with a hypergolic propulsion system would suffer a catastrophic event upon launch. Additionally, hypergolic propellations are far more dense than cryogenic ones—”

“The stuff they freeze dead people in?”

Junhui pauses. “Oh. Yeah, I think I read about that once in a book on Ancient Earth burial techniques. Regardless, the higher density of the nitric acid or nitrogen tetroxide or whatever hypergolic oxidizer you’re using means the propellant tanks can be smaller, and smaller propellant tanks means a smaller payload fairing.”

“Wow,” you deadpan, “that’s some really fascinating stuff.”

“I know!” Junhui is near wiggling in excitement at your acknowledgement. The gods are going to smite you for attempting to snuff out such raw joy. “I was doing some reading, though, and what’s even more interesting is the way Dredelea builds their ships. Way, way back in history, it was common for Ancient Earth to use a solar power system for their ships, considering their proximity to the sun, and it wasn’t like the location of either the earth or the sun was going to change, so there was no real need to deviate from it… unless their missionwould bring them too far away from the sun.”

“Which would be the case for Dredelea,” you piece together, “considering its lack of light.”

“Exactly! They’ve all but been forced to build their ships using ancient technology. They use RTGs, or radioisotropic thermoelectric generators, to convert radioactive decay heat into electricity.”

You still understand none of these words. “What does that mean for us, if anything?”

“Well, nothing super significant,” Jun responds easily. “Ithea is, of course, one of the most technologically-advanced planets in the galaxy, so there’s really not much damage the Dredeleans could do as a counter-attack, but with the amount of decaying plant matter on their planet, I dare say they’ve unknowingly tapped into an unlimited power source.” You blink. “It’s a shame they don’t have the resources or knowledge to harvest it.”

A million thoughts race through your mind. There are also a million emotions, the most prominent being a piercing aggregate of anger and betrayal. Does Jeonghan know about this? Did your father? And if they did—if they knew Dredelea was sitting on a limitless supply of organic power—they sent you anyway?

You can’t let Jun see your panic, so you cough, clearing your throat to cover it. “Hypothetically speaking… let’s say they figured it out. Hypothetically, of course, how bad would that be?”

“Hmm.” Jun presses a button before sitting back in his chair, pivoting it back and forth in practiced semi-circles. “Obviously it would depend on what they chose to do with it. An unlimited power source could arguably make their planet the most prosperous in the galaxy, which is a clear upside, especially considering the current state of Dredelea, but also one very obvious downside.”

“It puts a target on their heads,” you conclude.

“Exactly. Despite the fairytales, there are civilizations out there far more hostile than the Dredeleans. Worse, there are civilizations far more desperate. I wouldn’t say I’d entrust unlimited power in the hands of Dredelea, but I’d trust them a hell of a lot more than, say, Chulvara.”

You blow out a long breath. “Shiiiiiit.”

“Either way,” Jun continues, turning his attention back to the viewscreen, “it’s not an immediate threat. Probably not even a next-hundred-years kind of threat. The science is maddeningly complex, but the Dredeleans are the only ones with such intimate knowledge of their ecosystem and biome. I don’t think anyone else would know what to do with it.”

You decide not to push the conversation any further. One thought branches to another branches to another to another, ad nauseam, and if you think too long and too hard it’ll give you a migraine. Politics isn’t your domain and a contentious, inhospitable planet sitting on a goldmine of power nearly tops the list of reasons why. Gods above. What are you doing? Even with all the training in the world, you’re not equipped for this. It stopped being a simple rescue mission the second Jeonghan let slip where Wonwoo was being held, and now here you are, trying to mentally disentangle a millennia's worth of interstellar governance while nearly hallucinating from all the anti-nausea tablets you’ve housed.

Fuck. You should really get some sleep.

You stand, joints cracking as you do. You’re too old for this. “I’m going back to my cabin. Let Seungcheol know where he can find me.”

Jun salutes, not bothering to respond otherwise. You suspect he might be hallucinating, too.

There’s only an hour until you reach Dredelea.

At least you were able to get decent rest the night before, your mind as clear as it can be. Another thirty minutes and your ship will blip onto their radars, alerting them of your impending arrival, and no one can be sure what their reaction will be. Surely they’ll have been anticipating this. You can’t hold hostage another planet’s citizen(s) and not expect them to eventually come knocking, especially if they’ve already tried resolving this peacefully.

Staring up at the ceiling of your cabin, you groan, knowing you need to get up and prepare yourself. This is not a situation you can walk into unrehearsed and play by ear. To have any hopes of pulling this off, you need to be the better proponent: more learned, more perceptive. This is what you find most daunting. You’re every bit as capable as Jeonghan said you are, but all the tact and diplomacy in the universe will crumble in the face of deceit, and then what? Outing yourself isn’t an option. Giving up and leaving Wonwoo behind isn’t an option, either.

Fuck me, you mutter.

Time to rock n’ roll.

You dress in the traditional diplomatic uniform: a black, high-neck top and a pair of fitted black trousers that scream money and power and a pair of pointed-toe, heeled black boots. You slip a silver signet ring onto your pinky, an iridescent pinfire opal mounted in the center, mined from Ithea’s own rock. Your white-blonde hair is ironed until it’s pin-straight and sleek, not a strand out of place, and then, as is customary, you paint a metallic silver band across your eyes.

Jeonghan’s cloak is the pièce de résistance.

Its effect is immediate. As soon as it rests on your shoulders, you feel all-powerful. Imposing. Imperial. The figure staring back at you in the mirror is competent and needs no reassurance. She’s not starving for a war but she’s not satiated, either. Dredelea had bet on the wrong horse. Showed their hand far too early. Jeon Wonwoo was the worst hostage they could’ve taken, and they’d wagered all their bets on your brother’s genuine kindness, on his desire to resolve this—or anything else—peacefully.

You may share his face and have stolen his voice, but you are not your brother.

“T-minus fifteen minutes to landing.”

Shoulders squared, you take a deep breath and steel yourself. The rhythmic click-clack of your heels grounds you as you walk to the navigation bay. You let the biometric scanner run over your eye, then your fingerprints. The doors whirr open as it deems you worthy and Seungcheol is there to greet you, looking every inch your counterpart, commanding to a fault. Like you, he stands tall and dignified. You imagine he’s spent enough time around the Ithean Councils to model the behaviors that bely their true sentiments, and the blasé affect he wears, as if all of this is beneath him, is one of them.

But the gravity of the situation immediately cracks when he takes one look at you and says, “Gods above, that’s fucking freaky. You look just like him.”

“Who?” you retort dryly.

Seungcheol gives you the finger. It’s one of his favorite customs from Ancient Earth, and he has refused to give it up ever since learning about it. No one outside of your circle knows what it means, either, which only delights him further. You can distinctly remember him doing it to your father on at least four separate occasions.

Still, he grows serious enough that you believe him when he meets your eye and tells you everything is going to be okay, that you’re capable and prepared. It isn’t the first time you’ve thought it, but he and Jeonghan are so alike. The poise with which they hold themselves. Their steadfast, unwavering confidence in you and all the quiet ways they show it.

“T-minus five minutes to landing.”

“Are you ever gonna talk about it?”

Their insistence that you never have even a second of peace.

“Talk about—”

Seungcheol shoots you a pointed look. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I can and I will.” He says your name with a hushed, almost pleading disapproval. “Cheol, I get it, okay? I do. But I can’t think about it right now. I need a clear head”—he moves to protest, but you mime zipping your lips—“and talking about it is only going to make things worse. Let me do this first and then you can be as annoying about it as you want.”

He pouts, stopping in his tracks at the accusation. “I’m not annoying.”

“T-minus one minute to landing.”

“You are,” you insist, fastening yourself into a seat. “You are the older brother I never wanted and never asked for yet can’t seem to get rid of.”

He follows suit, securing himself into the seat next to you. “You’d be miserable without me.”

“Only because you make Jeonghan slightly more bearable.”

Scoffing, he retorts, “Sure, keep telling yourself that.”

What’s sure to be a witty and biting riposte sits on the tip of your tongue, dissipating immediately once the pod touches down on solid ground. Showtime, you think, slipping back into character. You wear your brother’s likeness like a mask, projecting a sense of control you certainly don’t feel. Have probably never felt, if you had a second to spare for honesty, but there’s no time to dwell on childhood trauma when you’re a sitting duck on an unpredictable, hostile planet.

“I landed in the best position I could,” Jun explains, killing the interstellar navigation map and replacing it with a topographical one of Dredelea. “This is where we are. Easy landing and easy escape, if necessary, but it’s still some distance away from the rendezvous point as you can see.”

Seungcheol peers over Junhui’s shoulder, seemingly memorizing the map, before turning to you. “That means if anything feels even slightly off, we need to get the fuck out of there, alright? No wait-and-see. The bryophytes here are so dense they could have us surrounded twenty times over and we wouldn’t know it.”

“Trust me, you don’t need to tell me twice.” You address Junhui. “What are you going to do while we’re gone? Will you be safe?”

He smiles softly. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“He’s being humble,” Seungcheol accuses. “He tested as a goddamn sharpshooter, for fuck’s sake.”

Your jaw drops. “A sharp—okay, we are definitely revisiting this later. Seungcheol, let’s go before I lose my nerve and vomit all over the place. Junhui, you are a man of designation and integral to the continued prosperity of Ithea. It was an honor flying with you.” You salute him.

“Oh, fuck off,” Seungcheol groans.

“What, I can’t praise my friends—”

You’re unable to finish your sentence. Seungcheol places his hands on your shoulders and spins you around, directing you out the doors of the navigation bay and in the direction of the airlock deck. There, you equip dosimeters, unsure of exactly what’ll be there to greet you beyond the doors of your ship, and Seungcheol quickly puts in a pair of scotopic contact lenses. Aside from emergency oxygen and medi-gel patches, the two of you had chosen to forego any additional gear. No communicators, no tracking devices, no scanners, and only one weapon each, both discreet and undetectable by traditional means.

A massive risk, but one you hope pays off.

Before you press the button for the exterior door, Seungcheol places a hand on your arm. “Remember, we’re leaving this way, but we need to return through decontamination.” You nod. “Also, I know he’s our friend, but I don’t care what he says or how we feel: Wonwoo goes from de-con straight to the brig.”

Your heart twists at the thought of Wonwoo going straight from a hostage situation into a prison cell—at you being the one who has to subject him to it. Seungcheol takes in the look on your face and his touch turns gentle. “I know. But we don’t know what they’ve done to him, okay? Whatever it is can be deprogrammed later, but we can’t take any chances when we’re this far from home. More than a day’s journey on a travel ship with a possibly-brainwashed lunatic does not strike a grand sense of adventure into me.” When you don’t laugh, his gaze turns imploring. “Please. You’ve gotta promise me.”

As much as you don’t want to admit it, Seungcheol is right: the Wonwoo you bring home very well may not be the same Wonwoo who left. It feels impossible to imagine him any other way, but you suck in a breath, two more, and then you relent. What else can you do?

“I promise.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” His hand hovers above the exit button. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

What greets you is silence.

No ambient noise. No chirping insects or the skittering of small creatures. No noise from a wind storm on a neighboring planet. Dredelea is completely void of sound, of signs of life, and it raises the hair on the back of your neck. You can tell Seungcheol finds it just as unsettling as you. His footsteps grow slower, giving him more time to scour the darkness, more time to anticipate an ambush… but there’s nothing. There’s only you and him and an expanse of opaque greenery.

The earth is permeable and waterlogged, squirming beneath your feet; a sort of dance, purposely designed to make you second-guess each step. Keep you off-balance. It feels as though you’re treading upon something living—which you are, technically—but this feels different, like the terrain is alive. Dredelea is completely void of sound, but if it wasn’t, you imagine all you’d hear was the earth’s breaths, its wearied exhales and heaving sighs.

Moisture also hangs thick in the air. The humidity is so thick you can taste it on your tongue. Could hack through it with a blade. Every intake of breath feels like a chore, like you have to remind your organs how to work. It isn’t long before your lungs begin to ache, a stitch appearing in your side, and sweat plasters your clothes to your skin. You know you need to move quickly: it won’t be long before dehydration sets in, lethargy and mental fog accompanying it.

Though you can’t be sure it hasn’t already.

Dredelea’s darkness is disorienting. Not pitch black, but the kind of murky twilight that calls to mind a storm on a late summer evening, midnight blues and charcoal grays smeared together on a painter's palette. It’s dark enough that your mind starts playing tricks on you, inventing shadows that taunt you from the periphery; that take cover beneath dense moss canopies. They lurk, waiting to strike, patient and still.

“It shouldn’t be much longer.”

Seungcheol’s words are meant to reassure you, but you can hear it for the plea it really is.

It’s hard to tell how much more time passes. Your body has long since grown tired, legs cramped and feet screaming. Once you’re back home you’ll curse your entire planet for this foolish uniform. Heeled boots to traverse a soggy, moss-covered planet… What a brainless choice. Completely stupid. But then you take another step and both the literal and metaphorical fog clears. The ground becomes more firm and the humidity lessens, cooling your overheated, flushed skin. The ambient noise you’d been missing filters in. Immediately, the tension begins to bleed out of your body, muscles and tendons and sinew beginning to unwind and loosen.

Seungcheol stops. You watch his shoulders heave as he sucks in the fresh air. “Last chance to back out.”

You snort. “Last chance to return to Ithea and have my head put on a spike, you mean.” Your companion’s expression grows severe, and that’s not something you can deal with right now. You don’t need his pity or his well-intentioned sympathy or anything else, so you say, “They already know we’re here. I doubt we’ll make it ten steps before they capture us and drag us in like wet cats.”

“I know, but—”

You shake your head. “Come on.”

He has no choice but to relent. A long-suffering sigh restarts your journey, and as the dense brush gives way to the heart of Dredelea, shocked awe overcomes you. It’s… not what you expected. From the fairytales, you expected towering, metal buildings guarded by ominous figures. You expected the structures to be surrounded by moats of bubbling acid emitting a mysterious steam, toxic green and smelling of sulfur. You expected some semblance of technology. Not up to date or even semi-advanced, but… something, at least.

Not this.

What lies before you is a derelict civilization.

From what you’re able to see, the buildings are ramshackle, built from outdated, decaying materials. Wood, if you had to guess, which would explain the state of them: the mold that’s eaten away at the foundation, giving way to collapse; the sagging roofs and crumbling exteriors of what’s still standing; the overwhelming stench of woodrot and decay.

It’s clear that this is a society handicapped by the galaxy’s sanctions, poor and left to fend for itself, hopeless in the face of such a barren, sterile environment. A pang of sympathy that turns to resentment. No one should be forced to live like this when other planets sit on staggering amounts of wealth, its inhabitants dressed in battered rags as they scavenge for food.

“This is…”

“Fucked,” Seungcheol finishes for you. “Come on. Nothing we can do about it right now.”

True to your nature, you want to argue. Want to dig your heels into the soft earth and demand it be fixed right now, but you know he’s right. What you’re witnessing on Dredelea is the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of interstellar politics. As much as you might want to try, Seungcheol is right: it’s not something you can solve by standing around feeling sorry for them. Perhaps it’s not something you—or anyone—can solve at all.

Discreetly, you remove the opal signet and place it in your pocket for safekeeping. It no longer feels appropriate to wear it.

“Where do we even go?”

All of your original plans are obsolete. Neither of you can even be sure now that Junhui’s map had been correct, because surely there would’ve been some inkling of this—some trace warning that the Dredelea spoken of in nightmarish terms was long gone and fictional. Surely someone had to have known the state of the planet before sending you here on a wild goose chase. Surely it’s impossible that no one did, and that sends a cold chill up your spine. More questions. More things that have you questioning the extent of your father’s—and Jeonghan’s—knowledge.

“We stay on course,” Seungcheol finally answers. “This is fucked, but I trust Jun.”

You can’t help it. “Do you trust Jeonghan after all this?”

If he’s shocked by the bitterness in your tone, he seemingly decides now isn’t the time to address it. Instead, he rolls his lips and continues on, giving you no choice but to follow behind.

You cover your nose and mouth as you pass through the first decomposing building, terrified of mold spores embedding themselves in your lungs. Everything here feels wrong in the most primal way, every atom in your body screaming at you to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible, and you have no intention of ignoring them, so the thought of anything sticking with you, of following you home, is unfathomable. You won’t allow it.

Eventually, after Seungcheol leads you through the remains of two more derelict buildings, your mere presence seeming to cause more damage, exoskeletons crumbling as you pass, you reach a clearing.

You may not have Seungcheol’s eidetic memory, but you also don’t remember this being on Junhui’s map, which had been speckled with shapes: squares for buildings, circles for bodies of water, triangles for entry and exit points. This had not been there—you’re sure of it—but you’re not surprised. Whatever information Jun had been working off of was clearly outdated, as you and Seungcheol have quickly come to learn.

Being so exposed, though, has that familiar dread setting back in. Has the hair on the back of your neck rising again. Vulnerability is a liability anywhere, but Dredelea certainly isn’t the place for it. In this clearing, you and Seungcheol are sitting ducks. Anyone could be watching. Anyone could be waiting. And although it’s better than before, your vision is still limited. There’s still barely any sound to help orient you. Junhui’s map is still wrong.

And you can’t shake the feeling of eyes on you.

“Seungcheol…”

Whatever you’re about to say is interrupted by the arrival of Dredelea’s hereditary monarch.

High Emperor Zelos is exactly as they’ve been pictured: tall and gaunt, resembling a ghoul more than anything that could be considered human. Their skin is thin and nearly translucent, having taken on a faint, greenish tint. Their eyes, which only contain pupils where irises should be, are wide and upturned, sitting beneath a prominent brow bone. Unlike the rest of the Dredeleans you’ve seen, the emperor is dressed in an extravagant cloak. The fabric is unknown to you: it reflects the scarce amount of light in the clearing, giving it the impression of something fluid like silk, but even from a distance you can tell it’s more substantial, something that provides more warmth.

A far cry from the tattered rags of their populace.

“Ah,” they intone, their voice discordant and caustic, spoken through thin lips and blackened, rotting teeth, “how blessed are we that our friends from Ithea have completed their journey safely!”

You’re overcome by the sudden urge to blow this smarmy, unnerving motherfucker’s head off. If Soonyoung was here, he’d rub two sticks together and be done with it, high-tailing it back to the ship before you and Seungcheol even have time to process what’s happened, the two of you left standing there pathetically in a plume of smoke. And you can do it, you wager. Looking around, you think you’d be able to cobble together at least one-quarter of a functioning bomb. Given the biosphere, that should be more than enough to have this place looking like a supernova, interrupting what you’re sure is about to be a rousing and inspirational speech on behalf of the sullied and neglected. You gag just thinking about it, ignoring the pointed look Seungcheol shoots you.

They may say don’t kill the messenger,but sometimes the messenger’s declarations are more effective when they don’t come from someone wearing an exorbitantly expensive robe.

Beside you, Seungcheol’s energy is frenetic. Palpable. If he were willing to risk speaking, it’d be to implore you to remember your training and not make this worse. A nonviolent escape is still within reach, and it’d be nice to rescue Wonwoo and return to Ithea a hero, but there’s very little pleasure in that, isn’t there? And in light of all the risks you’re taking, most important of which is your life, isn’t it reasonable to feel you’re owed a little fun?

“Yes,” you sing-song, seamlessly adopting Jeonghan’s voice as you rock back on your heels, “here we are! And such a warm welcome! On behalf of Ithea, we thank you for your planet’s hospitality, High Emperor Zelos.”

It’s obviously not what they expected you to say, your enthusiasm—even if it’s fraudulent—clearly catching them off guard. “I’m sure our prior correspondences got lost,” you continue, tone still sickly-sweet and playing the fool. Jeonghan would kill you for this. “But as I’m sure you’re aware, one of our civilians, Jeon Wonwoo, has been kept prisoner on your planet for quite some time. We are here to retrieve him.”

“He is a hostage, not a prisoner,” Zelos sneers. “That implies an exchange, and Ithea has yet to offer us anything of value for his freedom.”

“Ah, I see, I see. And you have submitted your list of demands?”

This seems to incense Zelos further. They stalk forward, meaning to intimidate you. Within arm’s reach, their voice takes on a metallic, acerbic undertone, the stench unbearable. “A list of demands? We have something you want; that gives us leverage, and leverage is power. If you think anyone would find it urgent to give that up, you are a feebleminded, short-sighted child, Ithean—and I am not interested in brokering deals with children.”

You brush imaginary dirt from your—Jeonghan’s—cloak. “High Council Yoon,” you correct, “and I would say your disinterest in a deal is also short-sighted and imprudent, but I suspect you know that already.”

Zelos shouts at you, spittle flying, to get to the point. Seungcheol tenses. Not only at the High Emperor’s patience wearing thin, but at your unaffected demeanor. He can’t tell what you’re thinking or what your plan is, and that makes you dangerous. Coupled with your reputation for being a wild card and inclination toward chaos, he’s unsettled. Doesn’t know if he should be preparing for bloodshed or bureaucracy.

“Tell you what.” Feigning distraction, you retrieve the opal ring from your pocket and pretend to clean it. You slip it back on your finger and hold it before you in mock-admiration. “Give us Jeon Wonwoo and I will put in word to the Elder Council that Dredelea was cooperative and amenable to our suggestions.”

Zelos laughs, just as you expect. “That’s your offer? That you’ll put in a good word with your Elders?” he mocks. “I’d sooner deal your hostage a most gruesome death than trust an Ithean’s word on anything.”

This time, it’s you that takes a step forward. “That’s what I figured you’d say, but unfortunately that’s all we’re willing to offer at this time. Our contacts and pockets run deep, you know—when the Elder Council wills it, Ithea is a powerful card to have in your deck.”

“And your hostage? You are prepared to leave him behind?”

You shrug, turning on your heel to leave. “Take it or leave it, it’s all the same to me, so long as you are prepared to live with your choice.”

What the fuck are you doing, Seungcheol mouths to you, brows pinched in confusion and desperation, torn between staying put and pleading his own case and following. You ignore him.

“Perhaps seeing the current state of Jeon Wonwoo would change your mind.”

Back still turned, you smirk, pleased but unsurprised that they’ve played right into your hand, following your script perfectly. It’s hubris on full display, and hubris is always the preamble to one’s demise. You stop, pretending their words are giving you pause. “Oh?” you ask, turning back around. “High Emperor Zelos, now you have my attention.”

The first punch lands in the center of Wonwoo’s jaw.

Pain blooms, greeting him like an old friend, and he’s barely given a millisecond to recover before another punch is thrown at him. This time he ducks out of the way. Feints to the right. Watches as knuckles flex beneath the stained gauze wrapped around them; as tendons and blue-green veins move like snakes beneath skin.

Everything moves at half speed, iridescent halos casted around whatever he manages to focus on. Wonwoo rolls his neck to the side. Can’t hear the crack over the jeering of the crowd. Pushes his tongue into the fat of his throbbing cheek and grins around a mouth full of blood, metallic and viscous. Tries to blink the stars from his vision, pupils blown, eyes stinging from the dingy fluorescent lights hanging overhead and the salt in his sweat.

Another jab that doesn’t land.

Another deafening reaction from the crowd as they rattle the chainlink cage that surrounds him.

There’s a bruise on his ribs—yellow-green and mottled, streaked with petechiae. Clearly fresh. Clearly painful, too, considering the way Draecol favors his left side, the way he tries to shield it from Wonwoo’s view.

Too late, he thinks.

Wonwoo also thinks about you, just like he has every time he’s found himself here, forced to fight for his life. Thinks back to when the two of you were kids; back to when his edges were still rounded and soft. He hadn’t learned how to stand up for himself yet and, having no reference for violence at all, certainly didn’t know how to fight. But you, having grown up with an irritating gnat of a younger brother, were well-equipped to teach him.

He remembers the feeling of your skin as you placed your hand over his, shaping it into a fist. Remembers when he’d split his eyebrow and was too scared to tell his mother, running straight to you instead, and how gently you’d cleaned him up. Remembers all those sparring matches and the way your eyes used to narrow, sharp and precise. You were always predatory in quiet, clandestine ways—the opposite of Wonwoo, whose rage strikes like a viper. Injects its venom into his veins and rarely sticks around long enough to play witness. There and gone, just like a flashbomb. It’s the one thing he can’t seem to outgrow, and it manifests the same way now: as he clenches his jaw and his teeth slot into the worn imprints of his mouthguard like puzzle pieces; as he plants his feet against the canvas, stretched and stained with blood and sweat and fuck knows what else.

As he eyes the bruise again and kicks out with his right foot to knock Draecol off-balance. It’s enough to distract him from Wonwoo’s clenched fist and leave him blind to the quick jab Wonwoo takes at his ribs. Draecol cries out, body immediately collapsing in on itself, and the crowd jeers again, fueled by their pain and the promise of more cruelty. Just like sharks in a blood frenzy. Wonwoo is sickened by them, yet he has no choice but to dance for their approval, strung up like a marionette, unable to decide his own fate.

If he could, though—

If he could, he’d go home. He’d fall to his knees and press his lips to the ground, breathing in the scent of Ithea’s earth he’d forgotten during his time away. He’d open his arms wide, welcoming his friends as they mobbed and embraced him, giddy at his return. Tears would well in his eyes upon realizing just how badly he’d missed them, at how overwhelming it’d be to see them.

But it would all pale in comparison to how it’d feel to come face to face with you again.

To lay eyes on you and know you were safe. To be able to reach out and feel your warm pulse beneath his fingertips. To let apologies spill from his mouth over and over until you were sick of hearing them. To make promises he’d die before breaking, this time.

Reality comes crashing down on him like a rogue wave, though, because the cruel injustice of it remains: he isn’t going anywhere—and he will never see you again—if he can’t fight his way off of this godsforsaken planet. If he can’t shake the sight of blood and take advantage of Draecol’s momentary daze. It’s with your face in his mind’s eye that he strikes out again with all the rage and homesickness he can muster. There’s the sickening crunch of pulverized bone as Wonwoo clenched fist makes contact.

More blood. More jeering.

Draecol drops to his knees, just as Wonwoo does in his daydream, except instead of kissing the ground of his home planet, he prepares to deal the finishing blow to a man who had done nothing deserving of it. A man who had committed no crime, yet was stripped of his freedom and forced to fight for the delight of fiends.

“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo mutters, but his words are lost to the crowd’s raucous, tumultuous applause.

Then he squeezes his eyes shut and does what he has to.

And when he dares to open them, he wonders if the roles had been reversed; if he hadn’t hallucinated the entire fight and it wasn’t the crowd he’d heard but the sound of his own death knell. Because as he stands there, his skin caked with both his blood and someone else’s, he swears he can see you. Swears you’re standing right there, right along the perimeter of the room.

Such a beautiful mirage can only be the work of something divine, so he says a prayer in thanks, grateful it’s the last thing he sees before his vision promptly blacks out and he collapses to the floor.

Not even Dredelea is stupid enough to execute a hostage in front of his planet’s High Council.

You suspect they would’ve if you weren’t here, because Wonwoo can’t fight. Not in this state. Not for a while. And if Wonwoo can’t fight he’s worthless to them, and if he’s worthless then Dredelea has effectively lost all of its bargaining power.

This is why you never, ever bet on fickle things, you want to say.

But you also want to say it was never going to be a fair trade. Just as you feared, the Wonwoo you’ll be taking back to Ithea is not the same Wonwoo that left it. You want to scream at them, force them to make him right, undo whatever the fuck they did that made him this way. You want to reach across the table you’re sitting at and grasp at their throats and claw at their eyes, laughing as fear and nothingness replaces whatever life you can find in them.

You want to drag Jeonghan back here. Make him stand in that room with his back to its stained, concrete walls, the chill seeping through his clothes and into his skin. You want him disoriented by the unrelenting, rhythmic rattling of the cage. Frozen in shock and horror by the crowd’s bloodlust. You want him to choke as the smell of blood sticks in his nose, sickened by the overpowering tang of iron. You want the sound of crushed bones to ring in his head for the rest of his life, coming back to haunt him every time he closes his eyes and longs for sleep.

It isn’t the time, though. Right now, you need to keep a level head. You need to act like whatever you saw in that room didn’t affect you, like it didn’t have you wondering, even for a fraction of a second, if you should bring Wonwoo home. If it was safe. And Dredelea may have lost their bargaining power but you’ll kill them for this anyway. You don’t know how and you don’t know when, but you can promise them they’ll never experience a moment of peace so long as you’re alive. You want them on edge, always looking over their shoulders; always wondering if you’re lurking in every shadow.

“As I’ve already explained, the previous offer is off the table.” Opposite to how you’re feeling, you’re able to project Jeonghan’s voice as decisive and clear. Like the rest of him, you wear it like a mask: the Jeonghan sitting across from the ruler of Dredelea and their cronies is commanding and stable, not governed by emotion the way you are. Where you would glare, he observes with a sharp, clinical eye.

You and High Emperor Zelos are more alike than you’d like to admit. “It cannot be off the table!” their voice booms. “Not if you want your hostage.”

They mean to intimidate you—mean to have your spine bending out of fear as you’re forced into submission. But you aren’t persuaded. Aren’t moved by this childish, petulant tantrum at all. Wonwoo lies in a pathetic heap on the other side of the room and you cannot bring yourself to care about anything else. “Our hostage?” you repeat. “And what power do you think you’re still able to wield when it comes to our hostage?”

“He still belongs to—”

Your stare sharpens. “He belongs to no one but himself, and yet you’ve reduced him to that.” You point at Wonwoo’s unconscious form. “As a fighter?” You whistle. “The audacity you displayed earlier makes sense. If I had a weapon like that in my arsenal I’d behave like an overconfident, presumptuous brat, too. But now? Ithea isn’t in the business of violence, y’know, so maybe I’m wrong, but something tells me the bell has rung on that man’s final round.”

Zelos stammers, so you continue. “Let me tell you how it looks from my end.” You lean forward and plant your elbows on the table, projecting a placidness you don’t feel. “You took something of ours—took a living person and forged him into a weapon because you have nothing else. Whatever military presence you commanded in the past—regardless of its minute scale—has long since been incapacitated and rendered obsolete, so you cannot mount an offensive- or counter-attack against us. You have chosen to play the perpetual victim and have deemed technological advancement your enemy. Not even progress can find its way around an ego so large and intent on failure, and so you’ve doomed your people, your planet, to wither away in darkness. It won’t be long before Dredelea ceases to exist and no one mourns its absence. So, High Emperor Zelos, I applaud your efforts,” you snark, “but I fear you gambled and you lost. You have been defanged, and now you’re out of bargaining chips.”

Trembling with rage, Zelos still does not answer. The Dredeleans flanking them seem similarly stunned, aimless now that they’ve been stripped of their usual browbeating demeanors. You’ve done nothing and yet you’ve outplayed them. You aren’t even the goddamn High Council, and yet—

“We will be returning Jeon Wonwoo to Ithea,” you conclude, gesturing for Seungcheol to stand as you join him at full height, “and if you do so much as think about preventing us from doing so, I will take each one of these men. I will drag them out of this desolate, putrid hole, and I will kill them myself, one by one while you watch, and once I’m finished you can tell me how it feels when something of yours is taken.”

Zelos studies you with a questioning stare, looking for any tells, any sign that you don’t actually mean the promises of certain death that have spilled from your lips. The tension in the room swells. For a split-second you think he’s going to call your bluff, and in that meager amount of time you’re forced to confront a few harsh truths about yourself: that you would risk the safety and standing of your planet to defend Wonwoo’s honor. That you’d soak your hands in Dredelean blood as penance for what they’ve done to him.

But Zelos finds nothing but your cold, unflinching stare, and the tension deflates.

“Escort the hostage to the Itheans’ ship,” they announce, and from their acrid tone you can tell this isn’t over. You’ve threatened the lives of their men and insulted their planet. There are few grievances more offensive to such an egotistical maniac, but that’s a problem for Jeonghan and your father to solve. As soon as Wonwoo is safely on his way back to Ithea, you have no further obligations to this mission.

“A wise choice,” you can’t help but declare.

A sardonic grin splits black teeth. “You are far more ruthless than they say, Ithean.” There’s a challenge in their words. An accusation. If Zelos or any of the other Dredeleans have harbored suspicions that you aren’t who you’ve presented yourself to be, they’ve kept them under lock and key. Waited until the last possible moment to throw a hail mary.

You steal a glance at Wonwoo, still unconscious as he’s propped up between two Dredelean puppets, arms thrown around their shoulders to stay upright. You take in the mottled bruises covering his limp, malnourished body. His split lip, caked with blood. The laceration on his cheek, left unstitched and untreated, and the matching one that’ll paint a nasty scar through his right brow. The trauma that is sure to be embedded in each and every cell of his biology.

“High Council Yoon.” You’re unyielding as you correct Zelos again, demanding the respect you deserve, content to leave their suspicions hanging in the air, fated to become nothing but what-ifs. “And I suggest you remain blissfully unaware of just how ruthless I can be.”

Another strained moment passes before Seungcheol breaks it, barking at the Dredelean lackeys to start fucking moving. They obey without question. It’s another blow to Zelos’s pride. Another humiliating reminder that they’d been outplayed and outwitted, reduced to a sniveling, impotent ruler whose men will jump ship for anyone more powerful.

And jump ship they do. When the ensemble reaches your ship, you nod your thanks to them and turn to board, eager to get far, far away from this forlorn planet. But just as you’re about to seal yourself inside, one of Zelos’s men grabs you by the wrist. The contact sets your instincts ablaze, but the man before you seems nervous and meek, barely past his teenage years if you had to guess, and skittish in the same way wild creatures are. A strong breeze would have him tucking his tail between his legs. This boy is no threat to you.

“Do we have unfinished business, child?” His tongue stumbles over words that never materialize, offering only choked-off sounds. You square your shoulders and soften your approach. “Can I help you in some way?”

“Pl-please take—take me with you,” he pleads. “My name is Lee Chan. I-I can be us-useful, I promise, but I can’t—I can’t spend the rest of my li-life here. Please, I—”

You grab the young man by the shoulder, moving him out of earshot of his fellow Dredeleans. Strange, you think: he doesn’t look like the rest of them. Doesn’t have their pale skin or their unsettling, dark eyes. Doesn’t share their looming, thin figures. “This planet is not your home,” you conclude. Almost ashamed, Lee Chan diverts his eyes as he nods. “How did you wind up here?”

“I don’t remember,” he answers quietly, “I was ve-very young.”

“Did you come here alone?”

“No, with my mother, but she…” He clears his throat, becoming more coherent the longer you let him speak. (The more hope he lets himself endure.) “I don’t know what hap-happened to her, but she’s been gone a long time.”

You sigh. Gods above, are you truly considering this? You’d be stupid to look a gift horse in the mouth after earning yourselves a peaceful exit, yet here you are, contemplating taking this young man—who very well could be lying, you remind yourself—as a stowaway. It’s all the invitation Zelos would need to launch an interstellar war, legality be damned. Just as you and Seungcheol had arrived on Dredelea, metaphorical guns blazing to retrieve Wonwoo, they could come looking for Lee Chan, demanding his return.

But if you leave him here, if you pretend to be deaf to his pleas and knowingly condemn Lee Chan to a life of suffering on this barren wasteland, can you truly claim yourself to be any better than Zelos?

“I need you to answer me honestly.” The young man nods, eyes glistening with unshed tears, and that’s when you see the remnants of a fierce bruise fading along the contours of his cheekbone and temple. “Those motherfuckers,” you swear. “Will they come looking for you? Lee Chan, pay attention and listen to me: will Zelos come looking for you? Answer me honestly.”

He shakes his head emphatically. “No, I don’t—I don’t think so.”

“What is your role here?” He’s hesitant to answer, causing you to grip his shoulders tighter. You don’t have time for this. “Listen, kid, I don’t give a fuck if your job is to extract the shit from someone’s ass, I just need to know if it’s important enough that they’ll come looking for you.”

“No,” he finally responds, breaking out of his stupor. “They—they make me fight sometimes, and when I don’t, I’m the one who cleans up the… the…”

“The blood. Got it. You’re absolutely certain?”

“I know him. The man you came after. Wonwoo. He—he was always very ki-kind to me.”

The mention of Wonwoo’s name has you swearing again. Seungcheol yells at you from the deck of the decontamination bay, asking what the fuck you’re doing, reminding you that you need to hurry up. “I am your High Council, Choi Seungcheol,” you fire back, “and we don’t leave until I fucking say we leave.” You turn your attention back to Lee Chan, having made up your mind. All you can do is hope you don’t come to regret it. “Damn it all to hell. Hurry up and get on the ship. Quickly, Lee Chan, before someone sees you! No one’s making it to Ithea if we don’t get the fuck out of here in the next few minutes.”

You usher him aboard the ship, ignoring Seungcheol’s shell-shocked expression. “I am your High Council,” you repeat, hoping it’ll get him off your back.

Instead, he narrows his eyes at you, pressing the button for the intercom. “All aboard,” he relays to Jun. Immediately, the ship roars back to life, the engines rumbling beneath your feet. It’s the feeling of freedom. Relief. All the worry and anxiety being eased off your shoulders, no longer threatening to weigh you down.

But your nightmare isn’t fully over so long as Seungcheol exists, because he seals himself in one of the decontamination pods and says, looking as smug as possible, “No you aren’t.”

It takes a second to realize what he’s responding to, but when it finally sinks in, you scowl so deeply you’re sure it’ll be etched into your face permanently. Then you start banging on the pod’s glass. “Hey, you bitch, why don’t you say that out here in the open and not when you’re sealed into this stupid fucking pod!”

Seungcheol sticks his tongue out at you, baiting you into an even more obscenity-fueled rant that has you forgetting the terrified young man standing beside you. When you remember Lee Chan is there, you abort your tirade to offer him a saccharine-sweet smile, your clenched fist poised uselessly in the air. “It’s a very, very long story,” you say in lieu of an apology.

Despite your bone-deep exhaustion, you find yourself unable to sleep.

Every time you close your eyes, you’re transported back to that room with the blood-splattered floors and dingy overhead lights, the crowd packed together so tight it’s impossible to breathe. Back pressed to the wall, as if it could absorb you and transport you out of there, you’re forced to watch over and over as Wonwoo fights for his life; as he wields his body like a weapon and deals blow after violent blow. When you crack open your eyes, the stink of sweat and copper still linger. It doesn’t help the nausea that’s settled in your stomach.

You throw on a robe and slip out of your cabin. Maybe a walk around the ship will help. Or maybe you could make use of the training room, expel some of the pent-up rage you’re bowing under. But you shake your head. Even pummeling an imaginary enemy feels inappropriate after what you saw, so if you get really desperate you’ll go find some of that tea Jun is always talking about.

A handful of laps around the ship still finds you in a state, so that’s what you intend to do, tired of hearing Seungcheol’s blissful snoring every time you pass his cabin—but then you come to a crossroads. If you go straight, you’ll stay on course and reach the small kitchen where Jun keeps the tea. Going left will take you back to your bunk. But if you go right…

Right will take you to the brig.

Your feet move before you can overthink it, quiet as they pad down the long corridor as if you’re doing something wrong. Sneaking around. Going somewhere you aren’t allowed to be.

Nerves grip you tighter the closer you get. You’re surprised to find that you’re trembling. You try reminding yourself that it’s Wonwoo, it’s just Wonwoo, but you’re loath to admit you don’t really know what that means anymore. Dredelea changed him—that much is obvious—and none of you will know the extent of it until you’re back on Ithea, but you have to believe the Wonwoo you know is still in there somewhere. You have to believe that the Wonwoo you know had so much light in him that not even Dredelea’s darkness could blot it all out.

So you press your palm to the door and ready yourself as it scans. Junhui will get an alert that you’ve done so, and it shouldn’t bring you a scrap of comfort that he’ll know where you are if something goes wrong. You take a deep breath. It’s Wonwoo. You take another. It’s Wonwoo. It’s Wonwoo it’s Wonwoo it’s Wonwoo it’s—

The door slides open.

Lee Chan is the first thing you see. He’s asleep in the first cell, breathing softly. His cheek glows faintly blue where you’d applied the medi-gel and you can’t help but smile. Jeonghan will probably have some very choice words for you over this, but you don’t care. Not when he looks so at peace. Not when this is probably the soundest and safest he’s slept in ages. Maybe ever. Not when you know you did the right thing. You can’t imagine how much worse the nightmares would be if you’d left him behind.

You keep moving.

Wonwoo is in the last cell. It’s the largest one; has the most comfortable cot. Seungcheol had chosen that one specifically to assuage the guilt he felt over having to lock Wonwoo away at all. Funny that he’d felt it necessary to lecture you, giving you that spiel about it being for the best, yet he’s the one who hesitated. But he didn’t see what you saw, only hearing secondhand fragments as the two of you sat at the negotiating table. Threatening to decimate an entire planet seemed to give him a good enough idea of how bad it’d been, though.

Unlike Lee Chan, Wonwoo is not sleeping. He’s sitting in the middle of his cot, knees tucked to his chest. When your shadow falls over him, he looks up, but there’s nothing beyond that. No flicker of recognition. No change in expression. You might as well not be standing in front of him at all, and that stings a bit, just for a second, before you remind yourself your brief stint on Dredelea is nothing compared to Wonwoo’s.

So, undeterred, you take a seat on the floor and suck a breath through your teeth at the cold that seeps through your thin robe, your back against the wall. You don’t say anything. Knowing Wonwoo is safe—being able to see him—is enough for now. Whatever the two of you need to say to one another can wait.

But it seems the man across from you has other ideas. “Why are you here?” he asks. His voice is hoarse from lack of use.

“I wasn’t aware it was a crime to sit on the floor.”

Wonwoo’s jaw tenses, not amused by your answer. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I wasn’t aware it was a crime to sit on the floor in the middle of the night,” you amend.

He scoffs, muttering something beneath his breath that sounds a lot like he’s accusing you of being impossible. You let it slide. Much like Joshua, you can always count on Wonwoo to take the bait. As much as he doesn’t seem the type, Wonwoo loves a good back-and-forth as much as the next guy, eyes lighting up whether he’s watching or participating, but this doesn’t feel like the right setting for it. Sitting across from him while he’s in a cell, only hours removed from being held prisoner by a hostile planet… There’s no fun in that.

Minutes pass as words escape both of you. All you can hear is the thrum of the ship and Lee Chan’s easy breaths. Your eyelids begin to grow heavy as you listen. In, out; in, out—as measured as a pendulum. You can’t be sure if you fall asleep. It feels like you do. Feels like you dive in and out of consciousness, here one second and gone the next. Through it all, Wonwoo remains unmoving, either content to watch over you or indifferent to your doing the same. And then, just as you jerk awake for what feels like the hundredth time, he speaks again.

“I’m different now, you know.” You rub at your eyes. Obviously, you want to retort; who wouldn’t be? But Wonwoo keeps going. “I don’t—I don’t think I feel human anymore. Just a husk. It’s like… it’s like I know how I should be, on some intrinsic level, like my body remembers how to be human, but there’s nothing there when I reach for it.”

Sleep still has its claws in you, and you’re unsure if your words even make sense, drowsiness making a slurry out of them, but you remind him, “A terrible thing was done to you. You need time to decompress. You need time to heal.”

A choked sound of frustration. “And if I can’t?” he snaps, grabbing at his hair. “If all of this is permanent and I’m stuck like this forever?”

“You think you’re beyond repair? You think they made you into something irredeemable?”

“They did,” he insists. “You didn’t see what I had to see or hear what I had to hear. They didn’t force you to do what I was forced to do. I’m sure you were safe and sound on Ithea, living in fucking luxury while I was made to live in filth! You didn’t have to sell your soul in order to survive, kill off every good part of you that tried to persist, because you weren’t there!”

Wonwoo’s sneering accusation makes you recoil, shocking you with just how much resentment and bitterness is in his tone. He’s always been good at this, too: knowing exactly which bruise to press on; which one would hurt you the most. You had hoped the guilt you felt would abate once he was rescued. It had, for a little while. At his words, though, it’s sucked back out to sea, swelling, before it comes crashing down on you like a tsunami.

“That’s not fair.” Your words shudder under the weight of your grief.

He throws his head back as he laughs. “Not fair? You want to talk about not fair—”

But it’s not your fault. You didn’t do this to him. You didn’t hold him hostage and barter with his life. You didn’t harm him. You didn’t savagely extract every ounce of humanity left in him until he was left disfigured and bestial. You would neverdo any of this to him, because it was you that showed up. It was you he saw after he stood, battered and bloody, over the unconscious form of another innocent body. It was you that risked your life to bring him home.

“No, I want to talk about you,” you snap, trying desperately to keep quiet. “What was I supposed to do, Wonwoo? You seem to have spent a lot of time thinking this over, so come on, tell me what you would’ve had me do. Because I spent weeks learning how to get you out of there safely and not fuck it up. My brother is the goddamn High Council and you were the priority, so you know what? You’re right. I should’ve gone in there guns blazing and ripped them all limb by limb like I wanted to and risked all-out war in the process.” Chest heaving, you ignore Wonwoo’s stunned expression and add, “I risked my life for you. They used me as a pawn because they decided my brother’s life is worth more than mine, and I let them do it because it meant getting you home.” Your voice cracks. “All of it was for you, you fucking bastard.”

“I’m—”

“Save it,” you say, putting a stop to an apology you don’t want and he won’t mean. “I’m going back to my cabin. Seungcheol will come by in the morning with breakfast.”

Wonwoo doesn’t say anything as you stand. Whatever exhaustion had settled before has been replaced with a wearied, resigned heartache. You take a step towards the door. Another. Just as you’re about to disappear from sight altogether, you say quietly, “I’m not your enemy, Wonwoo, and if you can’t see that…” Then maybe you’re right about what they turned you into.

You don’t say it aloud but the blow lands anyway. It hangs in the air, unresolved, as you slip out the door.

Your convoy reaches Ithea’s orbit by late afternoon the next day.

You wait for relief that never comes. Instead, all you feel is dread every time Junhui provides an update on the ETA. T-minus twenty minutes to landing and you’re replaying the previous night’s events over and over, leaving you wondering if you’d widened a chasm that could now never be bridged.

Ten minutes and you’re still in your bunk with sweat-slick palms and an erratic heartbeat you can’t get to settle.

Thirty seconds and you’re contemplating hanging your head over the toilet, sick from nerves and the inescapable sense that none of this feels right. You should be happier. You should be more bitter. You should be celebrating a job well done while simultaneously spitting at the feet of your parents and anyone else that ever made you feel second class; like The Spare.

You should feel something.

You escort Lee Chan off the ship first, the two of you talking in hushed whispers as you make your way down the corridor. After your stint on Dredelea—even if it had been brief—the fluorescent lights are nearly blinding as they reflect off the titanium walls. Your companion is affected, too; not only by the intensity, but the modernism of everything he sees. He stumbles as he looks around in amazement, and that’s how Jeonghan finds the pair of you, looking regal and larger-than-life as he stands in the mouth of the passageway, bathed in silver light.

Up close, though, he also looks worn. The dark circles beneath his eyes tell you this hasn’t been easy for him, either—that he probably hadn’t slept a minute since you departed. But he’s clearly also confused, looking at you and then Lee Chan before his attention turns back to you, head tilted in question.

Still, he’s ever the diplomat, crushing you in a tight embrace before you can explain the stranger lingering awkwardly beside you. “Sister,” he breathes, feeling all the relief you were supposed to. “You have returned to us unharmed.”

But he’s also your brother, so you make a sound of disgust and try to wriggle out of his grasp. “Ugh, gross, get off of me,” you huff, irritation flaring as he does no such thing. “Gods above, isn’t this a little dramatic? You’re acting like I was gone for years.”

Reluctant, Jeonghan eventually releases you and pulls away, offering up an obsequious smile in exchange. “It certainly felt that way.” He returns his attention to Lee Chan. “And who is this?”

“Wonwoo,” you deadpan, feigning regret. “Dredelea got him with the shrink ray. Everything happened so fast; there was nothing I could do.” Jeonghan simply stares at you while Lee Chan protests your jab at his height with a meek hey! “He’s… a friend,” you decide, hoping it’s enough to convince your brother.

Seungcheol’s voice then comes echoing down the corridor. Wonwoo will be with him, you know, and Jeonghan must notice the shift in your demeanor because he asks, “Are you—”

“I’ll fill you in later, okay? I’m just so exhausted, and I should be a good host and show our guest to his lodgings.”

Your brother’s brows pinch. “To his lodg—what the fuck are you even saying? What happened?”

But you’re gone before he can get the words out, tail tucked between your legs like a coward. You don’t want to see Wonwoo right now. You can’t. You can’t look at Wonwoo and remember the vitriol in the words living in fucking luxury; the bottomless grief in you weren’t there. Maybe it isn’t fair that, out of everything, this is what you feel. Isn’t fair to hold these things against him. He's a wounded animal stuck in a claw trap, lashing out at whatever—whoever—is within reach, suffering under the delusion that causing pain will ease his own.

It doesn’t. It won’t.

You show Lee Chan to a vacant room and help him get settled. Draw a crude map of whatever you think he might need or want even though he insists he’s perfectly fine, that he’s survived this long with much less. What a grim way to live, your privilege whispers: a stark reminder that even The Spare had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

He and Wonwoo are two sides of a similar coin. They’re both scarred; both in need of grace and patience.

And because you, too, are currently misshapen, you promise yourself all of this is temporary; that you’ll give both of them the grace and patience they deserve. You’ll put enough space between you and Wonwoo to put yourself back together again, and once you’ve been righted, once the blemishes fade and the things he’d said to you don’t hurt anymore, you’ll try to fix what’s been broken.

Maybe you can turn the jagged edges into gold. A kintsugi relationship.

But if space and time to decompress is what you want, it’s not what you get.

You’re summoned to the Council in the morning. Nominally awake and barely showered, stomach grumbling in discontent all the while, you shake off Seungcheol’s escort and try to prepare yourself for what’s to come. On the surface, there’s nothing to report: you did what was asked of you, and you’d been successful at it. Ithea wasn’t responsible for any of the blood that’d been spilled. No one was threatening interstellar war. And while there’s a lot of healing to be done, Wonwoo returned to Ithea safely. He’s alive.

Below the surface, however…

You have questions of your own that need answers. Real, honest answers. Not answers with the artful evasion and word salad politicians are so adept at giving. What you saw can’t be brushed aside. The Dredelea you saw was not the Dredelea sold to you, not the Dredelea in Ithea’s history books, and you need to ascertain how much they know and how long they’ve known it. Because putting a higher value on your brother’s life is one thing—as much as you resent it, he is the High Council—but using you as his proxy while knowing exactly what you’d encounter? Knowing they were sending you in blind?

You take your seat. In front of you sits Ithea’s Council: your brother in the center and the six members of the Elder Council beside him, three on each side, and finally the ten members of the Governance Council. They’re the only democratically-elected officials other than your brother, and therefore the only other people before you that you respect.

Elder Council Adia leans forward to adjust her microphone. She’s a rigid, no-nonsense woman, whose clear and outspoken dislike of your father (and so, by extension, you and Jeonghan as well) has always made her a wildcard. She clears her throat. “Before we begin, the Council recognizes there may be conflicts of interest here, seeing as this is the sister of High Council Yoon and daughter of former High Council Yoon. Therefore, it is my suggestion that their allowed presence be taken to vote.”

Careful not to let anyone see, Jeonghan rolls his eyes. Posturing, he mouths to you, but you’re not fussed either way. No matter who’s allowed in the room, you’ll be demanding answers for what you saw. You’ll be demanding justice for Wonwoo, who should be sitting here alongside you.

“I would like to state for the record that I don’t give a shit who is and isn’t present. It makes no difference to me, but—”

You’re pinned by a severe look. “Such language is unacceptable in Council chambers, Miss Yoon.”

You blink, unfazed. “Thanks, but I wasn’t finished, Elder Council Lukesh.” Jeonghan rolls his lips to keep from laughing while the entire Elder Council goes red with fury. “As I was saying, it makes no difference to me who is and isn’t present, but I do find it suspicious to question me without Jeon Wonwoo present.”

“Speak plainly, Miss Yoon.”

The nerve of these people. “We speak the same language, do we not? But fine, I’ll rephrase: you’re not getting shit out of me unless Jeon Wonwoo is also summoned.”

A panicked murmur goes through the Council. They share confused looks, clearly thrown by your departure from and disregard for standard procedure, but you stand your ground. They should be forced to see his battered body; forced to bear witness to what he had to endure. They need to see the extent of his trauma, see how wrong he is, and maybe those who didn’t know him before won’t see it, but your father—who’s nearly foaming at the mouth at your performance thus far—will know.

“You insolent child,” he rages. “I don’t care if you’re my daughter, you should be—”

“Oh, pipe down, old man,” you fire back, scowling. “I’ve had about enough of you.”

“Miss Yoon—”

“I’ve stated my terms. If you want my account of events, summon Jeon Wonwoo. Seems pretty simple to me.”

“It is not—”

“You cannot make demands of us. Who do you think you are?”

Before the room can devolve into further chaos, your brother stands. Immediately the Council goes silent. Jeonghan is well-respected, and the Council—not including Elder Council Adia—holds him in high regard, but they’re also terrified of the power he holds. “I think she is my sister,” Jeonghan says plainly, “and I suggest you agree to her terms on the off-chance you all enjoy your positions and wish to keep them.”

“You cannot—”

Jeonghan turns, now face-to-face with your father. “Elder Council Yoon, I will not repeat myself on the importance of the suggestion you’ve been given, but I will remind you that your role, as well as the role of the entireElder Council, is merely titular in nature. You are here only as proof of my goodwill and adherence to tradition and thus hold no power.” Ignoring the stunned expressions everyone adopts, he speaks to Seungcheol. “Commander Choi, please see if Jeon Wonwoo is both available and willing to meet with us.”

He is.

Even if it had been well-intentioned, you were a fool to think you could—and that you wanted to—put distance between you and Wonwoo. A mere glimpse of him has your heart racing, as if it’s liable at any minute to leap out of your chest and seek refuge in him. Gods, you’re pathetic! Weak! The scene you caused here today is bound to be discussed for decades, passed down from generation to generation until you’re turned from a mere nuisance into a mythical legend, yet here you are, reduced to such a pitiful state over a man.

Wonwoo is offered the seat next to you, which he takes without complaint. Determined not to look at him, you stare straight ahead, very aware that this gives you a perfect, unobstructed view of the shit-eating grin your brother is wearing. Get it together, you scold yourself, refusing to come unglued. Not after you impersonated your brother on a hostile planet, played them like a fiddle, and lived to tell the tale, and not over this.

Jeonghan calls the meeting back into session, Elder Council Adia’s now-forgotten suggestion of a vote never coming to fruition. “Are the conditions and present parties now to your satisfaction?” You nod. “Great, then the hearing shall commence. Keeper Nozac, please note the current time for the record. Also for the record, I must ask both of you to state your names.”

You do. Wonwoo does the same.

“Thank you. Now, for those unaware—which shouldn’t be any of you—a ship piloted by Jeon Wonwoo departed for Atis five months ago and lost contact with Ithean transmitters shortly after. After three days of silence, we reached out to Atis who confirmed Jeon Wonwoo’s ship never arrived or made contact. At this time, the Council enlisted the help of Marshal Wen who after eight weeks tracked the missing ship to Dredelea. Upon this discovery, I repeatedly attempted to reach out to High Emperor Zelos personally to arrange Jeon Wonwoo’s return. Those attempts were either ignored or, as is Council record, set on fire and sent back. Are there any objections to the timeline and summary of events as stated so far?” No one says anything. “Noted. Taking into account both Dredelea’s reputation for hostility and antagonism and the clear fact that this had turned into a hostage situation, the Council felt a retrieval mission was both necessary and imperative. Given the Interstellar Treatises state a planet’s highest-ranking official must be present for hostage negotiations, the Council was thus faced with a unique challenge—”

You make a buzzer sound. “Can I object to that?”

“You may,” Jeonghan answers, correcting your wording like a pedantic schoolteacher. “Please state your objection for the record.”

“I don’t have a speech planned out or anything, I just object.”

Jeonghan pushes. “Please elaborate. The Council requires a detailed record of any objection made.”

You feel the weight of everyone’s curiosity, wondering what you’re going to say next. The weight of their eyes on you hangs around your neck like a millstone. “Fine. I simply must object to the notion that you were presented with a challenge at all, let alone a unique one,” you say, meeting their stares head-on. “I think it’s clear to everyone that I’ve won myself no favors with the Council. I certainly haven’t won any alliances. But what’s also become clear over the last few weeks is that you need me. That’s the real challenge. The decision to use me as collateral to ensure the safety of High Council Yoon was, I imagine, as easy as it was convenient.”

“Miss Yoon, are you accusing the Council of some sort of impropriety?”

“No, no,” you answer, flashing them a dazzling, award-winning smile as you sit back in your chair, “I’m accusing you all of being cowards.”

The room erupts into chaotic protest once again. They attack your character and question your audacity. They recite your list of offenses in an attempt to discredit you. You think your father openly disowns you, but you can’t be sure over the volume of their indignant, squawking objections.

Jeonghan even has the nerve to look betrayed. He’s allowed to feel that way, of course, but the indisputable fact remains that no one benefitted more from this solution than him. “That’s truly how you feel?” The indisputable fact remains that the plan wouldn’t have gone ahead if he hadn’t agreed to it.

“I wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t, but allow me, for the sake of clarification, to ask you a question: Ithea has never before gone against or attempted to circumvent the Interstellar Treatises, correct?” Your brother nods, and you tense as you feel Wonwoo straighten beside you. “Do you not agree, then, that the timing of this technicality was awfully convenient?”

Elder Council Lukesh pinches the bridge of his nose. “Miss Yoon, we are not the ones on trial here.”

“Neither am I,” you respond tartly, “so let me lay another accusation at the feet of the Council since there are no laws forbidding it: you sent me to Dredelea in place of High Council Yoon because you knew exactly what was at stake and how dangerous it was. You knew damn well what the risks were and agreed to them without question because the life you were gambling with wasn’t yours. That’s what makes you all cowards.”

You startle when Wonwoo places a hand on your knee. You’re almost moved to tears by how gentle it is, how softly he says your name—that he still has the capacity for tenderness after what he’d endured. You whet your lips. What’s the point of this charade? The same people who dole out injustices can’t bring you clarity. They can’t forgive your transgressions when they’ve earned the blood on their own hands.

Wonwoo clears his throat, clearly trying to project a confidence he doesn’t feel. “If I may: I can’t speak to, uh—to what has already been said, but I can speak to the conditions on Dredelea and the bravery it would’ve required to do what Miss Yoon did.”

“I think the Council would find a factual recounting of your experience very helpful,” Jeonghan answers.

You shoot your brother a look before turning to the man beside you. “You don’t have to,” you tell Wonwoo. “I know I made them call you here, but if it’ll be too painful—”

“It’s okay,” he quietly reassures you. “They should know the situation they put you in.” Then, louder: “The timeline presented by High Council Yoon is accurate. I can’t say for certain what happened to my ship, but I needed to make an emergency landing on the closest planet. Unfortunately for me, that happened to be Dredelea.” He pauses, inhaling deeply. “As I’m sure you all know, Dredelea’s terrain is not optimal and my ship suffered further damage upon landing. Even if I’d landed elsewhere, there was little hope of repairing it without the assistance of very skilled and technologically-advanced mechanics. Even by my most generous estimates, it would’ve taken months.”

“And the Dredeleans took you hostage?” Elder Council Adia butts in.

Wonwoo’s eyes narrow. “Elder Council Adia, I’m getting to that, if I may. I was surrounded within seconds of landing and, yes, restrained and taken before High Emperor Zelos, who told me they could repair my ship—for a fee. I told them if it was a matter of currency, Ithea would likely pay the cost without question, but it became clear very quickly that’s not what they had in mind.

“It started with labor. Dredelea, as you know, is very barren and largely covered in moss and other types of bryophytes. It’s too moist, and the mosses remove too much nitrogen from the soil, which is not ideal for farming… well, much of anything. Not to mention the planet’s lack of natural light. It’s far too dark for anything to grow.” He clears his throat again. “Anyway, it started with labor. All of their food is genetically modified so they have an extensive system of underground greenhouses.”

“Underground?”

Wonwoo nods. “Most of their civilization is underground, sir. Not much can thrive on the surface.”

“Was the Council aware of this?” Jeonghan asks, looking from member to member. Naturally, they all shake their heads. Your brother’s jaw clenches. “Please continue.”

“The greenhouses require a lot of labor—more than Dredelea is able to provide through its own people—so any outsiders are immediately sent and stay there unless they find a better use for them.” Another murmur goes through the Council. “Um. Lee Chan, the young man Miss Yoon brought back with us… I first met him there. He’d been brought to Dredelea as a very young child with his mother and was forced to work in the greenhouses as soon as he was able.”

A member of the Governing Council leans closer to her mic. “You mentioned better uses. Can you elaborate on that, please?”

It’s obvious the question makes Wonwoo uncomfortable. He shifts in his chair. Wrings his hands together and wipes them on his thighs. Picks at the skin around his cuticles. “Those prone to violence and ruthlessness are taken into the High Emperor’s inner circle. They’re still trying to rebuild the Dredelean military since its war with Emorix.”

“That was nearly two decades ago.”

“They do not have the resources to sustain a population, let alone a defense force. Anyone who is scientifically-minded is also removed from labor, but I cannot say where they go.”

“And you? Where did you go?”

“The Pit.”

Desperate civilizations resort to desperate measures, Wonwoo explains, and Dredelea realized it could capitalize on the galaxy’s morbid curiosity and penchant for bloodshed by hosting fights. Charge a spectator fee, charge an entry fee, charge a clean-up fee. Gambling is not only permitted but encouraged. Winner takes all.

“What was the nature of these… fights?”

“Last man standing, so to speak,” Wonwoo answers dryly. “You kept fighting until you couldn’t anymore, however that came to be.”

“Are you saying these fights were a matter of life or death?”

“Yes, on occasion.” Every face twists in horror, including your own. “You have to understand these events not only brought in a lot of resources for Dredelea, but cost a lot of resources for the planets that chose to buy-in and participate. They have no use for a subpar fighter, especially one that just cost them thousands of coins. If a fighter wasn’t able to immediately pay off the debt incurred from their loss, well…”

“They were killed?”

Wonwoo readjusts in his seat again. “Let’s just say it’s both more preferable and more honorable to die during a fight than after, but if it did get that far… yes.”

“Gods above.”

“Fights were hosted as often as possible. I’d estimate I had been there about three weeks when I was thrown into The Pit. They told me any winnings would go toward repairing my ship, as they had no desire for conflict with Ithea. A lie, obviously, since I know now they had ignored your attempts at correspondence.”

“I’m sorry to ask,” your brother interjects, “but can you describe your living conditions while you were there?”

“Calling them living conditions is generous. I was provided a small cell, perhaps 28 square feet in size. Sometimes I’d have to share it and one of us would have to sleep on the ground. I was given one small meal per day, but was allowed two larger meals the day before and morning of days I was expected to fight. I could not say what the meals consisted of. It wasn’t anything I’d ever eaten before. Um—the medical capabilities on Dredelea are severely limited. They do have a medical bay, so to speak, but it’s mostly a small room stocked with decades-old supplies. They do not have a designated medic or doctor.”

“What happened to those injured during these fights?”

“Whatever couldn’t be healed by expired medi-gel was between them and the gods.”

“They were left to die in their cells?”

Finally having had enough, you place an arm across Wonwoo’s chest to prevent him from saying anything further. “Elder Council Isaia, I think Jeon Wonwoo has made the conditions on Dredelea abundantly clear.”

“Miss Yoon, you demanded he be summoned here—”

“Yes, and I think you’ve heard enough. What purpose does it serve to siphon every ounce of trauma from him that you can?”

“It gives us insight into the true conditions on Dredelea.”

“And what do you plan to do with said insight, once you’ve decided you’ve gotten a sufficient amount of it?” No one answers. Not the Governing Council, not the Elder Council, and not your brother. Even your father looks around uncomfortably. “It’s obvious to everyone here that the conditions on Dredelea are not what anyone anticipated them to be, unless you did, but that’s an accusation for another time. For now, let him be. If it’ll suffice, I can testify as to what I saw, seeing as such a fight was taking place the day Commander Choi and I landed on Dredelea.”

Your brother turns to Seungcheol. “You will be able to verify what she says is true?”

“Of course.”

“Then, as High Council, I am satisfied with this offer. Please continue.”

“As Commander Choi wrote in his official statement, I had called High Emperor Zelos’s bluff and prepared to return to our ship without Wonwoo when they offered to let us see him. Upon agreeing, they showed us through a labyrinth of underground passageways that eventually led to a large cavern they referred to as The Pit.” You try to focus on anything other than your hands, which have begun to shake. “The first thing I noticed was the smell. Even from the second we descended underground, it was there, only getting worse the deeper we went. It was barely noticeable at first—mostly smelled like the woodrot on the surface—but the closer we got to The Pit, the more viscous it became until it overwhelmed you entirely with the stench of stale sweat and old blood and gods know what else. You could taste it. The only way I can describe it is to say it smelled like death. Certain, unimaginable death.

“Zelos only granted me permission to enter the cavern. If you’ve read about it, I imagine it’s what the Colosseum would’ve been like in Ancient Rome. Those people in there were rabid, only satisfied by violence. I could not hear myself think over the sound of their screaming. Initially I assumed Zelos had brought me there to show me what Dredelea was capable of, what got their rocks off; to remind me how and why they got their reputation. And then I saw Wonwoo in the cage.”

You tell them what you’re able to remember. The cognitive dissonance of seeing Wonwoo yet refusing to believe it was him. How you already knew his story just from looking at his mottled skin—which bruises were old and which were new; the rust-colored blood that stained his knuckles and his nose and the corners of his mouth. All the wounds that’d need stitching and the ones that were trying to heal over. How broken and battered his body was. How broken and battered he was, because the Wonwoo you knew, the Wonwoo that had left you that morning five months ago—

“It seems inconceivable that, however long I live, I will ever see anything as awful as that.”

“What happened after that?”

“Once the fight was over, Wonwoo collapsed and was carried out of the cage by two men. Zelos escorted Commander Choi and I to an interrogation room and they brought in Wonwoo’s unconscious body shortly after.” Breathe, you remind yourself. “High Emperor Zelos seemed to realize they had lost their bargaining chip. They tried to revisit our initial offer.”

“Which you revoked, I’m assuming.”

You look at your brother like he’s stupid. “What do you take me for? Of course I revoked it. I didn’t sit through weeks of tutoring sessions in diplomacy and intergalactic negotiating just to come out of them an idiot. I told him—very politely, and Commander Choi can vouch for me on this—that, in exchange for Jeon Wonwoo, I would not personally see to the brutal and swift execution of each of their worthless bloodhounds.”

“You didn’t,” Jeonghan pleads, heaving a long-suffering sigh. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“I did, and I’d do it again.”

“Any other threats you lodged that I should be made aware of?”

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” you reply, adopting an air of innocence. “That seemed to be convincing enough. Wonwoo was then escorted to our ship for departure. Lee Chan was amongst the group of men that did so, and as I was about to board, he asked if I could take him with us, too.”

Your father cuts in. “You willingly allowed a citizen of a hostile planet to board—”

“Prisoner,” you correct, “and yes I did, after confirming with him what his role had been on Dredelea and determining that High Emperor Zelos would not deem him worthy enough to risk waging war with Ithea to return.”

“That was not a decision you had the authority to make.”

“Gods above,” you cry out, trying with all the self-restraint you possess to not walk up to your father and throttle him. “Have you forgotten the entire purpose of this? I wasn’t me, I was him,” you say, pointing to your brother, “and that was a decision he had the authority to make.”

“And it’s one he would not have,” your father snaps, sneering at you all the while, reminding you just how little he thinks of you, “because he’s smart. Because he knows better than to put the safety of Ithea at risk by acting childishly and impulsively—”

“If that’s what you believe then I fear you do not know your son at all.”

“Do not tell me—”

“Oh, I’m gonna tell you lots of things,” you spit. You roll your neck to the side and crack your knuckles, Jeonghan and Wonwoo immediately sitting up straighter as you do so. “Your son would never allow anyone to suffer or wallow in despair if he could prevent it. He would never leave behind or abandon anyone in need of escape. He would move every star in the galaxy if it meant an Ithean returned home safely—because he is ten times the leader and man you are. Because he isn’t paralyzed by fear and his own lack of power. Because he sees the worth in helping those who are unable to help themselves and is smart enough to see the errors in your ways.” Beneath the table, Wonwoo’s hand finds yours. “I accused you all of being cowards, but maybe the only coward here is you, Father. Because the isolationism that defined your time as High Council is cowardice. Your blatant favoritism between your children is cowardice. The power you pretend to wield as you sit up there on your make-pretend Council is cowardice. You desperately need to believe that High Council Yoon would’ve left Lee Chan behind because it’s what you would’ve done, and you cannot allow yourself to believe what we all know is true.

“What I also saw on Dredelea is inequality. I saw a civilization that has been crippled by more prosperous planets turning the other cheek and ignoring their plight for decades. I saw its civilians dressed in tattered clothes and forced to live in rotting infrastructure. I saw a planet that cannot sustain their civilization because leaders like you decided they were worth losing to time; leaders who never once stopped to ask themselves if their hostility and circumstances were inherent or the result of diplomacy they constructed. You were content to let Ithea flourish at the expense of others, and what is that if not cowardice?”

Lee Chan has been granted asylum on Ithea.

He tells you as much over breakfast. Four days have passed since you were called before the Council, and you haven’t seen much of anyone since then. Your brother and Seungcheol have been in locked-door meetings from morning to night that Joshua refuses to speak about. When you seek him out and ask if he knows anything, Soonyoung shakes his head. You can’t even bribe him because there’s no information to buy.

No one has seen Wonwoo, either. When the medics aren’t working to deprogram him, he keeps himself locked away in his room. After your shared experience in front of the Council, you thought—hoped—he’d come see you, maybe apologize for what he’d said on the ship. But you haven’t seen or heard from him at all, and trying to keep the disappointment at bay is eating at you, because you don’t know. You don’t know if he’s just not ready or simply doesn’t want to. You don’t know if it’s just something you have to wait out or if he intends for this distance to be permanent. You don’t even know why he held your hand, if it was only meant to comfort you or if it meant there was still something deeper there.

“I can’ believe you jush give thish shtuff away,” Lee Chan says, cheeks bulging around an offensively large bite of food. “Ish sho good.”

“Speaking with your mouth full is a serious crime on this planet, Lee Chan,” you lie, jabbing your own fork in his direction. “Did they get you signed up for tutoring?”

“Yeah, four days a week,” he grumbles. “They’re still not really sure what to do with me, so I have to take lessons in everything.” You pat his arm in sympathy. Been there. “And why do you always call me by my full name? You can just call me Chan, you know.”

“Be quiet and eat your pancakes, Lee Chan.”

He mockingly salutes you. “Whatever you say, High Council. Why’d you have to do that whole thing anyway? With the Council. Is that an Ithean thing?”

“Mission debrief,” you answer, not meeting his eye. “Pretty standard. Everyone has to do it.”

What you don’t say: yours was less mission debrief and more trial by fire. What you don’t say: on top of all the old ones, you now have new suspicions that the Council had always known more than they’d originally let on and your summons had been to investigate how much knowledge you now possessed. What you don’t say: you can’t figure out why or what they’re trying to hide, but none of this is standard.

Lee Chan, however, is none the wiser. “Are you gonna try talking to Wonwoo today?”

“Jeon Wonwoo has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t wish to speak to me right now. I think forcing it would only make it worse.”

“Eh, you’re probably right,” Lee Chan concedes, effectively ending the conversation when he shovels another large bite into his mouth and promptly chokes from the size of it.

Three more days pass.

When dusk rolls around and everything else goes quiet, you allow yourself a precarious amount of hope that Wonwoo will show up and knock at your door. You imagine him taking your face in his rough, calloused hands; envision the depths of the galaxies you’d see in his eyes, unable to look away, unable to free yourself from the gravitational pull.

And every time he doesn’t, you fall asleep and dream about the night before he left.

How he’d shown up under the cover of nightfall. How he stood on the other side of your door and greeted you with a lopsided grin, smirking out of the corner of his mouth as he leaned against the doorframe. How he’d said your name with a reverence you wish you’d recognized at the time. How you could tell why he was there and granted him entry anyway, uncaring of the consequences.

In your dreams, he touches you the same way, his heedfulness undercut by years of longing. In your dreams, he still makes you just as dizzy as he undresses you and hovers above you. You can still feel the trail of kisses he left from your lips to your neck to your ribs. You can still feel the infinitesimal space between your fingers and his as he entwined them. The punch of breath that left you as he pushed inside and the two of you moved together in an inevitable rhythm written long ago. His panting breath against the crook of your neck once it was over and the goosebumps they left behind when he told you he loved you. The sincerity etched onto his features as he pulled back and told you he wanted to make this something real once he was back, as if everything that’d come before was meant to brand promises into your skin.

Except in these dreams, he doesn’t wrap you in his arms as he falls asleep, sneaking out in the morning to make his call time. In these dreams, your bed goes cold as he redresses and heads for the door. As he leaves, you hear, you didn’t have to sell your soul in order to survive. You hear, you didn’t have to kill off every good part of you that tried to persist. You hear, you weren’t there.

A week of this. You’ve grown accustomed to waking up in a cold sweat.

And, frankly, you’re sick of it. Wonwoo clearly isn’t coming to fulfill your silly little daydreams, so there’s no point in waiting around. No point in letting the unexpelled energy keep thrumming beneath your skin, turning your nerves into livewires.

But that ancient saying continues to ring true, apparently: speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Because as soon as the doors to the training room whirr open, there’s Wonwoo. He stands with his back to you—shirt soaked through with sweat and sticking to his skin—as he throws jab after jab at a punching bag. Every strike makes the suspension chain rattle. You wince, recalling the sound of the rattling cage back on Dredelea, but it only seems to spur on Wonwoo. He sets his feet differently to get more power behind each punch and they become stronger, more precise. One blow where someone’s liver would be.

“Are you gonna stand there staring”—Wonwoo grunts as he lands another one to the side of the head—“or are you gonna suit up?”

An incredulous laugh spills out of you. “Suit up for what? You think this is the best way to work out our problems?”

Another shot to the ribs. “We don’t have problems.”

Out of view, you roll your eyes and head for the lockers lining the wall. Leave it to Wonwoo to also live in a fantasy world. “Sure, yeah,” you agree sarcastically, yanking open the locker that belongs to you. “Everything’s great over here.”

Wonwoo says nothing. At least you were granted the opportunity to pretend you weren’t going to immediately cave and give him whatever he wanted, but if this is how he wants to settle things, fine. You set about wrapping your hands, making sure to double the tape around your knuckles. You flex, pleased with how stiff the tape is. Stable. You won’t have to worry about it coming loose when you’re trying to knock Wonwoo into next week as retribution for what he’s put you through.

Also as retribution, you peel your shirt over your head, leaving you only in a skin-tight sports bra. Wonwoo curses under his breath he stumbles, badly missing whatever he’d been aiming for. When you dare to steal a glance at him, he’s already staring daggers, tongue pressed into the fat of his cheek. This is exactly how he looked back in the cage, you recall, ashamed by the jolt of excitement that licks up your spine. You shouldn’t want that version of Wonwoo—the one that’s calculated, predatory, determined to earn the blood he spills—but something primal within you surges at the opportunity to face it in a controlled environment.

“See something you like?” you taunt, tightening and retying the drawstring of your shorts. “You seem distracted.”

He slams a knee into the bag. It nearly splits from the impact. “Mm, you think I didn’t fantasize about you every single day I was gone?” You raise a brow, breath catching at the admission that falls so easily from his lips. “You're gonna have to try harder than that to distract me.”

A clear challenge. You step into his orbit, the spring floor beneath you absorbing the weight of each step. Wonwoo meets your eye, his impenetrable gaze locked on yours as he lands another punch. “Careful,” you tease, “or you’re not gonna have anything left for me.”

“Impossible,” he growls.

“Prove it, then.”

At your taunt, Wonwoo abandons the punching bag without a care. He wears halos into the mat as he circles you, stalking you like a beast does with prey. Like a black widow weaving a web with endless patience, knowing the conclusion is foregone. Unbidden, a grin appears on your face. The way Wonwoo looks at you has electricity sparking across your skin. Every inch of you is aflame, and you feel alive for the first time in months. You feel like you can take on anything: the memories you’re trying to bury, the expectations placed on you because of your name, the Council, the entire universe.

Wonwoo.

He takes a step forward, seeing if you’ll react. You don’t, knowing the dangers of being in his reach, so he continues to circle you. Continues sizing you up, taunting you to make the first move and misstep. But while his time on Dredelea might’ve forged him into a more formidable opponent, this is what you spent your misplaced youth doing. Here and now, the roles are reversed. You aren’t prey. You aren’t some helpless creature awaiting an inevitable conclusion, desperately trying to untie the strings of fate before the clock ticks down to zero.

You taught him. You know he’s going to reach for you before his limbs move. You know he’s going to try sweeping his leg and knocking you off-balance. You know the more you anticipate and deflect the more desperate he’ll become, and that’s what you have to pin your hopes on. Wonwoo won’t tire easily. Not now that he’s built from solid, corded muscle, as if someone had studied the monuments built in devotion of the ancient gods and brought one to life, crafting them from memory.

And fuck, what memories you have.

“I’m right here, Wonwoo.” His name is breathy when it leaves your lips, almost suffocating under the weight of the tension between the two of you. “Did you move this slowly last time? Were you this reluctant to take what you wanted?”

It’s bait. Wonwoo knows it’s bait, but he’s affected anyway, unable to do anything except cross his heart as he walks willingly into your trap. Desperate, he surges forward again as he reaches for you one last time, already knowing you’re faster. You take his wrist in your hold, using it as leverage to pull him closer. Barely a hair’s width apart. Wonwoo has exerted no effort and yet every breath he takes is labored. Every exhale is panted into the crook of your neck, pressed against your sweat-slick skin.

“Are you mine to take?”

I always have been, you think. Of all inevitable things, you and I were always meant to be one of them.

You open your mouth to speak when the doors whirr open. If Jeonghan is shocked by the scene in front of him, he’s kind enough not to mention it. Instead, he rolls his eyes and, looking at you, very tartly says, “If you could possibly spare a moment of your time, I need to speak with you.”

Reluctantly, you let go of Wonwoo’s wrist and step backwards. When you’re out of his dominion, you find yourself too embarrassed to meet his eye. Ten minutes alone with him and you abandoned all logical thought. A fool! You are a lovesick fool, willing to forgive all of his sins at the prospect of more carnal pleasures; willing to let him reclaim residence in the empty space in your bed you’ve been saving for him since the morning he left it.

Maybe you should cut your brother some slack about the whole Dredelea thing considering he just saved you from making another disastrous decision in a long line of disastrous decisions. You were going to sleep with Wonwoo without so much as a conversation! It’s the least of what he owes you, and yet.

The bar is subterranean.

You scold yourself all the way to Jeonghan’s office, glad to be back in the safety of its four walls. Glad to be reunited with your favorite armchair and your brother’s flat, judgmental stare. “Good to know you and Wonwoo are on good terms again,” he deadpans.

“Oh, we’re not, I was simply experiencing a moment of hormone-riddled delusion.” Jeonghan makes a sound of disgust. “It feels inappropriate to say, considering the circumstances, but can you really blame me when he just… looks like that now.”

“I’m not touching this conversation with a—”

You pretend to sigh dreamily. “I mean, he’s so beefy—”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Jeonghan shouts, not at all amused as he puts a stop to your overdramatic swooning. “We need to talk about the Council.”

Your brother might as well have dumped a bucket of cold water on you. “What do you mean ‘we’?” you ask, subconsciously sitting up straighter. “In case you need reminding, I don’t have—nor do I want—anything to do with them. Especially after my last very successful foray into Ithean political matters.”

“Yeah, about that. What you said prompted a lot of questions some very esteemed members didn’t have answers for.”

“Meaning…?”

Jeonghan becomes very serious, immediately shifting into High Council mode. “See, something wasn’t sitting right with me. I had Jun draft up those maps myself—I sat beside him as he cross-referenced every resource we had available and looked them over myself, too—so how could they have been that wrong? Granted, the resources we had wereoutdated, so a discrepancy here and there wouldn’t have concerned me, but moving an entire civilization underground isn’t possible to do overnight. It would’ve taken years, if not decades.”

“Long before our most recent verifiable intelligence reports, I’m assuming.”

“Exactly. Not to mention Dredelea simply would not have had the resources to undertake such a project, so they got capital and manpower from somewhere. I know you weren’t there long, but did you hear anyone on Dredelea mention Olara?”

“No,” you answer honestly, “but we sort of lucked into the outcome we got. Things would’ve been a hell of a lot worse if Wonwoo collapsing hadn’t nuked their bargaining power.”

“I figured. I had Joshua look into some things after the meeting—follow the money, or whatever they used to say—and what he found left no room for misinterpretation: multiple Council members have been funneling money to Olara.”

Your brows pinch in confusion. “Why, though? Olara’s a rogue planet, sure, but it’s just as terrestrial and prosperous as Ithea.”

It hits you, then, what Jun had said.

With the amount of decaying plant matter on their planet, I dare say they’ve unknowingly tapped into an unlimited power source.

It’s a shame they don’t have the resources or knowledge to harvest it.

“I take it you’ve connected the dots.”

Dazed, you nod. “I didn’t—Jun had mentioned it off-handedly on our way there. He was throwing all this science talk at me, but he mentioned Dredelea could harvest the decaying plant matter and turn it into energy if they had the resources to do so.”

“And our dear friends on Olara saw an opportunity.”

“This still doesn’t make sense. Why would they want to help the Dredeleans? And what does that have to do with the Council members funneling money to them?”

“Oh, they weren’t helping the Dredeleans. Not really. Yes, they gave them the resources and manpower to start building the underground facilities with the caveat that they eventually invest it into research laboratories. Remember how Wonwoo mentioned they removed anyone scientifically-minded from labor?” You nod, feeling a migraine coming on. “The Olarans are a knavish, deceptive bunch. They saw an opportunity to be early investors. They’d give Dredelea what it needed to begin harvesting the energy and then they’d stage a coup and take it for themselves.”

“And the money?”

“Buy-ins. Offset some of the upstart costs to eventually reap a percentage of the rewards. From what we’ve gathered—and what people have admitted to—the plan was for some of them to relocate to Dredelea once it was under Olaran control, but the rest would stay here and use their votes to Olara’s benefit while getting filthy rich on the side.”

The room starts to spin and you fear you’re going to be sick. What aren’t people willing to do in pursuit of money and power? Who aren’t they willing to step on and stab in the back?  “Are you sure? Jeonghan, this is—are you sure? This is so fucked up. The consequences of this…”

“Joshua has been deployed to take our findings to the Capitol. Multiple Council members have resigned in anticipation of their investigation.”

“Who?”

“Lukesh, Ballard, and Qaals have admitted wrongdoing and resigned from their positions. Two more members have also been implicated but refuse to admit to anything or resign. Roach—true to their fucking name—stole a travel pod about three hours ago and is assumed to be en route to Olara to apply for asylum.”

“Who’s the other?”

Jeonghan whispers your name. “You already know who it is,” he says quietly, almost begging you not to make him say it outright. “There’s no other reason for me to tell you all of this if it wasn’t him.”

Rage. All you feel is unyielding, white-hot rage. This is what you’ve played second fiddle for? This is why you’ve been spurned? You think about your childhood. All those birthdays you shared with your brother and never blew out the candles. The diplomatic trips you went on with your parents and all the important figures Jeonghan was introduced to. The hours you spent running amok with your friends while Jeonghan was in private tutoring sessions that weren’t available to you. The beatific pride in your father’s voice every time he spoke of your brother, his only son, and how it faded when he had to mention you.

All of it had been a farce. All that time, the power and prestige your father projected had always been rotting away beneath the surface. There’s no cure for that—no remedy for a decaying soul. So you sit with the rage for a second, allow it only a moment to burn you up from the inside, and then you close your eyes and let it go, letting it give way to anguish. The possibility of more wealth had been worth your identity, your personhood.

“That’s why he primed you for this, isn’t it? He never thought you’d have the balls to prosecute your own father.”

Jeonghan sighs. The circles beneath his eyes are dark. There’s a slight tremor in his hands when he massages his temples, trying to ease the ache that’s settled there. “That’s the logical conclusion,” he agrees. “I don’t think he anticipated us becoming good, honest people.”

A huff of disbelieving laughter. “Born with silver spoons and we still never stood a chance, huh?”

“Could be worse,” Jeonghan says sarcastically, allowing a small smirk to play on his lips. “Imagine being born with no silver spoon and never standing a chance.”

It works. “Oh, the horror. Such poverty is simply unimaginable!”

The two of you share a moment of quiet camaraderie. Not for the first time, you pity your brother. The repercussions of this will be far-reaching. Months, if not years, of instability loom on the horizon as governments all over the galaxy are preparing to investigate their own, and Ithea is at the center of it. As High Council, no one can shoulder the responsibility of this except Jeonghan, and to share a family name with one of the perpetrators will only make it heavier. No matter what further investigations reveal, both of you may never escape the association, your names forever tainted.

“I’m glad you’re my brother,” you admit.

It’s a rare moment of sincerity. Jeonghan rightfully looks skeptical. “Me too,” he says slowly, “but what are you buttering me up for?”

“Well, I was going to float the idea of a public execution.”

Jeonghan chokes, torn between incredulity at your boldness and horror at knowing you mean it. “I cannot—”

“Sure you can! You’re High Council, and your people will undoubtedly demand answers. What better way to make a statement about how Ithea views corruption.”

Still red in the face, Jeonghan waves you away. “Like it or not, he’s still our father and, in good conscience, I cannot execute him. The Capitol will deal with him as they see fit, and it’ll please me greatly to watch him waste away in prison, but you raise a good point about the people. Which leads me to the next thing I need to discuss with you.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“I don’t need to. You have that look—the I’m about to say something you’re going to hate one.”

“Just hear me out,” he pleads. When you don’t immediately dismiss him again, he tentatively continues. “Needless to say, I am currently clueless how I’m going to navigate this. The Council will need to be rebuilt but the damage has been done. No one will want to vote if they have no trust in the system, but if I appoint the positions without an election, they won’t trust that I’ve done so objectively, either.”

“Uh-huh. Sounds like a real catch-22.”

“It is, which is where you come in.”

“No.”

Jeonghan rolls his eyes. “I want to create a Council Oversight committee and appoint you the head of it.”

You laugh. “You’re worried about looking unobjective and your solution is to create a brand new government position and appoint your sister the head of it?”

“Yes,” he answers easily. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve reached legendary hero status around here. Regardless of your name, all of this corruption was rooted out after your testimony before the Council. They attribute all of this to you.”

“That’s not—I didn’t—”

“They’re not wrong. Look, I never should’ve agreed to that stupid plan. You’ve never been second-best. You’ve never been less important than me, and yet I let them treat you as if you were. I let them risk your life, and even though no harm came to you I will regret for the rest of my days that I put you in a position that it could’ve, and I’m sorry.”

“And you’re going to make it up to me by making me work for the government.”

He grins. “C’mon, you can’t stand the Council. There are some slight concerns about your objectivity, but I know you wouldn’t let them get their claws in you. They won’t be able to corrupt or buy you. That’s who I want overseeing them. That’s who the people will be able to trust.”

What an unexpected turn of events. Your instinct is to say no, because Jeonghan is right: you hate the Council. Even more, you don’t trust the government, and the mere thought of working within it makes you feel queasy. But it’d be a lie to say your trip to Dredelea hadn’t opened your eyes. You didn’t know it then, but you’d seen the impacts of profiteering and exploitation in real time, and you didn’t like what you saw one bit.

You think of Lee Chan. Maybe you could help people like him. Maybe you could help people not like him, too. You know it’s too idealistic to think you’ll be able to eradicate corruption for good, but maybe there’s no harm in more checks and balances—in you being the one overseeing them.

Days ago, you sat across from the Council and told them the truth: they needed you. Maybe it’s time for them to fear you instead.

You stick out your hand. Your brother shakes it.

Just as you’re about to slip out the door and find a quiet place to bang your head against a wall, your brother calls out, “Oh! One more thing before you go.” He pauses for effect. (The effect is an all-knowing, impish grin that makes you want to bang his head against a wall instead.) “I got a message earlier from Dokyeom. He said Wonwoo’s deprogramming sessions were a complete success.”

Your gaze narrows. “And you’re telling me this because…?”

“No reason. Just thought you’d want to know.”

Yeah right, you think as you slip out the door. There’s absolutely no reason he’d want to tell you about Wonwoo’s deprogramming—and absolutely no reason you can hear him giggling as you walk away.

Another night spent staring at your ceiling.

The rage and anguish you’d felt during your conversation with Jeonghan is gone. So is the heat you’d felt in the training room with Wonwoo. In their absence, you aren’t sure how or what to feel. Everything feels off, like you’re trying to fit two puzzle pieces together that don’t fit even though they look like they should. Like you’re both too big and too small for your body. Like the freneticism inside of you is uncontrollable.

You’re restless. You’re overwhelmed and confused. You’re furious at your father and trying to ignore two-plus decades of childhood trauma because you’re horny. You should be thinking about the implications of what you agreed to, the multitude of ways your life is about to change, but every time you close your eyes all you see is Wonwoo. Stupid, handsome, solid Wonwoo. You should’ve knocked him out when you had the chance. At least if you had, you wouldn’t be pining and yearning like this—like a teenager with their first crush, like you’re about to write his name in your diary and doodle little hearts around it. At least if you had, he would be incapacitated, and being incapacitated would make what you’re imagining impossible.

Because it’s the possibility, the attainability of what you wantthat’s dangerous.

Because you’ve had it before and once hadn’t been enough. Once barely scratched the itch. Once had taken you apart seam by seam and remade you into something with an incorrigible greed. Once had sealed your fate of wanting, wanting, always wanting.

Has it always been like this? Of all the ill-advised things you wasted your youth doing, had wanting Wonwoo been one of them? You can’t remember. You stare up at your ceiling and you can’t remember a life without Wonwoo at all, regardless of your feelings. Isn’t that why you’d gone along with Jeonghan’s plan so easily? Not because of your loyalty towards your brother, but because a life without Wonwoo was simply not an option.

You gasp.

Gods above, you’re in love with Jeon Wonwoo.

What a terrible revelation to have at this hour! What a devastating blow to your reputation! What a disgusting, horrible situation you’ve gotten yourself into, because you’ll never hear the end of this. You, the spare who faced down the High Emperor of a hostile planet without so much as blinking and unknowingly uncovered a galaxy’s worth of corruption, are in love. All your sharp edges have been eroded. All the walls you built around yourself have been scaled and breached.

Fuck, you think. “Fuck!” you wail at your ceiling.

And let no man accuse Jeon Wonwoo of having good timing, because no sooner is the word out of your mouth that there’s a knock on your door. The knock—the one you’ve been trying to manifest for days. Surely he could’ve done this at any other time. Surely it didn’t have to be now, when you’re on the brink of mental collapse, but you’d be a fool to leave him standing on the other side.

Just the sight of him knocks the breath from your lungs. He’s beautiful. He’s beautiful and he’s here and he’s safe and he’s real. He came back to you. You brought him back. The two of you found your way back to one another and it doesn’t matter how, it only matters that you did.

There’s so much you want to say. I love you. I’m sorry. Did you think about me every second you were gone like I thought about you? I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Did it mean anything to you, that night? I can’t get the feel of your hands all over me out of my head. Kiss me again, touch me again, I’m in love with you, maybe I always have been, I feel like I’m going crazy with it—

What comes out instead is, “Took you long enough.”

It’s all the permission he needs. When Wonwoo surges forward this time, the heat in his gaze is simmering. As tame and gentle as it is dangerous. When he surges forward this time, you don’t reach out to stop him. Instead, you bury your fingers in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. You’re overwhelmed by his scent—clean and a little sweet, with just a hint of bitterness beneath the surface. You’d know it anywhere. It’s the same scent he left lingering behind the night before he left, pressed between your sheets like you were trying to preserve it, keep it safe until he came back.

It does your head in, has you moving like a person possessed. Your hands move to his waist, to his shoulders, his arms. They retrace the same paths they’d mapped out before. Chart the same lines. Your nails ghost along his skin, delve into the same valleys they remember, and it does something to you when Wonwoo’s breath catches in his throat, just like it had the last time. When words are so clearly biting at the back of his teeth and fail to materialize as he shudders.

But muscle memory claims Wonwoo, too. Reminds him how dazed you look when he steps further into your space, so close that the two of you share the same breaths. Reminds him of that split-second of panicked freefall right before his lips claim yours. Reminds him how perfectly his hands fit in the curves of your waist. How willingly you go when he walks you backwards toward your bed. How it feels like his chest is going to cave in at the sight of you beneath him. Like his ribcage would break apart and rearrange itself to make a home for you there; to keep you safe in between all the scar tissue and the sinew.

You look at him with such reverence. Wonwoo is going to collapse under the weight of it.

“I wanted to come earlier,” he murmurs, almost sounding pained as he speaks the words into the space just beneath your ear. He nips at your lobe. Presses a hot, open-mouthed kiss to your neck, smiling when he hears you whimper. “I wanted to so fucking bad, I would’ve, but I needed to wait.”

You hear the subtext: I would’ve, but I needed it to be me—actually me.

As your hands skim underneath his shirt, as his muscles twitch and spasm beneath your hands, you have to laugh, because you’ve known and loved hundreds of iterations of Wonwoo. It seems impossible that a version of him could exist that’d change that. It seems egregious that you’d ever want something more than this: Wonwoo panting soft breaths against your skin, his usually-deft fingers rendered useless as they fumble blindly with the knot in the waistband of your shorts; as the weight of his body presses you further into the mattress; as he seems determined to never be apart from you now that he knows the agony of it.

So you laugh and erase the remaining distance between you and, as your hand moves over his abs and his hipbones and delve beneath the waistband of his shorts and he shivers, you say, “You are a fool, Jeon Wonwoo. There has never been a version of you I didn’t want.”

There’s very little talking after that.

Wonwoo slots his mouth against yours. Kisses you with such a pressing ferocity that your reality is reduced to the size of a pinhead; to nothing except Wonwoo and the way he tastes. Wonwoo kisses you in a way that’s equal parts apology and brand, as if the entire purpose is to ruin you for anybody else. Like he needs to exist in the center of your universe. Like you’re the only thing he’d allow to orbit around him.

Wonwoo kisses you like your hands on him are an afterthought, and that simply will not do, you think. You need him just as unraveled and destabilized as you, so you skim them lower, lower, until you’re centimeters away from his cock and he freezes. Seems to realize all at once what this is leading to, the pleasure that’s on offer, and he groans. Places his hand over yours and guides it to where he wants you most; helps you grip him tight enough that it’s a struggle for him to roll his hips in your grasp. Wonwoo swears and pulls away enough that you can see his eyes roll back in his head, his bottom lip tugged between his teeth.

You swat his hand away. “Off,” you instruct him, and while Wonwoo desperately tries to get out of his clothes, you make a show of moving your hand to your mouth and licking a stripe against your palm, the spaces between each finger. The look he gives you is meant to be severe, but it’s too glassy and fucked out to read as anything but frenzied.

Time seems to slow when he’s finally naked; when you allow yourself the opportunity to stare shamelessly, your heated gaze appraising every inch of him. Stubborn bruises still linger,  discoloration still stains his skin, but Wonwoo wears them with pride. Wonwoo wears them like the reminders they are of what it took to get back here—to reclaim his spot in your bed and feel your hands all over him. For you to make a tight, wet fist and work him over slowly.

“Shit,” he whines, trying and failing again to roll his hips at the rhythm he wants, but you’re intent on your torture. And Wonwoo knows it, too, because he sees the curve of your smile and gladly accepts his fate. Lets the waves of pleasure pummel him as he trails his fingers up the inside of your thighs and feels the wetness that clings to your skin. They travel higher. Higher. Dangerously close. You cant your hips, trying to get him to touch you properly, touch you like he means it. Wonwoo wants to be just as intentional as you are, but he can’t seem to deny you anything.

He thumbs circles against your clit. Moves downward and swipes two fingers through the sticky mess between your legs before pressing them inside, feeling you stretch around him as your body goes taut. You moan, head thrown back, and Wonwoo presses relentlessly against your g-spot as he leans in to suck a bruise into the column of your throat. Within seconds, you’re in disarray, reduced to a trembling wreck as you mindlessly chase your orgasm. As you tighten your grip on his cock and tangle your free hand in his hair, tugging at the loose strands at the nape of his neck and scratching your nails against his scalp.

Wonwoo grunts. Quickens his pace. Just as you’re on the brink of a mind-shattering orgasm, just as the pressure borders on too much, Wonwoo removes his fingers, sitting back on his haunches as he brings them to his mouth to suck them clean. The insults die on the tip of your tongue as he finally gets the tie unknotted; as your shorts and panties are only pulled down far enough for him to get his mouth on you. A truly animalistic sound is ripped out of you as he shows you no mercy—as he licks and sucks and soaks the sheets beneath you. As he throws your legs over his shoulders and presses his fingers back inside. As your body bows, almost retreating from the overwhelming pleasure.

Wonwoo pulls you back in. “Don’t run away from me,” he tells you, voice hoarse as he nips at your thigh. “I know you can take it, baby.”

I can’t, you want to argue, but your body moves on autopilot as it pursues your orgasm. You roll your hips in involuntary circles against Wonwoo’s face, hand dipping to rub at your clit as Wonwoo’s go to your hips to keep you in place. Both of you are gluttonous and wild as you hurtle closer to the edge. “Wonwoo, I’m gonna—” you begin to say, but the seams holding you together are fraught with tension, bound to tear and unravel at any moment.

And they do. You cry out as you come, nearly shaking apart as your vision whites out, stars exploding behind your eyelids as Wonwoo refuses to relent. As he keeps his face buried in your cunt, keeps sucking at your clit and tonguing at your folds, keeps moaning vibrations against you. Your body threatens to shatter, and if you weren’t so stubborn—if you weren’t so dogged and unyielding—you’d surrender, but Wonwoo said you can take it, so you keep your white flags lowered as he works you into a second orgasm and half of a third before you’re begging for a reprieve.

Chest heaving and sweat-slick, Wonwoo gives it to you. Presses soft praise into your shoulder, your jawline, your temple. Through lidded eyes, you watch as he gently removes his fingers from your pussy and wraps them around his cock, using your mess to slick himself up. You can hear your wetness on him, can smell the scent of your sex as it fills the room, and it fills you with a dizzying need that overrides the exhaustion you feel. You move. Wonwoo goes easily as you plant a hand in the center of his chest and push him backwards. His hand still moves rhythmically as he watches in anticipation, brow quirked, wondering what you’ll do next.

“What do you want?” you ask, throwing a leg over his waist as you move to straddle him. “You want my mouth? My pussy?”

Wonwoo feels delirious as the heat of your cunt hovers above him. He’s tempted to close the distance; tempted to pull you against him; tempted to grab your hips and move you along his length, soaking him as you grind your clit against his cock. He swears again. Somewhere in his mind, he knows you asked him a question, but for the life of him he can’t remember what it was. Can’t think over the sound of the blood rushing through his head. Can’t do anything except grip tightly at the sheets and pray to the gods this passes, because he’s about to fucking cum just from the images he conjured up in his own head.

But when he closes his eyes, he can feel it, so he chokes out, “Anything. Do whatever the fuck you want to me, I just—I need to feel you again. Need to feel you around me. Baby, I need—”

You, he means to say, but then you’re moving back onto his thighs, leaning forward to grab his cock and spit on it, and the word comes out breathy and pathetic as it’s punched right out of his chest. As your wetness stains his skin and paints over his bruises when you move back to where you were. As you reach for him again and pump him once before lining yourself up and sinking down.

Your movements are slow as you try to find your bearings; as your mouth drops open at the stretch and how perfectly he fills you. Your brows pinch. Your pussy flutters and spasms as you find your rhythm. As you start to move faster. As you roll your hips more deliberately, making sure Wonwoo’s thick cock hits where it needs to every time.

“You feel s’good,” you sigh, the epitome of blissful pleasure. Wonwoo’s hands move to your chest and thumb at your hardened nipples. Move to your hips and then your ass, skin dimpling in his grip as he guides you up and down, groaning at the obscene squelch.

Wonwoo follows you on an upswing, sitting upright as you cross your legs behind his back. He spreads his just enough for his cock press deeper and you nearly sob. The first time hadn’t felt like this. The first time was a cautious introduction, a promise of possibilities; a careful dance on a tense tightrope as you both try not to misstep. This time is all raw, genuine need—the culmination of unfinished business and five months of separation that you try not to think about. But it’s hard when Wonwoo uses that newfound strength to flip you over as if you weigh nothing. When he poises himself above you and rocks his hips into yours, eyes locked on the place your bodies meet.

No, this time feels like something bigger. This feels like something they’d memorialize in granite and dedicate monuments to. Something that finds every forgotten crevice in your chest and starts laying the foundations of pillars.

Wonwoo moans. Throws his head back. Places his hands on your knees and presses them to your chest, folding you in half, opening you up even more as his pace quickens. Skin slaps against skin. Electricity sparks through your veins. You’re still so sensitive that every thrust feels devastating, like you’ll be left permanently scrambled and craving. He spreads your knees and palms at your chest. Pinches at your nipples until you’re gushing around him and hopelessly trying to suck in air. Wonwoo just grins, enjoying the leverage while he has it.

But the truth is that both you and Wonwoo are unraveling at full speed, rushing headlong into oblivion. You can tell by the way his hips stutter; the way his eyes pinch closed, as if he’s praying to anyone and anything that can help make this last longer. You can tell by the way his praise starts sounding accusatory, like he’s cursing you for being so tight, so wet he keeps slipping out and losing his rhythm; cursing your searing heat. You can tell by the way he hikes your thigh around his hip and erases the space between you, pressing in so close you breathe as a singular unit.

“Give me one more,” he grunts, the words spoken into the crook of your neck in a high, desperate keen. “Make yourself come for me, baby, please—I’m so close. Wanna feel it.”

As if you’d deny him anything. As if he’d ask this of you and you’d do anything but snake a hand between your bodies to rub at your clit. As if you’d bring yourself to the precipice and pull back.

When you come, it feels like a supernova. It feels like every atom in the universe is rearranged. Your body goes taut, locking up as your pussy grips Wonwoo like a vice. He’s locked into that space between your legs with no chance of escape, and all he can do is grit his teeth as he fucks you through it—one, two, four more thrusts before he’s spilling inside of you, biting down on your shoulder to keep himself controlled and quiet.

Seconds pass. Minutes, maybe hours. Eventually your breathing evens out and reality creeps in around the static blurring the edges of your vision. Wonwoo finds your hand and intertwines your fingers. He holds onto you like a lifeline, like he’ll disappear again if he lets you go. And you know what it means but you need him to say it. You need to finish what the two of you had started.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s quiet when Wonwoo finally speaks. The tension that suffocated the room had peaked at the same time you did, giving way to a calm, almost unnatural stillness. You wonder if you imagine those two words. You wonder if your heavy lids finally caved to exhaustion, allowing your imagination to fill in the gaps that still remained. But Wonwoo presses a whisper of a kiss to the corner of your mouth that brings you back to the present. “For what I said,” he clarifies. “I wasn’t myself, but that doesn’t excuse it. I know it hurt you.”

You hum. Hold his hand a little tighter. “Like you said, you weren’t yourself.”

He sighs. Burrows closer. You want to pry your ribs apart and invite him in. “It’s not just that. I shouldn’t have left things so undefined between us, but I—I thought I was coming back. I thought there wasn’t a thing in this universe that could keep me from coming back to you.”

“That’s not your fault, Wonwoo,” you say, tracing nonsensical shapes into the palm of his hand. “You couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah, but… I could’ve told you. I should’ve told you.”

Your fingers still. Your breath catches, trapped beneath the weight on your chest. “Tell me what?”

Wonwoo hovers above you, propped up on his elbows. His smile is small, almost shy, and it reminds of you when you were both kids, unburdened by adulthood and expectations and trauma. His smile reminds you of flowers and the superstitions assigned to them, and maybe that’s what love is, you think. Maybe love is when you look at Wonwoo and the world becomes butter yellow; when he smiles and you feel the warmth of every sun in the universe. When he looks at you like you’re a little stupid and a little perfect and says, with as much conviction as a man can possess, “That I love you. That I’m in love with you and always have been.”

Maybe love is when your heart beats in a staccato rhythm that only Wonwoo can perform. When you’re sure you’re dreaming when you say, “I love you, too. Always have,” and Wonwoo’s smile is so impossibly wide he presses it into your skin to preserve it.

Whatever it is, you’re giddy with it, content to spend your days in this pinky-lavender haze as long as it exists. You’re happy to reacquaint yourself with the weight of Wonwoo’s body when he presses against you again, kissing your laughter lines. You sigh when his cock stirs against your thigh and you feel the way his cheeks warm against your own, laughing wildly when you thread your fingers through his hair and ask if he wants to go again, only for him to admit in sheepish embarrassment that it’s a little weird—only a little—when you still look so much like your brother.

You’ll dye your hair in the morning, while Wonwoo sleeps soundly on his side of the bed.

Admittedly, Jeonghan doesn’t react as poorly as you expect him to.

Not that he shows it, of course, but you can tell by the way he rolls his lips and how badly he’s trying to keep it together; how desperate he is not to laugh, because this was not exactly what he had in mind when he offered you your position. Yet here you are, once again missing half of an eyebrow (dyed back to your natural color) as you sit across from him—

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

—and Joshua, that unctuous little rat.

“Only that I plead the fifth,” you retort, turning your nose up at him.

Jeonghan nearly cracks. Joshua sneers. “That’s not a thing here,” he fires back. “Try again.”

“Or what?”

If this was an old-timey cartoon there’d be smoke coming out of his ears, you think, watching in amazement as Joshua’s face turns a concerning shade of red. “‘Or what’? ‘Or’ nothing! There is no ‘or what’ because you planted a bomb and blew up a Council member’s private office—”

“That’s hearsay,” you argue, waving him off. “You can’t prove I did that.”

“Not only can I prove it, I have witnesses.”

“Witnesses that’ll go on official record?” you challenge. “Against me, the Savior of Ithea? The enforcer of morality and trustworthiness? The bomb sniffer of corruption? The beacon of hope and light in the darkest moment of our planet’s history?”

A bark of laughter interrupts whatever Joshua is about to say as your brother loses the battle he’s been waging against himself and all his sensibilities. Behind him, even Seungcheol turns around to face the wall, and with that the last flame of Joshua’s optimism is snuffed out. All of his friends are traitors. All of the people meant to make his job easier—his life—use his suffering as entertainment. He’d hoped to rekindle his alliance with Wonwoo upon his return from Dredelea, but it was obvious he was under your spell, too lovesick to see what a devious little shithead you truly are.

Even now he sits at your side, smiling proudly as he throws an arm around your shoulders and says, “That’s my girl.”

Joshua is going to be sick.