Chapter Text
They barely had time to crawl from the rubble.
Jeonghan’s heartbeat hadn’t even settled. Hongjoong’s eyes were still bloodied from the blow. Jiyong's arms trembled as he tried to brace Jeonghan’s back.
But it didn’t matter.
Because something else was coming.
And it didn’t knock.
It tore.
It started as a whisper.
Not sound but sensation, like strings under Jeonghan’s skin, plucked, tugged, coaxed and he froze.
Arched.
Clutched at his chest with a sound between a gasp and a cry.
“Jeonghan?” Jiyong caught him, tried to press a hand to his back, but his fingers passed through divinity that had already begun to fracture.
Something deeper, the very thread of his creation, was unraveling.
“Someone’s calling me.” Jeonghan said, voice wet with disbelief. “From inside.”
He curled forward, forehead knocking against Jiyong’s chest.
“I can’t... I can’t pull away.”
“Then we’ll pull you back,” Hongjoong snarled, crouching down, touching Jeonghan’s other side. “Don’t you dare go.”
But it was too late because the tethers had already sunk in and they weren’t dragging him upward. They were dragging him inward.
Jeonghan screamed as his spine bowed and his fingers clawed at nothing. His mouth opened, but no words formed, only light. Blinding. Raw. Like a sun splitting apart behind his teeth.
Jiyong clutched his face. “Jeonghan, look at me. Look at me, please.”
But his eyes weren’t his anymore. They shone like mirrors; reflecting every face he’d ever been forced to wear, every purity, every punishment, every expectation.
All of it was writhing inside him now.
“You can’t have him!” Hongjoong screamed at the ceiling, even as blood dripped from his lips. “You took your chance! You left him to burn!”
And yet, another pull, like a chain snapped tight.
Jeonghan's body rose off the ground, lifted by nothing visible, limbs twitching, eyes wide with pain.
And Jiyong felt it like being ripped in half.
“No!”
He leapt, grabbing Jeonghan’s arm as Hongjoong grabbed the other.
Light speared from Jeonghan’s chest, a holy tether, stretching skyward.
It wanted to take him whole.
“Hold him!” Jiyong shouted, arms burning.
“I am!” Hongjoong gritted, digging his heels into shattered stone.
But Jeonghan was convulsing. Body wracked. Light bleeding from his mouth and eyes and scars he never let them see.
“I’m sorry.” Jeonghan choked, somewhere between sobbing and dissolving. “I didn’t want— I just— I wanted to feel! I wanted to be mine.”
“You are.” Jiyong whispered, leaning close, voice breaking. “You’re ours, Jeonghan.”
“You chose.” Hongjoong said through clenched teeth. “We chose you back.”
Jeonghan’s fingers spasmed as the light screamed and something snapped.
There was a blinding pulse, like a divine nerve misfiring. The tether cracked. Just cracked, not broken but it sent all three of them slamming back into the ground.
Jeonghan collapsed between them.
Smoke rising from his skin.
Tears carving holy lines down his face.
“I can’t do this again.” He whispered.
And neither god nor demon answered because they had seen this before, and this was often the times when... when they begged to be sent back.
Instead of speaking, they just held him. Arms around his shaking form and breathing unsteady.
The worst part was, they knew, this was far from over.
It came not as light this time but as something quieter, something far crueler.
A pull from the inside.
A tug not of rope or chain, but of essence. Of thread. A slow unspooling from where Jeonghan's soul still glowed dimly beneath his ribs.
It started in his fingers, a numbness that curled inward.
Then to his spine.
Then to his throat.
He opened his mouth, as if to call out, to scream.
But no sound came, only silence.
And that silence carried with it a terrible finality.
He turned his face toward the two figures who still held him, trembling and torn.
Jiyong, his wildness tempered only by sorrow, eyes red-rimmed and teeth clenched like he could bite fate itself if it dared to touch him.
And Hongjoong, still bleeding at the brow, but cradling Jeonghan’s body like it was holy, like even in pain it was a blessing.
They hadn’t let go. Even now.
Even as the heavens prepared their next blow.
Even as his divinity was being ripped from the bone.
And still... still, he smiled.
Soft. Fragile. The ghost of what could have been joy if not for the devastation at his core.
“I didn’t know love before this.” Jeonghan said, voice cracking. “Not real love.”
The numbness had reached his legs and his chest felt hollow.
He curled his fingers, barely, until they brushed the backs of their hands.
“I didn’t know what it was to be chosen, or to choose back.”
Hongjoong leaned closer, a broken breath catching in his throat.
“Don’t.” he whispered, like saying more might undo them all. “Don’t say it... please.”
“I have to.” Jeonghan breathed, the light behind his eyes dimming, but his gaze still impossibly warm.
“I love you both.”
The silence afterward wasn’t silent at all.
It was screaming.
It was everything in the space between what they wanted to say and the fact that there was no time left.
Jiyong dropped to his knees, hand flying to Jeonghan’s face.
“No.” he said, hoarse. “You don’t get to... don’t say it like it’s the end, Jeonghan.”
“It isn’t.” Jeonghan whispered. “Not really.”
Hongjoong’s hand gripped his tighter, knuckles white, jaw clenched. “You better not be planning to go back.”
“I’m not planning to.” Jeonghan said, smiling, tears gathering at the edges of his eyes.
“But I think... they’ve planned enough for me.”
He exhaled, eyes fluttering shut briefly as the pull inside tightened, dragging something essential upward, like a siphon of light.
“But I’ll fight.”
His voice shook.
His lips trembled.
“I’ll fight to stay with you. Until my last breath.”
“And if not,” he said softly, “if this is all we get...”
His eyes opened, irises glowing faintly gold.
“I hope to see you in the next life.”
The scream that tore from Hongjoong’s throat was inhuman.
Rage.
Despair.
Loss.
It cracked the stone beneath them, sent tremors down the mountain, split the sky for one breathless second.
Jiyong folded over Jeonghan’s body, head pressed to his chest, as though he could anchor him with nothing but presence.
“Take me instead,” Jiyong hissed into the heavens. “Take what’s left of me he’s already given everything!”
But there was no reply, only the pull.
Stronger now. Like a wind rising from inside Jeonghan.
Jeonghan began to fade.
Not vanish, fade.
Color bleeding from his skin.
Edges softening like morning fog.
The warmth they loved slipping second by second through their fingers.
“Jeonghan, please.” Hongjoong whispered, his face crumpling. “Please stay.”
“I want to.” Jeonghan said, eyes distant now.
“I want to stay.”
But his body arched again, seizing in their arms. Light burst from his mouth, his chest, then cracked at his shoulder like something holy was trying to claw its way out.
“No!” Jiyong shouted, arms locking around him.
“We won’t let them take you!”
But they were.
Heaven had learned from last time.
No grand entrance.
No visible tethers.
Just slow, awful dismantling.
And still, Jeonghan reached out, grasped their arms.
“Don’t forget me.” he whispered.
As if there was any chance of that.
And then, he vanished.
There was no scream, no light show.
Just a breath.
A hand, curled around theirs.
And then gone.
It was too quiet.
Hongjoong stared at the empty space where Jeonghan had been and Jiyong didn’t move.
Not until the wind picked up, carrying a faint warmth.
Like the echo of his skin.
The aftertaste of I love you.