Chapter Text
The room instantly exploded into commotion. Minho scrambled over to Chan’s bedside, followed by everyone else, now wide awake with misty eyes.
“Hyung, you’re awake,” he sobbed into Chan’s chest, usual composure completely lost. “I thought you’d never wake up…”
“I’m fine, Min,” Chan replied weakly, voice hoarse and crackly from disuse. He cleared his throat multiple times, coughing to get the grit out. “Can someone get me some water?”
Jisung instantly hopped right up, scurrying to the kitchen to get a glass. Minho helped Chan prop himself upright, tears still running down his face like almost everyone else in the room. Chan took the glass gratefully but his hands shook aggressively. Changbin quickly took over, being careful to tip the water into Chan’s mouth without spilling it on him or anyone else.
When Chan had finished the glass, Changbin put it on the counter. For a moment everyone just sat with Chan, staring at him to make sure he was real and alive and awake and talking to them like they had all desperately prayed he would. “Well?” he eventually asked, breaking the silence. “Can I get a hug, or what?”
The pack jumped on him, all regard for personal space completely forgotten as they absolutely smothered Chan in their scents and limbs. Chan made a choked-off sound as seven boys all climbed on him, but Minho could see the relieved grin spreading across his face as he wrapped his arms around as many boys as he could.
The pack stayed like that for a while as everyone’s tears eventually dried up, occasional sniffles being heard or eye-wiping happening subtly. No one commented on anything, all too focused on their hyung, who had survived what most people wouldn’t have. Who had fought back for so long and so hard and had succeeded. Who was most definitely the bravest person any of them knew.
“So, hyung,” Minho ventured. He sighed internally, hating that the conversation would have to happen but at the same time unwilling to let it just flicker away. “I think you owe us some answers.”
Chan gave a weak grin, raising a hand to drag down his face in preparation for the heavy talk. “Yeah, I guess I do.” The pups got off the eldest, giving him space to talk and express his emotions, but most of them were still holding on to a little corner of his clothing or touching one of his fingers, needing that mental reassurance that no, he wasn’t going to disappear, and yes, this wasn’t a dream.
“Okay. So…ugh, where do I even start?” Chan contemplated, eyes shifting upwards to look at the ceiling as he drew his knees towards his chest. “Um…so you guys know I’m a hybrid, correct?” Everyone nodded. “Um, and that hybrids need to be turned by werewolves?” Another nod. “And that omega hybrids supposedly don’t exist because the transformation is too painful?” Hesitant nods. “And that I’m an omega hybrid?” Affirmations around the circle. “Okay, I guess we’ve got the basics down,” Chan chuckled to himself. He took a deep breath in, letting it out in a short burst of air.
“Alright. So. I’m going to go through the major events and can I just ask that you guys stay mostly quiet so I don’t…like…chicken out after being interrupted, or something?” Chan asked nervously.
“Of course, hyung,” Felix responded gently. “Whatever you need.”
Chan smiled warmly at him, and everyone subconsciously relaxed because there was his signature smile and his adorable dimples that they had missed for so long. “Sorry, it’s just–”
“There’s no need to justify trauma responses, hyung,” Jisung quietly spoke up. “Just tell us if you need a minute, alright? We’re not going anywhere.”
“Yes. Of course,” Chan said, seeming more like he was trying to convince himself rather than everyone else. “Whew. Alright, here we go.”
The pack tuned in, listening intently as Chan laid out his entire past, bearing his heart and all his scars to the seven people he trusted most in the entire world.
“Um, so I was turned when I was seven years old,” Chan started off. Minho felt his heart sink; seven years old was such a young age, and he knew the transformation was incredibly painful, so he couldn’t imagine what it felt like for Chan in that situation. “I didn’t know what had happened really, um, and it took a lot of…getting used to being a hybrid, I guess? The only thing I needed to live was blood, but I was only seven, so acquiring that was…really difficult, to say the least. For a while I just snuck around to find the drunkards on the streets since they wouldn’t fight back, but there were too little of them where I lived and I wasn’t getting enough to sustain my body. So I, um…I had to figure out how to kill, or at least subdue, any person I met out in the world if I wanted to survive.”
Chan fiddled with the hem of his shirt, gaze flitting across his pups before going back down. “I got more efficient with every kill and just…trained my mind, I guess, to just move on. I mean, it wasn’t out of malice, or anything, I just needed to survive and I didn’t know how else to do so.” Minho could hear the hint of defensiveness in Chan’s voice, just barely there but he didn’t say anything, heeding Chan’s request.
“Um, so the next big event was when I was nine…” The room could see how Chan got visibly more uncomfortable, wringing his hands together, which were trembling slightly. Minho reached out and grasped one in his hands and Chan looked up at him, surprised, before taking a deep breath and continuing.
“So I was going through an alleyway to find people when I noticed someone following me. I tried to lose them but they cornered me and bit me. I could tell they were a vampire but their venom was too strong, especially since I was so small, so I passed out on the concrete. I…don’t really know for certain what happened when I was unconscious, but I woke up in an unknown basement. It was really dark and I was scared, especially since I was in a…cage, I guess? Um, and when I tried to touch the bars I got really badly burnt since they were silver dipped in wolfsbane, so I never tried that again.”
Glancing around the room, sorrow creeping up on Minho in light of the new revelations, he could see the pups that were struggling the most were Hyunjin and Felix, the two most emotionally attached ones. He made a mental note to smother them in love later, since he didn’t want to stop Chan when he was so willingly divulging precious information.
“They gave me some blood once every…month or so, I think, so I got really, really weak since it definitely wasn’t enough for my body to use well. Um, and then one night this guy came downstairs, unlocked my cage, and took me upstairs. I was in an expensive home, I think, so I could hear a bunch of parties constantly being thrown upstairs, but I was in the basement the whole time so I didn’t really fight back that much since I wanted to see the rest of the house, I guess. Yeah, so he took me to this huge bedroom on the highest floor and there was a vampire already standing there.”
“Chiwoo?” Changbin guessed quietly, and Chan made a small noise of affirmation.
“Yeah. He was the one who turned me, I think. But anyways, Chiwoo, um, bit me, I think, and so I couldn’t move since he imbued venom into the bite. It wasn’t enough to knock me out, just to immobilize me, but I guess that’s all he needed.” Chan laughed bitterly, and Minho felt his stomach churn, already guessing where the conversation was headed. “That night was…really, really bad. I was really just like a doll to him, and I couldn’t talk or move because of the venom so he did whatever he wanted with me. And he was so rough–” Chan broke off, wiping his frustrated tears away as he forced himself to continue.
“He didn’t clean me up after or anything, just made himself look respectable before bringing me back to my cage again. It took hours for the venom to wear off and I felt so dirty and used and it was probably the single worst day of my entire life.” Minho felt a couple tears roll down his face, mirroring the ones on Chan’s own, neither bothering to wipe them away since they knew they would return anyways.
“And that was how I lived for the next…five years, I think it was. Almost every day someone new would ‘visit,’ I would be taken upstairs, used, and then put back downstairs. Those people are the reasons I have the scars I do. And yes, I know you’re wondering about them. Um, the little dots on my neck were from a collar someone made me wear. It had…silver spikes inlaid into it so they bit into my neck and didn’t stop bleeding for almost an entire day, since I had almost no energy to go towards healing myself. Um, these lines up and down my body–” Chan gestured to his bare arms and legs–“were from a silver knife, and the lines on my face were from a silver muzzle someone put on me, since they didn’t bite me but didn’t want to hear my screams.”
There were a couple gasps of horror and Hyunjin covered his mouth with his hands, but Chan, eyes unseeing as he was stuck in his past, powered forward. “There was a werewolf who used his alpha voice on me and made me reveal my subgender. The one who got interviewed and arrested, remember?” Minho nodded emotionlessly. “Um, and the thick lines on my wrist were from shackles so someone chained me to the bedframe. And this one time two people got to, um…use me, so I couldn’t walk right for days after that.”
Now the entire room was crying, people leaning on each other for support as Chan unraveled his past. “But because I was fed, I stayed alive, so one day when this vampire took longer than usual to recompose himself, I knocked him out and leapt out the window. I got as far from the house as I could and lived on the streets after that.” Chan grinned weakly, “That is, until I met you guys.”
“Wait, so those weekly disappearances were when you went out to get food?” Seungmin clarified, sniffling.
“Exactly. I was usually really efficient so it didn’t take much time at all, and I targeted the scum of society as a kind of sick way of taking revenge against the people I would never see again but who broke me so badly.”
“You’re not broken,” Jeongin instantly shot back. “You’re chipped sure, but in no way are you broken.”
Chan gave a kind smile to him before continuing, dropping the subject. “So as I’m sure you guys have guessed, I was treated the same at the HSC when I was captured. Those two days were some of the worst in my life. There were so many of them and they all had specific wants and needs and I needed to satisfy them all or they would beat me really badly. I…my mind was not in a good place but I am so unbelievably glad that you guys arrived when you did.”
Chan sighed. “And then the escape. I…kind of went haywire, I guess. I just couldn’t- the insinuation of what the HSC could do to you was just too much and I…snapped, I guess. All I knew was that I needed to ruin the people who dared speak so badly about my pack, so I just killed them all in all the ways I learned how to. I slit almost all of their throats so they could command me to do anything, and when I met Chiwoo…” His eyes glazed over, remembering the interaction. Changbin and Minho shared a subtle glance with each other. “I, um. Tore off all his limbs and chopped off his head.”
Someone gagged and Chan shot them an apologetic look.
“Good. F*cking b*stard completely deserved it,” Minho huffed, and Chan laughed.
“He did. I had to make him pay for what he did.”
“Before we ask questions, I just want you to know that we are so proud of you, hyung,” Jisung said, speaking for the first time in a while. “You are so strong and brave, hyung. The mental and physical fortitude to withstand the absolute horrors inflicted upon you is so incredibly impressive, and we all love you so much. Our opinion of you hasn’t changed in the slightest, except maybe we’ve learned to not get on your bad side.” A couple people chuckled, and Chan rolled his eyes in fond exasperation.
“Alright. Who’s got questions?”