Work Text:
Kim Dokja dreamed.
He dreamed of himself, walking there on the street. His walk brisk yet faintly exhausted, clinging to the thought of some bitter coffee he’d wake himself up with sooner or later. He dreamed of the hot sun making the sweat linger on the back of his suit, musty and suffocating.
There, in his phone, were the words of Ways of Survival. He scrolled through those words, his fingers repeating familiar motions of comfort, his eyes fixated on the screen, and a small smile on his lips at every exciting paragraph.
He dreamed of the life he lived before the scenarios, how the one thing that helped him pull through such a life were words typed out chapter after chapter, words from an author he could perhaps, call his friend in the future.
The author.
A hand reached his shoulder, grazing his sleeve, weak, fleeting. It drifted away just as quick as it met his arm, and he felt himself being pushed forward by the mob of office workers around him.
No, wait.
He turned around, he turned around as quickly as he could, because the doors were about to close. Because someone was telling him to do it before it was too late.
Hurry, Kim Dokja, his voice spoke.
There she stood, her eyebags visible even from this distance, her face so pale from her body crumbling and shutting down over all those years.
She looked so frail, like she was about to pass out.
Han Sooyoung, the name slipped from his lips. He screamed, a guttural, visceral, desperate scream, and he ran.
Pushing past all the people around him, dropping his suitcase – It seemed to have fallen near the gap between the platform and the train entrance, even if it had fallen in, he didn’t care – and he ran.
The world could be watching him at that moment, and it would point and laugh. For what reason was this man screaming, chasing after someone so desperately for, in a busy station at a time like this?
The world. The world wasn’t doing such a thing, because the world had been wrapped tightly into his arms, tackled into a hug that knocked out the air from her lungs, embraced so, so warmly.
A feeble wish of being saved. Another, of wanting to save.
Dozens of scenarios, plans upon backup plans with no room for failure. Having everyone to fight with, having no one to talk to.
Were you lonely too?
He cried, his tears staining her sleeve, the sleeve of his savior. She felt the hot concrete floor against her back, the pain of the impact taken by his elbows and limbs. She looked down, slowly, her final breaths thin and her heart already too fragile to take something like this.
“Kim Dokja,” She whispered, laughing. She looked beautiful when she laughed, her eyes crinkling into gentle lashes that tickled his fingers cupping her face, her cheeks pink. “Kim Dokja.”
“I’m sorry,” He choked the words out. She would disappear soon. The Han Sooyoung of the 1863rd round would disappear soon. He hugged her so, so tightly.
Please don’t go. Please don’t disappear.
No response, but she was still warm, her breaths still faint but there, still there against his collar.
He felt her suck in a breath, he knew whatever she wanted to tell him next was something she had waited a long time to finally say. He knew what she was going to say, he–
“It wasn’t your fault for being born,” She started crying too, tears streaming down her cheeks, her voice crackling with emotion. “None of what has happened, none of what will happen, will ever be your fault, Kim Dokja.”
He fucking. Knew. What she was going to say. And yet.
“Han Sooyoung, Han Sooyoung.”
And yet.
He sobbed pathetically, like a child. Say it. Say it before she’s gone.
“Thank you for saving someone like me.”
Her eyes widened, and her fingers dug into his suit. Her grasp was so soft, he could barely feel it.
And she echoed it back. That sentence of his.
“Thank you too,” She murmured, and oh, Kim Dokja knew those words were on her final breath. “For saving someone like me.”
He woke up gasping for breath, tears stinging his eyes, his heart beating to the point it hurt his chest. There, sitting beside him, was Han Sooyoung, gripping his hand so hard that it took a moment to register the pain.
She had gotten off her chair, holding his shoulder with her other hand as he jolted awake, the concern on her face unlike her usual self.
He instinctively held out his arms, leaning forward. It didn’t even take a split second to pass for her to hug him back.
“I… I dreamt…”
“I know,” She mumbled, the words hissing through gritted teeth. “I know, you fucking bastard.”
Sleep talking was no new occurance since he had awakened weeks prior. He clutched onto her, the nauseating cold still churning in his stomach.
“Han Sooyoung,”
“Oh my god please, don’t cry,” She whispered. Her embrace was warm. Strong.
She was alive.
And so he cried anyway. The both of them do.
Under the hot sun casting through the windows of the room.