Chapter Text
Home sounds like leaf litter under feet and the rattle of reeds and grasses in mild winds. It was all Jisung knew for the first seventeen blooming seasons of his life.
If not for the sharp scent of metal and the tang of blood on Jisung's tongue, he would think he's dreaming again of returning there. He can hear tall grasses outside, the wind playing them against each other until it pulls a symphony from the field. The song aches in Jisung's chest like a fresh wound as he comes to consciousness. Ages have passed since he left his home planet, yet it still feels like yesterday.
When he opens his eyes though, it isn't to familiar fieldlands.
Instead, it's the interior of an impossibly well-lit ship, and Jisung quickly realizes that the pain searing across his chest isn't homesickness but a jagged, bleeding, and very real cut.
There's also the distinct feeling of gravity pulling him, not just to the side of the ship instead of the flooring, but at several times the force the tiny ship's artificial field should be able to generate. A glance around reveals a gaping hole in the ship's ceiling, morning light flooding in from two suns and illuminating the devastating path their crash landing carved through the ground. Scattered across what should've been the wall are the standard supplies every ship is mandated to have on board, flung from the regulation-sized locker they'd been stashed in.
The harness of the ship's single pilot's seat is half busted but still holding both Jisung and the person behind him, even as gravity tries to overpower them.
Changbin.
With a sense of mounting dread, Jisung is sure that the other man has died, either from the blaster shot that tore through his side during their escape or from their crash landing. He's so cold, so still.
Jisung doesn't know what he'll do without him. Changbin's knowledge had quickly become Jisung's only chance of survival, and now it might be gone.
With stiff, shaking hands he undoes the seat harness and lets himself fall the short distance to the hull. Pain flares through every inch of Jisung, thick like tar and immediately blazing higher when Changbin's limp body lands on him.
Despite how cold he is and how he remains completely immobile, the impact drags a short gasp from Changbin, weak and shallow with lack of air.
The noise makes something click in Jisung. They have completely different physiologies. Changbin, for all that he is of moderately similar height and build to Jisung, has huge, velvety wings and something that definitely isn't blood in his veins.
With strength he didn't know he had, Jisung lifts Changbin enough to slip out from under him, grimacing as the movement tugs at the wound across his chest. It's not nearly as life-threatening as the one Changbin sustained getting them off planet though, so Jisung can deal with it later.
His hands shake as he shuffles through the supplies scattered across the ship. The one thing nearly everyone learns about space-travel, no matter what form of education you receive, is how to use a stabilization pack. Jisung had wanted to use one on Changbin at the start of their escape, while they rocketed away from the port and far too deep into space for the ship they'd stolen to handle, but the other man had told him not to, that in a ship so close to shaking apart the pack was more likely to kill him than help in the case that Jisung's hand slipped.
Then Jisung, with all the flight training of a newborn, had crash landed them into the planet Changbin pointed out on the scanners before he had fallen unconscious.
But they were on stable ground now, and Jisung could steady his hands long enough to save a life.
"Shit," he huffs, fumbling with the dials on the pack until the primary one is pointed at a humanoid and the secondary has been aimed at the depiction of a winged insectoid. Finally he outlines an approximation of the wound on the package's touch screen, which displays a humanoid figure and, after peeling off the sheet of plastic that kept the main portion of the device sanitary, presses it firmly to the hole in Changbin's side.
A few tense seconds pass before with a click the stabilization pack finally deploys, customizing itself to the information it was able to gather and the input Jisung had provided. Bright blue gel begins to seep from below the pack, clinging to the skin around the wound and drawing it in slightly before solidifying. The red outlined portion of the humanoid figure on the stabilization packs screen turns green and a diagram of vitals that Jisung doesn't understand appears beside the figure. It's the best he can do, stranded on an unfamiliar planet with his only companion on death's door.
Jisung isn't a doctor and he'd never wanted to get caught up in government secrets and underground rebellions. All he'd wanted was a peaceful life making music and enough money to send back to his family on their home planet.
Instead he has a data chip that could topple an empire trapped against his wrist and no idea where to go from here.
With a sigh, Jisung shuffles through some more supplies for a pack of bandages and wraps one firmly around the wound across his chest, careful to clean up the pinkish-grey blood that had welled up as he went. Once done he finds all the food, or food-related items since he doesn't know what Changbin needs to eat, or if he eats at all, in the emergency supplies and stashes it back in the busted locker, unsure of where else to put it to keep it safe. Then Jisung crawls through the hole in what should've been the roof of the ship and lets the twin suns' light wash over him as he closes his eyes.
Everything will be okay. Jisung just has to survive a year and then he can hand off the data chip and go back to making music.
Easy.
Changbin wakes confused and with a pounding headache.
He's injured, but everything feels muffled by painkillers. If he opens his eyes he knows he'll see the blank white ceiling of the private hospital reserved for those deemed important enough to be admitted and for agents associated with LOUD. The thought of how the doctors will hover over him, back-lit by too bright lights, speaking as if he's not even there, makes Changbin want to curl on his side and throw up.
But the air is too warm, there is no beeping of a heart monitor, and it feels like he's laying on metal, not a hospital mattress.
He shouldn't have a mission while he's hurt and on medication. It could cloud his mind, lead to mistakes. And he wouldn't sleep somewhere so uncomfortable unless he had a mission.
With no slight measure of trepidation, Changbin opens one eye. Above him, there is a pilot's seat, perpendicular to how it should be oriented in a ship.
At least it's not the hospital, thinks the part of Changbin that has wanted to run away since his very first mission.
Slowly, Changbin tries to think around the painkillers.
First, he needs to know where he is. Rolling his neck carefully, he looks first to the left.
Through ripped metal and torn wires, there's a destroyed field littered with pieces of what Changbin assumes is the ship he's in. Also through the hole in the ship is a young man, green-tinged skin catching the light from the twin suns of whatever planet Changbin crashed on. Fluffy brown hair littered with closed flower buds shifts with a slight breeze and Changbin's memory finally catches up to where he is.
His hand flies to his side, where it settles on cool plastic and metal. A stabilization pack. That's where the painkillers must've come from then.
"Jisung," Changbin calls, and grimaces at how weak his voice sounds. It isn't his first instinct to draw in air through his mouth, so he runs out too quickly when speaking.
The young man in the field jolts, scrambling to his feet and dashing over on clumsy legs. There's a gaping hole in the front of his shirt, exposing sloppily tied bandages with the slightest hint of color seeping through them.
"Changbin," Jisung sighs, tension bleeding from his shoulders, "thank the moon, you're actually alive."
"How long was I out?"
He doesn't mean to interrupt if Jisung had planned to continue talking, it's just that there's no guarantee they haven't been followed, that someone wasn't able to get a tracker onto their ship, that someone didn't see them. Getting somewhere safe comes before anything else.
Jisung stammers, obviously fumbling over his thoughts, before checking the watch strapped way too far up his wrist to avoid the leaves there. "It's been about three hours since I woke up after the crash so it can't have been too much longer than that."
He glances at the pack fixed to Changbin's side before continuing, voice miniscule even in the tiny confines of the wrecked ship, "Will you be okay?"
"I've survived worse," Changbin replies only after he's propped himself mostly upright, and immediately he catches how Jisung's eyes narrow. It wasn't a yes, and they're both fully aware of it.
They fall silent and Jisung looks impossibly smaller crouched beside him, some stray flower petals still stubbornly stuck in the tangles of his hair. A reminder that it's only been a day since this all started. Changbin knows he should be saying something, comforting the other man, but he can't. He hasn't been able to do something like that since he got his wings and they stopped letting him see his sister.
The ship's sharp angles and ripped edges are starker in the bright light of two suns.
"You have to be okay," Jisung eventually breaks the silence, "you're the one who dragged me out here, so you're the one who has to get me home." His voice is firm, and almost angry, but underneath is a chilling fear.
It's not surprising to know that Jisung is terrified, but it is a little to see how well he's handling it.
It only solidifies the knowledge that Changbin made the right choice.
He'll likely die when this year is out, but Jisung should be able to live. After everything he's done, death doesn't seem too unfair.
"I'll be okay," Changbin says, meeting Jisung's eyes even though he's not positive he's telling the truth, "if you grab me some food from whatever we have onboard."
Jisung stares like he's been stunned, the joke falling flat for a few tense seconds, before a surprised laugh catches them both off guard. The noise eases a worried part of Changbin that hasn't acted up in a long time.
"I don't even know what sort of food you eat," Jisung huffs, getting up and heading towards the battered emergency supplies locker anyways.
He spends a few moments there shuffling around before walking back, arms laden with what was apparently the ship's entire supply of food.
"We need to sort this by what's edible for each of us." He says once he sits down in front of Changbin, blocking the dying sunlight, "Start grabbing anything that'll keep you alive I guess."
With that Jisung reaches into the pile and begins pulling various stuff towards himself. He grabs food most humanoids can survive off of, but avoids anything with too much salt. Changbin follows suit, snagging similar packages along with all the more sodium dense stuff Jisung avoided, and the few packs of less traditional food that he knows can technically fuel him.
The final thing he grabs is the ship's only nectar pack. It's the same brand as the ones LOUD supplies him, only smaller, barely enough for three days. It's a little terrifying to know he'll be flightless in such a short time if he doesn't find another source.
Between the two of them, Jisung has a drastically smaller amount of food, barely enough for two days if he stretches it thin. Changbin has enough for five.
If he gives Jisung some of the stuff the other should be able to eat, they'll have around four days to figure out their next move. Before he can slide a few things over, Jisung shakes his head.
"I don't need as much food as other humanoids," Jisung says, gesturing to his arms and the green tint to them along with the leaves wreathing his wrists. "A few hours in the sun and my feet in some dirt and I'm mostly set if I have a few snacks throughout the day."
Nothing about Jisung's demeanor indicates a lie, or that he's trying to give Changbin more since he was injured, so he lets it slide.
"Okay, then we should have just under a week to figure something out."
Jisung nods, and Changbin studies his face. It's a little harder with the long shadow being back-lit by the sun casts, but Changbin can see the tear tracks through dust on the other's cheeks and the grey tinged wound across one side of his neck where the seat's harness must've dug into the fragile skin.
He doesn't know what to do about any of it, doesn't know how to keep them safe besides staying on the run.
It all feels a little hopeless.
Jeongin has never had the chance to know anything but hiding. He's lived off the same fields and climbed the same ridges with the same small community since he was old enough to remember.
Logically, he understands that it was the right choice for his parents to make. With three young sons and horns that rich fools would pay an arm and a leg for sprouting from their heads, it was the only way to survive.
He's heard the lecture so many times. They can't leave. Not yet.
After so long, Jeongin thinks they really mean not ever.
But some nights Jeongin watches the sky and all the celestial bodies cradled in its dark arms and wants like a physical ache in his chest. Wants with such fervor that he fears he might disappear, torn apart by the need to be anywhere else.
There are ships he could take, that he could run away with. He's talked about it with his elder brother before, about wanting to leave but never being brave enough.
He's watching the sky again when he sees it,
In the cradle of darkness after the moon sets but before the first sun rises, something lights up the sky. It blazes a streak of fire and aching after images into Jeongin's eyes before it slips past the nearest ridge.
Jeongin stares.
No one else is awake right now. The mansion below him is quiet, unmoving. He could leave, find where the object had landed.
The possibility feels like fire flooding Jeongin's veins. So he stands and watches a motionless horizon, not sure why he isn't moving. Then, after too long watching and waiting and knowing what he wants to do, the first ray of the first sun peeks over the ridge, blinding him.
The aching pull to disappear over the horizon throbs in his chest through the morning. There is something out there that only he knows exists. Something no one else has seen.
He barely tastes breakfast.
He pretends he isn't thinking about anything but the chores he has for the day and the few new books his mom had managed to get delivered from off planet.
By noon he's failed.
With worried eyes his father asks to speak to him after lunch. There's a piece of cucumber skin caught in his teeth and Jeongin watches that instead of how guilty he feels for wanting to disappear.
"What's on your mind, Jeongin? I haven't seen you this antsy since you got your own room." His father is a good man, and Jeongin almost wishes he wasn't.
That year had been the first Jeongin was able to escape to the roof at night without waking one of his brothers.
"I've just been a little restless, or overwhelmed. Like I need to be away from everyone for a little while, I guess," the lie is sour, but it will get him what he wants.
There's understanding in his father's eyes, just as Jeongin knew there'd be. His father would hike for days on end when they first moved, disappearing into the fields to decompress and be alone.
He nods his head to the left, to where the hall leads into the kitchen then a side door. There's a mellow grin on his face that isn't quite sad, "Grab some food and water before you hike, okay?"
Jeongin beams at him, because he is thankful, and gives him a short one-armed hug before dashing for his room, desperate to get changed into better clothes for the trek he'll have to make and grab a decent bag for supplies.
Within ten minutes he's at the backdoor, bag stuffed with food, water, and emergency supplies.
He doesn't know how long it'll take to find the fallen object, but hopefully when he does something will change.