Work Text:
Saeran is giddy and nearly trembling with excitement when V and Rika tell him he’s now allowed to go outside. He is frail and wavering, carved empty where Saeyoung had left, but has enough strength left to hope, to say his thanks yous and goodbyes, and barely enough muscle memory to breathe again.
Those first couple of days are disconcerting. He is drained. The deluge of abuse from before had left him boneless and more vulnerable than he had ever felt in his entire life, yet his mother gives him as much space as she can in the small apartment. For the first time in his life, Saeran is feared and reviled, something disgusting to be avoided instead of hunted. He tries not to think too hard about it. It’s too easy to see the jagged edges where Saeyoung had been, the awkward way he’s forced to slip into his skin and where he falls short. He is small and yielding, playing at being someone three sizes too big and living in fear of when his mother will see through the farce.
That never happens. Saeran is not sure what went down between the two strangers and his mother, but she grows distant where she was encroaching before. He is not loved, he’s just unseen.
(a very small part of him, a voice that he hadn’t told anyone about, not even his brother, whispers that hands are the same whether they’re around a throat or touching someone’s hand; he wishes desperately he could hold Saeyoung)
That’s when the visits start. V and Rika begin taking him out on short trips around the neighbourhood; a swing in a park, a sunny table at a café – all the places that can be easily seen from the windows in his house. An offering to mother, he realises, and keeps quiet, sinks lower into his chair. What had seemed like tiny dollhouse set pieces from a distance is brought sharply into focus by the blinding April sun. The street is too loud, too real to be real, and Saeran watches himself as he’s being watched.
‘We thought you might like to go to school,’ Rika is saying. It takes a long time for her words to pass through the cotton in his brain.
‘We’ve made most of the necessary arrangements, but we thought we should ask you what you think about it before we go through with it,’ V says.
No adult in Saeran’s life had ever thought he was important enough to be asked things.
Later that night, while he’s getting himself ready for bed, he finds the faint trail of freckles the sun had raised on his cheeks.
Saeran wears the sunburn like a brand.
When Saeran sees the cathedral for the first time, he feels like his ribs are about to break from the strain of keeping himself contained. He is buoyant, eager to prove himself and make sure that no one will ever feel bad for trusting him with this chance. The small freedoms V and Rika had earned for him, as sparse and fenced in as they are, feel monumental and aberrant, too large for Saeran to comprehend. He can only dart his mind’s eye across a tentative outline of what they could mean in the future and it’s like trying to understand the size of the ocean from the perspective of a fish.
The cathedral hall (nave, he corrects himself, that’s what Saeyoung had called it; a nave is like a ship and ships have tasted the seas and skies of many places) is big and empty and echoing. It’s hollow like I am, he thinks, and brushes up against a sliver of what his brother must have found so comforting in this place. Empty places call to lost people, he understands a bit of that compulsion himself, and Saeran is scared to consider what that says about V and Rika; now, as always, he defangs the thought before it can hurt him.
His two benefactors lead him by the hands to meet the nuns who run the place. There’s three of them already there, looking like they were waiting for them, all thin and willowy with paper-thin skin. If Saeran squints, he can see the veins running under the surface. It feels oddly intimate, like he’s peeking into someone’s private life, and he averts his eyes before they spot his indiscretion. Rika leads the conversation for a while, bringing up stories and people Saeran has no knowledge off; when she finally steps back to let V carry on, the atmosphere cools from the friendly effervescence Rika had whipped up to polite attention. Saeran gets the feeling that V might not be as comfortable as she is in this space, as much of a stranger as Saeran himself feels, so he holds on even more tightly to his hand, hopes it makes it better even if it’s not much.
The introduction is brief, with whispered fragments of conversation drifting down lazily to his level. He’ll be joining in from next week, there’s some documents that need to be signed (his heart catches briefly in his throat at this, but V squeezes his hand back reassuringly), a small project to prepare for the arts class next week. Small glimpses of normality that he witnesses as if through a sieve. Fractured and displaced, but comforting.
Rika is quiet throughout the whole thing, breaking her solitary watch only to laugh airily or to thank the nuns for their understanding. As soon as her part in the proceedings had ended, she’d put up something dense in front of her; armour only she can see. When Rika finally moves from her spot at Saeran’s side, there’s a soft pearlescent glow around her and she quietly asks the older looking of the three about something. The woman nods before leading her off to the side into a different section of the building. The other two nuns say their polite goodbyes and smile at Saeran on their way out, but he almost misses this, his eyes glued to the back of Rika’s head and a quiet panic rising clamping down on his windpipe. There’s a vague and persistent feeling that he is being left behind and all he wants to do is call out to her even as his breath gets shallower.
V’s concerned face breaks through this terror, but only slightly; crouched down as he is, the man has grabbed Saeran’s other hand and is making soothing motions with his thumbs. The sudden closeness silhouettes him against the vaulted ceiling. In the fragrant dimness of the nave you could almost mistake him for a statue, but the quiet tremors under his skin betrayed a turbulent inner life. Just like before, with the nuns, Saeran freezes at the sudden intimacy.
‘It’s okay, she’s just going to pray in the chapel. She won’t be long.’
Ah. The fear subsides but a deep and rotten shame takes its place. He feels weak and stupid for this outburst and there’s small tears beginning to prick at the corners of his eyes. He wants to wipe at them, but V is still holding on to his hands. Saeran is too afraid to move in case he takes it the wrong way, so he just sits there trying to blink the sadness away. A couple of hours into this and he can’t even keep quiet and let them do the talking, he just had to start crying in the middle of church and draw attention to himself and they’re going to regret letting him come here he’s never going to school he’s never going to see the books they promised him he’s going back in the house forever
V takes him gently by the shoulders and then, slowly and almost fearfully, pulls him into a very loose hug. There’s not a lot of pressure to it and Saeran would be somewhat unsure if they were even touching at all if not for the smell of peppermint tea and the faint whiff of burnt toast (V, you’re so clumsy, Rika had scolded him with that same bright smile she always wore, you never get this right). It must be V, even if the person in front of him seems as light and bird-boned like he feels. The closeness does manage to chase away some of the errant thoughts in his head. No one would hug people they’re mad at, right?
Saeran is still somewhat shaken and unsure when he finally finds his voice.
‘Saeyoung used to pray.’ V makes a hissing kind of noise at this and Saeran can feel the reverberations on his skin. ‘He said I could always join if I wanted to, but I never knew what to say. I just sat there and watched him.’
‘Would you like to go see what Rika’s doing?’ V asks, and his voice is soft and reassuring. ‘She’d be happy to have us there.’
Saeran doesn’t have to think for too long about this. He nods eagerly and squeezes V all that more tightly. They untangle themselves from the cathedral floor and make their way over to where Rika had gone to. There’s an echo to the nave and, if Saeran closes his eyes, tilts his head this way and that, he can almost hear a double set of footsteps shadowing him, can almost pretend he’s not achingly alone. The Saeyoung-shaped hole in his side throbs painfully, a ghost limb he’s sure he’ll carry on his back forever.
They find Rika in the middle of the chapel, under a massive stained-glass window, an untamed halo of hair spilling out from the braid she had taken great lengths to tie up that morning. Wild and in sharp relief against the worn stone on the floor, her eyes wide in contemplation, Rika seems enraptured by the scene depicted in the window. There’s warm sunlight streaming in, the smell of incense wafting through from behind them, and she looks unearthly beautiful. Beautiful and lost and different from everything Saeran had ever known.
When Saeyoung had prayed, he had done so in the dead of night and under the ripped blanket they had shared. With one hand wrapped tightly around Saeran’s, one arm under his head, Saeyoung had frowned and prayed and burned with a determination that had felt as admirable as it was terrifying. It hadn’t even been a prayer to start with, just whispers of we’ll get out of here repeated like a mantra until sleep came to claim them both. Later, Saeyoung had added more words and formulas and appellations to that, like someone wrapping something very precious in tissue paper to keep it from breaking, but that seething core had always stayed the same. Where Saeyoung had been angry, Rika is yielding. Where he had crackled and simmered, Rika is unreal, untouchable and distant. It makes Saeran feel like he is once again watching the world through the dirty corner of a window.
She doesn’t react immediately, spending a couple more minutes in prayer. When she does turn around to greet them, she doesn’t seem to be looking directly at them, but somewhere far off inside herself.
‘Hello,’ she says, and her voice has a melodic lilt to it that instantly soothes Saeran’s worries. ‘Were you waiting for long?’
V shakes his head.
‘No, no. Take your time, we just wanted to join you.’
Her eyes are searching for something in V’s expression for a long time before she turns her attention to Saeran.
‘I’m sorry, you’re probably so overwhelmed right now with how many things are happening. I just wanted to come here and pray for a bit to clear my mid. Do you pray, Saeran?’
He shuffles his feet, unsure of himself. He’s desperate to make a good impression but lying here might end up hurting him in the end.
‘Not really,’ he admits quietly. ‘Saeyoung tried to teach me, but I couldn’t really understand it.’
She graces him with a beatific smile and laughs a bit at that.
‘Yes, like I said, it must be feel incredibly confusing to be thrown headfirst into this. But you learn best by doing.’ Rika nods her head lightly in the direction of the stained glass. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? They call it a Poor Man’s Bible. Most people didn’t know how to read, so they’d just look at this to understand. All those words distilled into images for everyone. It’s quite something.’ Her voice has that far off quality again and she smiles even wider at Saeran. ‘I’d like to be good enough to teach people like that one day, make them see complicated things in a way they can understand. It would make me very happy.’
Saeran wants to pay her back just a little for all the good she’s thrown his way, wants her to know how much she means to him. His voice is small and trembling, but he finds it anyway.
‘You can do it. You can make people understand. You could…you could teach me? If you want. I…’ his voice trails off at the end. He doesn’t really know where he’s going with this, but he knows that he wants to help Rika in any way he can. ‘I know I can’t do much, but maybe you can figure out how to show it to other people if you can teach me first?’
The veil that had separated them until now seems to be broken as Rika finally makes eye contact with him. Her eyes are green, but the diffuse light in the chapel gives them an inner light of their own. It’s like staring at a cat. She casts a long shadow across the floor and as she moves towards him, the cone of darkness swallowing Saeran up entirely. Rika crouches down in front of him, like V before her, and cups his face in her hands. They’re soft, but cold. Her smile though, her smile would keep him warm for a long time.
‘Thank you, Saeran. You are very kind,’ Rika says, and V makes an approving noise somewhere above. ‘You remind me of myself, you know,’ and then, so softly that Saeran is sure he’s the only one who heard it, ‘I’d love to teach you.’