Chapter Text
The bear charged forward, directly into Seonghwa.
The air was forced out of his lungs when he hit the frozen ground.
Someone screamed.
Jongho yelled, and Seonghwa could hear the click of the gun's safety.
The bear roared.
Seonghwa's head was empty when he reached up to grab at the bear's fur. Everything he had prepared to do, every incantation he had meant to say or sigil he had meant to paint had vanished into thin air.
He yanked.
After a second of resistance, the fur gave away, burying Seonghwa underneath it. Something crashed atop of him, but it wasn't heavy enough for a bear. Seonghwa hadn't heard a gunshot either. For a moment, everything was quiet, even the wind muffled by the fur covering him. It smelled like snow and dust.
Seonghwa tried to detangle himself from the fur and found himself staring at a young man's face. His cheeks weren't exactly hollow, but close,his brown eyes teary and surprised. He smelled like snow and dust too.
Somewhere behind Seonghwa, he could hear Jongho say “What the fuck?”. Seonghwa didn't look in Jongho's general direction as he answered with “Watch your language, Jongho”. The man's face was eerily familiar, like a memory of a dream.
The moment was broken by San positively screeching “Yunho!” and actually tackling him. Like a knee-jerk reaction, Seonghwa reached out and barely got a hold of the tails of San's cloak and jerked him back before he could actually hurt Yunho. Hypothermia was a very real risk right now, and Seonghwa wouldn't let Yunho freeze to death just because San thought he needed to hug him in the snow. San landed on his butt and burst into tears, but Seonghwa assumed it was more because he was overwhelmed and not because he was hurt.
Seonghwa felt snow slowly trickling down his neck as he stood up to help Yunho up. He shook out his feathered cloak and wrapped it around Yunho's naked shoulders, carefully closing the clasps at the front. Yunho looked at him with wide eyes, as if he wasn't entirely sure he was awake. Seonghwa caressed the man's cheek for a second, before he turned to San. San was still sitting on the ground, still in tears. He did give Seonghwa two of his three scarves without hesitation though, so Seonghwa left the boy to his emotions for a moment longer to tie one scarf around each foot of Yunho, so he wouldn't loose any toes while they were on their way back to Yangdong.
“I'm so sorry Yunho,” San wailed from where he was sitting, looking absolutely devastated. The tears froze on his cheeks, but San didn't seem to notice. Seonghwa threw Jongho a look who was currently instructing Wooyoung to take his rifle and get his ass back to Yangdong. He missed the rest of the explanation as he picked up the bear fur, shook the snow off it and wrapped it around Yunho's shoulders too. Yunho looked close to tears, hands too close to blue for Seonghwa's liking tangled within the raven feathers that made up Seonghwa's coat.
“I'm so sorry, I didn't want this to happen, you have to believe me!” San cried out again and he stumbled to get up. Seonghwa could hear Wooyoung stumble through the woods to do whatever Jongho had tasked him with.
“I'm so sorry.”
Seonghwa barely kept San from tackling Yunho a second time. They weren't going to hug it out in the middle of the woods. San's hands burrowed in Seonghwa's woolen jacket as he cried into the older's shoulder. Yunho glanced from San wrapped in Seonghwa's arms to Jongho, who was slowly approaching them.
“Hyung, I don't know if you remember me. I'm Jongho. You've been... missing for a while, but everything's okay now.”
Yunho blinked at Jongho like he had to really focus on him to understand his words, but he slowly nodded.
“You are... one of Mingi's friends,” Yunho then said, his first words in what Seonghwa assumed to have been almost a decade. Jongho smiled.
“Yes, I'm one of Mingi-hyung's friends. This is Seonghwa-hyung. He's the one that found you. Do you know Seonghwa-hyung?”
Jongho slowly came closer, as if he was still dealing with a wild animal. Seonghwa assumed it wasn't the dumbest approach. Even when his body was back to human, they didn't know for sure what ten years as a bear did to your head. Had Yunho been aware of what was going on? Had he recognized San? Or had time just frozen for his human brain and he was still only a ten year old boy mentally?
Yunho's eyes wandered over where Seonghwa tried to calm down San, who was almost hysterical at this point, because the cold had frozen his eyelids shut. Seonghwa let the younger bury his face against his throat as he shivered.
“You are the witch. You are the one that talks to birds” Yunho said and Seonghwa was relieved. Not really about Yunho bringing up his habit of talking to birds because Jongho would clown him for that once they got themselves indoors, but because it meant Yunho remembered.
Jongho wrapped his only scarf around San's eyes to keep the apprentice from further injury and slowly guided him through the woods by his hand, while Seonghwa supported Yunho's very wobbly steps on human legs too long still for his newly changed perception.
“I never could tell when you had arrived,” Yunho said at around the halfway point. Slowly, he got surer in where his legs actually ended, and he didn't have to concentrate as much. “One day, the mountain was empty, and the next you were there.”
“Should I wear a cow bell so you can hear me coming?” Seonghwa joked. He immediately bit his tongue. Maybe he shouldn't talk to Yunho like he wanted to return to the mountain. He had spent ten years here, most of it with no human contact. Seonghwa couldn't blame him if he didn't want to come here ever again. Maybe even Seonghwa, who loved this mountain like no one else he knew, would want some time away.
“You won't need one,” Yunho said, just as Seonghwa had assumed. And then, very unlike what Seonghwa had assumed, he continued “I will be coming here with you.”
Wooyoung greeted them with a wild wave when they reached Yangdong, before he took San's hand from Jongho to help him inside. Yunho's face flushed almost immediately after they entered the cottage and even the blue-ish hue his fingers had taken on vanished very quickly. San's eyes slowly thawed.
Jongho almost immediately busied himself with the big cauldron hanging over the open fire, adding strips of dried meat and some of Seonghwa's herbs he knew were actually meant for cooking and not for brewing, while Seonghwa handled Yunho to sit down on one of the chairs.
They hadn't exactly planned ahead (not even Seonghwa), and Seonghwa discovered that they had no clothes that fit Yunho just right. For now, he would have to get used to Seonghwa's clothes that were a bit too short on him until Seonghwa could get his hands on bigger ones. Maybe Hongjoong could bring up some of Mingi's clothes once he would come up here. Yunho looked about the same size as him.
San apologized again, this time hugging Yunho for real, for what felt like half an hour. He only let the taller go reluctantly, and only because Jongho announced the stew was ready. Yunho devoured seven bowls of the meat stew, as well as most of the bread they had in the house. Seonghwa would need to bake a new loaf later on. Yunho's hand lightly grazed Seonghwa's wrist, fingertips hot. He laid in front of the fire on Seonghwa's sleeping mat, eyes barely open.
“Thank you, hyung,” he whispered, voice heavy with sleep. He didn't even notice when Wooyoung and Jongho snuck out of the cottage and a cold draft swiped over them.
“For real,” San said, voice thick. Seonghwa could already tell how close he was to tears. “Thank you, hyung. Thank you so much.”
San did start to cry again when Seonghwa wrapped his arms around the younger. He could tell San was trying to be quiet, as not to disturb Yunho's sleep, but Yunho didn't even stir when they could hear Wooyoung and Jongho climb around the roof, securing more tarp over the hole they hadn't fixed yet.
Seonghwa pet San's hair until he fell asleep against his shoulders.