Archive of Our Own ^beta

They don't get many strangers in Winhill. The tiny village is isolated by mountains, hiding it from the rest of the world. Sometimes Chanyeol's not even sure there is a rest of the world, but then a traveller will come through, maybe stay a couple of nights in the rooms above the Flower Restaurant, and share stories about the things they've seen and done. Chanyeol laps it all up eagerly, a taste of freedom he never expects to have. He knows he'll never leave. Not many people do - and those who did, once upon a time, went away to fight. Few returned.

Chanyeol's own father had been one of the lucky ones, for a while, but his war wounds had caught up with him before he'd had time to do much more than hear his young son's first word. Chanyeol's mother had joined him only a few years later, and when Chanyeol goes up to the hill behind the village to lay flowers on their graves, he never forgets to greet them both properly, although his memories of his parents are patchy at best. He's been brought up by the village, one of a clutch of war orphans taken in by those who'd stayed behind. That's all he knows.

He's grown up playing hide-and-seek in the village square and flower fields, giving his guardians a fright by climbing around the bridge, chasing stray chocobos as they dash through the crossing. Winhill's residents are used to seeing him anywhere and everywhere, especially since his growth spurt kicked in and playing hide-and-seek became all but impossible for him. His height and long reach make him an asset whenever there are shelves to be put up, or beams to be dusted, or signs to be replaced on the walls of the old, weather-worn buildings, their faded browns and greys only brightened by hanging baskets of flowers that can be found all over the village.

Winhill's not a terribly exciting place to live but it's safe. Much safer than the world beyond the mountains, or so Chanyeol gathers from the old ladies who cluster around the tables in the pub with their cards and delight in telling him - their young, impressionable server - how lucky he is to live somewhere so peaceful, so civilised, as he brings them their gin.

"Mark my words," Ms. Marchant says, shuffling the deck of cards between her fingers as she speaks, "that one'll come to a bad end, just see if he won't. Scandalous, the way he managed to persuade young Mary to run off with him."

"She'll be back," Ms. Heatherstone says soothingly. Nothing ever ruffles Ms. Heatherstone's feathers, not even the time Chanyeol had accidentally smashed her window with a ball by playing catch in the square, and he likes her best. "Mary's got a good head on her shoulders, and I'm sure once she gets over the novelty, she'll realise he was just a mildly attractive ne'er-do-well with a nice coat and a few interesting stories, and she'll come home."

The other three ladies at the table look horrified by the classification of Winhill's most recent visitor as even 'mildly attractive', but Chanyeol's inclined to agree with the assessment, at least regarding the appeal of the stranger's tales of the outside world. He'd spent an enjoyable couple of hours talking to him the previous morning. Not that he's going to admit to this, of course, or they'll all think he's at risk of running away too. It's a valid worry: there aren't many people his age left in Winhill, and Mary's hardly the first to have taken off in search of adventure.

"I'm sure your granddaughter will come home soon, Ms. Marchant," Chanyeol says, pouring her a fresh glass. "She doesn't like to walk far, and she'll have to if she wants to reach the railroad."

She pats his arm as he sets the glass on the table. "You're such a dear, Chanyeol. Always a kind word to ease an old lady's heart. If I were fifty years younger..."

Chanyeol conceals his horror behind a smile (Ms. Marchant has been criticising his choices for as long as can remember, her most recent complaint being about him dyeing his hair blond, and the notion of taking up with her terrifies him) and edges away from the table to collect another order from the bar. The pub's mostly empty and he's got another two hours of his shift left, during which he'll be able to hear almost every word spoken around him. He doesn't usually mind.

But today...

Today the pub seems especially small. The sun shining through the coloured window glass fills the room, forcing its light into even the tiniest, darkest corner and making everything the same. There are no surprises here. Nothing ever changes, except when one of the residents dies, or on the rare occasion when a visitor passes through. Things have been the same for years. The same regulars, sitting at the same tables, drinking the same drinks and repeating the same old conversations they've been having for longer than Chanyeol cares to think about. Longer than he's been alive, probably.

Yesterday he'd heard stories about a great glass city, a shining vision in silver and blue, where people don't even have to walk if they can't be bothered because the streets will take them where they want to go. A place where Winhill's splintering wooden staircases would be hopelessly old-fashioned compared to moving platforms that rise and fall between floors. Esthar sounds like a dream - someone else's dream, because Chanyeol can't even imagine what such a city might be like, any more than he can visualise the Kashkabald Desert's endless stretches of sand or the deep blue of the ocean seen from Fisherman's Horizon.

For now, he explores the world through other people's stories and pictures in books. It's always been enough for him in the past. Each time he's thought about venturing beyond the flower fields, he's been brought to heel by a timely request to play a few songs at the village fête, or the unexpected illness of one of his co-workers. There's always something, and no matter how wistfully he looks at the path leading towards the mountains, he's never quite managed to push past the excuses. One day, he tells himself. One day he'll think about it seriously, and make proper plans.

Today is not that day. He ends his shift with a smile for everyone he sees - they all know him, here, and he likes to make them happy - and heads back to the small house left to him by his parents. He's old enough to live alone now, and has done for several years; he's had plenty of time to make his own cooking and cleaning mistakes, but if he needs advice, he's got a village full of opinions on how things ought to be done and sometimes, it's easier not to ask. He swings by the kitchen, grabs a soda and a packet of crisps to take with him, then shoulders his guitar case on the way out. He's spent enough time indoors.

The late afternoon sun is much more pleasant from Chanyeol's seat on the crumbling wall opposite the flower shop than when filtered through the pub windows. He can sit here undisturbed, playing quietly to himself and raising a smile from the handful of people who come past to buy flowers. It's nice to be with people, too, but he's running out of people to be with. People he can talk to without feeling the need to make the conversation all about them, how they're doing, what they want. He flatters them, he encourages them, he takes an interest in their lives and cheers them up when they're feeling down. He knows everyone in Winhill, from Ms. Marchant's ancient mother down to the youngest of the four Braddock children, and even if they catch him off-guard, he's always got something to say to them.

Chanyeol knows how to please everyone but himself.

He's working on that. Dyeing his hair had been one thing he'd wanted for himself, and he's done that now, despite the protests of everyone who'd walked by and seen him in the chair, having the colour massaged into the dark, matted strands. He plays his guitar more often in public now, when people ask him to perform, even though he knows that most of his audience prefers it when he plays the piano for them instead. In his own way, one step at a time, he's trying to make his life a little more about him.

It's not as if he has anyone else.

He flexes his fingers, which have spent the afternoon curled under trays and around glasses, and tightens his grip on his plectrum to play the opening chords of a lullaby, one of the few things he can remember his mother singing to him all those years ago. The words are lost to him but the tune is engraved upon his memory. He knows it better than he knows the sound of his own voice.

But the lullaby is driven from his mind as his hands fall slack from the guitar, thudding against the wall. The pain scarcely registers; bruises that will form on someone else's skin. Nothing for Chanyeol to cry out about - but then, he can't say a word. His mouth is missing.

So is the rest of him. He panics, reaching out blindly to grasp the wall, grasp the guitar, grasp anything that's not a handful of empty air, but his body won't obey him. It's not rebelling - it's simply not there. He can't feel the wall beneath him anymore, the uneven stone digging into the backs of his thighs. The sun is no longer gently warming his shoulders through his pale blue T-shirt. Soda's stopped bubbling in his stomach. He's lost sight of the flower shop across the path in the darkness clouding his vision, and not a single sound reaches his ears.

Chanyeol wonders for a moment if he's in the process of blacking out, but this doesn't feel like the time he fell from a tree as a kid and lay dazed on the grass until the impact caught up with him. There's no tingly light-headedness zooming rapidly towards oblivion. He's momentarily weightless, formless, without any means of physical structure, and it's terrifying.

He scrabbles around in his memories for song lyrics, grocery lists, even the letters of the alphabet. Anything he can run through in his mind to keep himself steady, one item at a time to keep the panic at bay. What does he need to buy tomorrow? Some more toothpaste...a couple of pints of milk...a fresh loaf of bread-

His mental trip around his cupboards is rudely interrupted by the return of sensation - too much of it. Fire races along his body, searing the ends of nerves he'd thought he'd lost, but somehow his skin's in the wrong places. His face feels peculiar, like someone's clamped his nose and mouth in a vice and locked them together in one scrunched up, solid block right in the middle, but that's nothing compared to the agony in his arms, where millions of tiny needles seem to be poking their way through to the surface only to explode into fireworks.

Chanyeol's legs, which have never been the sturdiest, are firming up as they elongate further and stretch, taking him beyond the wall. He thinks he's standing, yet there's no ground beneath him. No ground...anywhere.

He can't stop himself from rising. Something's driving him up, propelling him higher and higher and his arms, which he spreads frantically in an effort to control his ascent, snap outwards with the barest hint of an impulse from him. They're light...

Not light. Fire.

There's only fire when Chanyeol forces open his eyes, and it's coming from him. He's soaring upwards into a sea of stars - when did it become night? - with flames emanating from his misshapen body, leaping through the open air to set the sky alight. He has no idea how to stop. He feels light enough to fly forever, despite his new, longer legs, and a body that seems to have blown up like a balloon, curving out and under so much that he can't help leaning forwards. And his arms...

Chanyeol risks a sideways glance at his right arm, sees a fiery mass of yellow and orange feathers stretching out beside him, and screams.

A raw, guttural screech tears its way up from his throat to split the night sky, loud and violent enough to wake the dead. Chanyeol's never heard anything like it. And when he realises that the sound isn't emerging from between his lips, but from a beak, he keeps right on screaming.

He's a bird. On fire. A bird. On fire. He should be falling, his feathers burning until his wings can no longer support him in the sky. He should be dying, the flames stealing his air until he can no longer breathe.

He should be dead, his body roasted until his internal organs could no longer cope.

But for all that he's on fire, he's not feeling any heat. Not anymore. This is a painless blaze, flames forming all around him without once so much as singeing his feathers. Feathers he shouldn't have. None of this is possible. He's fallen off the wall, that's what it is, and the only reason he thinks he's a giant flaming bird is the head injury he's no doubt acquired by landing on a stray rock. He's willing to buy that as an explanation.

Because if he doesn't, if he forces himself to admit that this is actually happening...

Chanyeol likes the world to make sense, even if he has yet to experience much of it for himself. He reads all the books he can lay his hands on, tries to learn as much as he can from other people, and works out what he can to fill the gaps in his knowledge. He knows he's one of the brightest sparks in Winhill - albeit not the kind of sparks currently trailing behind him as he rises, and wow, is that a tail? - but nothing he's ever read or heard can explain such a phenomenon.

Dream, hallucination, or otherwise, this has to stop. He's pretty sure that even giant flaming birds can't fly to the stars, but that's where he seems to be headed unless he can figure out how to control his new body. Surely it should be easier to move down than up?

He snaps his beak shut, clamping down on the urge to keep expelling all his confusion and horror through a scream. A tentative wiggle of one wing has him spinning circles in mid-air. He must look ridiculous, he's sure - a newborn overgrown bird learning to fly at the worst possible time. He can't even be certain if he's using the correct muscles for what he wants to do. Perhaps the only way down is to make sure he's not using any of them at all.

Drawing giant sheets of fire towards himself is unpleasant to think about but Chanyeol does it anyway, making experimental motions until his wings collapse towards his chest. It's unexpectedly tiring. Each inch he covers feels more like a mile, a slow drag of laden barges through syrup. He sags in on himself, struggling to catch his breath, gulping down lungful after lungful of superheated air that does nothing to ease his exhaustion as he begins to fall.

The ground's still too far away to see. Chanyeol looks up instead, watching the trail of sparks he leaves in his wake. He'd find them prettier, perhaps, if he knew they weren't coming from him. When his eyelids become too heavy to keep open he lets them close. Doing nothing shouldn't be this draining. He's not moving under his own power at all, yet his strength bleeds away with every passing second.

He knows he should worry about hitting the ground. If it's this dark already there's probably no one around the flower shop, but can't be certain he's where he started, not after his attempts to steer, and it's possible he'll land on some unsuspecting passerby. (Although he would hope that anyone catching sight of a giant fireball heading their way would think to move to safety.) Winhill's his home and he'd prefer not to be responsible for accidentally burning it down.

But hitting the ground is inevitable unless he figures out how to land safely. Ordinarily, he'd be all over that, thinking about how to angle his wings and where to put his legs - he prides himself on his adaptability, even if this isn't his natural form. Only, that would take energy and he's rapidly running out. He drops his head to his chest and winces when he stabs himself with his beak; a nap would feel so good right about now, maybe just for an hour or two, and then he'll wake up to find he's lying on the grass, minus wings, and probably with a hangover because the soda he thought he grabbed from the fridge obviously wasn't anything anywhere near as harmless as soda.

Just when Chanyeol thinks he can't possibly keep awake any longer, the heaviness lifts and with a sudden pop, he's back on solid ground. Almost. The impact from falling off the wall jolts his eyes open and he sits on the grass, dazed, staring down at his own two featherless arms. He's not a giant bird. He's not on fire. He's not even dizzy. The sun's still shining and the flower shop's right where it should be, across the path.

Despite the warmth Chanyeol shivers, uneasy as he tries to piece together what's happened. He doesn't usually have bad dreams, especially during the day, but there's no other logical explanation. He's only just lost his seat on the wall, his head feels absolutely fine, and people don't simply turn into giant burning birds. They don't.

Perhaps he's had too much sun. Whether that's true or not, he's packing up and going home to lie down for a while. If he needs to sleep that badly, better he do it in his own bed, where he doesn't have so far to fall and won't get grass stains on his jeans if he does.

It's morning when he wakes, having skipped the night altogether, and he should be getting ready to go out. There's shopping to be done before his shift starts, a list of things he'd tried so hard to remember yesterday to keep his mind on track.

They can wait. Chanyeol doesn't even dress before he's scouring his bookcase, skimming past DIY manuals, cookbooks, and heartwarming tales about animals until he finds the volume he's looking for, all about mythical creatures. It's a children's book, old and tattered and far too young for him now, but he's had it since he was a kid, a birthday gift from Mr. Langdon, and his memories of it are fond enough for him to think he might be able to find himself in there. Thoughts of enormous birds with fiery feathers have filtered through his brain overnight, something he knows he's seen before on a page.

He'd thought, as a child, that the author hadn't had much imagination and had been merely twisting real animals until they appeared too fantastical to exist. Morphing a simple horse into a unicorn, for instance, or a large lizard into a dragon. It couldn't possibly have been real.

Now he's not so sure. He turns to the page headed Phoenix and begins to read.

-----

Chanyeol spends the rest of the day fending off enquiries about his health - everyone who speaks to him does so in order to say he seems distracted, not like himself, and is he feeling okay? Mr. Braddock has to ask him three times for the money when he finally goes out to buy groceries, and he mixes up orders at work for the first time in months. Luckily, it's nothing he can't laugh off. Everyone's so used to seeing him bright and cheerful, interested in everything taking place around him; it's not surprising that when he withdraws, even a little bit, he attracts attention.

It's unavoidable. He can't not think about how he'd imagined turning into a phoenix. It had felt so real. He can't recall ever having had such a vivid dream before, not with such levels of pain, and heat...and terror. He has no idea what could've brought it on. The phoenix is a symbol of rebirth; he toys briefly with the notion that this is his subconscious's way of suggesting to him that he stop dithering and make solid plans to leave Winhill so he can start a new life for himself elsewhere.

He soon discards it as an explanation. Taken symbolically, it could apply to almost anything about his life, right down to trying a new brand of toothpaste. He's unwilling to make drastic, life-altering decisions on the basis of what can only be a daymare.

But why fantasise about himself becoming a phoenix, an imaginary creature he'd read about many years ago and mostly forgotten? His dreams are usually far more mundane - but then, so is life in Winhill, where no one would put much stock in such a fantasy. Here, people dream of breeding new varieties of flowers, and possibly owning their own shop. Dreams that suit village life, not demolish it with a giant fireball. (It's not like he's ever wanted Winhill to go up in flames, either, so he can't imagine why he'd dream about putting it in danger.)

After accidentally delivering a child-size portion of lemonade to Ms. Marchant - who is not impressed - Chanyeol forces himself to chase all thoughts of the phoenix from his mind, at least for the duration of his shift. It's not fair to the people around him to let himself be distracted like this, especially when he doesn't like to tell them why. He's being paid to be here, he's got a job to do, and he's going to give it his complete concentration until he finishes work.

Ms. Heatherstone catches him by the door as he's about to leave. "Is something bothering you, Chanyeol?" she asks kindly. "You've been so quiet this afternoon."

Chanyeol gives her his biggest, brightest smile - mostly sincere, because even if he's not in the mood to smile at the moment, he knows she means well, and he genuinely does like her. "I slept very deeply last night and today I don't feel like I'm quite awake yet? But I'll be back to normal tomorrow, so you don't need to worry."

It's all true, except that he can't guarantee tomorrow will be normal. Not when he still feels ghostly feathers sprouting from his skin.

Ms. Heatherstone hums to say she doesn't quite believe him, but lets him go after stretching up on tiptoes to place a hand against his forehead, to reassure herself that he's not running a fever. He's not hot at all, no matter how much the memory of flames still lingers.

Chanyeol thinks it's best if he's not around people for the rest of the day, since he can't quite make the break between himself and the phoenix, and when he closes his eyes, all he can see is a trail of sparks blazing bright in the night sky. He can't talk to people like this.

That doesn't prevent him from visiting Winhill's one and only bookshop, a tiny affair carrying more romance novels than anything else, where all the bookcases are shorter than he is. He knows the contents of the shop by heart, has done since he was old enough to turn a page without tearing it, and he's always the first person Mr. Langdon tells whenever new stock comes in from Deling City. The old bookshop owner is used to Chanyeol popping in to look through the catalogue, asking if he can place an order for this or that.

This time, Chanyeol's not exactly sure what he's looking for. He has to crouch down to scan the titles of all the books on the lowest shelf. Most of them are about ailments of the body; few deal with the mind, and he only finds one that specifically mentions dreams. The only interesting thing it has to offer him is a theory that while he sleeps, one part of his self remains in his body, while the other is freed to journey through a realm of dreams. He likes that better than the idea of the dream somehow being a warning.

Today there are no books in the shop concerning fabulous creatures, only those revolving around the care of common household pets, and since Chanyeol hasn't had any dreams - that he can remember - about turning into a puppy, he leaves empty-handed, no closer to finding answers.

It's early morning before he's presented with another piece of the puzzle, not that he feels in any way enlightened. He spends a quiet evening at home, not in the mood for trying to keep up his end of a conversation while so distracted, and even when he retires to bed, his mind continues to busy itself with his phoenix problem.

That's how he knows he's still awake when he hears his name.

Someone's calling him, but not from outside. The voice is coming from inside Chanyeol's head, and it's familiar, though he can't attribute it to anyone he knows. The second he registers what he's hearing, he feels himself squeezed, a hard, invisible band trapping him in its small, tight circle until he thinks his ribs might crack from the pressure. But there's nothing there, nothing physical. He's still lying in bed, sprawled under the duvet, wearing the baggiest of baggy sweatshirts. He hasn't moved at all, hasn't had his mattress replaced by a vice. He can see the glow of his alarm clock on the nightstand...

...Until it winks out.

Or not.

Chanyeol catches a quick glimpse of his clock, almost out of the corner of his eye, because most of what's in his line of sight is considerably brighter than one small battery-operated timepiece. Sparks flash before him, forming an electrical barrier so thick he can't even see where it's coming from, and he jumps back to avoid receiving a shock. That sends him crashing into something soft and distinctly human-shaped, landing them both on the floor.

"Hey!" protests Chanyeol's new pillow. "You're supposed to attack the Capparwires, not me!"

"Capparwires? Huh?"

Chanyeol rolls to the side, ending up in a low crouch beside a lanky, brown-haired young man who's rubbing his stomach where Chanyeol's elbow made contact. His other hand is occupied with a giant shuriken, ringed with sharp, curved spikes, and Chanyeol's glad not to have landed on that. The man looks about his age, with narrow, cunning eyes lending a harder edge to an otherwise youthful face, and Chanyeol's never seen him before in his life.

They're on an unfamiliar street that can't possibly be anywhere in Winhill: there's not a building here less than four storeys tall, and some stand even higher than that. The tail end of a sunrise peeks between them, pale pinks and yellows fading out behind the concrete, and the ground is hard and empty beneath his bare feet, no grass or flowers to be found. A city, then, though Chanyeol has no idea which it might be, or how he might have arrived there.

At least he's not a phoenix this time, though his situation appears no less dire. Now he's beneath the cloud of sparks he's able to see their origin: a group of five short, tree-like creatures with greenish tendrils from which the bursts of energy emanate.

"Those are Capparwires," the stranger says as he propels himself to his feet. He's mostly leg, with boots that go on for miles, if not quite enough to reach his teeny tiny shorts. "And they're standing between me and my hotel room. So if you'd like to do something about them, Chanyeol, and I'll-"

"You know my name?" Chanyeol's certain they've never met before. A man like this would stand out in Winhill, where the closest anyone gets to being armed is brandishing a broom at stray cats.

"I know lots about you - but not what you can do here. You still use fire?"

"Fire? I..." Of course. Fire. The phoenix.

Chanyeol's not a phoenix right now, though. He has no idea how to go about making fire without tools. He looks helplessly at his hands, trying to imagine talons in place of fingers.

The brown-haired man ducks to avoid a crackling arc. "Any time now would be good?"

"But I can't-" Chanyeol begins, breaking off with a jolt when a spark leaps across the air between the two of them and the Capparwires, catching the back of his hand.

It's only a tiny burst, the mild shock nothing more than he'd receive from built-up static in his clothes, but it still hurts and he cries out in surprise. He's never done anything to hurt the strange tree creatures! Why should they attack him? He's not even supposed to be here, wherever 'here' is. He doesn't think they'll respond if he smiles at them and attempts to make nice, though. While he's normally all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, these probably don't qualify as people, and they don't seem like they'd be open to overtures of friendship.

The next shock numbs his thigh. He stands stock-still, grabbing his left leg with trembling hands. Beside him, the other man huffs and makes to hurl his weapon towards the Capparwires. He drops it to the street with a clang when a bolt narrowly misses his arm. He leaves it where it falls, carefully stepping away from the sharp spikes.

"They'll zap me before I can throw it!"

Chanyeol spares a second to wonder what the problem is, then realises the significance of the clang. The shuriken's made of metal. He has no idea what kind, but those weird little tree things are throwing around electricity like confetti. Metal's the last thing either of them wants to be holding.

He does a fast assessment of his attire. Same as he'd worn to bed - tracksuit pants and a baggy sweatshirt. No watch, no jewellery, so no metal, but no shoes, either, and if the Capparwires hit him with anything higher-voltage than they've done already there's nothing between him and the ground. He's already sweating from nerves, and if the concrete's damp beneath his feet...

But a bird of fire doesn't sweat, and he certainly doesn't remain on the ground to be fried. Chanyeol draws himself up straight, fists clenched in concentration as he thinks as hard as he can about how it had felt to have wings instead of arms, to have a tail trailing sparks in the night sky, to be a creature of feathers and flame. There. If he closes his eyes he can almost see it now, his wings beating bright and full of life against a midnight background. He stretches out his arm, willing the feathers to sprout from beneath his skin.

His concentration lasts only as long as it takes for his mysterious companion to knock him down. Chanyeol's eyes fly open; he manages to spread his hands in time to catch himself as he lands, scraping them painfully on the ground. Behind him, a streetlight explodes from the force of the Capparwires' attack.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

Chanyeol blinks up at his saviour, who's standing over him and has upgraded himself from being merely perturbed to outright distressed. He opens his mouth to argue that no, he's not suicidal, only trying to remember, but the words that emerge are not his own.

"Phoenix Flame!"

He clamps his mouth shut in horror. But...it's not lips he closes. As the two halves of his beak snap together, his arms - his wings - spread outwards, stretching overhead to their fullest extent. His head follows. The advent of his feathers has slipped by unnoticed, this time without the pain and the prickling. Fire bursts from the ground in a bright, heatless ring, surrounding them both, cupping them in flames that swirl faster and faster as they reach for the sky. They give him the propulsion he needs. He allows himself to be driven upwards, helpless to do anything but let loose a cry of fury as he hovers in the air a good twelve feet over his assailants. The puzzled Capparwires momentarily cease their attack, tendrils sparking with unspent power.

Chanyeol has sparks of his own, and he won't lose to anyone when it comes to power. A small circle of yellow light appears before his chest, rapidly expanding until it's beyond even his considerable wingspan. It's so bright he almost can't stand to look at it. Unlike the ring of flames below, it's warm, leeching the fire in his heart to live, pulsating with stolen heat.

Then it breaks. The circle splits into individual rays, each as wide as one of his wings and twice as bright; they rotate around his body until they find their targets, engulfing the Capparwires in brilliant beams. Chanyeol tries to protect his eyes from the blinding intensity, but even through closed eyelids, it's only just bearable. He doesn't see so much as sense the Capparwires burning to a crisp, as if the light is an extension of his skin and it sends back information on everything it touches.

He knows when it's over even with his eyes still shut. Exhaustion hits him hard, all his energy drained with the loss of his light. He's killed the Capparwires, but has he burned himself out in the process?

He forces his eyes open to survey the carnage. Below, the charred remains of the tree monsters still smoulder, their wooden parts all burned away. He flaps his wings a couple of times in an attempt to clear the smoke, then draws them in to effect a landing. It's mostly successful, at least as a phoenix. By the time his bare feet hit the ground, he's a man once more, and it's the man who loses his balance.

"Careful," the brown-haired man says, catching him by the arm to keep him upright. "You don't want to knock yourself out."

Chanyeol gives him a weary grin. "I think it might be too late for that." He has the strength to smile, because this stranger is being kind enough to help him stand, but he doesn't think he's good for much beyond that. All he wants to do is lie down and sleep. He can't do that in the middle of a street in an unknown city, though. Perhaps if he gets some rest, he'll be able to figure out how to take himself home again - wherever home is. Very far from here, he suspects. "Please...I...where am I? And who are you?"

"Oh, right, you probably wouldn't remember me either. You're in Junon, and I'm Shixun. Uh...Sehun. I mean Sehun." Sehun smiles widely in embarrassment, eyes narrowing until they almost disappear under his bangs. "I'm still getting used to that. It'll sink in eventually."

Chanyeol would bow in greeting, but thinks he'd probably fall over if he tried. "Nice to meet you, Sehun," he says, words no more than an indistinct mumble. Even moving his lips to speak is too much of a strain on his exhausted body.

Sehun's smile fades. "You'll disappear soon. But I'll call again later so you can come back, all right? This is the second time you've saved me and I need to tell you-"

Whatever Sehun has to say is lost as Chanyeol's body gives up the struggle for consciousness. There's a 'pop', and darkness, and then the glow of his alarm clock, which has been hovering in his peripheral vision all the while and is now the brightest thing in the room. Because it is a room, Chanyeol's own, not a street in Junon - and where's Junon, anyway? - and he's back in his own bed. Not, he thinks, that he ever left it. Probably.

According to the clock fewer than fifteen minutes have passed, and even if he's just witnessed the final moments of a sunrise, it's still dark here. Wherever he's going seems to be a few hours ahead. Dawn's a long way off, so he switches on the lamp to examine himself. A minute ago, he wouldn't even have had the strength to reach across the few inches of space to the nightstand. But now he's no more than ordinarily tired, the kind of tired that comes from waking up in the early hours of the morning and knowing without a doubt that further sleep will be impossible to achieve. The tingling in his hand and leg are no more. His temperature is normal, not even a little elevated from his time as a bird of fire.

When he looks down at himself, there are no feathers, no flames. No scrapes on the soles of his feet, nor on the palms of his hands. He's completely unaffected in all but his mind. There, a ghost of a circle remains, a tight band trapping him inside. Beyond the band, it's all a blur - no sights, but hints of sounds too muffled to make sense. Chanyeol stretches his arms - regular human arms - over his head, splaying his fingers wide, imagining how he must look beating his wings against the wind.

Strange, presumably, since the phoenix is supposedly a mythical being. Yet Sehun hadn't been surprised. He'd known Chanyeol's name, and that he had a connection to fire - and it had been Sehun's voice, Chanyeol realises now, that had called him just before he'd appeared in Junon. Sehun's going to call him again, and Chanyeol has no idea what that will mean for him. Fighting more weird tree-like creatures?

And what did Sehun mean, saying Chanyeol had saved him twice? Once from the Capparwires, certainly, but that's the only time they've met. Chanyeol's positive he'd remember if it had happened before. His life's not so exciting that events like this are commonplace.

It's all so strange. He rolls out of bed to consult a map, searching for a city named Junon. There's nothing. He knows there are places that were destroyed during the war and do not appear on modern maps, so next he checks an older one that had belonged to his parents. Nothing there, either, and those buildings definitely hadn't belonged to any ruined city. Besides, Sehun had mentioned a hotel, and Chanyeol's willing to bet he's not staying in some dilapidated shack.

He wishes he had more information. He's reasonably certain he's not losing his mind, if only because he's still rational enough to consider it as an option, which means this must all be happening, but how? One human doesn't simply call another one to a strange place and ask them to fight monsters. Being the phoenix is tiring, Chanyeol knows now, but if he hadn't transformed, if he'd retained his own shape, who knows how long he'd have been able to stay there without collapsing?

The only way he's going to learn more is when Sehun calls him again, whenever that may be. Winhill holds no answers for him. Junon might.

-----

It's a challenging morning. Chanyeol's simultaneously tired from lack of sleep and more awake than he's ever been, eager for the arrival of the voice in the back of his mind that will summon him to another place. He finds himself listening out for it while he's cooking breakfast, while he's doing his laundry, while he's scrubbing his front steps. He twitches optimistically at the slightest sound. Today is a day off, and he's even more grateful for that than usual. He can't imagine his customer service skills would be up to scratch when he's constantly distracted. This is so much worse than yesterday, when he didn't expect anything to happen.

It's better that he doesn't see anyone today. He'd be sure to let something slip, and then what would everyone think? That he'd finally allowed loneliness to get the better of him? People his age don't have imaginary friends, or dream of becoming phoenixes and fighting monsters in strange places. Those are childhood fantasies, and he's no longer a child, for all that the village's ageing population still sees him as one. There's no one in Winhill now with whom Chanyeol can share such dreams.

But he knows they're not dreams. When Sehun's voice finally reaches him, Chanyeol is catapulted from his own bedroom, where he's putting away a stack of neatly folded laundry, into what he assumes must be Sehun's. At least, Sehun is sitting on the bed, one hand holding his shuriken while the other directs Chanyeol towards a chair.

Chanyeol's prepared this time: as soon as he hears his name, he's planting his feet squarely on the floor, dropping the T-shirt he's about to place on the shelf, readying himself for the disorientation he knows will follow. No monsters, fortunately; Sehun is alone in the tiny hotel room. The backpack sitting on the small desk is the only sign that the room is used at all. Sehun doesn't look to be making himself at home here, and Chanyeol wonders where home is, for him.

"You don't have to kill anything this time," Sehun says, gesturing towards the chair. "I just want to talk. You haven't been summoned before, right? Not until I called you out? And that's why you were so confused."

"I've been confused for two days," Chanyeol admits. "This isn't helping much. How are you calling me? We hadn't even met until today...had we?"

"I can call you," Sehun holds up his shuriken, "because your name is on your materia."

"Materia?"

"This thing." Sehun taps a glowing red orb set in the centre of the weapon. It's in a twin socket with a similar stone in smoky blue, parallel to an empty pair of sockets. Chanyeol leans over for a closer look. "The red materia are for Summons, like you. People who can be called out to use special powers, like you did earlier when you killed those Capparwires."

Sure enough, if Chanyeol peers closely at the red materia, he can see his own name written inside. He tries to touch it but his finger never quite manages to reach the surface. It's as though the air between them is so thick that he's unable to force his way past. He sits back, puzzled as to why this should be.

"I've never seen a Summon touch their own materia," Sehun says. "But I've never had my own Summon materia before, either, just seen other people with them. I'm more used to Magic - those are green - and Command - those are yellow. But Joonmyun's holding onto all my others right now, so I've only got these two."

"Joonmyun?"

"He's in the room next door, taking a nap. He's at that age."

"Eighty?"

"Twenty-three. But he did just go through a massively life-altering experience. If he comes in and tries to tell you that his name is 'Suho', don't believe him, okay? He doesn't remember, but I do. Kind of."

Chanyeol doesn't know what to make of Sehun. He seems like he's younger than Chanyeol - and probably younger than this 'Joonmyun' - but the things he says...

"You 'kind of' remember? Like you weren't sure about your own name earlier?"

"But I do know my name," Sehun says earnestly. "Or I thought I did, until a couple of days ago, and then I remembered it used to be something else. I know who I am now."

He sounds sincere, if not terribly helpful. Chanyeol has no idea what Sehun's identity crisis has to do with weird tree monsters trying to kill them in the street, or Chanyeol transforming into a phoenix, or...well, anything to do with him, really. But Sehun wastes no time in clearing up that particular mystery.

"I remembered because of you," he says. "Only I didn't know it was you you until afterwards."

Chanyeol claps his hands to either side of his head, frustrated. "You're not making any sense!"

"I hear that a lot," Sehun says vaguely. "I don't know why. But mostly I hear: 'Huh? Where did my materia go?'."

"You're..." Chanyeol hesitates before finishing, because he thinks he's put two and two together and come up with quite an offensive four - and insulting a man holding a very, very sharp weapon is not a wise move. "Are you...a thief?"

Sehun nods, not at all abashed. "A materia thief. Or I was, until I died."

Chanyeol's mouth drops open. This conversation has just crossed the line from absurdity into the territory of downright impossibility. He can't be chatting with a dead man. He can't. "You're not dead," he says weakly, shaking his head.

"Not anymore, thanks to you. I'm grateful to you for that. I'd still be a crushed corpse in Fort Condor if I hadn't had your materia paired with Final Attack."

Fort Condor. Another place Chanyeol's never heard of. It is, Sehun tells him, a fort not too far from Junon, and a tempting target for a young thief looking to score a large haul of materia in one swoop. "I'd heard they kept all their materia locked away," Sehun explains. "They had to check it out if they wanted to use it. Fill out forms and stuff. I figured I could sneak in, take the whole heap off their hands, and make good money selling on anything I didn't want for myself, especially if there were any rare ones in there."

"That doesn't sound like much of a stable career choice."

"It's not, but that doesn't matter if you're good. And I'm the best," Sehun says airily. "I was just having an off night."

That's something of an understatement. Sehun's source had neglected to mention the fort's automated security system, which had left him badly crushed by large stone walls. "Or so Joonmyun told me afterwards," he adds. "I was unconscious at the time. The next thing I knew I was lying on the roof of the fort, watching a phoenix shoot up into the night sky."

Fire flares hot and bright in Chanyeol's gut. "The day before yesterday?" he checks, although he already knows the answer. There's nothing else it can be.

"That was the first time you saved me," Sehun says. "I'd only found your materia that afternoon, at the edge of the badlands, and it didn't have your name in it then. It only appeared after you brought me back. I've never heard of a Chanyeol materia before - I think this one might be the only one in the world, because the other Summons have been around for years now."

Chanyeol has so many questions. Who are these other Summons and what do they do? Why is it that a small red orb can be used to call him right out of his own home? How can dying make Sehun think he's someone else? These and a dozen more are on the tip of his tongue, waiting to spill out as fast as he can shape the words, when he becomes aware of something small buzzing disturbingly near his arm. A bee. Chanyeol's not good with insects. He's awful with them, in fact, and has been known to hide behind the nearest available person whenever anything flies into his line of sight.

This one, he can't see. He can hear it, though, and hunts around to locate the little pest so he can move in the opposite direction. All he sees is Sehun giving him strange looks. The bee is nowhere to be found, except out of the corner of his eye and when he turns around to view it properly, what he sees is his own bedroom, complete with the open window through which the bee has entered. He's seeing that...but he's also seeing Sehun in the hotel room.

"Lost something?" Sehun asks.

"I'm not...sure..." Chanyeol keeps turning, twisting in the chair, baffled by the split vision. He watches his own arm reaching out to push the window open further, wide enough that the bee can't possibly miss it when it looks for a way out - but in the hotel room, that same arm is hanging down at his side, hand resting on his thigh. "I thought I was here?"

Sehun rolls his eyes. "You are here."

Chanyeol shakes his head briskly, not in disagreement but in an attempt to discard the extra images. "I thought I was here completely, that I'd been transported from my own room into yours. But I'm still there. I can see it, I can hear it." He can push it to the back of his mind, he discovers, and then the bee no longer haunts him, but if he concentrates, he can put his mind back there, driving Sehun into a distant corner of his awareness.

"Maybe you're in both places and that's how it works." Sehun shrugs. "Not like I'd know. I've never spoken to a Summon before. Joonmyun's got some; I should ask him when he's awake." He gives Chanyeol an awkward smile. "If he's speaking to me yet. He probably isn't."

"Because you keep telling him he's not who he thinks he is?"

"That's one reason." Sehun doesn't offer up any others.

"Also because he's a bratty, disobedient ex-thief who was supposed to wake me before he called you out," comes a voice from the other side of the door leading to the adjoining room, and Sehun groans. The door is opened by a short, dark-haired young man wearing a white bathrobe and flimsy-looking paper slippers. Attire for relaxing, were it not for the pistol dangling from his right hand. Chanyeol hopes he's not here to shoot anyone.

"I did knock," Sehun says with an air of innocence that Chanyeol's not buying for one second. "You must not have heard me."

The newcomer shakes his head in disbelief and shuts the door before perching on the edge of the bed. "And I suppose your knock was something like this?" He taps his index finger lightly against the mattress, making no sound whatsoever, but Sehun only smiles sweetly at him and he gives up, turning to Chanyeol. "I don't know what Sehun's been telling you but you should probably only believe half of it."

Sehun protests in the background until the man in the bathrobe introduces himself, without hesitation, as Joonmyun.

"That's not what you would've said earlier," Sehun says. "Starting to believe me now?"

"About that, at least," Joonmyun says mildly, and Sehun makes the face of a chocobo who's just consumed a whole heap of zeio nuts. "While I was asleep, I had another one of those dreams. You called me by name."

Chanyeol's not sure what that means. Sure, the two men aren't sharing a room and it sounds like they only met a few days ago, but dreaming about each other is probably meaningful, right? He forces a smile. "Well," he says brightly, "don't let me int-"

"Not that kind of dream," Sehun breaks in with a laugh. "Dreams about the last time we were alive, all of us together, fighting to save the world."

This is the kind of game Chanyeol used to play as a child, back when he'd had no shortage of playmates and their games were only limited by their imaginations - which is to say, not at all, because to a child, nothing is impossible. Saving the world was an everyday occurrence. It was only later, as Chanyeol had matured, that he'd come to realise that the greatest danger threatening anyone in Winhill was boredom.

"That sounds like an exciting dream," he says politely. "What were you saving it from?"

"We," Sehun says. "We were alive. That includes you."

"Some sort of mysterious red force," Joonmyun says. "It's difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't seen it. Have you had any strange dreams lately, Chanyeol?"

"Everything's been strange lately," Chanyeol says. His real life is now much more bizarre than anything his imagination could have produced. "But I don't remember any weird dreams."

"You'd know if you had them," Joonmyun says. "Sehun wouldn't be here now if I hadn't seen him in a dream the night he tried to sneak in."

"I sneaked in just fine," Sehun argues. "Mostly. Your security system didn't pick me up until I was nearly at your lab."

He shuts up when Joonmyun points out that any stealthy exploit ending in death can hardly be considered a success. Chanyeol gets a good laugh out of that, earning himself a glare from Sehun.

"When the guards came to fetch me to take custody of Sehun's materia, I was in the middle of a dream about trying to save a tree with a group of other people," Joonmyun explains to Chanyeol. "I could only see one face, though, and when I went up to the clinic, that face was looking up at me from the table. With brown hair, not blond, but it was still Sehun, a man I'd never met before in my life."

"That must've been a shock for you," Chanyeol says.

"Quite. He was unconscious, mercifully, because his body was too damaged to heal with the Restore materia we had at the fort, and it seemed likely to me that he was going to die before I had a chance to speak with him and ask him who he was. But," Joonmyun points to the blue materia in Sehun's shuriken, "he had Final Attack materia combined with an unnamed Summon, and I thought that was unusual."

Joonmyun speaks slow and clear enough for Chanyeol to follow his explanation despite the unfamiliar words, but he has to interrupt to ask: "What does Final Attack materia do?"

"You see how it's paired with yours?" Sehun says. "If I died again now, you'd automatically be summoned. Whatever Final Attack is paired with, it calls when the wielder dies. It was a lucky coincidence I happened to put yours in that particular empty slot when I found it."

"It's normally used to gain posthumous revenge," Joonmyun says. "One final blow. I assumed that he'd paired it with a Summon so that whoever it called would know, upon being summoned, that he'd died. But I had no idea who that could be, and since Sehun likely wasn't going to survive until morning, I had him taken up to the roof, called out a few Summons in the event that the unnamed Summon considered me responsible for their master's death, and set the materia back in his shuriken to see what would happen when he died. That is, I believe, when you appeared to us?"

"It was terrifying," Chanyeol says frankly. "I was sitting opposite the flower shop, playing guitar, and then all of a sudden I was flying and on fire. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before."

"I think you probably only emerged as a phoenix to restore Sehun to life," Joonmyun says. "That wasn't the case today, was it?"

"No, I..." Chanyeol remembers how it had felt, out in the street, trying to recapture the sensations of being the phoenix. "I was just...me."

Joonmyun reaches over to give Chanyeol's knee a brief squeeze. "And I'm sure that will always be the case, unless he's unfortunate enough to die again."

"Oh no." Sehun shakes his head vehemently. "I'm not doing that again. Once was enough. I woke up with two different sets of memories, babbling about trees and training and evil red clouds. It's a good thing only Joonmyun and a few Summons were there to witness it or I'd probably have been locked up."

"You were there to steal all our materia," Joonmyun reminds him, teasing. "We should have locked you up anyway."

"You stole mine instead," Sehun grumbles.

"That only seems fair, since you then stole me," Joonmyun says, and that's when the world starts to spin.

-----

Chanyeol's lying on the floor of his bedroom, looking up at the open window and listening for voices, but all he hears is the buzz of the bee as it finally realises that an escape route is available and flies back outside. He grabs the window sill and hauls himself up, in a hurry to close the window before the pesky little creature changes its mind. Sehun and Joonmyun are nowhere to be found, and he assumes that he reached his limit again. He's taken in so much that it feels like he's spent hours with them, but when he checks his watch, it hasn't even been thirty minutes and already, his head is swimming with new information.

He always tries his hardest to be helpful, to make himself useful to others. That has never extended to restoring them to life, however. He's scared, yet curious; eager to know what this fantastic new world has in store for him. He finds himself hoping that Sehun will call him out again soon.

But the rest of the day passes, and Chanyeol resigns himself to finishing the list of chores he needs to complete before tomorrow. It's not easy. He's on constant alert, unable to focus even on tasks he normally enjoys, and that only makes them seem all the more mundane compared with what he's experienced over the past few days. The thought of trying to hold a normal, everyday conversation with his neighbours, or the customers at work, or...anyone, really. How's he supposed to relate to them now? All his life he's lived with the same limited group of people, rarely seeing anyone from the outside world, never quite managing to convince himself that he should leave Winhill in search of something more.

Now he's found something more without even leaving the house, and even if it makes no sense at all, he's desperate to follow wherever it leads. Although Sehun and Joonmyun are little better than strangers to him, he feels comfortable with them - more than he'd expected, given the weapons that both of them carry. Perhaps because they're so close to his age, and Winhill has a shortage of people who fall into that category. Those who remain are either like Chanyeol himself, merely waiting for the right moment to take their leave, or they're the kind who would never even consider it, bound to their families and their duties, content to never travel beyond the borders of Winhill.

He relates better to the first group. Even so, there's not a one of them who'd go with him if he left. He's alone, as always; longing to find people to whom he can give everything and from whom he'd receive it all back in kind.

Still, the other residents of Winhill offer him nothing but kindness in the empty days that follow, asking after his health upon remarking that his smile is not quite as bright as usual, nor his words and charm so ready as they used to be. Mr. Langdon from the bookshop tries to cheer him up with the news that they're expecting a delivery at the start of next week, and wouldn't Chanyeol like to come in and have the first look at the new books? Ms. Heatherstone invites him over for tea, because she's trying out a new cake recipe and she's sure she can count on Chanyeol for an honest opinion. Even Ms. Marchant, in her own way, is nice to him by not making a single crack about his hair colour.

That only makes him feel more guilty that he's not giving them his full attention. Now he's had a glimpse of life outside the village, he can't forget about it. There's no going back to the person he was before.

He's certain of it by the time Sehun finally calls him out again. Days have passed in a dream, where the dream is Chanyeol's everyday life and what's real is the sway of the floor beneath his feet when he materialises before Sehun. It takes him a moment to realise that he's standing on the deck of a ship that's slowly pulling away from a large coastal city.

"Say goodbye to Junon," Sehun says, giving the city a sour look.

"I barely got to say hello to it." Chanyeol stares across the water at the towering buildings, devoid of warmth and life, and thinks that he can probably live with not seeing more of Junon. "Where are you going now?"

Joonmyun's leaning on the rail on the other side of Sehun, having traded in his robe and slippers for a jumper that looks like it could've won 'Most Abstract Arrangement' at the annual Winhill Flower Show ten years in a row. "The ship is bound for Costa del Sol," he says. "I believe we're due to arrive by nightfall. After that, we'll have to see."

The deck is packed with people, most of them carrying bags of assorted shapes and sizes and huddling together in small clumps. Chanyeol can't see a single smile amongst them. Sehun and Joonmyun have a bag each too, and Sehun's shuriken is strapped to his back - a warning for anyone thinking to stand too close. Joonmyun's gun is nowhere to be seen, but a jumper like that could hide absolutely anything beneath it and no one would notice.

This is obviously no pleasure cruise. Everyone looks miserable...and frightened.

There are other ships at the port they've just left, and a large crowd of people waiting to board them. It's an evacuation, Chanyeol's sure of it. But why?

"What happened in Junon?" he asks. "Why's everyone leaving?"

Sehun points towards the city, beyond the port. There's an odd red cast to the sky that Chanyeol doesn't remember from the other day. It's not late enough for sunset, and too late for sunrise. It's not consistent, either; blood streaks across the blue beneath, a sinister tint that sends a shiver down Chanyeol's spine. Lower down, around the far edge of the crowd, there appears to be more commotion than people simply joining the throng - pushing and shoving in all directions, and smoke where there should be none.

"They're fighting over there," Sehun says. "All throughout the city. You know those Capparwires you killed the other day? There's a lot more now. Other monsters too. Some of them can fly, so that's why I've called you out."

"Nothing has tried to attack the ship yet," Joonmyun says, "but given our other options, I thought someone who could burn them up before they ever reached us would be useful."

Chanyeol stands up a little straighter; a vigilant guard dog keeping his eyes open for trouble even if he has no real idea what he's watching for. He hopes no monsters appear. He's on a crowded deck, surrounded by innocent people, and maybe Sehun and Joonmyun won't be startled if he transforms into a phoenix, but everyone else will be, and he has no wish to cause a panic. He'd rather not risk hitting the people around him by mistake, either. It's sheer luck he didn't fry Sehun last time.

Sehun nudges him with his elbow. "You'll probably be okay. I don't think anything's going to make it over to us."

"Maybe not the monsters, but the redness in the sky..." Joonmyun trails off, looking thoughtful. "I asked around in Junon. It's become much worse recently - more like Fort Condor was when we left."

"Why's it like that?" Chanyeol asks. "Pollution?"

"I used to think it was something to do with you." Chanyeol flinches, so Joonmyun clarifies for him. "Not you specifically. Summons in general. Look at the colour of your materia, and then look at the sky."

Chanyeol doesn't have to look. "The same colour?" he guesses, and Joonmyun nods.

"The red hasn't always been there. It's not natural."

"It's evil," Sehun breaks in. "It's all happening again. The monsters, and that weird red veil-"

"Yes, yes," Joonmyun cuts him off. "I think you're confusing Chanyeol."

They're both confusing Chanyeol. He can't imagine what his materia has to do with the sky turning red - but then, he can't imagine what materia has to do with him, either. None of it makes any sense, except possibly in Sehun's head. "Again? This happened somewhere else?"

"Unless I woke up insane on that roof," Sehun's expression suggests that he's ruling out this possibility, though Joonmyun appears to be considering it, "then yeah, it has. I don't know when, exactly, but in another life we were all there. The three of us and nine others, fighting to save the world from," he waves a hand up at the sky, "that."

"Is it doing something other than making the sky turn red?" Chanyeol says. "Because it's not pretty, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that's going to destroy the world."

"Apparently it is," Joonmyun says. "Though I don't think we're at that point yet - at least, not here, even if the air is drier than it should be. There's a village further north that's been more or less abandoned, thanks to the red clouds."

Sehun is rather more blunt about it. "First the red creeps into the skies and the monsters start multiplying. Then everything begins to dry up. Not enough rain, so the land dries out and the crops die. Water sources dry up; people go hungry and thirsty. I don't want to know what happens after that."

"What did happen after that?" Chanyeol asks. "In this other life you remember?"

"You don't want to know either," Sehun says. "Trust me on that."

Chanyeol wants to know, but a warning shake of Joonmyun's head makes him think better of asking. With a scenario like that, he can guess, and he figures that if Sehun remembers it, he'd rather not relive it. "How did we fight it?" he asks instead, and is rewarded with a relieved smile from Sehun.

"That part I do like," Sehun says. "All of us had special powers."

"Like the ones we need you to use now on those Zemzeletts." Joonmyun points back towards Junon, where a dozen winged creatures that appear to be part-bat, part-bear, have launched themselves towards the ship. "Chanyeol, if you please?"

There's only one way Chanyeol can be sure he won't accidentally roast anyone on board and he takes it before he can have second thoughts, screaming "Phoenix Flame!" as he vaults over the rail. He's the phoenix before he hits the water.

Afterwards, he drops back on the deck as himself, too exhausted to do much more than enjoy the startled smiles of the watching children before the ship disappears.

-----

The next time Chanyeol's summoned, he's at work, and the shock of it makes him drop the tray he's carrying. Three glasses smash, sending their contents all over the floor. With shaking hands, Chanyeol cleans up the debris, taking extra care not to cut himself on the shards of glass. In a way, having to concentrate on such a delicate task makes it easier for him to divide his focus between the self that's busy in the pub, apologising to his boss and to the customers around him, and the self that's sitting in the backseat of a stationary buggy.

"Welcome back," Joonmyun says from the driver's seat without turning around. "Please mind your head." He flips a switch on the dashboard and with a whirring from above, a roof begins to rise from behind Chanyeol.

Sehun, also in the backseat, hunches forward to keep himself from being hit; Chanyeol follows suit. When the canopy closes completely, another flip of a switch from Joonmyun has air-conditioning flooding the compartment and they all sit up, enjoying the cool air for a moment. All Chanyeol had seen, upon his arrival, was a vast expanse of sand, and his brief exposure to the atmosphere had been too hot and dry for comfort.

"Corel Desert," Sehun says, before Chanyeol can ask. "Sorry you had to miss out on the theme park yesterday."

"There was a theme park?" Chanyeol tries not to sound too whiny, but he's only ever read about theme parks in books. It would've been nice to see one for himself.

"You didn't miss much," Joonmyun says as the buggy slowly starts to roll forwards. "We only stayed long enough to rest for the night and buy this buggy."

Sehun grins. "I was all set to steal the keys and then Joonmyun whipped out his wallet. I'm still getting used to the concept of actually paying for stuff..."

"You'll give Chanyeol a bad impression of you," Joonmyun clucks disapprovingly. "Anyway, it was the only thing at the Gold Saucer that wasn't overpriced."

"Like you'd care." Sehun leans closer to Chanyeol so he can fake-whisper: "Being a scientist must pay better than I thought. You should see his wallet. In fact, you can." He pulls a black leather wallet from somewhere down the side of the seat and holds it out for inspection.

Joonmyun reaches around the side of his seat and grabs it back before Chanyeol can do more than admire the gold embroidered curlicues around the edges. "Sehun."

"Just keeping my hand in," Sehun says, not sounding the least bit intimidated by Joonmyun's attempt to sound threatening.

Their banter helps to ease Chanyeol's disorientation somewhat. He's gone from an alley, to a hotel room, to the deck of a ship, to a drive across the desert, with little time to absorb the transition from one to the next. He sits back against what is not a terribly comfortable seat, watching the empty sands speed by, and wonders why he's here now - and where they're going. The skies are a clear blue outside, sunshine unimpeded by clouds of any colour. They've more than outrun the strange red veil covering Junon.

Joonmyun's attention is fixed on the land up ahead as he drives; Sehun's is behind them, watching out the rear window with occasional glances to the side. Chanyeol wonders what he's watching for.

"Are we being followed?"

Sehun shrugs. "I hope not. But there will be monsters out here too. Some of them won't pay any attention to us because we're in a vehicle, but there's bound to be something. That's kind of why we're out here, after all."

Chanyeol's not sure he's heard correctly. "You want to be attacked?"

"This is the safest place for it," Joonmyun chips in from the front. "There are no people living out here, and I doubt there are too many others travelling through the desert."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Sehun says, turning to face Chanyeol, "but you're...not really coordinated. I saw it in Junon, and then on the ship. When you attack, you hit everything - I only survived the first time because I was right behind you, but you took out some birds over the sea along with the Zemzeletts."

And now Chanyeol's apologising in two places at once, trying to piece together whatever he can remember from his few experiences as the phoenix. It's hard to keep the images straight in his mind: fire and death insist on becoming one, a confusing, explosive burst of feathers and flame and rays that kill whatever living creature they find. He didn't get the opportunity to aim anything. He's not sure he can.

"It's all right," Joonmyun says kindly. "We know you haven't had much practice. We're out here so you can work on that without endangering anyone."

'Anyone except yourself' is what Joonmyun means, as it turns out, because at the first sign of trouble, he stops the buggy to send Chanyeol out into the desert to work on his aim. Trouble, in this case, is two dozen giant yellow and green worms, each with an enormous ring of fangs, emerging from the sand in a circle around the buggy. Their arrival shakes the ground so badly that further driving would be impossible, anyway.

Chanyeol looks out at the worms with a great deal of trepidation and not much in the way of enthusiasm. They're easily big enough to swallow him whole.

"Nothing that happens to you here can harm you," Joonmyun says by way of encouragement. "I've seen Summons take damage before and they're perfectly healed the next time I summon them. But I'm confident in your abilities and this ought to be good practice for you." He opens the glove compartment and Chanyeol can see the wink of materia from Joonmyun's gun. "And just in case..."

"We've got your back," Sehun says, pulling out his shuriken from down the side of the seat. "Good luck."

The desert heat has nothing on a phoenix's flame. Sweat soaks Chanyeol's shirt with the first few steps outside the buggy, and then his shirt temporarily ceases to exist, giving way to fiery feathers. He's getting faster at this, he thinks. Each time he switches skin it comes a little easier to him, and the less he fights it, the more natural it feels. Like he was born to it. The sky is much kinder to him than the sand beneath his feet, which shifts as the worms surge beneath it, though that lasts only as long as it takes the circle of fire to propel him upwards. The worms can't hope to reach him now.

From the sky he has a clearer view of his enemies. Although their circle around the buggy is rough, there will be no driving through the gaps. All the creatures have to do is travel beneath the wheels to overturn it. Safer to keep still and wait for Chanyeol to clear the way.

And clear it, he does, with golden rays that char the green and yellow flesh beyond all chances of survival. The worms wail as they cook in their own skins. It's an awful sound - a roar warped into a screech - but the phoenix doesn't care, although the man inside can't bear to listen to it. When the last worm expires, collapsing on the sand, Chanyeol withdraws, dropping down beside the buggy, drained from the exertion and feeling the heat as a man in a way the phoenix had not.

The door slides open, and Sehun grips him under the arms to haul him inside. "I knew you could do it," he says, the warmth in his voice as welcome as the buggy's air-conditioning. "I wish you could see how impressive that looked from down here."

Chanyeol slumps into the seat, grateful when Sehun hands him a bottle of cold water. He drains half of it in one go. It's thirsty work, being a creature of fire in a desert, and he's just taken out a considerable number of opponents at once.

"Impressive, yes." Joonmyun leans through the gap between the front seats. "But the Land Worms were all in a circle, so your attack was unlikely to miss. Perhaps next time we'll encounter something in a less convenient formation." Despite his words, however, he's giving Chanyeol a 'well done' pat on the knee, and Chanyeol feels like maybe he's accomplished something here (which is more than he can say for his paying job, after the broken glasses).

"You're not going to be good for another round yet, are you?" Sehun says, stating more than asking.

Chanyeol shakes his head wearily. "Is it supposed to be this exhausting, being summoned?"

Sehun defers to Joonmyun, who has much more experience with Summon materia. "At first, I believe so. But the longer your materia is equipped by a single person, the stronger you become. You'll be able to come out more frequently and stay for longer. That said, you're the only Summon I know of who transforms, and I imagine that requires more of your energy than a straightforward attack."

"All my energy," Chanyeol corrects him.

"That should improve with time too, I hope," Joonmyun says. He takes the water bottle gently away from Chanyeol. "Get some rest now, okay?"

Chanyeol does, causing quite a stir when he collapses on the floor of the pub. At least he's not carrying anything at the time. He manages to stave off a doctor's visit by pleading simple tiredness, although he feels fine now he's only trying to control himself in a single place. He leaves with strict instructions to take it easy, which he does, once he reaches home, although only there. In that other place, he destroys more Land Worms, some fast-moving cactus creatures, some strange flowery things...anything and everything.

He has no shortage of target practice. The cactus things, in particular, present quite a challenge, darting quickly across the sands the instant he so much as looks at them and ready to spray him with thousands of tiny sharp needles at a moment's notice. Chanyeol learns how to send his rays where he wants them, rather than out in circles, and he ensures that nothing ever reaches the buggy. His transitions become even smoother, beginning the moment he opens the door. Sehun and Joonmyun are so pleased with him. Each time they call him out, they're further through the desert, and each time, the exertion drains him less. He can't muster up more than one golden circle of fire per summoning, but he holds out longer, afterwards, before feeling the pressure to disappear.

The exhaustion fades the moment he does, and the body he thinks of as his 'real' body never suffers for it afterwards. Although the other must be real as well, he reasons - even if it is capable of fantastic feats, and can seemingly operate independently, it is no dream. His aim is not all he practises; with each summoning, he works to improve his separation of self, that there will be no more dropped trays or fainting spells. Pushing himself away isn't easy. There are times he accidentally answers questions from the wrong person, or reacts so strongly to something that he can't keep it from spilling over.

But he's getting better.

The final time he returns to the buggy, it's late in the afternoon and Chanyeol can tell, while he's up in the air, that they're running out of desert. He tells the others as much when he returns to his usual seat.

"Just as well," Joonmyun says, starting up the engine again. "I'd rather not be out here when the sun sets, and I think you've accomplished what we came out here to do. The hotel clerk at the Gold Saucer marked a town on the map for me - Cosmo Canyon - so that's where we'll go tonight."

"And tomorrow?" Chanyeol asks.

"That depends on what we can see, I think."

Sehun hands the map across to Chanyeol. It shows one land mass only, with an arrow pointing across the sea to where Junon must be. Yellow sands give way to green grass, a small river with a bridge for crossing, a forested area, another river, and a brown path leading into some mountains. Circled in red, built into the side of a mountain, is Cosmo Canyon. The tiny picture has one defining feature that catches Chanyeol's eye.

"Is that a telescope?"

"They've got an observatory there," Sehun says. "We can use the telescope to try to locate the Tree of Life. If it's here. It might not be, but it should exist wherever there's life, and it's the only thing I can think of that might help."

"I wish you'd mentioned that before you insisted we leave Fort Condor," Joonmyun chides him. "I might've had something in my library about it."

"I wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time," Sehun says.

"And neither was I." There's a note of regret in Joonmyun's voice. "I shouldn't have let you badger me into leaving so suddenly. We might have missed something important."

"Do you know how many monsters I had to kill on my way in? They were swarming around outside the fort because they couldn't get inside, but they'd have managed it eventually. It wasn't safe to stay."

Chanyeol doesn't like this sudden friction between them. He needs them to be in harmony, because they're the only stable aspects of this strange new existence he has. They can't fight over this. "It's too late to worry about that now. The important thing is that you're both still alive and not killed by monsters back across the sea."

Sehun stretches out to give the back of Joonmyun's seat a lazy kick. "See? Chanyeol agrees with me. Don't dwell on the past so much."

But dwelling on the past, it transpires, is exactly their plan. Chanyeol watches the scenery whiz by, ground becoming a verdant green, as Sehun tells him about the magical tree they'd sworn to protect in another time and place - though he's quick to emphasise that he by no means has all the answers.

"I'm still trying to sort out my memories," Sehun admits. "It's easy to tell if I have people or places for context, but everything's so mixed up that sometimes I don't know which life I'm remembering, or there's just so much of it that pieces are buried under more pieces that I haven't even found yet.

"What I do remember is that the Tree of Life represents every living thing in the world - maybe all the worlds, if there are others. I don't know. We didn't know if there was another one out there. As long as it lives, life can survive, but when it's in danger, bad things start to happen to the world."

"The monsters?" Chanyeol guesses.

Sehun trails his fingers carefully along the flat surface of his shuriken. "There was a little red dust on the leaves at first. We thought no big deal, it's pollen or something, because who knows what kind of stuff might grow on a Tree of Life, right? The twelve of us were supposed to guard it and make sure no one accidentally chopped it up for firewood, but we weren't there to handle the gardening side of things."

He kicks Joonmyun's seat lightly again when Joonmyun laughs at the gardening part. Chanyeol can't quite picture him wielding a watering can either.

"But it worked both ways. The gardeners didn't have any special powers. Maybe if they had, they wouldn't have been killed when those leaves fell off the tree and became monsters."

Chanyeol's too shocked to ask for further details. In the front, Joonmyun is no longer laughing, though he doesn't seem surprised. He must've heard this story before.

"The monsters just kept coming," Sehun continues, voice tight. "We did our best to keep everyone safe, but we couldn't stop them from being created. The red dust became more of a red dust storm, covering the tree and spreading to the surrounding area, and slowly things grew worse. As the tree got sick, so did the land, and everyone and everything living there. Yixing worked himself half to death trying to keep people alive."

"Yixing?"

"He's a healer. Or he was, then. I don't know if he does anything like that, if he's alive today somewhere." Sehun pauses to consider this for a moment. "He's probably a doctor or something. Joonmyun had water powers, and now he's got some fancy magical ring that does something similar. You used fire, and you still use fire now."

"What about you?" Chanyeol asks, curious. "What was your power?"

"I controlled the wind," Sehun says. "Now I've got some items, Bird Wings, that I can use to cast wind spells, but I'm not like you. I can't do anything directly, and neither can Joonmyun. Summons, though...you've got your own power."

"You wouldn't sound so jealous if you were the one having your skin split open by feathers," Chanyeol warns him. Using items for his magic seems like a much less painful idea. "It's not so bad when you're used to it, but the first time's awful."

"Thank you so much for that mental image, Chanyeol." Sehun's face wrinkles in disgust. "Just what I always wanted: to be able to think of you as an overgrown plucked chicken."

"I'm not so sure you're in any position to be calling anyone else an 'overgrown' anything," Joonmyun chips in. "At least Chanyeol's sensibly dressed for someone his height."

Sehun waves his hand dismissively at the dig at his ridiculously short shorts. "I think shorts are perfectly sensible attire given that we've spent most of the day travelling through the desert."

They're out of the desert now, though, and driving through the trees; a welcome relief from the sun's glare. With the air-conditioning on, Chanyeol can't tell the difference in temperature, but it's nice to be able to see out the windows without blinking. No wonder Joonmyun's wearing sunglasses.

"Anyway, having my memories back doesn't mean I get my wardrobe back, unfortunately," Sehun says. "And current me has made some questionable fashion choices. Still better than Joonmyun's, though."

Chanyeol's not about to embroil himself in a sartorial argument, not when he knows he'll have to disappear soon, and he hasn't heard the end of Sehun's story, yet. He can guess, but...

"There's not much left to tell," Sehun says, at Joonmyun's reminder that their time is limited. "We fought, and we trained, and we tried to plan, but in the end it all came down to one final concerted attack with all twelve of us, when it looked like we were going to lose the tree for good." His expression darkens. "The last thing I remember is Yixing telling me to hold on. I can only assume I didn't manage to."

Sehun's words haunt Chanyeol as he slips back into himself, leaving the buggy and its occupants behind. He's not sorry to not remember the things Sehun does. It's tragic, really. All twelve of them must have died, and presumably the Tree of Life - and maybe the rest of the world - with them. He doesn't want to know how he died, if he was slowly dried out by the red force, or eaten alive by ferocious monsters. What matters is that he's alive now, though he doesn't see how he can be. Reincarnation? He's never given it much thought, having always assumed that if it were possible, he'd remember nothing of his past life in his current incarnation.

Which is true - he doesn't. But Sehun does, having died in this life, and Chanyeol's curious as to why that might be. Has death reset him, somehow, to the person he used to be? But...no, he's said he's got both sets of memories. So death hasn't erased the person whose life he's lived until now, merely granted him access to the life of the person he was before.

Death...or Chanyeol, using the phoenix's gift of rebirth. What if Joonmyun were to die, and Chanyeol were to bring him back too? Would his memories also be restored to him? It's a scenario Chanyeol hopes will never come to pass, but it makes for interesting speculation while he busies himself with maintaining the pretense of an ordinary life.

It helps that his existence in Winhill is so simple, so routine. After all the practice he's reasonably certain now that if he's summoned again, he can keep from embarrassing himself in front of anyone, and even at work, it's not as if anyone ever orders anything other than their usual. He doesn't have to keep track of complicated orders, which is just as well given that the next time Sehun calls him out, it's the following day, and he's back in the pub, delivering gin to his regulars.

The buggy is stationary in the middle of an area of grass, with mountains looming down from the north, much darker than those near Cosmo Canyon. Chanyeol's not sure where they are, but he knows why he's here - a pack of unusually large wolves are approaching the vehicle and their claws look more than sharp enough to shred the tyres if he doesn't get them first.

Many crispy wolves later, Chanyeol's back in his usual seat and Joonmyun's driving them towards the mountains. There's a town there, according to the map.

"Nibelheim," Joonmyun tells him. "We're going to consult the library there and see if they have any maps that cover more than just this continent. If the Tree of Life is here, and it's as large as Sehun remembers, it may well be distinctive enough to be considered a landmark."

"What happened to Cosmo Canyon?" Chanyeol asks, confused. "You did go there last night, right? Did you see anything through the telescope?"

"We went," Sehun says grimly. "I kind of wish we hadn't, though."

He tells Chanyeol about the Junon they'd seen through the telescope's powerful lens - a deserted city, where those who hadn't escaped in time had died where they stood. Not from the monsters, who were nowhere to be seen, but something that had left them as dried-out husks of their former selves. Humans and animals alike, all those who'd never made it to the ships, had collapsed at the port. Sehun had seen it before, in another life.

"It's just as disturbing as I remember it being." Sehun shudders. "Not a single drop of moisture left in their bodies. We were just trying to check in and see if Junon had been completely overrun by monsters, but I think they'd already left. Most of them are as vulnerable as we are, after all."

The buggy lurches over an uneven patch of ground, sending Chanyeol sliding into Sehun. "Sorry," Joonmyun says over his shoulder. "I think that might've been a fallen tree."

"Speaking of trees..." Chanyeol pushes himself back across the seat, one knee smarting from crashing into Sehun's.

"We didn't see anything," Joonmyun says. "We had a look again once it was light, but no luck. There's simply too much ground to cover."

"What would you even do if you found it?" The question's been plaguing Chanyeol since last night. Because if the same thing is happening again, and twelve of them couldn't stop it before...

"Joonmyun's probably going to tell you we'd calmly assess the situation," Sehun says, "but the truth is that we don't actually have a plan right now." He shoots a glance at Joonmyun's bag, which is sitting beside him in the front. "We might be able to do something with materia, though. Or magical items. We've got more options now than we had then, even if there's only half of us here."

"Half?"

Sehun counts them off. "You, me, Joonmyun, Zitao, Minseok and Baekhyun."

Baekhyun...

The name stirs something in Chanyeol's mind, distracting him from Sehun babbling on about how they would've had Kyungsoo too if Joonmyun hadn't dropped him in the rush to leave Fort Condor. He doesn't know Baekhyun, not here, but a piece of him recognises the name and floods his brain with impressions. A smart mouth and fast talker. A light bright enough to outshine the stars themselves. A real mood-maker, always ready to entertain.

And a good friend.

Chanyeol can't remember what Baekhyun looks like. He can't remember a single thing they've done together, or one scrap of a conversation between them. He doesn't have to. The warmth settling in his heart tells him that this is someone about whom he cares a great deal. Feelings that strong, whatever form they take, can't be bound to a single lifetime.

But...ultimately, he knows nothing about Baekhyun. He's missing those memories. Baekhyun probably doesn't remember him, either, and won't that be awkward?

"About Baekhyun-" Chanyeol begins, but he's speaking so quietly that his words are lost to Joonmyun's announcement that they've reached Nibelheim, and Sehun's subsequent mutterings about how he's so utterly thrilled to be spending his morning in a library.

Sehun is somewhat more entertained when they find the library to be empty of books, but unusually full of monsters. While Sehun busies himself clearing their path with his shuriken, Chanyeol helps Joonmyun search for hidden rooms on the grounds that all the books have to be somewhere.

"Elder Bughe at Cosmo Canyon did mention that the building had fallen into disrepair," Joonmyun says as he fires a shot at an unexpectedly vicious flying mirror on their way upstairs. "I think he might have understated the situation a little."

Even without the flying mirrors and the weird, long-haired creatures swinging around on pendulums, the mansion that supposedly houses a library is a wreck. Faded, peeling wallpaper, stained by trickles of rain through the leaking roof; filthy rotting carpets; windows so smeared with grime that the sun's rays are struggling to make it through. Chanyeol's never been anywhere so decrepit before. Touching anything at all is probably asking to be infected by some dreadful disease.

Nevertheless, he gamely taps walls to see if they are hollow, and pushes furniture aside to check for trapdoors below. They come up empty until they reach a shabby-looking bedroom, where a curved section of the wall slides aside to reveal a hidden staircase. There's no telling how far down the stairs will take them, not in the dark, but Joonmyun has a small torch on his keyring and as they make their way around the endless spirals, Chanyeol tries not to think too hard about the feather-light brushes of wings against his skin. It's safest to concentrate on placing his feet.

By the time they reach the basement Chanyeol's tired enough to realise that returning to his orb can't be far off. How long he can remain out each time seems to correlate directly with his level of activity, and running around a mansion followed by descending several flights of stairs takes a lot more out of him than being a passenger in a buggy does. He sticks close to Sehun as they make their way down a tunnel and into the library itself, which contains more books than Chanyeol's ever seen in one place. He'd love to have time to sit and read them all, but he's not even steady enough now to help much with the search.

Joonmyun turns off his torch after locating the switch for the overhead light. In the middle of the room there's a table surrounded by chairs; Sehun helps Chanyeol over to it and Chanyeol sinks down gratefully into a seat, unable to assist any further with the search but unwilling to leave until the choice is taken away from him. He watches the others scan the bookcases, hunting for a likely section in which to find maps. Several times he sees them remove books from the shelves, skim through them, and put them back in disappointment.

It's not a terribly riveting pastime. Chanyeol turns his attention to the table instead, which is already covered with books. Perhaps there's something here that will be of use. He begins to sort through them, setting them into neat stacks so that if the others find anything, they will have room to spread it out on the table. Based on those he picks up, the last person to use it must've been a big fan of comic books.

But there's one that stands out, much thicker than the rest, with a pretty black butterfly on the cover. It's not, as Chanyeol discovers from flicking it open, a beautifully drawn tale of a butterfly who goes on fantastic adventures through the flowers with her bee sidekick. It's far drier than that, being a book on lepidopterology, the pictures limited to anatomical diagrams and the occasional photograph.

He's about to set it aside, as the first of a pile of 'real books', when his fingers find a page that doesn't belong. It's a long, folded sheet of paper glued to the inside of the back cover, covered with symbols. There's one that looks like it might be a dragon, another that's clearly a unicorn, one that could be a snowflake, and...

Oh. A phoenix. Chanyeol's certain of it. No other bird has such a distinctive fiery tail. It might be a coincidence, him finding this, but his gut feeling on this one is that he's supposed to be here, looking at this book. That's it's been placed here for him to find.

Careful not to tear the paper, Chanyeol slides his fingernail under the fold to nudge it open. It sticks a little and he holds his breath as he tries to spread it out. All that air leaves him in one surprised rush the moment he sees what's inside.

It's a map.

A map with multiple continents. Chanyeol only recognises a few names. Most of the map is a complete mystery to him, and it doesn't take him long to confirm that Winhill isn't on it. Same with Deling City, and Dollet, and Fisherman's Horizon, and anywhere else he's ever heard of. That only cements what he'd already suspected: when he's summoned, he's not simply pulled to another place in the same world, wherever Sehun happens to be at the time. He's taken to another world altogether.

A world with landmarks he doesn't know. But there's one, marked on the northernmost continent, that he finds most interesting...

"I think I've got something!" he calls out, and Sehun and Joonmyun immediately rush over to the table. He's reached the end of his strength now. All he can do is place one shaking finger on the map and trail it up to the tiny symbol drawn near the very top of the page. It has no label, but all the other trees are clustered in named forests and this one stands alone.

He's found the Tree of Life.

-----

"And that was the last thing I saw in this world until Sehun called me out earlier," Chanyeol finishes.

He's been talking so long that he's beginning to wonder how much time he has left before he inevitably vanishes. He's not in the least bit tired, however - or he's too excited to notice, if he is. It must be better than a decade since he was last around so many people of his own age. Some seem pretty quiet; others, he gets the feeling that they've been desperate to interject their own comments since the start of his story. Joonmyun hadn't let them, holding up a hand whenever anyone opened their mouth.

Baekhyun's been a particular casualty of that. Chanyeol's been watching all of them during his tale, but no matter where his gaze wanders, it always returns to the same pair: Kris, who knew Chanyeol's name from simply seeing his face, and Baekhyun, who watches him back with dark, lively eyes, seemingly always poised to break in with a question.

Chanyeol wishes he could remember. Kris's name isn't familiar at all, but perhaps that's his name in this life, and he had another before. Sehun can probably tell him. Kris's face might be there, somewhere in his memory, but it's blurry. His voice, on the other hand...

Chanyeol can hear that voice in the back of his mind, issuing instructions one moment and laughing at his own lame jokes in the next. Although he's barely heard Kris speak, he's certain he remembers correctly, and Kris's voice tugs as sharply at him as Baekhyun's name had, when Chanyeol had first heard it. All twelve of them are gathered here now and no one else is having such an effect on him. He wants to slip away and ask them questions - so many questions! - because Baekhyun lives in Dollet, and Dollet is a place Chanyeol knows from his own world, even though it's only from maps, books, and other people.

There are other people like Chanyeol, other Summons, who live in one world but can appear in another. He's not alone anymore, and it's so wonderful, so overwhelming, that he's about ready to cry and not even worry to blame it on the wind.

No one would notice, anyway. They're all watching Baekhyun lose the battle to keep his mouth shut.

"Winhill!" Baekhyun finally blurts out, horrified. "Of all the places. Winhill? That's in the middle of nowhere, right? Do you even get enough of a signal to make video calls out there? Wait, do you even know what those are?"

Kris smacks him lightly across the back of his head. "Shut up before your complete lack of tact scares our new friends away, okay?"

"It'll take more than that," Joonmyun assures him. "For one thing, we can't leave this airship without throwing ourselves overboard, and I think we've spent enough time getting wet for one day."

"How did you end up in the Tiny Bronco anyway?" Jongdae asks. "Shera told me you stole it without making a sound?"

Sehun smirks. "I am a thief, you know."

"Not usually of aeroplanes," Joonmyun says. "When we found the map, we realised we'd have to travel either by air or by sea, and returning to Costa del Sol would have taken far too long."

"I'd been through Rocket Town before," Sehun says. "I figured we could get a plane there. Guess I should've asked about airships instead." Jongdae hugs the nearest control panel protectively. "Joonmyun flew us out of Fort Condor in a helicopter and I thought an aeroplane couldn't be much different? But I had enough Bird Wings with me that I hoped we wouldn't have to find out. That's how I got us out of there. We opened the hangar, and then I used a Wind spell to fly the plane without the engine. Perfect plan."

"If it was that perfect, what were you doing in the sea?" Lu Han snipes, though without any real sting given that he appears to be trying not to throw up. "Taking a pleasure cruise?"

"Almost perfect," Sehun amends with a glare at Lu Han. "I just hadn't realised the plane was too weak to hold up so long against magic. The propellers snapped and the fuselage started to buckle, so I had to bring us down."

Chanyeol tries not to picture it. Sehun's description sounds terrifying. "I'm glad I wasn't out at the time."

"There wouldn't have been room," Joonmyun says. "Sehun's legs already took up more than half the cockpit."

Baekhyun snickers, watching Kris out of the corner of his eye to ensure he doesn't get hit again. "How long were you guys down there? Since last night?"

"Thankfully, no. We could only fly slowly with Sehun's Wind items; we landed on the coast for the night, then resumed our travels this morning. This airship obviously moves much faster than we could, with or without magic."

"Nearly four hundred knots," Jongdae says proudly. Chanyeol has no idea what he's talking about, but everyone else looks equally blank so he's not too bothered by this. "We'll reach land by the time night falls, easily. So if anybody has any bright ideas about what we need to do when we get there..."

"Did you find the same map?" Joonmyun holds up a folded piece of paper.

Kris nods. "Yeah. Eventually. You couldn't have maybe left it somewhere more obvious?"

"We left it where we found it," Joonmyun says. "Had we known we were being followed-"

"Forget all that." Lu Han finally raises his eyes from the deck, though they're somewhat lacking in focus as he turns them on the others. "We're all here now, and that's what matters. We don't have much time. Things are getting worse."

He and Kris between them summarise, for the benefit of Chanyeol, Sehun and Joonmyun, exactly what's been happening over the past week. The old prophecy they heard from Hargo, that Lu Han had found in a book - the same book Chanyeol had found in Nibelheim, only with a map instead. The twelve symbols and their powers. The spread of the strange red force.

Joonmyun pales when they talk about Fort Condor and its desiccated bodies, as tragic as the remains of Junon; Zitao, leaning on the rail next to him, slips an arm around his shoulders for a tight, comforting squeeze and Joonmyun lets him, leaning back ever so slightly. Even Sehun looks down in the mouth hearing about Costa del Sol.

"It's probably spread from there by now," Kris finishes. "Who knows how far? Maybe even to Rocket Town." He casts a glance up at the sky. "I'm sure there were some red streaks out here earlier."

"Um..." The tall, quiet guy holding hands with Lu Han - Jongin, Chanyeol thinks - speaks up, none too sure of himself. "There were, I think? A while back? But I haven't seen anything since we found the aeroplane."

"Perhaps it receded?" Yixing suggests. "Like the skies cleared when we found Kyungsoo at Fort Condor."

"Or perhaps we've just outrun it for now," Lu Han says. "But we can't keep running forever, and when we stop, we need all the advantages we can get. Chanyeol, you're going to have to come to Dollet. It'll be too difficult to keep in touch, otherwise. I'll give you the address of our bookshop, and-"

"Wait!" Chanyeol protests. Getting out of Winhill, yes, good. Going to Dollet to find these people with whom he shares both a past and a future, okay. But he's never even travelled to the nearest station. He'd always assumed that if he ever managed to leave the village, he'd have everything planned out well in advance, with maps and directions and at least some idea of what he was doing. Not like this. "I have to consult a map, and find out where the nearest station is, and work out what to tell my boss that doesn't make me sound like I've lost my mind."

"Just quit," Baekhyun advises. "I guarantee you'll have more fun working with us than spending all your time serving gin to little old ladies." He breaks into a grin, and Chanyeol's heart gives a joyful leap when he adds: "But you'll have about half a day to figure out how to phrase it nicely while you wait for me to arrive."

"You're...you're coming to collect me?"

"And what makes you think we're giving you the time off, Baekhyun?" Lu Han asks, but he's smiling too, and Minseok's nodding from across the deck.

"Chanyeol'll probably get lost in the mountains somewhere or end up on a train going south or something," Baekhyun says. "I'm just saving us some time. Besides, who better than his new roommate to pick him up?"

"Roommate?" Chanyeol's head is spinning, new information and ideas being thrown at him faster than he can adjust.

"Sorry," Minseok says. "I'm afraid you'll have to share a room with Baekhyun. We're a little short on space."

"That's fine!" Chanyeol's almost too eager to agree. Sharing a room with Baekhyun is not the problem. But suddenly leaving like this...

Kris looks from Chanyeol to Baekhyun and back again. "You don't have to stay, you know? You could just ask for some time off, say you're taking a trip to see friends, and go to Dollet for a while? I don't know what's going to happen in the next few days, but either we're all going to be dead and then it won't matter where you are, or we'll save the world and you can go back to your old life."

"Or 'a new world shall open up', like the prophecy says." It's the first thing Kyungsoo's said since introducing himself. Chanyeol wonders if he always sounds so humourless.

"Or that," Lu Han agrees. "Kris is right, Chanyeol. You don't have to decide the rest of your life right now. But we've got a place for you, if you want it."

A place for Chanyeol. A place with people he's known before and wants to know again. A place where maybe he can start afresh, without catering to everyone else's expectations of who he should be, how he should act. This is a chance for him to finally experience life outside a tiny village, to take his first faltering steps into a wider world. Even if it's scary, he can't pass it up.

"Just think about it while you pack up some stuff," Baekhyun says. "I'm getting ready to leave for the station now, but we're only going to be able to talk while we're both here, so you'd better give me some place to meet you."

Possible meeting places flash through Chanyeol's mind. As a stranger, Baekhyun will have the eyes of the entire village on him the moment he arrives. Trying to be stealthy about it would be an exercise in futility. "There's a flower shop on the way into the village - you can't miss it. I'll wait for you by the wall opposite. Does that work?"

"Yeah, but you might be there a while," Baekhyun grumbles. "I'm looking at the map, and the nearest station to your tiny little village is in Timber."

Chanyeol wonders if Zitao's disgusted snort is at Winhill's remote location, but it turns out that he's less than enamoured of his hometown. "Don't stick around Timber too long. A pair of pretty boys travelling together will get a lot of attention, but not the kind you want, trust me."

"You really think I'm pretty?" Baekhyun grins and flutters his eyelashes at Zitao, tilting his head cutely to one side.

Zitao's not impressed. "Not by my standards, but some people might think so."

Chanyeol doesn't ask if he measures up to Zitao's standards. The last person to call him 'pretty' was Ms. Heatherstone, when he first dyed his hair, and he's not sure he can consider her to be unbiased, though he's not inclined to disagree with her either. But he does think Baekhyun's pretty, even if Zitao doesn't. Pretty, with a sparkle of mischief that makes him one to keep an eye on, for fear of trouble. Chanyeol's not worried about trouble, but he can't look away, either. Soon they'll meet! In their 'real' bodies! And then they'll travel further than Chanyeol's ever been in his life, not counting his weird, on-again, off-again road trip in the buggy with Joonmyun and Sehun.

Lu Han pokes Baekhyun in the shoulder. "Knock it off. Just try not to attract too much attention while you're travelling, all right?"

"As long as Baekhyun maintains his usual habit of hitting on anything that even seems like it might be female, I'm sure they'll be fine," Kyungsoo says drily.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Baekhyun says. "We'll be just fine. You'll see."

"You'd better be," Minseok says, "because if you don't show up in Dollet by tomorrow night, without a damned good excuse, I'm sending Kyungsoo out to find you. And you know how he's going to feel about that, don't you?"

Baekhyun shivers, and Chanyeol's only about sixty per cent certain it's feigned. "We'll be there."

"Do I get a say in this?" Kyungsoo raises a halfhearted hand, his protest trailing off when he realises no one's paying him much heed. "I'm still here, you know..."

That's not the case for too much longer, however. The other Summons gradually begin to disappear, promising to keep in touch via Lu Han, who vows to return later - preferably when they've landed, he says. When Baekhyun and Chanyeol are the only Summons left, and Joonmyun is busy looking over the map with Yixing and Jongdae, Kris approaches Chanyeol. Baekhyun follows. Sehun pretends to be absorbed in polishing his shuriken, but Chanyeol can tell he's listening.

Kris doesn't say anything, merely looms like a great, awkward tower, not sure where to look or how to begin. But Chanyeol wants to talk to him too, and they don't have all day.

"Do you remember me?" Chanyeol asks, trying to keep his voice down. It's not like any of this is a secret, and after spending his whole life in a tiny village he's used to everyone knowing his business, but Kris probably isn't. "You knew my name before I even said anything."

Kris seems relieved not to have to bring it up himself. "Not much," he admits. "I had a dream yesterday, and that was the first time any of us," he waves his arm to cover the expanse of the Highwind, "had seen what you looked like. But I kind of got interrupted before I could hear your name."

Chanyeol starts forward, eager to hear more. "You saw me? What was I doing? I haven't had any of these dreams everyone keeps talking about."

Kris jerks back at Chanyeol's overly enthusiastic response, but recovers easily enough, ignoring Baekhyun's snickers at his side. "You weren't there for long, sorry. You were a phoenix, and then changed back into a human when you came down to land. I gave you a hand up, and that's all I saw before I woke up. But I knew you. Really knew you, even though I didn't."

"He never makes any more sense than this," Baekhyun says to Chanyeol. "You should get used to it."

"It makes sense to me." Kris's eyes open a little wider when Chanyeol adds: "Because I get that too. With both of you. The first time I heard Baekhyun's name I got all these impressions of him. Kris's name didn't mean anything to me, but when I saw his face there was definitely something."

"Nausea, probably," Baekhyun bursts out between giggles. He's adorable when he laughs; mouth a wide half-moon and eyes like dark, shiny buttons. It makes Chanyeol want to laugh with him and he does, after giving Kris an apologetic glance that has Kris sighing and shaking his head at the pair of them.

"Familiarity," Chanyeol says when the laughter drains away, and his already light heart has shed another couple of pounds. "Like we were comfortable together before."

Kris turns his attention to the deck, avoiding Chanyeol's eyes. "Yeah, I got that too," he mumbles. "But my name wouldn't mean anything to you, anyway. 'Kris' is a name I gave myself, years ago - I used to change names every time I moved towns, but this one's kind of stuck. I think I'm the only one who doesn't know what he was called before."

"We can find out!" Chanyeol reaches out to grab Sehun, freezing when he realises that it's possibly not a great idea to seize someone who's handling a very sharp object. "Sehun, you remember everyone's names, right?"

Sehun half-turns, forcing Chanyeol to move his hand if he doesn't want to get sliced. "You sure you want to know? 'Kris' is a lot easier to pronounce..."

Kris glowers at him, eyebrows scarier than any Chanyeol has ever seen. "Just tell me."

"Fine. It's 'Jiaheng', but you weren't even using it by the time I met you - you were making everyone call you Kevin instead. And occasionally 'Ace', when you'd been drinking."

"I named my chocobo 'Ace'," Kris says, taken aback.

Baekhyun gives him a grin of immense self-satisfaction. "You don't get to make fun of Beakhyun now."

"I didn't know!"

Chanyeol has no idea what they're talking about, but it's obviously some sort of joke between them, a smug Baekhyun and a defensive Kris. He wishes he understood it. He doesn't know how long they've known each other in this life - long enough to bicker, and banter, and throw casual insults at each other out of fondness rather than spite. Chanyeol can't remember ever having a friendship like that and he's jealous, just a little.

"And I'm guessing none of those were the name you were born with in this life?" At least Sehun has no idea what they're talking about either. "It sounds to me like you've never really known who you are, if you keep changing your name all the time."

He says it lightly, but Kris stiffens up, jaws clamped together, fingers curling into fists at his side. It must be rough for him, Chanyeol thinks, when everyone around him has been discovering more about who they were before, and he's the last to know, only to find out that the answer to his question isn't any kind of answer at all.

"I did ask if you were sure you wanted to know," Sehun says. "Sorry."

Kris looks to the sky, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as he unclenches. "You did. I was hoping it would mean something, but..."

"Take it from me: knowing who you were before doesn't make things any easier," Sehun says. "I didn't ask to have two sets of memories battling it out in my brain! It's a total accident that I know anything at all."

Baekhyun snorts. "Too easy; not going for it," he says, and Sehun reaches over to smack him on the hip.

"You know what I mean. If Chanyeol hadn't brought me back, I wouldn't know any of this."

"Sorry," Chanyeol says. "I wish it hadn't made things more complicated for you." Maybe it's better, after all, that he doesn't remember his past. His memories, such as they are, are not terribly exciting - at least, they hadn't been, up until recently - but they are all his, from this lifetime, and not hard to catalogue. Sehun's mind must be ready to burst.

"If I-" Kris begins, addressing Chanyeol, then stops. "Forget it."

"Forget what?" Chanyeol says.

Kris shakes his head. "I was going to ask you something, but I need to think about it some more first."
"Take your time." A familiar exhaustion is beginning to creep into Chanyeol's body, tugging him away from the airship and all these new people, and he knows it'll be time to leave soon. "I can't stay out much longer. We can talk later?"

"But first, you get to see me," Baekhyun says, and that's the last thing Chanyeol hears before the world fades out.

-----

Chanyeol has no idea what to pack, or how much, or how long for. This could be a two-day trip, or it could be the rest of his life - which might be one and the same, depending on what happens when they find the tree. And what's he supposed to tell everyone? Not the truth, certainly. They'll all think he's mad.

It isn't as if he could pack up the entire house and take it with him, either. It's not just his stuff but his parents' things too, and there's no way he's getting that all into a case. His books will have to stay here, and his dad's animal sketches, and his mum's homemade cushion covers, and...can he take his guitar? Maybe. He casts an appraising glance around his bedroom, trying to estimate how much he can carry. One bag and his guitar case, perhaps? He can't weigh himself down too much on the journey, and he doesn't feel like he can expect Baekhyun to help him carry his things, not when Baekhyun is already doing so much for him by travelling all the way down to Winhill to collect him.

It's easier to focus on packing than what to tell people. Optimistically, he takes out enough clean clothing for roughly a week, some toiletries, and a couple of his favourite hats, squeezing everything into his dad's old travelling bag. He checks the catch on his guitar case to make sure it won't fall open while he's walking, and goes through everything in his fridge to locate anything due to expire in the next few days, which he throws together in a hastily-made lunch. He doesn't have work today so he procrastinates a little longer, emptying the bins, checking all the locks, taking another shower. Baekhyun won't be arriving for hours yet.

Baekhyun. Arriving. Here.

Chanyeol has trouble believing it, that anyone he's met in that other world can live in his own. It can't be real. He should've let Lu Han give him their contact details, so he could at least use Mr. Langdon's phone to call the bookshop and check. Just in case. But now he has no way to communicate with any of them until the next time Sehun summons him, and he has no way of knowing when that might be. He's on his own, waiting and hoping for Baekhyun to appear to prove that it's all true.

But...Lu Han said they were in Dollet, and Chanyeol knows Dollet exists. And Timber, and Balamb, and Deling City, even if he's never set eyes on any of them himself. This is his opportunity to finally see more of his own world, with or without Baekhyun - though he'd prefer with. He can go, regardless.

With that in mind, he picks up his guitar case and takes himself off to the pub, all prepared to grovel and apologise as much as necessary in exchange for some time off. He never takes any, knows he's owed some, but can't help feeling guilty anyway.

Fortunately, his recent strange behaviour, coupled with his dramatic collapse while at work, has his boss suggesting he take some time off before he can even open his mouth, and the whole meeting leaves him staggering out of the back office wondering what's just happened. He thinks he may have mumbled something about going to the sea for his health.

"The sea?" Ms. Marchant sneers, shaking her head at him over her glass. "What utter rubbish. Everyone knows if you want to recuperate from an illness, you should go up into the mountains."

"It's Chanyeol's decision to make," Ms. Heatherstone says, giving him a gentle smile. "And I think it's exactly what he needs, a little time away from everything."

Chanyeol not actually being on shift has not stopped his regulars from calling him over on his way out, what with it being a slow day for village gossip, and now he wishes he'd pretended not to hear Ms. Marchant in the first place and made a quick exit. She's the least likely person in Winhill to approve of him taking a trip up to Dollet.

"But he could get into all sorts of trouble out there by himself," Ms. Marchant says. "He's never even taken a train before!"

The same could probably be said for most of the village, Chanyeol thinks. "I'll be all right, Ms. Marchant. Please don't worry about me."

She reaches up and cups his chin, sighing as she squishes his face. "You're so young."

"Which is exactly why he needs to go," Ms. Heatherstone says. "You know as well as I do that this is no place for the young, not when they're full of life and desperate to see more of the world. It's no wonder he's so out of sorts when he's suffocating here."

Chanyeol wriggles out of Ms. Marchant's grip and bends down so he can look Ms. Heatherstone in the eye. "I won't be gone forever."

"I know." She gives his hand a soft pat, her short, thin fingers so much tinier than his, but full of loving warmth. "You'll always have a home here."

A home she promises to keep an eye on, while he's away, and that's it, that's all he has to do. Word will spread, soon enough. There's nothing left but to wait for Baekhyun. He goes to the flower shop, settling down on the wall with his guitar to work his way through every song he knows as he fixes his eyes on the path. Sometimes he has an audience: shoppers with their arms full of flowers pause to listen, or children run up to sit at his feet for a while, and he lets them make requests that they can sing together. His music is a gift he gives freely, gaining as much joy from it as his listeners. He doesn't tell any of them that this might be the last time they ever hear it.

It's almost sunset by the time a slim, dark-haired stranger appears on the path, whistling as he approaches the wall. Chanyeol stands up too fast, forgetting about the guitar sitting in his lap. It slides down his thighs, the strap pulling taut across the back of his neck; hoping Baekhyun's too far away to notice, he hastily slips it over his head to pack away in its case.

He's here! He's real!

It's all Chanyeol can do not to run over to him, but Baekhyun's not rushing either, maintaining an easy pace as he makes his way up the path, so Chanyeol tries to contain his excitement. He doesn't want to knock Baekhyun off his feet when he's been travelling half the day.

Baekhyun's still whistling - something tuneful, but unfamiliar - when he reaches the wall, only breaking off to return Chanyeol's welcoming grin. He's identical to the Baekhyun Chanyeol met earlier, only now he has a blue coat over his black T-shirt, and a brown and gold backpack slung across his shoulders. His hair's all mussed up from the walk, face reddened from exertion, and he's here!

"I hope you've got a spare bed," is the first thing Baekhyun says as he hands Chanyeol a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. "Because we're not going anywhere tonight."

Chanyeol's too startled to say any of the things he'd thought about while he waited (which were mostly variations on "welcome to Winhill", only he'd been trying to find a cooler way to say it). He unfolds the paper, which turns out to be, if he's reading it correctly, a train timetable for Timber. There's a train leaving in about an hour and then after that, there doesn't appear to be anything running to Dollet until the morning.

"That's right," Baekhyun says. "It's a three-hour walk back to Timber - they didn't have any chocobos available to rent, or I'd have been here sooner - and there's no way we're making it back to catch the last train. So I guess tonight you get a sneak preview of life as my roommate."

Life as Baekhyun's roommate, Chanyeol thinks, must be very lively. Baekhyun's not one for letting silences hang about for too long, and as they walk slowly towards the square, he keeps up a constant stream of chatter. Chanyeol finds it sort of endearing, if far in excess of the normal levels of conversation in the village. They've never had anyone quite like Baekhyun here before.

"The train ride was incredible! The seats were so soft, you're going to love them. And we were going so fast I thought we were going to ram straight into the mountains, only then we turned, and-"

"Was that your first time on a train?" Chanyeol asks.

"Unless you count riding around in Kris's sword when he rode trains in Midgar, yeah," Baekhyun says frankly. "This is my first time even leaving Dollet, so I hope you appreciate all the trouble I took to get here."

Chanyeol does, more than he can possibly say. "I do," he assures Baekhyun. "I don't know that I'd have gone by myself, not without proof. It's not like you're not real? But..."

Baekhyun gets it. "It's amazing, isn't it? You see things over there and you think they can't possibly exist outside your own head, and then you finally meet someone and you know it's all real." He holds out his arm to Chanyeol, pushing up his sleeve with the other hand until the lower half of his forearm is exposed. "Go on, you can check I'm real."

"Aren't you supposed to pinch me, so I'll wake up if I'm dreaming?"

"Whatever." Baekhyun drops his arm, letting his sleeve roll back down. "If this is all in your head, how about dreaming up something to drink? I finished up my water bottle over an hour ago."

Of course. Baekhyun's been walking for ages in the afternoon sun, and Chanyeol's just been taking his own sweet time, playing host. He immediately picks up the pace, guiding Baekhyun home. It's not a long walk. Nothing in Winhill ever is.

The second Chanyeol unlocks his front door, Baekhyun's sticking his nose inside, turning as he walks to look at absolutely everything. There's not a great deal to see, only a framed sketch hanging next to the front door - one of a pair of squirrels sitting on a branch. They take off their shoes in the tiny entrance hall and pad through to the kitchen, where Chanyeol sorts them both out with big glasses of juice. Baekhyun gulps his down in seconds and holds it out for more, so Chanyeol just pushes the carton across to him and lets him have at it.

"This is more like it." Baekhyun sets his glass down and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. "Now do I get the guided tour?"

"I don't think you really need a guide?" Chanyeol says, because he could just stand in the doorway and point, given the size of the house, but Baekhyun's his guest, so he walks him through the property anyway.

The kitchen's cosy, most of the space being taken up by the round wooden table and three chairs in one corner. It's probably the room that's changed the least since his parents died - other than the bathroom - and even if the colours are no longer as bright and cheery as they once were, he hasn't been able to bring himself to paint or paper over the animals his dad had painted along the borders.

When he'd been old enough to move back in by himself without an adult to watch over him, his first order of business had been to remove the baby bed in the lounge. The Braddocks had been happy to take it off his hands. Taking out the bed left him with enough room to stretch his legs across the floor when he sat on the couch to read books or play guitar.

"Lots of books," Baekhyun observes when he sees the stuffed bookcase. "You'll fit right in at our place. Are they all yours?"

"Most of them, but some I inherited from my parents."

"Parents?" Baekhyun pronounces the word like he's never heard it before, and wants to be certain he's saying it correctly. "Are your parents living here too? Or somewhere else in Winhill?"

"You could say that," Chanyeol says. "They're both buried up on the hill behind the village." He waves off Baekhyun's startled apology. "It's okay. They died when I was a little kid. I've had a lot of years to get used to being alone."

"I got used to it too, only my parents are still alive." Baekhyun shakes his head, offering Chanyeol a bitter smile. "Sorry. Not trying to one-up you or anything."

"You don't get along?"

"I think we got along okay, they just weren't home enough for us to ever really find out. My big brother probably raised me more than they did, at least until he went away for university. I guess you don't have any siblings?"

As a child, Chanyeol had counted the other village orphans as his brothers and sisters, all bound together by ties of mutual bad luck and loneliness. They'd played together, learned together, helped each other to grow up. But the older they'd become, the further apart they'd grown. Each one had reclaimed their heritage, picking up the pieces of the lives their parents had left behind; Chanyeol had been no different, finally considering himself to be his own man when he'd moved home at last. His own man...but such a lonely one.

"Wish I did. Did you and your brother share a room?"

"Not for long." Baekhyun wrinkles his face in disgust. "He kept complaining he couldn't sleep because I was making puppy noises, or something."

"As your future roommate, I feel this is something I should know," Chanyeol says. "Do you?"

"How would I know what I do when I'm asleep?"

Chanyeol concedes that Baekhyun is unlikely to know this. "We'll find out later." He pushes open the bedroom door. "You can leave your bag in here."

Baekhyun unhooks his bag from his shoulder, all prepared to sling it down on the nearest available surface, and stops dead in the middle of the floor. "So...this is your bedroom?"

Chanyeol looks pointedly over at the bed, with its slightly crumpled duvet and pillows with a noticeable dent where he sleeps. "You were maybe expecting a birdcage? Or a nest?"

"There's not a nest in existence big enough for your legs," Baekhyun snipes. "And no, I was just wondering if this was it, or if this was your parents' room and you'd got another one somewhere."

"We're just about out of rooms," Chanyeol says, pointing to the remaining door in the hallway. "That's the bathroom over there. This was my parents' room, until I moved back in and took it over."

"So where did you sleep when you were tiny?"

"A little baby bed in the lounge. But that's long go-" It dawns on Chanyeol what Baekhyun's trying to worm out of him. "Oh. Yeah, this is the only bed. But it's big enough to share, right? I promise I don't kick in my sleep. At least, I don't think I do..."

"Your parents' bed?"

"Only the frame. The mattress and all the bedding is mine. I can put on fresh sheets?" Chanyeol pulls out a new set from the drawers embedded in the bedframe.

"I can just take the couch?" Baekhyun says. "It's only for one night."

"You'll have your knees dangling over the arm. It's barely a two-seater couch, Baekhyun. Try sleeping on that and you're not going to be able to move in the morning."

"Voice of experience?"

"I may have fallen asleep on there once or twice," Chanyeol admits. "I learned my lesson after that.

"You'll be fine in the bed. What, are you worried I'm going to roll over and flatten you while I sleep?"

"I'm not used to sharing, all right?" Baekhyun grabs one corner of the duvet and starts stripping the bed so Chanyeol can change the bedding. "We've got a bunk bed, back in the bookshop. Top bunk's mine, by the way."

"Not going to fight you for it," Chanyeol assures him.

Chanyeol's slept in bunk beds before, when he and the other orphans were four to a room and privilege of the top bunk went to the eldest kids (which didn't usually include Chanyeol). Given how much he's grown since then, he thinks he'd be more comfortable on the bottom bunk now anyway. He'll happily leave Baekhyun to be the one taking chances with the height of the ceiling.

Baekhyun doesn't say anything else about sharing the bed while they make it up again, and if he has reservations, well, he's going to have to live with them. It's that or do his back in on the couch, and Chanyeol's pretty sure Baekhyun will opt to be comfortable on the double bed. It'll be an unpleasant walk back to Timber in the morning, otherwise, and now that Chanyeol's mind is made up, he has no wish to miss their train.

It's far too early to even think of sleeping, but late enough that they can both agree food is required. Taking Baekhyun to the Flower Restaurant would expose him to the curious stares of half the village, and Chanyeol kind of feels like he wants to keep him to himself for a while longer. They'll have plenty of company tomorrow, and most of what Chanyeol wants to say to Baekhyun really shouldn't be spoken before an audience - not if he doesn't want all his neighbours to think he's lost his mind.

Luckily, Baekhyun's not in any rush to go out either, and is quite happy to give his feet a rest in the kitchen (Chanyeol has to tell him off for putting them up on the table) while Chanyeol cooks. His choice of ingredients is somewhat limited after his earlier clearing spree, but he digs out a package of dried pasta, opens up a bottle of homemade sauce, and defrosts some chopped vegetables from the freezer to throw together into a passable meal. It's enough to satisfy his guest, at any rate.

"Kyungsoo will be pleased you know your way around a kitchen," Baekhyun says after a couple of bites, lips already smeared with sauce. "I think he mostly cooks so he doesn't starve, and he's not all that bothered about whether or not the rest of us survive."

That fits with what Chanyeol's seen of him so far. "I take it you don't cook?"

"Let's just say it's not one of my many strengths..."

Chanyeol learns a little more about his new friends while they eat. Apparently, Lu Han's a menace in the kitchen ("Too many orbs," Baekhyun says, "so as much as he'll try to tell you otherwise, he does get distracted from time to time, or drop things, which isn't great if you don't want an entire jar of curry powder in your food."), Minseok's cooking is actually pretty decent ("But he says he'll either cook or clean, he's not doing both, and since he's the only one who likes cleaning, we don't get to eat his food often."), and Zitao eats out more than he stays in ("He's the best at talking people into buying him meals.").

"So what do you do?" Chanyeol asks, when Baekhyun pauses to chase a twist around the plate with his fork. "You don't cook, you don't clean..."

"According to Kyungsoo, not a lot. But I'm great with customers, and that's crucial to keeping us in business. You do customer service too, right? So between us, we'll have it covered." Baekhyun grins widely at him and Chanyeol's brain fires off one quick flash of memory, the two of them victorious after a battle they'd handled alone, blinding white light and sizzling orange fire meeting in the skies overhead.

"Y-yeah." Startled, Chanyeol shakes off the image. Is he going to keep remembering in tiny bits and pieces like this? "The over-forties love me. And the under-tens."

Baekhyun looks pleased by this, though he doesn't say why. Chanyeol's had most practice at dealing with elderly ladies; perhaps Baekhyun prefers to interact with customers closer to his own age, and is happy to shuffle the rest over to Chanyeol.

That assumes Chanyeol is going to stay, that he's going to move in with the others for good and work with them in their shop. He doesn't know about that. Nothing's settled yet, and probably won't be until they find the Tree of Life (or perish in the attempt). This business of moving to Dollet permanently could be entirely theoretical.

But the more time Chanyeol spends listening to Baekhyun describe his life there, about how it's going to be so great to have someone else to share shifts with, and dodge chores with, and talk all night with, the more appealing it sounds.

Dinner passes easily enough, the conversation turning to music when Baekhyun reveals that his dream had been to become a singer, before his first summoning had dashed his hopes of a normal life. They split the dishes, with Baekhyun washing and Chanyeol drying and putting away. Afterwards, Baekhyun declares that he's rested enough, and how about a tour of Winhill, what with this being his first trip outside Dollet and all?

"It's not all that interesting," Chanyeol warns him, but Baekhyun is undeterred, even after Chanyeol explains that the picturesque aspect of Winhill is its flowers, and there's not really enough daylight left to appreciate them now.

It's a pleasant evening, warm enough that Chanyeol ends up tying his sweatshirt around his waist after a few minutes outside. They're not the only people taking the air. The benches by the bridge are all occupied; a group of smokers are lingering outside the pub, puffing away at their cigarettes before they can go back inside. Families are walking dogs; lovers are strolling hand in hand. Just another night in Winhill, where all you have to do to not be alone is take a single step out your front door.

If only it were that easy for Chanyeol.

Their progress is slow, with Chanyeol stopping to wave and bow whenever someone spots him. Yet no one approaches them, keeping their distance while staring suspiciously at Baekhyun.

"You know a lot of people," Baekhyun comments as they finally make it out of the square.

"I know everyone. I told you Winhill's tiny. Don't you know people in Dollet?"

"Yeah, but nothing like this. And there are a lot of tourists. You don't exactly seem to be overrun with them here."

"They have to be able to find us first," Chanyeol points out, and Baekhyun's laughter attracts even more strange looks.

He's too loud for this village, in ways that Chanyeol's mostly had ironed out of him by the constant press of other people's expectations. Everyone here knows everyone else: do something unexpected, or stand out in any way, and the rest of the village will know about it by the next morning. Chanyeol's learned that the best way to be himself is to not be himself at all, so to speak. He tries to get by with the little things, like dyeing his hair and playing guitar, so that the bigger things, the things that might lose him the warmth and comfort of having the entire village as his surrogate family, he can keep locked away inside.

Baekhyun's having no such difficulties. He waves cheerfully at complete strangers if Chanyeol happens to acknowledge them, bends down to share smiles with curious children who run over to get an eyeful of the newcomer. Chanyeol watches him make friends with two of the Braddock children and their Golden Retriever, Molly, and begins to relax, letting go of his concerns one by one. Baekhyun's not the first stranger to come here, nor the first with whom Chanyeol's spent time.

But he'll be the first to take Chanyeol away with him, and if word's spread since this afternoon, everyone who sees them together probably knows that too.

The streetlights are enough to see them around the village, past the bookshop Chanyeol knows so well, past the restaurant where they could've eaten tonight. Shops, and houses, and always flowers, everywhere they go. They'd had one visitor, once, who'd been allergic. She hadn't stayed long.

"Pretty village." Baekhyun stops halfway across the bridge to rest his arms on the wooden railings. "But how are you not dying from excessive boredom?"

Chanyeol pauses next to him, leaning on the railings too, their splayed elbows just touching. "It's how I grew up. It was years before I found out there was anything different out there - you can't miss what you don't know exists, right?"

Baekhyun tilts his head closer to Chanyeol to murmur: "Especially if it's in another world."

It's a secret between them, something no one here knows - and no one would believe, even if they overheard. Another thing Chanyeol can keep for himself. He's never had anyone to share secrets with, not ones that last. Two can keep a secret, but not when they both live in Winhill and if one person doesn't blab, the other will. His connection with Baekhyun will remain a mystery to the village, however, and Chanyeol likes it that way.

"I'm not sure I'd miss much there either," Chanyeol whispers back. "I've seen more of the desert than anywhere else."

"There are better places," Baekhyun assures him. "Or there were, before..."

Chanyeol nods sombrely. Before everywhere began to dry up. He might never get to see anything more of that other world beyond ice and trees, now. He's barely had time to adjust to the idea that it exists in the first place, much less explore it in a way that doesn't involve transforming, wiping out monsters, and collapsing until the next time, which is hardly the most enjoyable way to sightsee.

"I forget, sometimes," Baekhyun says quietly. "Because I'm not there all the time. Whenever I'm called out, it means I know people are still alive, but most of my masters..." He shrugs. "It's been a while. I doubt they're all still alive. Kris has been lucky so far, but it's got to be tough, watching your world fall apart. I can't imagine what it would be like if that happened here."

"Why isn't it happening here?" Chanyeol wonders aloud. "I've never heard anything about red clouds or monsters. If the prophecy's about all twelve of us, don't you think things should be bad here too?"

"They kind of are? Not with people drying up and monsters and stuff, but so many died in the war, and afterwards..." Baekhyun's expression, only faintly visible in the light from the streetlamp at the end of the bridge, turns wistful. "It's not affecting me personally, but you grew up as part of a bunch of war orphans, the entire Centra continent's pretty much a wasteland, and don't get Lu Han started on social attitudes unless you want to hear a long story about why his life sucked until he moved to Dollet. Things aren't perfect, wherever you go."

Chanyeol's vaguely aware of some of these things, in the same way he's aware that Dollet is a place that exists, and that his long-deceased maternal grandmother was a maths whiz. He doesn't have first-hand knowledge of anything in this world outside Winhill. Books, second-hand stories and irregular news reports can only teach him so much.

But the world outside can't be all that bad, he reasons. Because if it were, Baekhyun wouldn't have been able to come collect him in the first place.

"Maybe not, but if you ask almost anyone here, Winhill's about as close as you're going to get," Chanyeol says. "Peaceful, safe-"

"Dull," Baekhyun finishes for him. "I'm impressed you stuck it out this long."

"This village is all the family I've got. Deciding to leave isn't easy. And speaking of family..." Chanyeol draws himself up from the railing, dropping his hands to his sides. "I have a couple of goodbyes to say before we go tomorrow."

"Then let's go say 'em now. We're on a tight schedule, and waiting until the last minute won't make it any easier for them to hear."

"Um..." Chanyeol begins a slow walk to the far end of the bridge to pick up one of the public lanterns for those wandering beyond the streetlights at night. "It's not that anyone's going to hear, exactly..."

Baekhyun follows him, his question cut off when Chanyeol hands him a lantern. He gets it when they pass the signpost. There's only one arrow pointing where they're going. It's the path to the cemetery.

Many of Winhill's dead never returned home, and there's a marker for all those who didn't make it back from the war on another hill, slabs set into the grass with no bodies beneath. Chanyeol's parents are buried alongside everyone else who died in the village - mostly down to old age, but occasionally illness or accidents - and it's a sober trip up the hill, picking their way through the headstones until Chanyeol pauses at two graves lying side by side, under a tall tree. He knows the location by heart; the lanterns are mostly for Baekhyun's benefit, because the light from the village makes little dent in the darkness up here and the stars are not bright enough to compensate.

Chanyeol hasn't brought flowers this time but he thinks his parents won't mind, under the circumstances. He kneels down, setting the lantern to one side.

Baekhyun's swinging his around, lighting up all the nearby plots. "I'm gonna let you have some privacy, okay? I'll just wait over there."

"You don't have to-" Chanyeol starts, but Baekhyun's already heading away from him, further up the hill. Chanyeol suspects this is due less to Baekhyun giving him some alone time out of respect for the dead, and more to Baekhyun not wanting to be anywhere near him if things get tearful.

Chanyeol's not planning on any tears. He's too excited, half-ready to walk to Timber now, never mind waiting for daybreak. Tomorrow he's going to people who need him for something more than serving drinks and dusting in places they're not tall enough to reach - something that could save an entire world, maybe two, if they all work together. He'll be part of a team, of people he's known and has yet to know. This is his chance to start over and learn how to be himself without the weight of the village's expectations pulling him back into line every time he tries to spread his metaphorical wings.

He likes to think his parents would appreciate that. Who doesn't want their child to be happy?

In a hushed voice, he explains where he's going, what he's doing. Whether his parents are somehow watching over him or not, he'll never know, but he takes comfort in talking to them here, perhaps because unlike everyone else in the village, they're in no position to comment on his choices. As he's finishing up his farewells, Baekhyun reappears and yanks him up by his arm, holding his lantern over his head with his other hand.

"It was here all along and you didn't say anything about it?"

Chanyeol looks around, but can't imagine what Baekhyun can be talking about. "What was here?"

"The Tree of Life! Look at it!"

Baekhyun picks up Chanyeol's lantern too and forces him to hold it above his parents' graves, illuminating the tree that stands guard over them. He's never paid much attention to it. It's been there as long as he can remember, broad trunk reaching up into the sky, leaves coming and going in accordance with the seasons. He's not even sure what it is, but botany's never been his subject, and on the odd occasion it's occurred to him to try looking it up in a book, by the time he gets home, he's forgotten, only remembering days later when he can no longer recall anything about the shape of the leaves, or the thickness of the trunk, or...anything, really.

"It's just a tree," Chanyeol says. "If it was magical, I think I'd have noticed by now."

"Not if you didn't know what you were looking for." Baekhyun steps back to get a better view, waving his lantern around for more coverage. It nearly takes Chanyeol's head off. "Yeah, this is definitely it. Haven't you ever seen it before? In dreams?"

Baekhyun's grinning like mad, clearly elated with his discovery, and even Chanyeol's statement that no, he's never had any of these dreams that everyone else has been having, doesn't dampen his enthusiasm.

"But I did see it on that map in Nibelheim," Chanyeol says, trying to recall the image. "It could've looked like this...I guess?"

"It did," Baekhyun tells him, no two ways about it. "I've been seeing it in my dreams for years. You're lucky you've skipped out on that so far. It's no fun fighting a losing battle and knowing that you, and everyone you love, will die when you fail."

Chanyeol's relieved not to have a share in those memories yet. "Maybe the next one will be easier?" he offers.

Baekhyun shrugs, then frowns as the light from his lantern flickers. He shakes it, holding it in different positions around the tree for a better look.

"What?"

"Does it look...I don't know, kind of weird to you?"

"You're telling me it's the Tree of Life," Chanyeol says. "Wouldn't it make sense for it to not look like a normal tree?"

"Not like that." Baekhyun grabs Chanyeol's free hand with his own and drags him forward to smoosh their fingers against the trunk.

Chanyeol's too startled by the unexpected contact to be bothered by the fact that the bark is digging into his skin. "Are we supposed to commune with it by touching it or something?"

"You want to try, be my guest, but that's not what I'm going for." After a moment of pressing them both into the tree, Baekhyun releases Chanyeol's hand, making puzzled humming noises to himself. "Go around the other side and look at my lantern."

"But I can't see your lantern through the trunk," Chanyeol protests, until he gets to the other side and discovers that actually, that's not quite true.

He can't see the lantern itself, nor Baekhyun holding it. The tree's not that transparent. But it's by no means as solid as he'd expect, either, and it's somewhat unnerving to be able to see knots in the wood because they're being lit from behind. It's as though the tree is becoming thinner, losing its substance despite its presence before them. Chanyeol's never noticed before, but then, he's never been here at night, either, and he doubts he'd have noticed during the day.

"It's fading."

Hearing the irrepressible Baekhyun so downcast worries Chanyeol. "What does that mean?"

"Search me. Maybe it's always been like this, if it's half in our world and half in their world? Like there's not enough in either world for a complete tree?"

This isn't a world of materia and monsters, where people can perform the most marvellous feats of magic with glowing orbs or bespelled items. Mythical trees have no place here - much less trees that appear to be fading from this reality. It shouldn't exist. Chanyeol wonders how much longer it will last, and what state its counterpart in the other world will be in, when they track it down.

That question occupies them all the way back to Chanyeol's house, where Baekhyun asks if they can call back to Dollet and tell the others about the tree. Chanyeol reluctantly admits that Mr. Langdon's bookshop is the only place in the village possessing the technology - Baekhyun hadn't been far off in his original estimation of Winhill's communication capabilities - and it's already closed for the night. He'd prefer not to rob the elderly shopkeeper of his sleep unless it's a matter of life and death, and this, he concludes, probably isn't.

Baekhyun agrees, but wants to return to the tree in the morning, before they leave, so he can take a picture to show the others.

"How?"

"I brought my camera." Baekhyun disappears into the bedroom, returning with a small silver cuboid.

Chanyeol doesn't have one of his own, and Baekhyun's is considerably more compact than the handful owned by the villagers. Newer and fancier, presumably. They sit side by side on the couch so Baekhyun can flick his way through the photos stored on the memory card inside. Chanyeol gets to see pictures of the other Summons in Dollet: Zitao making cute, pouty poses around the corner of a bookcase; Kyungsoo glaring from behind a cash register after having been caught by surprise; Minseok and Lu Han dressed for sports and holding a football between them. Pictures of Baekhyun and Zitao eating cake at a café. A colourful fountain in the town square (although Chanyeol's not sure if the picture's supposed to be of the fountain or the group of pretty young women standing in front of it with sketchbooks). All five of them sitting at a restaurant, raising their glasses in a toast.

There's even a photo of Kris, barely recognisable in some sort of green monster costume and looking less than overjoyed to be caught on camera.

"He had to dress up as a dragon for a part in a play," Baekhyun explains with a grin. "I couldn't help myself."

"Dressing up for a play?" Chanyeol's sure he can't have heard right. "But he seems so serious."

"That's what he'd like you to think. Sure, he has his cool moments - occasionally. But if you think he's like that all the time, wait until you see how he acts around his chocobo. It's like he gave birth to Ace himself."

Baekhyun proceeds to tell him the story of the evening they'd spent at the Gold Saucer, complete with a rendition of Kris's failed attempt to bond with his chocobo via rap. "He still won the race, though," Baekhyun finishes up; then adds, slyly: "Almost. Jongdae swears he didn't let him win by much."

Chanyeol's only heard briefly about how Kris and the others had met Jongdae a few days ago; the same events, described in greater detail by Baekhyun, have an air of comical unreality about them and would sound even less plausible, had Chanyeol not experienced such fantastical things himself of late. There's not much he's not prepared to believe, at this point.

He'd happily listen to Baekhyun's stories all night - there's so much he's yet to learn about the others - but he has a feeling that if left unchecked, Baekhyun can easily keep talking until morning, and they really ought to sleep soon if they want to make an early start. He says as much the next time Baekhyun pauses to take a breath. Baekhyun reluctantly agrees, and then beats him to the bathroom.

While Baekhyun's busy brushing his teeth, Chanyeol closes up the house for the night, switching off the overhead lights and leaving only the bedside lamp, so that Baekhyun won't miss the bed in the dark. He wonders which side of the bed Baekhyun will want, and if he'll even care. Maybe they'll both try to kick each other out of bed while they sleep. If they even sleep. Chanyeol thinks he might be too excited. Tomorrow he's going to take a train! And travel to Dollet! And-

"Your turn," Baekhyun says, interrupting Chanyeol's thoughts as he enters the bedroom and slings his backpack down to the floor again. He's wearing shorts and a ratty blue T-shirt for some band Chanyeol's never heard of, fraying around the hem, and his feet are bare when he pads across to the bed. "I guess it's a good thing Minseok made me bring an overnight bag."

"I could've loaned you a shirt or something," Chanyeol says, grabbing his own nightwear to head for the bathroom, "but not my toothbrush."

He could change in his bedroom. It's not like he'd had much privacy growing up; changing in front of other people is nothing new. But it's been a long time since he's had to do that, and he feels a bit...funny changing with Baekhyun in the same room, and he can't quite put his finger on why. Not shy, exactly. But funny. If they all used to live together, in that other life, then they've probably seen just about everything there is to see, but Chanyeol doesn't remember any of that yet, only his impressions. It's all too tempting to just jump straight in, feet first - Baekhyun makes it easy, treats him like they've been friends forever and there are no barriers between them.

Perhaps the barriers only exist in Chanyeol's head, filling up the spaces he could be using for memories. He prepares for bed quickly, eager for the night to be over so the adventure can begin.

When he emerges from the bathroom Baekhyun's already under the covers, lying on the side furthest away from the lamp so that Chanyeol will have to be the one who switches it off.

"No kicking," Baekhyun reminds him. "You promised." He's leaning up against the pillow, hands linked behind his head and elbows spread wide enough that he's beginning to encroach on Chanyeol's pillow too.

"Don't give me a reason to kick you and I'll do my best," Chanyeol says, waving his hand next to Baekhyun's elbow to make him move.

Baekhyun does, shifting onto his side with a grin to make room for Chanyeol. Chanyeol slides under the duvet, forcibly reining himself in to keep from sprawling automatically. It's strange, having someone lying beside him on the mattress. They're not touching but it wouldn't take much, only a few inches of space to cross before Chanyeol's fingers brush the ragged edges of Baekhyun's T-shirt. He'd almost like to, to reassure himself that Baekhyun's really there, that he's not going to vanish into the darkness the moment the lights are off. He'd like to cling to this dream a little longer.

But...it's not a dream, Chanyeol tells himself. It's not a dream, and they need to sleep. "Ready for me to get the light?" he asks.

"Ready," Baekhyun says through a yawn, and settles himself lower on the pillow. He tugs the duvet up until it bunches under his arms. His eyes are still open, bright buttons glinting in the lamplight, and he looks softer, more relaxed than he had earlier.

Chanyeol quashes a thought about whether or not this is what it's like to have a puppy curling up in one's bed and switches off the lamp.

"Do you have enough room?" He wants to be a good host, even if it's just for the one night.

"I'm fine," Baekhyun assures him. "We probably shared a bed before sometime, right? We'll manage."

"We did? Do you...remember something?"

"I don't remember anything about you," Baekhyun says, words blunt but without bite, and Chanyeol feels the brush of the duvet against his skin as Baekhyun tightens his grip on his side of it. "Ah, I mean, not just me, but I wish I did. Kris is the only one who's seen you properly in a dream. Who knows? Maybe now I've met you, I'll dream about you tonight."

Chanyeol thinks he'd like that, the possibility of Baekhyun remembering things about him - about them from before. Things he could share. "Is that how it works?"

"Sometimes. Or sometimes we have the dreams first, and then find the people. That's how it worked with me and Kris - I was the first person to see his face in a dream, and then I found him. Sort of," Baekhyun amends. "More like he found my materia and managed to call my name before he passed out face-down in the snow. It wasn't the best first meeting."

They should sleep, but Chanyeol wants to know more, and Baekhyun doesn't need much in the way of encouragement to continue. He tells Chanyeol all about dragging Kris over to a tree and wrapping him up in laundry for warmth, and then about his subsequent visits, armed with hot soup and dry clothes borrowed from Zitao, and how awkward it is to try to change someone else's clothes when you're both hiding in a cocoon of bedding in the middle of a snowfield. As first meetings go, it might actually rival the absurdity of Chanyeol landing in the middle of a back-alley fight between Sehun and the Capparwires.

And then Baekhyun reaches the part where he and Kris both pass out on the floor of the Icicle Inn, which he illustrates by slamming his hand down on the mattress. Chanyeol can't see it, but he feels the bed jolt beneath him, and the breeze generated by the movement. Baekhyun's hand is somewhere near him now, making Chanyeol paranoid about rolling on it while he sleeps, crushing Baekhyun's fingers into the sheets the way Baekhyun had pressed his against the tree, only with rather more painful consequences. He shuffles as silently as he can towards his own side of the bed, just to be on the safe side. Baekhyun's hand doesn't move.

But for all that it's so new to him, Chanyeol finds he doesn't mind Baekhyun invading his personal space. He's cautious, of course; the people who usually try to insert themselves into his life tend to be elderly ladies with too much time on their hands and a burning desire to know everyone else's business, which hardly makes him inclined to welcome them with open arms, nice though most of them are.

Baekhyun invited himself here, into Chanyeol's village and into Chanyeol's bed. He's not the kind to wait for someone else to extend an invitation...and Chanyeol's not the kind who'd turn him away without one.

"Sounds like you and Kris have had a lot of adventures together." Chanyeol doesn't intend for there to be an undercurrent of jealousy in his voice, but somehow it slips through, insidious and unwelcome. He doesn't resent the time Baekhyun and Kris have spent together up until now. It's not their fault he wasn't around for any of it. It's not his either. Only...they have all these experiences he'll never have for himself, all these in-jokes he'll never share.

"Some," Baekhyun says lightly. "And now we'll have even more, with you here. If we don't all die tomorrow."

His offhand dismissal of such a fate amuses Chanyeol, turning his own mood away from the darker end of the spectrum. Chanyeol tries to match Baekhyun's tone. "That would be a shame, since we've only just met. Maybe the world can end next week?"

"Or a long, long time after we're dead. I'd like that better."

"I think we all would."

"Then we'll just have to make it happen," Baekhyun says. "It feels like we can now, you know? Because all these years, trying to find each other, putting together little pieces of the puzzle, and now we've got the whole thing. And maybe we can't do much from over here, but over there, we're amazing."

There's a rustle in the dark, and long, sure fingers find Chanyeol's hand, flipping it over with a quick twist so that it meets Baekhyun's in a clumsy high-five. Chanyeol doesn't care that their fingers don't match up, or that the bones of his wrist are pressing uncomfortably into the mattress. Baekhyun is here, a noisy bundle of life and light too powerful for his body to contain, and that, Chanyeol thinks, is pretty amazing too.

-----

The phoenix soars above the tree, struggling to find clear air beyond the red fog that blankets the entire area. Injured as he is, it's a challenge to climb so high; down below, great bundles of his feathers spill from the scorched, slack mouths of slain monsters, and not a few chunks of his flesh with them. Nothing that sinks its teeth into a bird of fire survives to take more than one bite, but there are many sets of teeth.

The higher he flies, the more he has to fight for each breath. There's no air left. Nowhere left to go. With a harsh cry, he plummets back down to the ground, where he can at least fight as a man. He transforms as he descends, but just as he sets foot on the remains of the bloodstained grass, he's caught under the arms from above and yanked up onto the back of a dragon.

Chanyeol doesn't need to turn around to know who's responsible. It's not the first time Baekhyun's pulled him up to ride with him - though the circumstances are usually less fraught - and he finds his seating easily enough, holding steady with his knees to leave his hands free. Even as a man, he's a creature of fire and it explodes from his hands as they fly, Chanyeol aiming to the side as matching flame pours forth from the dragon's mouth to the front. Baekhyun covers the other side, blinding bursts of light pulsing from his palms.

They try to contain their fire to the air so they don't interfere with Joonmyun's powers, but as fast as the red force burns away it's back, clogging their lungs and leeching moisture through their pores, determined to dry them out like everything else around here. It's spreading so fast that soon, there will be no safe haven, nowhere to which they can retreat to lick their wounds. It's already killing Yixing to have to make the choice between healing people in the surrounding villages, or saving his powers to help the Tree of Life. Their gentle unicorn wants to help everyone, heedless of the cost to himself.

The best way they can support him is to give him space to work, to protect him while he toils away by the trunk. Chanyeol knows he's down there somewhere, even if it's hard to see through all the red and the chaos generated by their powers, and he hopes with all his heart that this time will be the final battle. They can't afford to lose today.

A scream from down below cuts through the fog and then they're diving to the rescue. Chanyeol can't tell whose scream it was, can't tell if it means someone's wounded...or dying. The steep plunge has him leaning back against Baekhyun, who wraps his arms around Chanyeol's waist even as Chanyeol wraps his own around the dragon's neck. No amount of practice makes the dive any easier to handle. Chanyeol's forced to close his eyes against the rush of air and it takes a moment of blinking to clear his vision when they land - as clear as it can be through the mishmash of powers battling the haze.

He'd rather not look. Someone's fallen, lying in a heap near the trunk, and from here he can't tell if it's Yixing or one of the others. It's bad either way. He slips free from Baekhyun's grasp to dismount, both of them scrambling to get down before their dragon transforms back into Kevin, who definitely can't support the weight of both of them as a man. The instant they're on the ground, they become targets for everything that couldn't reach them in the sky; Chanyeol takes a scrape across the cheek from the sharp tail of something so fast he can't even muster up a spark before it's on Baekhyun, raking its claws down his chest, screeching into his petrified face.

Baekhyun screams back at it. Chanyeol screams too, because Baekhyun's pain is his pain and he can't incinerate the monster without endangering him. Fire's out, so he grabs for the tail, trying to tug the beast away with his bare hands. Once, twice he misses. On the third try he pricks his fingers on the spines but he grits his teeth and pulls. Bleeding hands to match his bleeding face: scars may heal, but death is forever.

The monster whips its head around to see who dares to interrupt it at work, claws out and at the ready. The momentary reprieve gives Baekhyun the chance to roll out of range. Chanyeol doesn't hesitate for a second before releasing the fire that's never far from the surface, burning the monster from the tail outwards. His hands are smoking and bloody when he holds them out to help Baekhyun up, but Baekhyun takes them anyway, grinning at Chanyeol shakily as he staggers to his feet, shirt no more than red-soaked rags and the skin beneath little better. The slices are deep, judging by the amount of blood.

Chanyeol's wounds are survivable. He's not sure about Baekhyun's. They need to get to Yixing.

He looks around for Kevin, who's back in human form and embroiled in a struggle of his own, pinned beneath something flat and purple with multiple waving tendrils that leave smears of blood across his skin. Chanyeol's torn between supporting Baekhyun and trying to help Kevin, but fortunately Kevin manages to kick free from the creature before it's necessary to make that choice. Despite the lacerations on his face and arms he's still in much better shape than Baekhyun, steady enough to help him walk.

With Chanyeol supporting Baekhyun on one side and Kevin on the other, they make their way over to the trunk. Slowly, because Baekhyun's steps are faltering and their progress is impeded by the monstrous corpses littering the area. The ground has turned into a swamp from a mix of bodily fluids and Joonmyun's attacks, but it's no longer shaking, and Chanyeol can't detect any sign of the others using their powers. No more random explosions of air, no patches of freezing fog, no bolts of lightning...it's as if no one's fighting anymore, and that scares him even more than the claw marks down Baekhyun's chest.

Baekhyun's not complaining as they walk, which means his injuries must be bad - Chanyeol's seen him kick up a fuss over paper cuts before, and if he's not making a peep now, it's taking everything he's got just to keep moving.

But Kevin's the first one to drop to his knees, choking on his own blood. Chanyeol glances back over his shoulder to see that the thick, conical spear through Kevin's chest is attached to one of eight wings protruding from a skeletal red dragon. The other seven stab viciously at the air. Too close. They're too close. Baekhyun's still caught between them, half-up and half-down, no room to dodge, no strength to run. Chanyeol has to get him clear.

He bends down to work his free arm behind Baekhyun's knees, but Baekhyun won't stay still and let him. He's fighting...squirming...falling.

Chanyeol thinks the stabbing pain he feels is from the spike splitting Baekhyun's chest. Only his own final breath tells him otherwise.

-----

Chanyeol never does get the chance to find out if Baekhyun really does make puppy noises at night. He falls asleep with Baekhyun's hand still half-atop his and awakes with a sudden jerk, drawing both his hands towards his chest. Just visible in the early morning light, Baekhyun's doing the same; they clutch their hearts, breathing in shallow gasps as they try to calm down from what Chanyeol suspects is the same dream.

Or perhaps 'nightmare' better befits what he's seen in his sleep.

"Is it...is it always like that?" Chanyeol wants to reach for the lamp but with the way his hands are shaking, he thinks he stands a better chance of knocking it to the floor than switching it on. "I saw...what I saw was...I..." He knows he's not making any sense. But how's he supposed to talk about his own death?

"Stupid tree dream," Baekhyun spits out. "You had it too?"

"Did you...um..."

"Die? Yeah. That's the first time, though. It usually ends before then." Baekhyun shudders, an exaggerated, full-body motion that rocks the mattress beneath them both. "It got you too, right? I think I caught a glimpse on my way down."

"Yeah." Chanyeol swallows hard, mouth bone-dry. He doesn't trust himself to get up and fetch a glass of water yet, though, as much as he could do with one. "First Kris, then you, then...me."

"All three of us killed by the same monster. Lovely."

Chanyeol forces himself to take steady, calming breaths. He needs to relax. He can't allow himself to be paralysed by a memory, no matter how painful. If he does, they won't be able to move forward, and they need to be up and getting ready to leave. "Just because it happened that way once doesn't mean it's going to happen like that again, right?" he tries. "There's nothing we can do about the past."

"We could brood about it like Kris does?" Baekhyun suggests, but he does concede that really, the dream doesn't tell them anything they didn't already know - except the exact manner of their demise - and lying around talking about it isn't going to help. There's no way they're getting back to sleep now, and Chanyeol's alarm is due to go off in less than half an hour anyway. They might as well get up. Ever the gracious host, Chanyeol once again lets Baekhyun beat him to the bathroom.

When Chanyeol emerges from his own ablutions, his bag and guitar case have vanished and Baekhyun appears inexplicably pleased with himself.

"Did you just hide my luggage?"

"I sent it on ahead," Baekhyun says. "Kris called me out to talk about the dream, so I stashed your stuff on the airship and we can pick it up later."

Chanyeol's intrigued by this (and pleased, because it saves him carrying his stuff all the way to Dollet) but that's not the important point here. "Kris had the dream too?"

"We all did. Everyone had a rough night. Telling them we found the Tree of Life here distracted them from trying to work out who died first."

Of all the morbid breakfast topics. Chanyeol thinks he'd rather not know, as he suspects he was the last and there's something terribly depressing about having outlived the people you care about, even if by only a few seconds.

They rush through their own breakfast, because Baekhyun wants to take photos of the tree while his splinter self is still out on the Highwind, so that he can pass the camera through to himself and show everyone the pictures. It's an odd way to communicate - the "Summon Network", as Baekhyun jokingly refers to it, with the two parties linked by Lu Han and Jongin's telepathic connection, and what one side knows, the other usually learns soon enough. It's only when the Summons are separated like this that things become more complicated.

They won't be returning to the house before they leave for Timber. Chanyeol rustles up drinks and snacks for the journey, the resulting cloth bag considerably lighter than his original luggage. Baekhyun helps by going through the kitchen cupboards and picking out the least healthy items he can find to throw in the bag. Chanyeol takes one look at Baekhyun's selections and figures they might actually be able to walk all the way up to Dollet on a sugar high.

No one else is in sight when they lock up the house, though Chanyeol's sure their progress is carefully monitored through the net curtains of his neighbours. He's welcomed a stranger into his life and that makes him unpredictable, a wild card by Winhill's conservative standards. He could be up to anything, so naturally, everyone wants to know about it. He keeps his eyes fixed on the path ahead so he can pretend the rest of the village is still asleep.

Baekhyun has a far easier time navigating his way between the headstones in the daylight. Chanyeol can't see anything odd about the tree guarding his parents' graves. It appears as grand and solid as he's always seen it, at least until Baekhyun declares he's done snapping pictures, and Chanyeol places his hands on the trunk. His fingers find holes in the wood: small, but seemingly bottomless. He snatches his hands back the instant he understands why. The tree is completely hollow.

"Something bite you?" Baekhyun asks, staring at Chanyeol's hands, and Chanyeol doesn't know how to explain that he's afraid of the nothing.

"It's...empty," he says at last, when Baekhyun moves to examine the trunk for himself. "There's nothing left inside."

How such a tree can still be alive is a mystery. The wood is a healthy brown; the leaves, thick and green. There's no sign of rot or decay. It's simply a shell of a tree, all its resources used up - or transported elsewhere.

Chanyeol wants to be away from it as soon as possible. He's used to seeing unbelievable sights in that other world, but that doesn't mean he's ready to see them in his own. Baekhyun doesn't object when Chanyeol marches them back down the hill, double-time, and when Baekhyun's camera disappears from his hands Chanyeol tries not to jump. The verdict from the other side only confirms what they already know, what Chanyeol can now attest to for himself after last night's dream: the tree beneath which his parents are buried is none other than the Tree of Life.