Work Text:
Protagonists often had dreams of what they wished to achieve. Yoo Joonghyuk wasn't any different.
Yoo Joonghyuk used to dream.
He used to dream of a future he could spend with his loved ones, dream of a future with his own family, happy and unharmed.
However, he gave up on those trivial matters.
The day he grew to resent the world and its watchers was the day he stopped materializing a future he realized he could never reach.
Everything he's worked hard for, everything he's compensated and sacrificed for the sake of the future he wanted to see— all of it was so close, yet so far.
He fails one turn, he tries again.
‘The next turn will be better.’
Is all he could do to console himself, all he could muster to save the last bits of his humanity.
He fails and fails, until he loses most of his senses, abandoning the reality he dreamed of, and letting go of the ‘him’ that used to have so much hope for a ruined world.
How many long years has it been? How long has it been since he caved into a comforting warmth?
He no longer remembers.
But what he knew was that his suffering would end soon.
Having made an understanding with Han Sooyoung, he will be sealed into an eternal rest along with the others for the sake of his freedom.
It seemed selfish, but how could you blame someone who’s tried to save the world— better yet, his loved ones over, and over again?
“I’ll finish your story.” A calm voice resonated through his ears, he emptily looked up at the man that spoke to him with unfamiliar fondness.
He no longer had much to offer. Yoo Joonghyuk, the regressor that tired himself, giving every inch of himself to each and every turn with the unfortunate results of failure, could only give a dried-up husk of the man that he used to be.
Even so, why did this man kindly offer his hand and cruelly drown him into his nightmarish experience at the same time? Why did this man still seem to accept Yoo Joonghyuk, who had been identified as a man whose sins are far from redeemable?
The anticipation of the upcoming ‘death’ he’s held up wavered when a flicker of hope had been rekindled inside him, that maybe, just maybe he can continue to dream.
Even if it was just a small part of him.
Yoo Joonghyuk felt like a dog listening to Kim Dokja’s orders at every beck and call. A man who’s fallen too deep in his depression that he could no longer think for himself is off-putting.
Now, he has his head rested on Kim Dokja’s lap, ordered to rest even just for a little bit as the reader cards his boney fingers through Joonghyuk’s wavy black hair.
“You try so hard, don’t you know that?”
Yoo Joonghyuk does not respond.
He only opts to stare at Kim Dokja with the eyes of a man torn down; utterly broken and left as a mindless puppet who had lost its strings.
Kim Dokja wryly smiles down at him, pushing the man’s hair out of his forehead, drawing his palm down to rub his thumb on Yoo Joonghyuk’s sturdy cheek.
It had more scars than his own Yoo Joonghyuk.
“You…”
A shaky sigh has been emitted through those chapped lips that the regressor had intently stared at for a mere few seconds.
“You did well, you did so much that it’s a shame you couldn’t receive the right recognition you deserved.” He adds, eyes akin to that of never-ending love glossed with slight exasperation.
If Yoo Joonghyuk were on his right mind, he would have scoffed at Kim Dokja and reject such an idea.
But the Yoo Joonghyuk with Kim Dokja right now somehow felt those words had been a pitiful attempt to raise both their hopes up.
Kim Dokja who never understood the concept of self-appreciation, and Yoo Joonghyuk who determined himself unworthy of such praise for his failures.
Both spent majority of their lives in solitude, having no one else to turn to when no one would even remember them.
You could say these are the few times they would ever come to understand each other with mere words.
“You look so broken, Joonghyuk-ah.” He laughs bitterly, tears finding their way to drip down on Yoo Joonghyuk's face.
He makes no move to wipe them away when Kim Dokja hurriedly wipes it for him.
“I wish I could take all of your burden for you.”
Yoo Joonghyuk used to dream.
He used to dream of the end with his family.
Yoo Joonghyuk had already given up on them long ago, knowing that they won’t remember their past nor will they know his story.
But Kim Dokja knew his story to heart.
Now, Yoo Joonghyuk lays his tattered heart to the man he swore he wasn’t supposed to trust. Once again putting himself bare at the thought of having someone he could call his home, someone he could call his salvation.
A silent call of the constellation’s name, staring at the direction the man had left to.
“Kim Dokja…”
His plan with Han Sooyoung was nearing.
He’s grown numb to the thought of the pain that may come.
If it weren’t for Kim Dokja’s arrival, then maybe he’d no longer feel the warmth he’s lost for almost two thousand years.
Unlike before, he began to fear what he asked for.
He began to fear his end as if Kim Dokja’s warmth would disappear with him.
It didn’t seem like a bad end, but he wanted it to last longer.
“Why…” he croaks out, catching the reader’s attention from the corner of his eye.
He stiffly looks at the smaller man, bitter tears inevitably fell from his cheeks, “Why now..?” he questions helplessly, as if he were a devotee looking at his god for answers.
Kim Dokja looks at the man with sadness, wiping away the taller man’s tears as if it were his own.
“Why do you have to show up when I wanted to finally rest?”
It wasn’t fair.
When he’s already had his resolve, why? Why did he have to show up now?
Question after question had been left unanswered as Kim Dokja only wipes the man’s tears.
And then it hit him. A question that made Yoo Joonghyuk look like a child abandoned by his parent.
“Where were you when I needed you most..?”
[The exclusive skill, ‘Fourth wall’ is greatly shaken]
Before both of them knew it, Kim Dokja cried with him that day.
He pulls Yoo Joonghyuk down to rest their foreheads together, and all Kim Dokja could do was smile and cry with and for his favorite protagonist.
“I was always with you.”