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“Hearing your cries wasn't the last of my punishment. In a way, I got used to hearing you I felt numb. It hurt, but I sat waiting to hear it over and over." Grim reapers can't get drunk. However, like humans, their jaw loosens when they have alcohol flowing in their systems.
Living with Ryeon, he learns the wounds she cannot uncover without it. He doesn't give himself the right to stop her. Instead, he pulls up a chair and sits with her.
"I started seeing us. All the lifetimes we could've lived. You were a teacher in one of them. A history teacher, it's fitting isn't?" she mumbles, pausing as if she's playing out the memory before her. Eyes downcast, he thinks it over for a second... quickly wiping the idea when it gets too much. “We'd find each other every time. Something red always found us as well,"
She's not wearing the shadow, face bare. There is something raw about seeing her like this.
Her laugh, rough and hallow. He moves from across her, pulls out the seat beside her, and pulls her closer to him.
She doesn't find his comfort. “There was one where we had kids... you were so panicky... I never seen you sweat so much. They had your heart, my brains, both of our tempers—a nightmare when they were frustrated. Our little nightmares." Ryeon's voice softens.
In the times he spent in hell, he thought about it as well. Her pregnant, all the strange cravings his mind couldn't understand. All the nightly kisses to her stomach. All the time, the world would shut off when he looked at the growing pictures of their child.
Park Joong Gil thought about every scenario his mind could conjure up with his wife. He thought about the special ways he'd love her. Holding her in his arms, whispering things only would hear.
All the things he thought he'd never be able to do.
“You were so happy. Your smile so big. I should've.. you should've gotten that. Our string so long and circling." He places her head down on his shoulder, rubbing her side. He thinks of the string she's no longer afraid to cover around him.
She is freezing in his hold. His baggy shirt falling off her body, his nose sucked into the smell she exudes in his clothes. “Bu-in..."
"... When we finished living out all our lives. We'd be waiting for each other surrounded by pink carnations." Their favorite. His mind nearly betrays him once more, wrapping itself in what could've been. A spiral of addicting and never-ending pain. He sought to rid himself when they agreed to start over.
“Bu-in. Do you love me or pity me?“
Her reply is instantaneous. "I love you,"
“All of those lifetimes hold their own stories. Their own wounds. Those lifetimes sport things we wouldn't know how to bear. New skin to shed over and over. Having you like this, loving you again without the risk of losing you, is all I ever wanted."
His fingers slide down to her scar, the severed thread still dangling at the ends. He covers his hand with it. "I do not want to entertain another life with you. I do not seek another lifetime... This is the moment I want right now. Here with you, that is all."
He holds up her arm, pressing his lips to her wrist. She gasps softly, eyes glossing over. Blinking them away, he kisses the scar again. He kisses up her arm and stops when he's just shy of her lips.
"I don't have to lose you again," she whispers in a sense of disbelief.
“No, you don't," he kisses her nose.
“I won't let you go,"
“Neither will I," She shatters the distance. Kissing him soundly, her thumbs caressing his cheeks.
In another life where they didn't break, they'd look for each other. Searching for the other end of the thread. Hold each other until their last breath and keep starting over until the finish line finally catches up with them.
In another life that would be ideal.
In another life, he'd entertain it.
In this life, he wants nothing to do with it.
In this life, he lives in these small moments as she slowly opens herself to him again. In this life, he lives to make up for lost time and create new memories.
He promises to hold the weight of her scars alongside her as she does to him in this life.
In this life, Joong Gil loves Ryeon all over again. The good. The bad. The broken.