Chapter Text
“IS ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE?”
There’s something sharp digging into Min’s palm. Both palms. Legs, too. Sand trickles down onto his face, tickling his nose.
“SAYEON? SAYEON, ARE YOU OUT THERE?”
Min opens his eyes. It’s just as dark as when he had them closed. He feels out the ground below him, and as his senses return to his body, he realizes that he’s pinned on top of, and under, an unknown quantity of rubble. Something warm is dripping down his arm.
He can’t feel his-
“ HELLOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAANYONE? !”
“Iseul,” Min says, his voice coming out in a hoarse rasp. “I’m here.”
Iseul swears from somewhere to Min’s left. Ten feet away? Twenty? “ Min!” the Cell 4 member says brightly, and Min hears the shifting and shaking of gravel, and the swish swish of suit fabric.
“Thank goodness! Sorry about the yelling- it’s so dark in here, I can’t see a freaking thing. Say something again?”
Min has never been the talkative type, so it’s not unusual that he has to muster all his energy to open his mouth. Not unusual in the slightest.
“I’m over here,” he says again, quieter, eyes drooping closed.
There’s a pat pat pat noise, like someone is groping around the ground. More swish swish swish, rocks and gravel being pushed around, curses mumbled under a low breath that grows closer, louder.
Finally, a hand lands on the very edge of Min’s blazer.
Iseul crumples the fabric triumphantly in his fist. “Min! Is that you?” he asks cheerfully, and this time his voice is coming from right above Min’s head.
Min doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “It is,” he says finally, and the admittance feels like it take every ounce of his energy to spit out.
He feels cold. Was it this cold outside when the mission began?
No… it’s supposed to be June. A summer month.
Boss’s favorite season of the year.
“ Wow! I can’t believe we met another Aberrant with an Explosion gift! You think he’s related to Taeho somehow?” The rubble Min is laying on shifts below him as Iseul crosses his legs, scooches closer to Min. “I don’t mean directly, like brothers or a father or something. Obviously. They’re all in the Corps, aren’t they? I mean like, maybe this guy was a distant cousin. Somebody Taeho doesn’t know about, even. You know, I have a cousin-”
“You called for Sayeon,” Min interrupts. His head is heavy, waterlogged, and sentences refuse to form in his mouth. “Was… was she in the building with us? When it went down.”
There’s another sound, fabric tightening, and Min thinks Iseul may have straightened his back.
“She shouldn’t have been. Juni told her to wait outside. But you know Sayeon- she doesn’t listen to Juni very well, at least when she thinks Juni is wrong, and earlier… you remember how they were arguing? She wanted to check out the area with us. So I got worried that she followed us without telling. Sayeon’s not that strong, you know?”
Min tries to remember. He feels like his thoughts are submerged under a layer of water. It could be a concussion, which would explain also the cold numbness of his limbs. But Min has had a concussion before, and this feels different somehow. Besides, he would have recovered from a simple head wound by now.
It doesn’t matter. He has to get up, to confirm the safety of the Boss’s sister…
"I’m glad I found you, though,” Iseul blathers on. His voice bounces off the walls of the concrete prison enclosing them, separating into ten different echoes. “I used up a bunch of my essence when we were fighting that guy, so I’ve been waiting for it to recover a little. But then I’ll try and get us out of here. The problem is…I don’t think I can move any of the really big pieces of rock.”
Iseul somehow finds Min’s hand. He grasps it reassuringly, squeezes once, then pats it a couple times with enough force to sting.
“But that’s where you come in, alright? Cut up the big pieces with your gift. Then I’ll levitate ‘em out of the way. We should be out of this in no time!”
“I can’t use my gift right now,” Min says. He doesn’t even need to summon his essence to confirm it. His body is freezing, and tired, and utterly spent, and it takes every iota of discipline Min possesses to stop himself from slipping into an unwakeable sleep.
Though he can’t see Iseul’s reaction, Min can feel the boy’s aura electrify with a rush of nervous essence.
“Why? Huh? What’s wrong?”
Min tries to shake off the sleepiness obscuring his thoughts. Why is he still lying here? If there’s a piece of rock hanging above him, and the ground below him, Min just needs to crawl out sideways, and…
As he tries to move, the coldness in his stomach twists. Ice splinters through his center, like a fracture radiating from his very core, and he sucks in a choked breath.
There's a sensation of falling. But he can't be falling... he’s not even…
“... in. Look… pipe or s...ometh… moving… Min! Hey, hey-”
A hand is pressed against Min’s shoulder with enough pressure to bruise. He’s being shaken, and when his head rolls against the rocks, the pain blurs his vision into long, jagged streaks of dark and light.
…There’s light.
He puts in just enough energy to twist his head to the side. Iseul’s face is lit with warm orange, his hand held up to his cheek and glowing with essence. His eyes are glowing, too. There’s a strange expression on his face. Eyebrows furrowed, bottom lip bit. His curly hair is standing on end, and pale with dust. Min wonders if his hair looks like that as well. But his hair is already white, isn’t it?
“Holy shit, man,” Iseul says in a shaky voice. “Holy shit. Can you hear me?”
(Boss is standing over him, face shadowed and unreadable. “White, look at me. Can you move?”)
“I can,” Min says to Boss. “What do you need?”
“What do I-” Iseul gapes at him. “What do I need ? There’s like, a pole or something going right through you. Like, part of the building- sticking out of the concrete, it’s kind of hard to see. Here, if you- if you crane your neck, maybe you can see it?”
With Iseul’s light, Min can see now that he’s laying at a slight incline, with his feet lower than head level. That makes it easier to look down, to see the two dark shapes skewering his torso, both protruding from the shattered ceiling and ending somewhere in his body. One pole is crooked, mangled from holding up the weight of the concrete. The other is straight.
Good. It will be easier to remove.
“There’s two,” Min says, in a voice that feels like it’s floating away. “Two pieces of rebar.”
“ Two- “ Iseul straightens like he wants to stand up, to pace around a room they aren’t even in. He puts both hands to his hair and pulls, hard, face scrunched up. “Oh my god. Holy shit. Are you- are you going to be, uh…? Doesn’t it hurt?”
“I can't heal with the rebar still in me. I need to cut and remove them,” Min tells Iseul. He registers it now- the familiar stickiness of blood clinging to his clothes, plastering his shirt to his sides. “But that may cause the concrete to collapse. You will use your gift to hold up the concrete while I roll out from under it.”
Iseul balks. “I- what- now?”
Min tries to shake his head. The effort makes the ceiling spin.
“Not now,” he rasps. “Once I’ve… once I’ve recovered more essence. Five… ten minutes.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Iseul says almost immediately, that strange expression crossing his face again. “M-maybe we should wait until Juni and the rest pull us out. Just stay put until then.”
Min doesn’t want to see Iseul’s face this close. It had never bothered him before, but now it does- Iseul and his strange expression and the way his shoulders are hunched over, making him look small. Min closes his eyes.
“...They don’t know exactly where we are. They might not even know that we’re under this building.”
“Look, Min,” Iseul says tentatively. “I know… you can’t see yourself right now. But… you’re pale normally, sure, but just now. When you stopped talking all of a sudden, and I activated my essence so that I could get a little light, see what’s… going on. You-”
His voice sounds a little strangled.
“I saw- I saw you, with the rebar sticking out of you and stuff, and you- you looked dead.”
It takes a lot of energy for Min to force his eyes open again. The glow of Iseul’s hand has dimmed, and he can barely make out Iseul’s face through the haze.
“I’m an Aberrant,” Min says.
The shadow of Iseul doesn’t move.
“That doesn’t mean you’re invincible,” he says quietly. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
Min can’t tell if it’s Iseul’s light or his vision that’s fading.
“Ten minutes,” he says in a voice so low it could be a whisper. “Ten minutes, and I’ll wake up. Then I’ll have enough essence…”
It doesn’t feel like he’s falling asleep. It feels like he’s dissolving away, a heap of sand spreading out into nothing, and his consciousness is…
—
Ten minutes pass.
Min doesn’t wake up.