Chapter Text
Just as quickly as he had called the number on that almost alien, brown business card and gotten inexplicably kidnapped, he had been thrown around a frenzy of colourful, deadly children’s games, had voted and been ultimately kicked out.
Thanos had been ejected from that car and placed neatly on the street, all his belongings surrounding him like bags all full of bricks. He looked just the same as he did before he entered, before he woke up in foreign clothes in a foreign place with Joseph Haydn’s Trumpet concerto in E flat fucking major playing across the room. He wasn’t gagged or threatened or anything he’d expect from a kidnapping, just his wrists and ankles were tied, blindfolded. He escaped after a little bit, after he’d woken up, surprised the gas they used to knock him out even worked that well.
The merry-go-round was the last before X beat out O. Now with nothing to numb his senses, the gas they used to knock them out seemingly suppressing whatever was in his system before, he thinks of that game. In a hazy, hurried mess, he’d abandoned Gyeong-Su, almost left Min-Su, definitely left Semi. And Nam-Gyu. He’d always kept Nam-Gyu.
He plucks his belongings out of the trash bags they stuffed them into, keeps the rope which was used to tie him (just in case) and looks around. Things don’t exactly look familiar, trees on the street tall enough that he can’t really see any landmarks he recognises. He lets out a heavy sigh, hikes his full backpack over his shoulders and picks up the crossbody bag he has as well, hooking it over his shoulder. The remainder of his possessions are reduced to a couple of grocery bags and full pockets. He doesn’t know where he’s going, doesn’t know why he’s walking. He has nowhere to go now; before the games he got a spiteful, orange eviction notice slapped right across his door. It’s part of the reason the Han River Bridge seemed so appealing. What else did he have to do, have to lose? And the answer was nothing.
He walks for what feels like hours. Empty, numb, hardly in a place to make decisions and do other adult things adults do. He’s definitely been to where he is a couple of times but things look slightly different to how he remembers. Some lights have swapped their orange bulbs for white LEDS, some sidewalks are narrower, some bushes have been trimmed in places too close to the branch. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been to this part of Seoul in a while; maybe it’s because that in the four or five days he was holed up in that place, everything had drastically changed and nobody had bothered to tell him.
He wades through harsh street lamps, across damp pavements, and finds himself trudging that familiar way home only to remember that it isn’t his anymore. Technically he’s homeless and he gets a cheap, humourless laugh out of it. Out of how the games, ironically, were kinder to him than all of his landlords and landladies put together. How even there he felt more at home than he did on any streets. Maybe having a near death experience almost every day does that to you, makes you fear the normality of the outside world. When everything you do for nearly a week seems so vividly rehearsed and dream like, what do you do when you wake up?
Not really knowing where he was going in the first place, he stops for a few minutes to consider what to do now. The question hangs aimlessly in the air, waiting for something that won’t arrive. Wanting for an answer he doesn’t have. He’s standing just off of an overpass, overlooking one of the main roads, sky black with void and no stars. Unwelcoming. See: light pollution. As it starts to rain, he really has to fight the urge to cry. That build up in his temples, that sting in his nose and the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t; what would it solve?
Stuck in a hole, that’s what he’d always imagined. Slumping down against a dirty stone wall that builds up into one of many pillars, knowing the back of his shirt gets dragged through it, and digging in his pockets a bit for something. Answers? He finds a couple of loose cigarettes and a lighter. It’s almost automatic what he does with them.
Stuck clawing at dirt walls and abandoned, voice raw from screaming for help, legs giving out from standing. Helpless at the bottom of a mess he’d created. It might be why he came to the bridge, or at least another reason. He had dug it himself, like a grave. He sort of subconsciously knew what he was doing. That’s why it was grave-shaped, the perfect size for his own coffin clamped shut, lowered one inch down for every awful choice he made. But he didn’t think about it, not until it was too late. When it was raining and he was ten feet below the surface, who was going to come and rescue him when all he had ever done to people in his life was cheat, lie, and steal from them. Who would save somebody who they know wouldn’t do the same? Who would save somebody from a fate they’d hand-sewn for themselves? The answer is no one.
The drag he takes from his cigarette doesn’t help in the slightest. He watches the smoke dance up and away, brushed to nothing by the breeze and gets irrationally angry, almost like everything in the entire world, even this, was just a ploy to taunt him, tease him, push him over the edge.
He’d had it all and blew it. And ended up here, pathetic little tears brimming, smoking because he has nothing left to do with himself, not because it’ll bring him joy. And now? Now what? He had yet another chance to be the victor, another chance that he threw. It wasn’t even his fault they left, just that the majority decided to take it away from him. Just cruel, unfiltered destiny.
He had thought that maybe the man in the suit that knew his every detail was some kind of divine intervention. Some message from the universe that he could be better, that he didn’t have to feel so miserable.
He had thought some childish, illogical things when he played those games of ddakji, lost more times than he’d won and still profited. How insane it all was, how he craved these simple feelings like the rush of winning something and the sinking feeling he got when handed a crisp, impersonal business card that he called the number on instantly. His fingers shake, the cigarette clamped between the two. Heart beating steadily, yet another taunt. Thanos’ arm rests on his knees, hiked up to his chest. He remembers thinking of irrational things like fate and destiny and divine intervention then. Things like second chances.
Desperate things. Things like lies children tell to stay out of trouble, to just get their parents to look under the bed no matter how silly it sounds. Things like maybe this guy was somebody Someone sent. Someone who still believed in him. Someone who knew that he could turn it all around in some heroic gesture of passion and selflessness because it was just the right thing to do! But he isn’t selfless.
Humility. It should have to fit him now, like a cheap suit. Out of everything he should be feeling (anger, denial, fear) it’s nihilistic indifference that wins the battle—but inescapable, suffocating guilt that wins the war. He replays the look on Gyeong-Su’s face as he actively kicked him away, Min-Su’s expression as he told him to pick O if he wanted to stick by them, to have that protection Thanos offered. If all but one was going to die anyway, what was the point of all that? Of those people he pushed to their deaths, those people he tried to fight. Hell, what’s the point of anything he does? But he pushes it all away with another drag, looking out on the scenery. There’s no reason to be asking in the first place.
Things in the shadowy corners call out to him, whisper funny little ideas into his head which are both unrealistic and unappealing. If he’s going to do anything it’s probably going to be go back to the bridge. The thought strikes him, oddly enough. A pang of real fear crackling right through his chest like a flash of lightning. One that he didn’t feel before. Thanos dismisses it.
He’s still wearing the same clothes as he was when on the bridge. Same ratty sneakers, same yellow T-shirt which now seems incredibly inappropriate for the new, unexpected winter chill present in the air. Same necklace. Speaking of.
Thanos stops moving. Hastily, he stubs out his cigarette (which at this point has burned down to the filter) and breathes out a shaky breath which clouds in the air in clumps not dissimilar to the smoke he was just blowing out. He can make this all go away. This is how he figures out what to do.
He grips the locket with what is probably too much force, fiddles with the latch with clumsy, shaking fingers, his heart hammering, before he stops. He’s definitely done this before. Yeah, with the dead body of Mina at his feet, a bullet hole through her temple. He shakes his head, tries to forget the only sober part of his time in that place. Her eyes, the way her eyes looked. The way the life could be extracted from somebody in a split second. Were the people that would have found him washed up in the river going to look at him like that?
No. No no no no, not now, please not now. His eyes sting again, the cold air not helping him. There is a giddy anxiety boiling over in his chest, a feeling like fate. It’s so strange how anxiety and excitement border each other, bleeding and mixing together into a mess of confusion and trickery. In the daze he can’t exactly tell which he’s truly feeling. A feeling like fate. Twisted, backwards logic, really. An inevitable feeling, a couple of seconds of pure and utter fear, unexplained to him by means of divine intervention this time, a knowing that he can make it all go away if he just—
The hinged lid squeaks open, dropping down as far as the hardware would let it. As soon as he opens the locket, he’s greeted with only four small pills left, one which is crumbled into pieces. At the sight, the familiar sight, his heart leaps, sinks, then leaps again.
On each of them, two or three numbers are etched on the surface. The hasty scribbles of a crazed, desperate man. His mind scrambles to find the distant memory, to work his way back to what happened despite the fuzziness in his peripheral.
He’s suddenly brought back to what has to be at least yesterday. He and Nam-Gyu sitting on his bed as they often did, though this time, devising a plan. A plan to find each other.
Nam-Gyu knew his own phone number off by heart and Thanos knew that the only thing the masked guards let them keep both in and out of the games was their jewellery. His necklace and piercings all stayed perfectly in place before and after.
They’d talked for a long time after the vote, all hasty, none apologetic, and eventually Nam-Gyu said he was afraid. Afraid that this would be all for nothing, that he’d never see Thanos again. Thanos had asked him his number then, used his fingernail to etch the numbers slowly into his pills. Using both sides, all the space, he got all but one, one he said he’d remember but couldn’t.
He remembered the order or the colours, the area code, which side went first but not that fucking last number. Four? Eight? Six? Racking his brain, he doesn’t take a pill, knows he can’t now. He needs to call Nam-Gyu. It isn’t even a question. He will not. He won’t fuck it for himself again, won’t cut off his contact to the person he trusted most in those games, the person he fucking needs right now. Come on, come on. That last digit, what the fuck was it?
His eyes still sting. Crying seems easier than this but all he has to do now is press on and remember a number. Easy.
Thanos stands on uneven land, unsteady legs, and wanders frantically around like a crazed drunk. He wonders what he looks like right now but doesn’t dwell on it. Ironically, he’s stone cold sober but hasn’t acted like it in the slightest. His search brings him to a decently sized bridge, one with a narrow river running under it, a road on top. Its stone arches over the space underneath, wide, the other side of it looking like it comes out to somewhere near a more populated area full of shops. He hurries under it to escape the rain, the clap of his footsteps echoing, bouncing off of the curved ceilings.
He crouches down, pulls out his cracked phone and presses the small plus in the corner of the Phone app to open the New Contact window. With a deep breath, he reopens the locket as slow as he can, with the care and precision of a surgeon. He knows the pink pill went first but doesn’t quite have the nerve to move his hand, so cold they’ve gone red and numb and slow. Holding the locket flat with one hand, phone in the other, his movements are limited. Yet again he considers crying but this is sort of more important.
He pulls his knees up to his chest again, rests the phone on them and frees his shaking hand. He brings his finger to the unnaturally bright screen and presses the numbers scraped into the tiny pill. It’s hard to read and he prays to god he does it right but the light from his phone makes it easier. He knows the pink pill went first, thanking whatever saved him before the games for making all of his remaining ones different colours. Seven, three, zero.
He remembers trying the second batch of numbers much too small and hard on the crumbled pill, the blue one. He stares at it for a moment, remembering, considering. He doesn’t even know if all the pieces are there. Actually scratch that, they’re definitely not. It’s too small to do anything with now, let alone take it, as proved by him trying to fruitlessly scrape the last digit on back yesterday. No luck. He presses on.
He moves to the yellow pill. His hands tremble, fingers stiff and uncoordinated. He has to try at least three times to press the right number on the keyboard. Four, nine…
Thanos changes to the mint coloured pill. Zero.
Last digit.
Come on, Thanos. Think.
+82, South Korea’s country code. 10-, the standard prefix for mobile numbers. 7304-930 … the numbers etched desperately into the pills, his only chance at getting somewhere safe to stay tonight, getting some fucking hope in life. Getting his friend back.
Fuck it. Too much is riding on this not to try.
He just decides to just type something into the new contact, try random numbers. He fills in the information, names it ‘namsu??’ And fills in the last digit with a placeholder. Zero. 9300. Thanos presses the number on the screen to call it and holds to phone to his ear, heart thumping around his chest, against his rib cage, breath bated and heavy.
“The number you have called does not exist, please…”
Thanos stops listening after that, yelling out in frustration and hearing his broken voice reverberate across the curve of the bridge. He lets himself have a moment, a selfish little indulgent moment, watching the wavering patterns of water below on the underside of the bridge, listening to the cars speed by above him. His heart pounds but not quite as fast now. Those patterns of water, waves of dulled out aqua captivating him for just a moment. It reminds him of the Han River Bridge, hearing cars go by behind him, hearing water slosh and crash against stone pillars and its bank. He remembers how he felt there. Hopeless.
He looks down to his phone again, number staring back at him. It isn’t like that anymore.
With renewed strength, Thanos looks back to his phone. He tries again. He goes through 9301, 9302, 9303, before the pattern breaks. All the other tries ended up with it ringing out, not existing or with somebody random picking up—and then immediately leaving upon hearing his damp voice ask for somebody who was not there. Until he found it.
He tried it randomly, when the ascending pattern of one-two-three-four wouldn’t work. Out of frustration, curiosity, he doesn’t know, he tries seven. It’s completely random. Lucky number seven (apparently), doesn’t necessarily look correct or sound it from what he remembers of Nam-Gyu telling him, but off handedly he completes the number in his contact once again and stares down at it.
‘namsu??’ With an impersonal N as his placeholder profile picture.
+82 10-7304-9307.
Thanos presses call with a suspicious hand and slowly brings the phone up to his ear.
Whoever it is picks up unnaturally fast, silently, almost anticipatory. Like they’re waiting for something. He hesitates to speak, just in case something will jump out of the phone and kill him (yet another groundless expectation) but knows that one of them has to say something. Hastily, he snaps the locket shut, his hand darting down, phone cradled to his chest as the water of the river splashes gently against the bank, hypnotising patterns swirling above him that he’s able to ignore. He checks irrationally, looks over the phone to see whether the call is even still going. And it is, almost a minute of silence, forty-eight seconds going having said nothing. No rational person would’ve stayed, they would’ve hung up. So either this person isn’t alive, or—
And it’s when Thanos brings the phone back to his ear, whispers into the speaker a, “Nam-Gyu?” he hears some shuffling on the other end, crackling, another breathless, still silence. And it felt pivotal despite the fact he could always just try again. A pivotal moment where the universe could decide what his fate would be. And what it chose he would never really know.
A massive sigh of relief on the other end, the faceless call interface, fifty-nine seconds, N profile picture, being all he sees in the unlit tunnel. The aqua waves dance above him, a silent symphony on mute, one that would put any other man under a hex, lead them with its siren song somewhere different. But not him. He releases the breath he was holding, all of his muscles relaxing against the dingy wall.
Just as breathless, anxious and slightly manic with joy as him. Someone finally speaks. Someone finally says something.
“Thanos,” comes the reply.