Work Text:
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NOTES:
-...- is Joonghyuk thinking
italics is Dokja speaking (in the past/in Joonghyuk's head)
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"They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined."
- V. E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
"Death was the only one could keep you from me, Death shall not keep you from me."
- Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Tale of Pyramus and Thisbe
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"I hope you fall into the darkest depths of hell."
Joonghyuk calls out in hopes of a response.
Yoo Joonghyuk is furious, raging at Kim Dokja. He's stopped believing in the ideas of heaven and hell years ago, when he'd died for the first time and was navigating his world blindly.
It's well known that the blind are recommended to find their way by touch, to trace the familiar walls and floorboards beneath their feet and find comfort in the familiarity of their surroundings.
Kim Dokja is his guide, the only person in his lives that follows him through regressions. It's Joonghyuk's one reassurance in the world; that Dokja will be there beside him, mapping out the slightly different version of the world he's experienced before.
Joonghyuk wishes, though, that Dokja could keep his memories from each time, accumulating them until there are enough memories to build a relationship together from the scraps.
That would be too easy for the constellations, though. Whoever created the rules of regression must have some kind of grudge against Joonghyuk, or is a sadistic son of a bitch, because they seem to enjoy watching Joonghyuk wake up without Dokja next to him, and search, wild-eyed until he finds him, only to find that Dokja's forgotten him. Again.
Sometimes, Joonghyuk is ashamed to admit, he's aggressive towards Dokja. That idiot, that stupid, selfless idiot whom he's had to watch die thousands of times, and Joonghyuk is unable to do anything. Helpless.
So, seeing Dokja anew, smiling at him expectantly, as if he knew that Joonghyuk would come for him, he's irrationally angry and acts as if he doesn't care, because it would be infinitely easier if he could go through his lives without a tether to pull him back. It would be freeing to let go, knowing that Dokja is fine somewhere, someplace and doesn't care if Junghyook lives to see tomorrow.
For example: once, he simply turned around and left, just to see Dokja chase after him. A small, selfish part of him that he tried to suppress was joyed by this, Dokja being the one to follow him rather than the other way around.
He came back, though. He always does.
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One night, when Yoo Joonghyuk awakens and Kim Dokja isn't there, he goes feral.
Like a wild animal, taught to lash out at everything that moves and seek bitter satisfaction by licking its wounds, Joonghyuk grabs his sword and sets out to find Dokja.
It's a dark, dreary night, the kind that precipitates appearances of big bad wolves and witches, lurking in the woods.
- Dokja, where are you, where are you, please come out, I can't do this again. -
Joonghyuk feels a light tap on his shoulder, and because of years of training, he turns around, thrusts his sword into the attacker's midsection.
The dark figure - no, not dark, he's pale, illuminated in the moonlight as if he's ascended from heaven. It's Kim Dokja.
Dokja looks shocked.
Joonghyuk-ah - why?
Then, another twist of the knife.
Oh, it's you, Joonghyuk. Why are you crying?
Dokja stepped towards him, then fell down, choking on his own blood.
It was just you, right, Joonghyuk? Don't cry. It's me!
Fuck, this wasn't supposed to happen. The architects of his regressions, every time he revived, had made a point of placing Kim Dokja at least a day's journey away, for more entertaining programming, he supposed.
Watch the regressor go crazy, watch him turn into an animal, pulling at his own strings desperately as if it'll make any difference.
This time, it is his fault, and nothing Dokja can say will change that. It's the trauma, the deaths looping in his head, no, it's Joonghyuk. They've broken him in, twisted and morphed him into something he can't recognize anymore.
That is, they place Dokja purposely far away from him when they've regressed. This time, Joonghyuk realizes, they hadn't died last night. Dreams, conflated onto reality until he doesn't know what's real anymore.
Joonghyuk pulls at his hair, and he can't see anything. His vision has turned red, red with the blood from Dokja's wound from right now, but there's hundreds of Dokjas in his memories now.
Joonghyuk-ah!
Hyukkie -
Sunfish.
Joonghyuk.
JOONGHYUK.
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FIFTEENTH REGRESSION:
Dokja, splayed out on the ground and trying not to pass out from the pain, holding a hand out to Joonghyuk. We had a pretty good run, right?
Asmodeus was standing - how was he standing? Joonghyuk had taken him out first, specifically so that he couldn't harm Dokja, not again.
Asmodeus grinned, the smile too wide, marking him as something other than human, holding out empty bottle of an SS-grade healing potion.
It's not your fault, Joonghyuk-ah.
It is.
"Looks like someone forgot that I'm a demon king, huh, Hyukkie?"
Joonghyuk lunges towards him, but it's useless now.
The light in Dokja's eyes fades.
A familiar title card:
TRY AGAIN.
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THIRTY-SEVENTH REGRESSION:
Dokja, body broken at the bottom of the cliff. His horse had thrown him off, and Joonghyuk had held out a hand to catch him.
"I can save you!"
He couldn't - or, Dokja wouldn't let him.
Joonghyuk had him by a hand, fingers slipping out of his grasp, slicked with sweat. It could've been an eternity, Joonghyuk holding onto Dokja as one of them dangled off of a precipice.
Hey, Joonghyuk-ah?
"Dokja, shut up. I'm keeping you from falling off."
You can't pull me up, even with your freakish grip strength.
"Did I not just tell you to shut the fuck up?"
Okay. One thing, though?
"...Fine."
You're a good companion.
"Stop acting like you're about to let go of my hand, Dokja. I'll actually kill you if you do."
Of course, Joonghyuk.
"Don't condescend me - are you laughing right now?
No, definitely not, Joonghyuk-ah. It struck me as funny, though. They say that you shouldn't meet your heroes, because they'll let me down. I wasn't.
"Wasn't what?"
Let down, I mean. You're my one and only companion. You know that, right?
"Dokja? DOKJA - "
Dokja let go, and Joonghyuk felt as if he were falling too, for the entire minute that the drop took. The crack of bones breaking could be heard even from where Joonghyuk knelt, as well as the raw, guttural scream he released.
Dokja smiled, a mocking, satisfied smile all the way down.
The bright red letters, mocking Junghyook with the same message:
TRY AGAIN.
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TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIXTH REGRESSION:
Dokja manages to exceed all of Junghyook's expectations.
He'd accounted for every possibility - kept Dokja in the camp, told him to stay there, to wait until he'd slayed the dragon riders with the help of Huiwon and Gilyeong. The dragons were low-level, and the attackers without a mount were all but useless. Still, Junghyeok wasn't taking anymore chances with him.
Joonghyuk and the others had won (as expected), and they were wiping gore off of their blades when they heard a strangled scream, cut off mid-stream.
- Dokja. -
He was fast like lightning, as if he'd unlocked a new level of the Way of the Wind, scorching trees and grass in his wake.
- Is this what you want, constellations? To destroy the world with my very presence? -
"Too late, motherfucker!" The assassin had exclaimed. "You're regretting killing my dragons now, huh?"
Fuck. The assassin must have slipped off, even though Joonghyuk had told Huiwon to let no one escape.
- He'll never be safe, no matter what you do. -
Joonghyuk!
Before Joonghyuk could kill him, resign himself to the fact that he would never be able to keep Dokja safe, the assassin had stabbed Dokja in the windpipe and used Blink to teleport away, leaving Joonghyuk to catch Dokja before he fell.
Joonghyuk. Hyukkie. That's a new one.
"I thought that keeping you here - you'd be safe - Dokja - "
You tried. Thank you.
Dokja says this as if Joonghyuk did so out of pure selflessness, not because he needed Dokja like he needed air to breathe.
Dokja held a single, bloody hand up to Joonghyuk's cheek, tracing the line of his jaw.
Still so pretty.
"I would be a hag if it meant you were safe."
Joonghyuk -
A cough, wet and rattling. The assassin had chosen the kill spot well - Dokja would stop breathing in a matter of a few minutes or even less.
You could never be ugly. Too pretty -
Dokja points towards Joonghyuk's heart. He means that Joonghyuk's pretty inside? What does beauty even mean, in the face of Kim Dokja? Bleeding, broken, frail Kim Dokja. He who Joonghyuk would, had given his life to protect.
Couldn't be ugly if you tried.
Dokja is laughing, now, or it's the obstruction in his air pipes. He can't talk anymore; his voice can't be expressed around the hole in his throat.
For the last few minutes, Joonghyuk gives up on keeping himself away from Kim Dokja. Joonghyuk strokes his hair, playing with the strands.
"I wish I'd done this earlier." Joonghyuk's voice cracks, and he's barely staying together, about to break into pieces. But he needs to be stable, to bring Dokja peace during his last minutes alive.
Dokja's fingers are dripping blood, and he lifts up a hand to Joonghyuk's, where it's resting on Dokja's collarbone, drawing a crescent, then another, interlinking them. It's a heart.
Love you, Dokja mouths.
Joonghyuk responds, a moment too late.
"I love you, Kim Dokja."
Joonghyuk speaks, and hears nothing from Dokja - not even a breath. As soon as Dokja had told Joonghyuk that he loved him, verbally or not, he was at peace with dying.
Was this all a part of the constellations' plan? Let him die, please, let him die with his companion and let them be done with this. Let Joonghyuk sleep for a hundred, no, a thousand years and let him wake up to find that it was all a dream, and Dokja was trying and failing to make him breakfast in the morning, waking Joonghyuk up with a kiss.
Wake up, sunshine.
Morning, sunfish.
Joonghyuk, why are you crying? It's just a nightmare!
Dokja would know how to calm him down, though. In the one hundredth and twenty-ninth regression (one of the longer ones, and for a couple days, Joonghyuk was fooled into thinking that the constellations would leave them be.), Dokja had woken up screaming.
Joonghyuk ran to his side, and Dokja had been soothed into letting his guard down. He told Joonghyuk everything - how his mother had killed his father and gone to prison for it, how he'd been the son of a famous murderer/author and had almost jumped. Later, how he had figured out that he had killed his father, and that Sookyung had taken the fall for him. (Too late, though. It was always too late for them.)
Joonghyuk cradled Dokja in his arms, and strangely, Dokja had fallen asleep in his arms as Joonghyuk whispered what he might've done with Dokja's harassers. What now, he would do to the constellations.
He'd slaughter everyone, chase down the constellations to the end of the earth and hold them down with a knife, no, with the Heavenly Sword, and reenact every one of Dokja's deaths, all two hundred and fifty six tragedies on the masterminds behind them.
He would bring down the gods even if he was brought down along with them. Some things are worth dying for.
TRY AGAIN.
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FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH REGRESSION:
This is it.
Joonghyuk has tracked down the constellation who's been orchestrating this, turning Joonghyuk this way and that, leading him down over a hundred different paths that were red herrings to walk into a pit of monsters, or worse, Kim Dokja.
He's given up on even talking to Dokja, banned himself from doing anything other than checking in on him once every five regressions or so. Dokja is fine without him, really. He's happy, thriving, for the most part, but there's a hollow look in his eyes, as if he knows that Joonghyuk is there, watching Dokja and wants to show him the gap that he left.
The one time that Joonghyuk had been spotted, he had half-hoped that Dokja would see him. He did, and their eyes had met across the stream. Joonghyuk couldn't handle the accusatory look in those eyes.
Where did you go?
So he ran, like he always did. Joonghyuk saw the irony in this; a rabbit believing himself a wolf, sprinting towards his death and away from Dokja with bared teeth.
Joonghyuk is also aware that this is likely a trap. He knows that the only situation in which he would be able to corner a constellation, let alone one of the more elusive ones, is because they led him to their den. He doesn't care anymore.
He approaches its home. It's unassuming, both perfectly ordinary and enticing with comfort. A cottage, exactly the one he had lived in with Dokja on their fortieth regression - two weeks of cooking with Dokja, their laughs filling the house and overflowing through the chimney. It's exactly the kind of evil that he's come to expect from the constellation; the kind that promises salvation only to snatch it away.
Joonghyuk steps up to the door, and places his hand on the door. It dematerializes in front of him, and he thought he knew sadism before. This is beyond what they've ever done to him.
Throughout the house, there is music and laughter. He walks into each room, knowing what he will find.
The fortieth scenario, if it had never ended, and Dokja is throwing flour at him in small puffs. Joonghyuk catches him by the waist, and they kiss.
Joonghyuk, sitting straight-backed in front of a screen, and Dokja waving at the little pixelated characters, saying Joonghyuk-ah, did you see that! Your subscribers are only here to see me!, and Joonghyuk turning around in a mock-pout.
Dokja and Joonghyuk, curled up together on the couch. Dokja is nestled in Joonghyuk's arms, reading a book, and Joonghyuk is - knitting? Grandma, Dokja says, but it's clearly a nickname that Joonghyuk is fond of. "Grandpa," he corrects. Ah, yes, you're a grandpa at heart. How could I forget?
This one. Oh, god. This is the worst one by far.
The room houses a single, winding staircase leading up to where Joonghyuk assumes the constellation is. There are photos on the wall, simply framed, but they show the story of a life that Dokja and him could've lived if the circumstances had been any different.
Dokja and him, on their wedding day. Joonghyuk is feeding Dokja cake, and there's frosting smeared on both of their mouths. They're radiant with joy, and it's painful to look at. Then again, all of these are.
Yoosung and Gilyeong, on their first day of school. They're ten and eleven, as shown by the caption on the frame (Gil and Yoosung, ten and eleven - first day of middle school!), and Dokja and him are standing proudly. There's faint tears in both of their eyes, overjoyed that they had the chance to raise their kids.
The last one: Joonghyuk and Dokja, gray streaks in both of their hair. Someone else must've taken this one, because the picture includes both of them, backlit by the dawn's early light, walking towards the sun. Towards a happy ending.
Joonghyuk ascends step by step, not cursing the names of the constellations, not even registering the tears dripping down his face and onto the softly worn-down carpet from kids' feet stomping up and down them, games of tag played by a family throughout the house.
He sees Kim Dokja.
At first, Joonghyuk grabs at his white coat, forcing Dokja to face him.
"Dokja! How did you get here - "
Oh. It's not him.
The mouth is twisted into an expression of disgust, at being grazed by Yoo Joonghyuk. Joonghyuk, whom the constellations have seen only over the StarStream, who is such a lowly being that it's impossible, implausible that he could be human enough to touch.
"Had enough?"
The voice is his, or at least a perfect imitation.
Joonghyuk is tired, though. He's so, so tired.
The fake Dokja tilts its head at him.
"Maybe this will convince you."
It snaps its fingers, summoning a video - no, a livestream into Dokja's life right now.
Joonghyuk thinks that if Dokja is satisfied, if his life is good enough without Joonghyuk there, he could be at peace.
The video shows Dokja, curled up against Sangah on a couch. He's nodding off to sleep.
For a few weeks, Joonghyuk and the imitation simply watch Dokja, the trust that he must have in this woman to fall asleep against her. He's safe in her arms.
"I - if I give up, now."
The imitation bites back a sneer, the sheer joy of a child who breaks their favorite toys and takes pleasure in knowing that they are unfixable.
"Will you take care of him?"
Joonghyuk's eyes are shining, and the imitation almost feels bad for convincing this poor man that he needs to die to save Kim Dokja. Him and Joonghyuk, they're soul-bonded. If one hurts, or dies, permanently, the other will feel the pain like their own. The memories themselves will fade away, until all that is left is a black hole in his chest.
Yoo Joonghyuk will die, and Kim Dokja will feel an emptiness that eats away at him for the rest of his days.
"Of course I will honor your request, Joonghyuk-ah."
The imitation can see how the familiar nickname, even from a faked Dokja, pains him like a blow. Even though the human knows that the constellation is nothing like Kim Dokja. If the human is foolish enough to believe the lies he is told, too tired to question any further, it would be a mercy now to end him. Permanently.
"Thank you."
Humans are so strange, thanking the gods for the release of death, when others had killed to avoid it.
The imitation steps towards Joonghyuk and pulls down his head towards itself, sweeping a light kiss across his forehead.
Joonghyuk whispers something, fainter than the wind. The imitation strains to hear it.
"I wasn't too late."
Joonghyuk is relieved. He's spared Kim Dokja, and he would do it again if given the chance.
"Goodbye, silly human."
Joonghyuk is already gone.
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Kim Dokja wakes up suddenly, a stabbing pain in his chest. Sangah is woken up by the disturbance, rising with a yawn.
"Dokja?"
"I can't breathe - "
No, he can breathe. He just doesn't see any reason to. Somehow, he knows, knows it like he knows that the sun will rise each morning, like he's memorized the scent of someone who's left him behind. He knows it so well -
He doesn't.
When he reaches out his hand, he expects to feel the phantom of a callused hand brushing over it, ruffling his hair and tweaking his nose, reassuring itself that Dokja is still there, and reminding Dokja that he is safe.
He's gone.
Joonghyuk.
Sunfish.
Hyukkie.
JOONGHYUK-
It's
-gone.
"Dokja?" Sangah is leaning over him, because at some point, Dokja must have fallen over, clutching at his chest.
"It's nothing."
Dokja could almost believe his words, if there wasn't a gap in his heart, raw and exposed to the world.
There used to be something here.
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The night before Joonghyuk mistook Dokja for a threat, before he killed the love of his life, Joonghyuk was spooning Dokja.
They were sprawled out on the blankets, cast in silver from the moonlight.
"Joonghyuk?" Dokja was here, right now.
"Yes?"
"I love you, you know."
And he did know. He would know Dokja, defensive and caring, quick-witted and unbearably oblivious. A series of contradictions.
"I know."
"You do?"
"I do."
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Dokja had snuck out in the middle of the night after Joonghyuk had fell asleep.
He had been searching for the constellation that Joonghyuk spoke about in his sleep. There was a constellation, and it was plotting their deaths in every scenario. That was all Dokja knew.
It was cold, and wet, and Dokja was frozen to the bone.
He felt strong, muscular arms wrap around him, and didn't bother resisting.
"Hey, Hyukkie."
Joonghyuk laughed. Why would he laugh? Dokja hadn't even said anything yet.
"I need you to do me a favor, Dokja."
How could he say no?
"Go back to the house."
Dokja twisted his body, trying to face Joonghyuk, but the arms held him securely in place.
"I - I don't know how to get back. I got lost, somehow."
"It's okay," the voice reassured him, now nearly a purr. "I'll guide you there."
And he did. Dokja tried to ignore it, the nagging feeling telling him that there was something wrong, that Joonghyuk hadn't even shown his face. But he trusted Joonghyuk, and so he followed the voice, pressured forward by the hand on his back - until it let go.
"Joonghyuk? JOONGHYUK?"
There! Joonghyuk was right there.
Dokja nearly tripped over his own feet and the tree roots several times in the dark, before tapping Joonghyuk on the shoulder. Joonghyuk whipped around, a flash of black and silver, and Dokja looked down only a second later to find steel buried within his chest.
Cold. He was so cold now, but he was warm, too, liquid gushing out of his chest, spilling onto his coat.
"Joonghyuk-ah - why?"
Did he do something wrong? He just did what Joonghyuk wanted, didn't he?
Joonghyuk's face is blanched. He's shaking, and Dokja tries to reach out, to wipe the tears from his eyes.
"Oh, it's you, Joonghyuk. Why are you crying?"
Dokja stepped towards him, then fell down, choking on his own blood.
"It was just you, right, Joonghyuk? Don't cry. It's me!"
Joonghyuk sobbed incoherently, laying down his sword.
It's you.
Don't cry, Joonghyuk.
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"Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you're pretty, so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise."
- Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood