Work Text:
Once Intak starts running, everything passes by him in a blur.
One minute his dance coach was walking him to an audition, laughing with him and supporting his dream that he hadn’t had the confidence to share with really anyone yet, and the next she was screaming and lunging towards him.
The chaos and fighting of the others around him faded to static in his head as he ran away from his coach, shouting back at her to snap out of it. His words fall onto deaf ears though, because she doesn’t stop. She’s swearing at him, yelling for him to die, and Intak can’t comprehend what the hell just happened.
He doesn’t notice where he’s going, through the mall and up the stairs and onto the roof, back down again, and suddenly the world snaps back into focus as he meets a gate he can’t get past.
He realises in horror that he can’t run anymore.
And then the world really goes quiet, because suddenly he’s five years old in the back of a car slamming into a streetlight at 120 kilometers an hour again as he whips around, seeing his coach, and maybe six other people rushing towards him, screaming their throats raw, charging at him as he’s literally backed into a corner.
His coach’s hands aren’t the only ones wrapped around his neck, pressing him against the railing, but they are the first, and the only ones he cares about. He can’t breathe, and he can’t call for help, and he can’t stop what he knows is about to happen as he feels his back bending over the guardrail.
The moment he can finally inhale is the same moment he’s lost his footing, already thrown over the edge.
And he hits something hard and solid, his whole body on fire, twisted and broken and wrong before slipping into the darkness behind his eyes.
🩹
When Intak regains consciousness, the first thing he’s aware of is the mind-numbing pain in his head. Only after struggling to take in a breath more than a few times is he able to slowly recount what happened to get him here.
Drones, his coach, running, screaming, the guardrail, falling.
He’s absolutely shellshocked. He fell from a building, definitely at least 9 meters. He should be dead. He should be, or at a minimum unconscious and barely clinging to life.
But he isn’t.
That doesn’t mean this isn’t the most physical pain Intak has ever been in.
His senses almost seem to double, hyper aware of the shooting pain up his legs and arms, the fact that he can’t seem to pick them up off the concrete. He’s almost certain he’s broken half the bones in his body, and he can’t think past the pain, can’t worry about the fact that someone might come to finish the job, can’t question why the entire area seemed to erupt into chaos in a matter of seconds.
It could have been minutes, or maybe hours until the pain dulls away, leaving behind just a slight prickling under his skin, as if his whole body was just experiencing the paresthesia you got from leaving your leg still for too long.
He knows after that point, it took a while before he had the confidence to try moving his arm again, but this time he was able to pick it up. It was bloody, and definitely stung a little when he moved it, but it wasn’t snapped in half or torn open, which was a win in his book.
He brought his hand up to his head, running his fingers through his hair and almost recoiled at the feeling of blood still dripping from his matted bangs. He definitely slammed his head into the concrete, because when he pushed himself up onto his forearm, wincing at the pressure on his arm and feeling a nerve tweak in his neck, he felt as if he’d emerged from water, and when he looked down it basically confirmed that for him when his eyes landed on the sickening amount of blood pooling where his head had previously laid, the sight beyond nauseating.
Once again, he was just questioning how. He couldn’t understand how he could have survived a fall like that. Now, he wasn’t the smartest kid in school, far from it, if his report cards had anything to say, but he knew that if his head had bled that much, there’s no way in hell he could have lived through that.
Was this just some sick dream? Or was this death? Was it even real?
Well, the hurt he felt when he tried to move his leg felt pretty damn real.
Trying to stand up was a difficult feat, as his whole body was alight with agony, but he managed, and after a few torturous first steps, he managed to get the fuck out of there.
🩹
Hyperdurability.
He didn’t really know what to do with that.
(He tried not to think about the fact that, if he really had this ability his whole life, it was probably the reason he was the lone survivor of that car accident).
Obviously, Intak could piece together that he was alive because of it, that his newfound power was the sole reason his life didn’t end at the foot of a building, slamming into the pavement. He still didn’t know where it came from, why he had it, and how he hadn’t realised it sooner.
What he did know was that him not dying did nothing to take away from the pain of injury.
As the sleek car, driven by the mysterious man who had called his name and informed him of his power, zipped along a dirt road, heading out to the middle of fucking nowhere, all he could feel was guilt stirring in his gut.
What had he done to make his coach flip on him like that?
(Why did he have to walk without a scratch when his parents were mutilated beyond recognition in the accident?)
He tried to remember everything he had said, everything he had done leading up to that moment, but one moment he was running alongside his coach, and without even a minute’s notice he’d switched to running from her.
He moved to brush his bangs out of his face, before recoiling in discomfort, his hair still intertwined with blood that had long since dried. On his skin, in his hair, staining his clothes, he still was covered head to toe in his own injury, despite physically being sound, having not even as much as a scratch on him.
He tried to think, was there any time he could have noticed this sooner? Was he just oblivious to this ability?
There was that time he slammed his finger in the door, and didn’t even lose the nail, or the time when he fell on top of his own wrist and hadn’t even sprained it. That one time he tripped in the woods while out with friends, and slipped down a pretty steep hill into more rocks than he’d even encountered, and still not a scratch. (And of course, the accident that had taken his parents away from him before he ever really got the chance to know what life was like before they were gone).
Really, all this time, he always walked away from a sticky situation unscathed. It was almost laughable in retrospect, how absurd and otherworldly the explanation was.
Either way, laughing was the last thing Intak wanted to do right now.
His world as he knew it was falling apart. What was going on, he couldn’t say. All he could tell was that suddenly, half the world seemed to be bloodthirsty and murderous.
When the car finally sputtered to a halt outside of an abandoned building with what had to be the lamest excuse for walls, Intak, the strange man, and the two younger girls in the car dashed inside. His best guess was that they were hiding out from the people who had made their way over here.
Intak, the girls, and the man had started building a barricade along one of the walls, since they didn’t even make it halfway to the ceiling. He rushed the two younger ones away quickly as a few people stumbled their way over, the dancer standing tall as the staggering people approached him.
“Hit me! Do it! I can’t die, you’d be wasting your energy!” He spat, knowing damn well that the people approaching him, half of them brandishing some type of weapon, couldn’t process his words.
He fought, with what limited skill he had, and dodged some punches and swings of blades, thankful for the balance training he had been put through for dance in the moment.
Until he felt something slice through his neck, cutting straight into his carotid artery, and his vision whited out. The pain was indescribable, worse than what he had felt when he woke up slammed into the pavement. Blood filled his throat, splashed onto his face from where it was pouring out of his wound, and dripped down his shoulder at a rapid pace. It had to have been only a few moments before his body stitched itself back together, the artery rebinding and the surrounding tissue closing, skin scabbing over for an infinitesimal amount of time before reforming, good as new.
However, even though the injury was gone, the pain was consuming his every nerve. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. It was horrible.
But when more punches rained down on him, he realised he couldn’t just stand and take it. He spat out the blood pooling under his tongue somewhere to the side of him. Biting his lip to distract from the searing pain in his neck, he put on a brave face and returned to the fight.
🩹
The pain lasted for at least an hour following, Intak having to shove down the urge to scream, blink back the burning behind his eyes as he was shown a whole new side of the world, the strange man changing form behind his eyes, two strangers appearing in front of him and asking what year it was.
🩹
Intak didn’t even flinch when Jiung, still adjusting to using his telekinetic abilities, sent a pen flying straight through the back of his hand.
He felt it though, hissing under his breath as it ripped through layers of skin and stuck into the tissue underneath like a thumbtack to drywall. He ignored it, the only evidence that he even felt anything a slight wince as he tugged out, and the way his hand twitched ever so slightly as he tore through the skin yet again.
Intak learned very quickly that he did not want the others to see he felt the pain from his injuries, preferring to put on a front and let them believe his hyperdurability also increased his pain tolerance to an extreme level. He also picked up very fast that, if anything, his natural pain tolerance was virtually nonexistent.
He looked around at the other powered individuals he’d found himself grouped up with. Jongseob who had lost his sister so recently to the virus and hadn’t gotten her back yet, despite that man’s promise. Soul, who was infected himself, but wasn’t actually affected by the virus. Theo, who had no one other than Jongseob and his sister, and that man, but since his existence had turned out to be a lie, Theo certainly was hurt by it. Not that he ever said this, but Intak was able to read the other boy fairly well. Jiung, and Keeho, who had suffered amnesia, couldn’t remember anything about their lives, themselves, or each other.
His lack of pain tolerance shouldn’t have to be another thing the six of them worry about. They have enough on their plate trying to figure out how to bring Noona back, and piecing together how to stop the virus. The last thing he wanted was for them to pity him, see him as weak. He wanted to help stop the virus that had taken his coach away from him, he wanted to be strong the way he felt when he danced. (And honestly, not being able to dance anymore because of his role in their group to eliminate the virus was just as painful as that pen he had pulled out of his hand moments ago).
Regardless, he would endure it, put on a brave face, and use the fact that he can’t die to protect his newfound friendships, and maybe save the world too. He’ll just see where the day takes him.