wild_terrain | Echo of Dusk

Title: Echo of Dusk
Author: wild_terrain (ie. fi_chan)
Banner:

Chapter: [7a/20?]
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU
Summary: Two men met one cold, winters day. One, a cook's assistant, the other a young lawyer. The year was 1950, when this instant attraction occured... However, the threat of civil war loomed and the two found themselves faced with the risk of seperation. Yunho swore he'd protect JaeJoong at all cost...but can he really?

A/N: Phew, I managed to squeeze another update in before my brother returns home from China. YAY I haven't seen him for a year!
And...yesterday it was the real Hangeng's birthday. HAPPY LATE BDAY MY LOVE! <3

OST for this chapter:

~ Yunho:
Die Another Day – Madonna (3.25MB) DOWNLOAD!!
For every sin, I'll have to pay
I think I'll find another way
I guess I'll die another day, it's not my time to go.

~ JaeJoong:
Twist of Fate – Olivia Newton-John (3.35MB) DOWNLOAD!!
Do we deserve a second chance? How did we fall into this circumstance?
A higher voice has called the tune, two hearts that lost the beat will now resume
This is a new beginning, I'm back in the land of the living.

The North Korean guard nodded briefly at Hangeng. We were at the first checkpoint away from the camp. Hangeng’s doctor ID was flashed briefly followed by a quick inspection of me, the ‘assistant’. There was another truck behind our medical van, a lot more suspicious then ours perhaps, which took away the emphasis to search ours.

“Keep driving,” I muttered to Hangeng, my heart pounding the adrenaline throughout my veins at the thought of something going wrong.

As soon as we reached some flat, isolated expanse of road, Hangeng turned around the corner and pulled over. I quickly threw my seatbelt off and ran to fling open the back doors of our medical van. Leaping up into the half dark platform I crawled past the medical supplies to where we had laid JaeJoong. I pulled the sheet away from his face and bent to kiss him immediately.

“Come with me, into the light. Close your eyes until you’re used to it,” I warned, pulling him up again off the platform. He clung on to my neck with one hand, the other grasping his sheet tightly around his body to continue keeping it hidden from me.

I carefully made my way back out into the fresh air and slammed the two doors shut with my spare hand – the other was dedicated to holding JaeJoong securely to me.

I moved across to the small back seats behind Hangeng and loosened my hold on JaeJoong so he could sit properly in the window seat. I would have loved to hold him forever in my arms which I knew were safe for him…but it just wasn’t practical in a motor vehicle.

Hangeng restarted the engine whilst I mothered over JaeJoong, checking he was comfortable.

“I hate to remind you, Yunho-shii, but JaeJoong’s got that infection. So there’s no sitting position he’ll be comfortable in.”

“I’m fine,” JaeJoong insisted sulkily and I couldn’t stop the small smile that came to my face. JaeJoong hated being fussed over – especially when the high pain tolerance he always bragged about came into question.

I leant back, searching for JaeJoong’s hand under the sheet. I could see from the way he was slumped over that he was finding it difficult to even find the energy to sit up properly.

“It’s okay, JaeJoong,” I smiled as his head turned to look at me. “You can sleep if you want.”

He shook his head stubbornly. I suppose if I was in his situation I wouldn’t want to sleep either – not with the new liberty teasing me from the car windows.

“Where the hell are we? And why is that car still following us?” Hangeng interrupted in a huff.

With a frown I leant forward to glance behind us and get a better view of the road. “He’s not following us, is he? This is a one-way road after all.”

“Who knows. What I would like to know is where I’m heading. Is this even the right direction?”

I slid my tongue over my front teeth in concentration as I tried to examine our surroundings.

“I wish MinWoo was here. He was my map boy,” I sighed. “May as well keep going in this direction, there’s not much choice for now.” I leant forward to pat Hangeng on the back comfortingly.

As I shifted back to my seat I noticed JaeJoong’s eyes intently studying me. Feeling a little self conscious I slowly turned my head to look inquisitively back at him.

“You’re too thin.”

“P-Pardon?” I asked, slightly dumbfounded. I had not been expecting any commentary along those lines at all.

“You’re too thin,” he repeated tersely. “You need to eat more.”

I smiled and retook his hand into my own. “I will if you will.”

He didn’t smile back but he let me continue holding his hand all the same.

I was at a loss of words for a lot of the trip back. I honestly did not know what I should say to him. Was there anything I could say? I desperately wanted to tell him how much I missed him and how ecstatic I was to be in his company again. And yet…it didn’t feel right to say any of that out loud to him. I needed to know where I stood first. I needed to see if I was still important in his life or whether the past year had completely ruined all that. Holding his hand was the only thing I felt comfortable doing.

Dusk was just about beginning to spring up on us when I noticed he had finally fallen asleep next to me. His head was resting awkwardly against the window, his hand still in my own. I noticed his sheet had slipped a bit in his unconscious state. I could now see a little bit of his belly and upper thigh through the uneven slip of the sheet and could do nothing but gaze uncertainly at it. I felt a little weird viewing it, as if the sight numbed my stomach. It wasn’t the nicest feeling I had ever experienced so I quickly pulled the sheet back over his body.

Instead, I chose to watch his chest slowly rising and falling – that at least gave me some comfort. I was almost lulled to sleep myself, until Hangeng’s startled gasp brought my senses back up.

“What’s wrong?” I stopped slouching to sit up properly.

“That car is still there!”

“And?”

“They’ve got guns.”

“So?”

“They are pointing those guns at us!”

“WHAT?!” I twisted around to stare nonchalantly out the back screen. There definitely was a North Korean vehicle following closely behind us filled with two soldiers and they were certainly armed.

“Alright, alright, calm down Hangeng-shii,” I sighed. “Besides there’s still the chance that they aren’t after us. They are probably patrolling the streets and therefore need to be armed.”

“Patrolling the streets for some enemies perhaps? Enemies driving in a medical van?”

“They don’t know we are enemies. Besides, you’re Chinese.”

“And you are South Korean and looking at them and OH MY GOD they are talking!”

“Calm down, Hangeng-shii and keep driving. People are allowed to talk without any negative connotations involved.”

“OH NO PLEASE NO! THEY ARE TALKING AND LOOKING ANGRY!”

“Shush, Hangeng-shii, you’ll wake JaeJoong up.”

Both of us gasped as a bullet suddenly flew into the back window behind where my head was, rippling the glass and completely obscuring our view of them.

“Holy shit!” I swore.

“I AM NOT DRIVING IN THESE CONDITIONS!” Hangeng yelled.

“What choice do we have?!” I yelled back, trying desperately to see through the ruined glass, my heart pounding madly at the thought that if that glass had be thinner, my head would now have a huge hole through it.

“Either we DIE from bullets, of we DIE from my driving! I am a doctor! Not a rodeo!”

I growled in frustration, undoing my seat belt. “A rodeo rides bulls. I think you mean a racer.”

“I cannot do this Yunho-shii!”

“Okay okay!” I yelled, climbing into the front and trying to grab onto the steering wheel. “Stay with JaeJoong!” I demanded, letting the doctor slide past me and onto the back seats. JaeJoong was sitting up, a look of pure fear on his tired face as Hangeng joined him in my old seat.

I slammed my foot on the accelerator and tried to look through the rear-view mirror at the shattered back window to see what they were trying to do now. They were speeding up too and angling their rifles.

“Holy fuck Hangeng, I don’t suppose you can work a gun!”

“Do I LOOK like I am trigger happy?” he exploded back.

“FINE! You have a choice. Either you start killing some North Korean ass or you take over this wheel for me again!”

“Wheel!” he gasped, trying to get back up and into the front once more.

As soon as the steering wheel was securely back under Hangeng’s control, I sprung back into motion. The whole car jerked as the soldiers shot at our tires.

I searched frantically for my rifle and saw it half hidden under the front seat. I leapt back into the back seat and dived down for it, trying not to hit JaeJoong accidentally in the momentum.

As I bent to grasp the handle, I felt JaeJoong’s hands on my shoulders. I looked up hurriedly, saddened by the fear on his face. “We’ll be alright,” I quickly assured, squeezing his hand and looking back out the window.

To my horror, our bullet-punctured tires slowed our van down, allowing the soldiers to drive parallel to us with no other traffic coming towards them in the other lane.

“Get down!” I yelled to JaeJoong, leaping over him to roll the window down and stick my rifle barrel out at the enemy. I felt JaeJoong scramble out from under me and towards the opposite window.

Digging my boots against the seat for better balance, I bent to aim my rifle at the shooter opposite me. I missed him by inches as our van slowed down even further.

To my horror the sniper I had been aiming for yanked his trigger whilst I was unprepared. And then everything became slow motion for me for me as my brain intercepted the scene. I ducked out of range and heard the awful, deafening sound of glass shattering as the bullet smashed into the window behind me, sending hundreds of glass shards onto the back seat.

“Hangeng!” I screamed in horror, temporarily forgetting about the rifle behind my head, as a nasty shade of crimson filled my vision and soaked the pale white sheet wrapped around JaeJoong.

“It is okay, Yunho-shii!” Hangeng shouted back, glancing into the rear-view mirror. “It’s just his back!”

JaeJoong had been lying low on the seat on his stomach to avoid being a target of the sinister gun barrels. Instead he had become a victim of the glass shard shower. Although the shards of glass couldn’t have ruptured any internal organs as Hangeng had just pointed out, the stain of red all over the sheet made my heart sting overwhelmingly.

Grasping my rifle with shaking fingers I turned my attention back to our attackers. In my new found rage I shot the sniper after a few attempts, my own rapid blood flow almost deafening my ears.

The driver, outraged and anxious by his newfound solidarity bitterly spun his wheel to the right, smashing violently against the side of our van. I was sent flying backwards onto JaeJoong. But before I could sit back properly and avoid pressing the glass further into JaeJoong’s skin, the North Korean vehicle slowed down to join our lane and rammed us from behind.

Hangeng hurriedly drove onto the one-way bridge to our left, hoping that the single lane would give the North Korean driver no choice but to stay behind us and cause less damage.

At the same time, we were rammed again, flinging me back onto Jaejoong. He cried out in agony at my large weight crushing the glass even further into his delicate skin and I felt rage stir my muscles violently into action. With an angered heart at being made the cause of JaeJoong’s pain, I leapt back to the left-side window and leant out of it, aiming my barrel towards the driver.

The rebound force from the power of my rifle pushed me backwards and almost made me lose my delicate balance. At the same time, the persistent driver slouched over the wheel in final rest.

I was just about to rest my own aching body when Hangeng’s petrified cry jolted me back into a tense state.

“The bridge has been bombed!” he screamed and I hurried peered out through the front screen to see what was causing his panic.

I saw the cause all right.

Feeling my breath leave me I turned my head wildly back in JaeJoong’s direction and tried to pull him into an upright position.

We were driving on one of the bridges which connected us onto South Korean territory. The only problem was that the South Korean section had been completely blown apart, leaving a gaping hole across the dark river below.

Although we had time to activate our brakes…I felt a swift rush of terror. Yes our brakes were working…it wasn’t our brakes that I was worried about. The driver I had recently shot was either unconscious or dead; either way, how could he step on his brakes? He was speeding right behind us and would push us completely over the edge of the destroyed bridge in no time at all.

I knew that we would have very little chance of surviving if we stayed in the truck – the weight and added velocity from the North Korean truck’s force would most definitely push us under and drown us in our own van. The vehicle we had felt so thankful to for getting us out of the camp, had in no less than two hours turned into our enemy.

But, if we jumped out now surely the impact of falling into the water would kill us. What was the best way to die? Drown slowly? Or die quickly? I could already feel the strong wind pushing in through the broken window, taunting me.

Would this be my final memory? Tumbling into oblivion with my tortured lover, forever unable to find our salvation? I didn’t even have time to cry.

“Jump into the river, now!” I screamed at Hangeng, bundling my JaeJoong into my arms and flinging open our door. The harsh wind blew me backwards, causing my new struggle to stay upright with JaeJoong’s added weight.

Not looking back I pushed forward, forcing myself out of the car and holding JaeJoong tightly against my heaving chest. I let go of the heavily dented door and shut my eyes.

It’s crazy how mere seconds of immense shock can turn into minutes of slow motion – as if someone decided to pause the whole world.

I could distinctively feel the ferocious wind rippling through my hair and deafening my hearing. I could feel the sharp sting from my aggravated arm wound. I could taste salty air all around me. And most importantly, I could feel the warm contours of the body I so desperately clutched in my arms. His long, dirty hair lashed against my face, stinging my skin and eyes. But it all didn’t matter because it was JaeJoong I was feeling and if that was to be my last existing memory on earth…then there was absolutely nothing I could complain about or regret.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I tried to scream but all that filled my mouth was a rush of water. My body was screaming in agony all over. Although Yunho had taken the full impact of our fall, the immense pressure still rocked my whole body until it felt like I was being broken into pieces.

The wet sheet clung annoyingly onto half of my body, the other half of it floating dangerously in front of me, completely blocking all my vision once all the tiny spurts of bubbles started to disappear.

I was still grabbing desperately onto Yunho but his weight was pulling me further down. I refused to let go and leave him though. If I let go I knew he would sink fast and I’d never be able to see him again.

The impact he had taken for both of us had seemingly hurtled him immediately into a state of unconsciousness…but I did not have time to worry about it. I needed air.

As I tried to stop us from sinking further and further down, I could barely block the soul-shredding thoughts that maybe he wasn’t unconscious…maybe there was no conscious left to begin with.

My panic and struggle to keep holding onto Yunho left me further and further without breath. I knew that if I let go I would live and he would die. But if I didn’t let go then what would be our fate? Would I drown, completely filled with sorrow at the thought of the life and happiness we would never be able to have together?

Had everything been hopeless from the beginning? Hadn’t fate always been against us? I had been a poor cook’s assistant, he a wealthy upper-class lawyer… What sort of match was that?! How could two completely different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle possibly fit together?

And so war had started, trying to tear us apart.

…But no, we weren’t torn apart. I was put into Yunho’s division and we had been together.

And so a knife was pressed against my throat and I was taken away. The North Koreans had torn us apart.

…But Yunho had found me and come for me and we had been together.

And so now the bridge had been broken and the river below opened its satanic jaws to swallow us up. It was trying to tear us apart again.

... But I was just a fatigued, scrawny, poor boy…how could I possibly fight fate?

My lungs screamed desperately for oxygen and I tried pulling Yunho up with me but I was hardly strong enough. Maybe last year when I was defending South Korea in Yunho’s platoon I would have had the strength in my arms, but this year I was completely hopeless. I had spent too much time wasting away, refusing to eat anything when Hangeng wasn’t there to force it into my stomach. Not to mention all my spare energy being sapped away with every thrust into my worn body by the North Koreans. I just didn’t possess enough physical strength anymore.

I almost fainted from relief as Hangeng’s arm was eventually flung downwards, just above my head. I was so scared I would drop Yunho with only one arm around him, but also desperate to use my other hand to accept the potential rescue.

Our slippery fingers intertwined and he grabbed my offered wrist powerfully. I could feel Hangeng slowly pulling us upwards, but with each ticking second I felt my burning lungs plunging me into a deep unconsciousness.

NO!

I had to resist it! I couldn’t lose control! I had to live so that Yunho could have a chance to live. Hangeng would not be able to support two deadweights. I needed to fight it!

As soon as my forehead smashed through the water and into the air, my mouth and lungs kicked into action and I was desperately breathing in all the oxygen I could take in.

Hangeng pulled Yunho away from my hold to help me breathe easier.

After awhile, the both of us splashed towards the grassy bank. All I could do with keep trying to breathe.

My tears were falling unnoticed down my cheeks and dissolving into the wetness already on my skin as I watched hypnotized as Hangeng crouched in front of me, trying to breathe life back into Yunho’s lungs. Hangeng was looking so desperate; frustrated that the person who had been so strong for us was now unresponsive to everything he tried.

“Yun…Ho…!” I cried, trying to break through my lethargic body’s resistance in order to crawl to him.

“YUN…” I sobbed, grabbing his lifeless arm and trying to use it to pull myself closer to him.

Hangeng frantically pushed me off, trying to get back into a better position to continue giving him mouth-to-mouth resusitation.

I was still grasping his hand once Hangeng finally moved away in satisfaction. I clutched it even harder as I desperately watched his soaking jacket rise and fall in a beautiful rhythm.

I finally let myself sink downwards, resting my head on his bony wrist. Was it possible that I had got it all wrong? That fate had been against me and abandoned me? Perhaps it had always been there fighting for me. It was surely not fate that was trying to constantly tear us apart…that was an unknown horror. But perhaps fate had been the one working madly to fight it all and bring us back together despite all the odds. Or…maybe fate never existed in the first place. I didn’t know what to think or believe anymore.

My naked body shivered in the constant breeze, the absence of my sheet finally registering in my senses. I didn’t care enough to think about that at the moment though. Instead, I was too caught up in just watching my Yunho breathe.

I wasn’t feeling happy though…unless relief counted as happiness.

No, I was feeling something else and it frustrated me that I could not put a name to it. But I was feeling it so strongly now that reality was slowly sinking in. There was definitely a dark presence there, snapping at reality’s heels.

Dark presence…

Tonight I had almost been separated again from Yunho and it made my whole soul shudder. I never wanted to feel that deep-rooted sorrow again. I’d do whatever it took to shield myself from it.

Anything.

Even if it would hurt me at first, I could survive through it. I just had to be strong.

I knew what I needed to do.

///TBC///

A/N: Yeh I know, stupid way to end it. BUT there is a story behind this. This was only supposed to be the halfway point in chapter 7 BUT by the time I finished writing it was almost 30-pages so I had no choice but make it 7A and 7B (my fav is 7B ><). You can yell at me, I can take it T_T... haha.

Now...it's that time again....please comment. I love hearing from you ! ^_^