╰ the end of all things ╮{ 1st tl }
ccxkana:
it’s over. this is it. it’s as taeyong coughs up tar-like blood that kana realizes she will never see him again. if she leaves here, every step she takes will be in a world without taeyong. how does she exist without him, and his unwavering strength and determination and devotion to his cause? he is the fire– the soul and core of everything. even kana is only here now due to following him. what does she do now? how does she continue on in a world where her best friend is the one to deal this blow, and send taeyong into death? what is left for her here?
{ tw: blood }
she sucks in a shuddering breath through her mouth, nose runny due to her tears. she instinctively wipes her own face with her free hand, uncaring of marring it with taeyong’s blood as she does. she isn’t afraid of the blood; she isn’t even afraid of the darkness here, but more the mortality of someone as powerful and unstoppable as taeyong. how? they fought so hard. how does it end like this? it’s so easy, like his life is nothing to them. her rage sets in before grief can even settle, infuriated by the injustice of people that used to fight by their side turning on taeyong so quickly. how dare they. jongin especially– how dare he.
her hand returns to taeyong’s face, and she cradles his head in her hands and lap, panic clawing its way from her chest to her throat and threatening to seep into every word she speaks. she knows this is the end. two minutes isn’t long enough. she doesn’t want to leave him. everything in her protests to this in agony, still processing– trying to paint taeyong’s final moments into her memory and trying to escape into the past of something better, too, with life still in his cheeks and his imperishable fighting spirit, still living on. she can’t accept this. there is so much to carry for his sake, but she doesn’t know if she has it in her. nothing will be the same as taeyong. she is not the same as taeyong.
he tries to speak, and all of her thoughts evacuate her mind, and she hangs on his words, even as her tears still flow, silent in her last dwindling shreds of willpower. she can see him fading into death as he fights for it, and she just wants peace for him. she wanted to believe there would be some rest in this, after everything the world put them through. she can’t fight a sob when the words finally leave his lips.
was it? was it his fault? she doesn’t know. she doesn’t even really know what he means, but she doesn’t have time to wonder. everything? the remnants of the league were so eager to pin everything on him without acknowledging their own responsibility in the chaos earth plunged itself into. it’s not just taeyong, no. it’s her fault too, if anything. he didn’t do this on his own, and in this moment, it’s something she’s proud of– listening to taeyong and standing by his side when no one else would. she can grasp the importance of it, because taeyong was the only shred of understanding for her, too. maybe they are the same after all, or maybe they share the same heart.
“i don’t know,” she breathes. “but i know you were just doing what you thought was right. maybe we were wrong, but we aren’t the only ones that were. i’m sure of it. you were just trying to do what was right and you can’t be faulted for that.”
he scowls weakly, thoughtfully, his gaze glued to her face because it’s a sight he doesn’t mind having as his last one. he selfishly wishes ken were here, then realizes it’s better that he isn’t. he doesn’t want ken to see him like this, weak and suffering and fading.
he wants to believe her. somewhere, deep down inside of him, perhaps an apology resides, waiting to fall from blackened, pale lips. but it doesn’t matter. nothing matters anymore, and it’s almost a relief. somewhere out there is the friend who took his life, who drove his anger into his heart over and over until neither of them could breathe.
if it was, is, his fault, perhaps the world repairing itself is why his death seems to hurt more than any pain he ever endured in life. he thinks, if there is a hell, if he is going to it, he’ll go well prepared.
his lips flap uselessly, quiver for words he can’t find, couldn’t say even if he could find them. he can feel the icy, tingling numbness of it all encasing him. she’s still here and she’s so warm and he realizes within an agonizing blip that he isn’t at all ready to die.
oblivion awaits him. it crawls into his vision, black and impenetrable. His ears ring with something otherwordly, inhuman, indecipherable whispers whirring past him, beckoning him toward the demise that awaits him. he thinks he hears his brother’s voice among them. his grip on kana’s hand tightens as black shapes loom tall and foreboding in every corner of his vision. they’re not real, they can’t be; whatever they are, it makes them no less terrifying.
he misses the sun. trapped in the manifestation of his own darkness built in a world shrouded in ash and dust; sunlight would be a welcome repose from the eternal cold seeping its way, sharp and jagged, into his bloodstream, his very existence. he feels small and light, as if he’d float toward a perpetual ceiling if it weren’t for the writhing black limbs wrapping around him and trying to pull him through the floor.
there is no peace in death, a thought that crosses his mind when he glances just behind kana’s shoulder and sees the largest figure looming, a jagged, terrible grin splitting the shadow’s face. if she isn’t careful, taeyong knows that son of a bitch will hang her with him. taeyong squeezes her hand again, a warning, a plea; there are invisible fingers wrapped around his throat, pressing down on his windpipe, pulling the last of his life force from his lips, it is the only way he can tell her to run far away from here and never look back.
please, he thinks at her with his last moments of coherence, please make it out of h-
something razor sharp and white hot pinches at the back of his neck, slowly pries something invisible from taeyong, torturously slow, pulls a faint whimper from his lips. he’d looked away from the biggest shadow in his desperation to see kana escape, missed the creature swirling to rest behind his head.
and then it’s impossibly quick. he sucks in a hard breath of air, painfully, uselessly, desperately as his soul is wrenched from his body. the world goes from faded black to a blinding white.
and then he is gone.











