⎯ ✂ ⎯ real ⎯
lately, he's starting to understand how daeyong feels.
today, the experiments lasted well into the night.
usually they tell him what they're planning to do, to give him some illusion of choice. sometimes jaeyong considers saying i don't want to, just to see what happens, but he figures it's not worth the risk. besides, so far, none of it has been worse than what he's already endured in his life. some sick part of him shares the same curiosity he's sure the researchers have, too: how much can he take? how much can he bend before he breaks?
today they didn't tell him. they just came with a big syringe, and said this is going to make you unconscious. you'll be safe. he wonders if they think he's stupid – if they think he hasn't seen his brother's memories, and leafed through the fragments of reality and whatever they planted in his head. he'll be safe? he doesn't trust them. he hates them. sometimes he considers killing them all. the lead researcher has a nice scar on his neck, and on his arm. he isn't sure if he could bleed him out by himself. maybe.
but they injected him with whatever shit they had in the syringe, and he blacked out within seconds.
he caught on quickly, after a few startlingly realistic and detailed dreams – memories, but slightly off-kilter, something always a little wrong. they weren't him. of course he could tell he didn't conjure the images himself – at least not entirely. they wanted to see how precise his power detection was.
he probably should've pretended he didn't notice, but jaeyong's pride will surely be the death of him one day, because instead, he pointed it out, over and over: that's not real. i see you. you'll have to do better than that.
( cw: body horror, gore )
and they did. first it was even smaller changes to his memories – some he's sure he didn't notice in their entirety. and then they switched the approach, disrupting pleasant memories with horrific imagery: teenage daeyong's body splitting in half from his smile, cockroaches crawling out. one of his nephews he held in his arms exploding, covering him in chunks of their flesh. seoyun laying beside him smiling at him in one moment, then covered in blood and missing his eyes in the next.
not real, he said, despite the churning of his stomach. this isn't real, he said, despite the tightness in his throat and the prickling threat of tears in his eyes.
when he woke up – actually woke up, he didn't know where he was for several long moments. he just knew it felt different. he looked around wildly, searching for something unnatural to call out, and slowly reality sunk back in. the scientist in the chair beside him jotted something down on a clipboard, then said, thank you jaeyong. that's enough for today.
he doesn't get home until past midnight. he leaves his car in the parking lot at nepa hq and walks. he needs air. he needs time – to steel his defenses, to blink the vacant look out of his eyes and face his brother, who is not a pile of blood and guts. hopefully.
their apartment is dark when he arrives, and jaeyong takes his phone out of his pocket and uses the flashlight to make his way forward without tripping on anything. he shines it toward the couch, unsurprised to see daeyong there – more surprised that his eyes are open, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
"hey," he says, voice low, as if there's someone else he might wake up in the apartment. "what's up?" he's stopped asking are you okay? because daeyong is never okay. they broke him in there, leaving a mentally mangled version of his brother behind for jaeyong to drag out. none of this is okay.
but it also is. daeyong is here. daeyong is free – physically, at least. he is not a pile of blood and guts. he can eat real food and see the sunlight and sleep under a blanket when he gets cold. they can't hurt him anymore. jaeyong will do whatever it takes to make sure they can't hurt him anymore.
⎯ ✂ ⎯ @daeyongdx ⎯
he is floating, suspended in blinding whiteness somewhere between life and death, forgotten in purgatory where the sound of his own heartbeat plagues his thoughts like explosions dropped from above to wreak havoc on what's left of his consciousness.
cw: gore, body horror, sleep paralysis, surgery/hospitals
then the emptiness is replaced by faceless figures in white coats, their only defining features matching gelled undercuts and sinister splitting grins too large for the faces that aren't there. the ceiling above him is suddenly mirrored, and he can see as well as he can feel every fileting cut they make to his body, peeling his skin away and laying it on a tray nearby in sickeningly perfect sashimi cuts. someone meticulously pours over him a bucket of house centipedes, and he realizes, as he feels them burrowing pathways into his bone marrow, that he cannot scream, because they've garnished the platter of his organs with his julienned tongue.
the ringing in his ears ceases to be his own raw screams, because they have cut his throat to see how long it will take their blood puppet to choke on his own blood. but he still hears high-pitched wailing, shrill and desperate. is that--jiahn? no. no, it's younger than that. it's the shrieking of a colicky infant, bouncing off the walls of his hell until it sounds like there are fifty of them, tremoring in his head so hard he feels something snap and leak out of his ears until he hears nothing at all. he is trapped in a suffocating silence while they lift his organs out of his flayed chest, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to breathe--
then everything is dark.
he doesn't realize he is awake, instead of dead, until an unseen light causes the room's shadows to shift eerily overhead. he doesn't realize he can hear again until jaeyong's voice cuts through the apartment's imprisoning quiet. he doesn't realize his tongue is still firmly attached to itself until he utters, after stilling his trembling jaw long enough to speak, "jae?"
he still can't move, can't bring himself out of his nightmare's paralysis, can still feel tight, steel shackles pressing him down into the couch cushions, as if to bury him there. he shivers, damp with sweat.
"i heard- babies."
there is no explanation; there is none to give. but it should be enough for his twin to understand, that through his night terror came inklings of what may have been a very real memory. had he really, between his own scientific torture sessions, heard the screeching of lab rats not yet old enough to formulate their pain into words?
he thinks he can still feel the bugs from his dream crawling under his skin, and he can feel his own blood cells racing through him trying to find those imaginary foreign invaders. his head throbs with every beat of the heart still miraculously in his chest, right behind his eyes, spackling the darkness with a colorful, burning halo. out of the corner of his eye, a boy-shaped shadow, just behind jaeyong's shoulder. it is featureless, but somehow he recognizes the hallucination as his late brother. he wonders if maybe jiahn got the better end of the deal.
"i'm out." he contemplates out loud, squinting up at the ceiling through his migraine for more grounding signs of reality, still unsure where it begins, still glued unmoving to the sofa, "you got me out."
he has to assume jaeyong's presence here is not another hallucination. he has to assume this is reality and his nightmare was a dream and not the other way around, or else he will wake up back in that hell even worse off than before.
"real?"
