Rain
He hates it, he hates watching his friends fall deeper and deeper into Aku’s grasp. They hate him right back, and he knows it; it’s obvious in the way they look at him now, with a mixture of disdain and concern and pity in their eyes. They stopped listening to him a long time ago, if they’d ever started listening to him in the first place, and he can imagine the darkness taking them away from him almost as tangibly as the darkness eating away at him painfully from the inside.
The meeting was unsuccessful, that much was clear when Changkyun finally caught up with Taeyong. He was wary of the hunched over frame, the one that didn’t even flinch when distant rumbles of thunder became loud overhead just moments before a torrential downpour that felt like a single massive blanket it was coming down on them so hard.
“Taeyong?”
There was no response from the familiar caped form, only the slight scratch of the tip of his sword against the rooftop gravel. The metal glinted in the next flash of lightning above, it and the tattoo on his arm flashing metallically in the electric energy in a way that was so fleeting it could’ve been missed if Changkyun so much as blinked.
It was a cold rain, one that would have them both chilled to the bone in mere minutes, even through garb held together with the power of magic.
He approached, slowly, carefully, making his footsteps deliberately loud so the reluctant leader of the rebellion wouldn’t think anyone was sneaking up on him; he was always on edge lately, Changkyun had noticed, afraid of something appearing out of thin air and attacking him from behind.
“They didn’t listen,” Taeyong finally spoke up, barely audible over the rain falling against the city.
Changkyun didn’t say anything, just continued his slow approach.
“They won’t listen!” It was sudden, the surge of energy, the sliver of lightning that caught the tip of his greatsword and traveled down it as he swung it with all the strength he could muster against a nearby air-conditioning unit.
Changkyun paused, eyeing the air around them, the energy making the hair on his arms stand on end, the roof rumbling under their feet as the unit collapsed into a useless heap of sliced metal under Taeyong’s blade. Several moments passed, and it became clear in the hopeless slump of the younger male’s shoulders and the way his sword hung uselessly at his side that he was otherwise harmless.
He approached again, this time with less apprehension.
“They never--” but Taeyong’s hopeless words were cut off when he was pulled into Changkyun’s embrace, his weapon falling with a sharp clang against the gravel.
Changkyun kept him close, even if Taeyong felt uncharacteristically small and lax in his arms. He still felt human though, even with the faint darkness pulsing through him. He was still human.
He pressed a kiss to the crown of Taeyong’s head, ignoring the way the sky seemed to be trying to drown them, uttering his own quiet words of encouragement:
“They will.”