SHINee 5 | Stranger Things AU
There were more children other than just 08 and 011
Jinki : 02
Jinki was stolen from his poor mother at the age of 2. He doesn’t remember much from his childhood apart from men in white coats yelling at him and a lot of telephones.
He was being trained to be able to travel through telephones and radio with his mind and listen in on conversations over the phone. When he did this he was able to see two scenes at once; each side of the phone call.
So up until the time he was 18 he was being used as a spy to let his mind wander through telephone lines and radio waves to get information for the whitecoats and the man who forced him to call him father.
Jinki grew to detest his life around the age of 13 when the toys were taken from him and the hard work began.
At night he began to experiment on his own and for the first time he found music, and radio shows, and the news. This is when his outlook changed.
After years of captivity, he and his best friend since he could remember, 04 escaped.
While escaping, they were separated and he never saw the 15-year-old again.
He was 18 at the time of escape and he had made his way to Indianapolis and he never looked back. He took the name Lee Jinki to fit his heritage he’d been told of in the lab.
He lived the next years working and living off minimum wage in a shabby run-down apartment.
When he was 26 he met a man at a bar. They were both too drunk and they were switching stories about life at 2am.
Jinki saw the small tattoo on the younger’s wrist and his life changed yet again. 04.
He learned about what happened to Jonghyun after they got split up and the younger’s troubles and how the younger was staying with two twins who came from the same place as them but had been kept separately.
Upon meeting Kibum 05 and Minho 06 he was shocked at how similar yet completely different they were at the same time. They didn’t look like twins, but moreso polar opposites.
He grew to care for them as younger brothers as he did with Taemin when they ran into him when they returned to Hawkins to pry more into their past.
Jonghyun : 04
He was put up for adoption by a teenage mother when he was just two weeks old and he was taken by the lab.
All he ever knew was feeling and hearing too many thoughts and emotions.
He can read the thoughts and feelings of anyone he chooses to. The problem when he was younger was learning how to control it.
He was often brought into interrogation rooms and he was abused if he didn’t condemn the guilty and tell the truth.
Growing up with 02 as his best friend are the only good things he can remember from his childhood. The rest was pain and crying and constant migraines.
When he was 15 Jinki asked him if he wanted to leave with him and run away and live a normal life. But Jonghyun was not fortunate enough like Jinki to have the radio to base this ‘normal life’ off of. However, the idea of not being treated as an experiment instead of a child sounded like bliss to Jonghyun. So he agreed to run away.
As they were in the process of running away, they got split up when 02 tried to lure the guards in a different direction.
After that moment, Jonghyun never saw him again until he was 23 years old.
After escaping Jonghyun had found a busy road and caught a ride to Indianapolis. He was only 15 at the time, so of course he was quickly picked up off the streets and taken into a foster home and they did a background check on him and learned that his name was Kim Jonghyun, however they were unable to track down his birth parents and there was no record of adoption or of the lab adopting him.
At this time his stability with his powers took a turn for the worst since he wasn’t used to being in such close living quarters with others at all times, and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. But he knew the truth.
Two years later when he was 17 a set of fraternal twins were introduced to the foster home. They were also runaways with cases similar to his. Birth Records with unreachable parents however their names were Kibum and Minho.
It didn’t take long from Jonghyun to spot familiar looking tattoos on the twin’s wrists. 05. 06. Considering their ages and the timeline, they were almost undeniably from the lab also.
One night after lights out, Jonghyun crept into their room and interrogated them.
Kibum and Minho both radiated the same energy of anxiety and dread as he brought up the lab and how they were just like him.
A year later he was set with a job at 18 at a radio station and after Kibum and Minho turned 18 they moved in together.
Years later he met 02 again by chance and this led to a discussion of the horrors of their childhood between the three of his brothers and him.
A deep hatred for his ‘father’ grew in Jonghyun’s belly and when Kibum suggested they go look for answers, he couldn’t say no.
When they met Taemin he fell in love with the younger, willing to do anything to protect his anxious baby brother.
Kibum : 05
Kibum and his younger twin brother were taken from the hospital when they were born.
Turns out their father had worked briefly in the lab, but left after he found out about the children experiments. When the lab heard that he had had twins, they couldn’t resist taking them. Twins experiments who were connected in mind would be a beautiful thing for them.
While him and 06, Minho were twins, they looked nothing like it.
Kibum and Minho had a set of similar gifts, and each their own special gift.
Kibum and Minho could hear and communicate with each other no matter the distance. They could also switch consciousness if they needed to. Kibum’s mind would be in Minho’s body, vice versa.
However, Kibum had the ability to make people do what he wanted them to by telling them to do so. He just had to flip and switch in his mind and say whatever he wanted.
He was the biggest reason him and Minho were able to escape at the age of 15
Upon escaping, Kibum led them to a gas station and convinced a nice old couple to take them wherever they were headed, leading them to Indianapolis.
From there the old couple let them stay with them for two days before calling child services.
Kibum and Minho wound up in a foster home, leading them to their older brother, 04.
They learned their true names and Kibum felt his first taste of normalcy.
As they spent their whole childhoods being groomed to act in sync and become each other, the second Kibum had money and freedom, he dyed his hair a bright blonde to differentiate himself from Minho.
After meeting Jinki, who he automatically clicked with, they quickly decided to go to Hawkins.
Kibum most of all hoped to find information on his and Minho’s parents.
Kibum longed to have a proper family, however, he was just glad that he had Minho, and Jonghyun, Jinki, and eventually Taemin even though the little shit gave him a headache at least once a day.
Minho : 06
Minho was the younger of the twins, however, he looked and acted older at times.
He hated their childhood. He wanted to be active and moving. His body ached to be free, but he was held in captivity.
In addition to the gifts he shared with Kibum, He could look through mirrors.
He could see through any mirror and watch and listen, but he could never break through.
His own gift was torture to him. He wanted to run free if only he could break through that class barrier as his mind wandered the maze of mirrors in his mind.
As himself and Kibum grew older, they grew to detest their dad and their ‘home’
One day when Minho was exploring the mirrors at night and he looked into one of the meeting rooms because he could see some commotion happening.
There were others like himself and Kibum. And they were trying to escape.
This was the seed that grew into the twins conspiring to run away and never look back.
It only took two years for the twins to gather the courage and plan out their escape. And with Minho’s leadership and Kibum’s gift they made it out with only a few bumps along the road.
Minho didn’t mesh well with ‘normal life’ He always felt like he was missing a part of himself.
This feeling just increased as they met Jonghyun, and then Jinki.
His older brothers must have been the ones who escaped when he was younger.
He really admired Jonghyun and Jinki for how strong they were despite the abuse they went through that the twins hadn’t been subjected to nearly as much.
But the shared stories made anger grow in Minho. Not as much for himself, but for his brother’s and the fact that there could be more kids like them out there.
When they decided to head back to Hawkins, and when they accidentally kidnapped Taemin who was outside the lab at the same time they were, he realized the answers to his past and these brothers of his was the missing piece.
Taemin : 09
His father had taken Taemin and run from Korea. During the immigration process and the relocation to Indiana, Taemin was taken from his dad and brought to the lab. He was only 1 year old.
He grew up feeling angry. He didn’t remember what life was like before this. But he knew his ‘father’ wasn’t really his father, and that this wasn’t what his life was supposed to be like.
Taemin’s gift was stopping time. He could do this as he pleased, however when time is stopped he continues to age.
He lived constantly handcuffed to the wall or to somebody to avoid his escape.
He was used so much in the first 16 years of life for missions and experiments and training that Taemin was aged to 18 instead of 16.
The last straw apart from the abuse and lack of privacy was the time they made him pause time until he literally passed out from exhaustion.
They had given him a small stopwatch to track the time. 15 hours. 25 minutes. That’s the longest he had ever paused time before. But this time he lasted a little under 3 days.
The next day Taemin waited for the one time he was allowed out of the cuffs; shower time.
That's when he used the keycard he’d stolen earlier to break out of the bathroom. He put on his white shirt and pants and he calmly walked out of the lab after stealing a gun off of once of the guards.
He resumed time once he was a good distance away from the lab.
He lived the next two years in the woods, stopping time daily in order to steal clothes and food and supplies as needed.
The alone time was amazing for him, after years of not having his own space. However, He came to long for companionship.
When he was 20 he decided to finally go back to the institute to get answers, and as he was scouting along the gate to find the entrance he was ambushed suddenly and was knocked out.
He woke up in a motel room tied to the bed with four men standing in front of him.
After some initial shock and interrogation, he learned that they thought he was lab personnel, and they wanted answers. Just like he was.
That’s how he found 02, 04, 05, and 06.
He finally felt like he could fit in and belong with someone.
He loved them all for different reasons, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
They took him in immediately and even gave him a name other than 09. Taemin.
All he needed now was answers.
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