Hakyeon prefers to dream, these days.
With his vision gone, mostly, and just vague shadows and lights to go by, there isn’t much to do. He can mend his and Taekwoon’s clothes by touch now, which is an improvement, but he can’t read. Can’t go out into the woods and simply watch the world happen, unhindered by humans, as he used to.
Quite frankly, he wishes something could be done about it all. He remembered seeing stuff about blindness in one of Taekwoon’s journals, but, Hakyeon is unsure of how to bring it up. So he lets it be, keeping silent.
Actually, he’s become much less talkative, more like he was before Taekwoon found him, like he was before he started to open up. He no longer knows what to say, or do. He prefers to listen again, taking everything in and leaving it to the web of his imagination to show him what’s going on around him.
More than anything else he does, Hakyeon sleeps. He looses himself in the images of his dreams, treasuring everything that he ‘sees’.
Much of it, so very much of it, is his lover. Even if he can see the man by touch, Hakyeon misses his face, misses the looks hidden in his dark eyes. He misses a lot, honestly, but it’s Taekwoon he misses the most. Taekwoon, who he can tell is becoming thin. Whose voice is a bit strained when he speaks. He sounds so tired. Hakyeon hates it.
And so without saying that it’s what he’s doing, Hakyeon begins memorizing the space outside. Careful forays into the forest, minute remembrance of which way he had come from. The time he stayed out there was spent focusing, trying to pick out the sounds that he had once known so well.
Chances were that he couldn’t shoot an arrow at any of it, but Hakyeon was beginning to remember the things he searched for. A deer maybe fifteen yards southeast from him. A chattering squirrel in the tree above him. Once, even a brave fox that had curled up against his thigh. That had made him smile.
Even if he himself couldn’t hunt any longer, there was still someone that could. The hawk that he had trained so carefully months before, that had been intended as a hunting companion for Taekwoon. A gift for Valentine’s that he had never had the chance to give.
Hakyeon could still instruct it properly, even if he couldn’t see.
And so he began augmenting their meals with small catches from the hawk, ensuring that the bird was rewarded for its efforts. As long as he couldn’t feel bone so easily through Taekwoon’s skin anymore, he didn’t care how dangerous it could be to be out alone. They’d have enough food for the both of them again.
He never asked. Never questioned. Ever quiet, ever trying to remember the nonsense he had read at one time.
And so he dreams of being able to see the world again. Of being able to see Taekwoon. To see the bird that helped him so.
He dreams of being himself once more.
Hopes that his dreams aren’t in vain.
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