sa-hareth | arrival (mingle log)

[groundrules]

WHO: Everyone ever + the local Sa-hareth squad.
WHEN: Arc I: Sa-Hareth arrival.
WHERE: Sa-Hareth citadel, salt mine, the old jailhouse,
WHAT: Our intrepid heroes get commandeered into the frosty unknown.
WARNINGS: the glorious undead, background House of Dew mentions, at least one person's terrible sense of humour.

Comments

[jeoha]

One eye half closed as the smoke passed him, giving Mingyu a weary look but not saying anything.

"I had assumed you were providing the cups," He said wryly, before looking up around the room. "Though I suppose I should not have assumed."

He carefully averted his eyes as Mingyu stripped, even though the thin robe had not exactly left a lot to the imagination anyway. He found a pair of cups intact, took those, and came over to sit where Mingyu had indicated.

After a moment, and with a low sincerity:

"Are you alright?"

[descendency]

"I've been worse," Mingyu replied airily, dismissive, slipping on his second robe without bothering to sash it. He sat up to make room for Lee Chang where he was lounging, then almost at once slid down to lean against the man as he'd previously been leaning on his perch.

"I'll endure. It's what I do."

Then he reached out for the bottle, ignoring the cups, and took a long swig before passing it back.

He let out his breath in a low sigh, eyes fluttering shut.

"...well done. It's good drink."

[jeoha]

He looked a little helplessly at Mingyu - now flopped fully against his side - then at the bottle thrust back into his hands. I should annihilate your entire family for your insolence, he joked darkly to himself, and then let out a sigh as he raised the bottle to his lips.

A new world, new rules. New everything.

New Lee Chang.

He drank.

He let out an answering breath once the liquid had burned pleasantly down his throat, and then he passed the bottle back to Mingyu. "What is it you actually want?" He asked ruefully. "Surely anyone could have brought you decent drink."

[descendency]

What did he want from Lee Chang? Mingyu's gaze slid from the fox tattoo to the lotus on his opposite wrist, expression pensive. If he was to go any further with this, let Lee Chang any closer, he would have to know. Was this man enough? Was this insufferably noble, contrary, altogether unpleasant man worth the risk of tipping his hand?

He wasn't even that far into his drink, and yet he couldn't help it.

"What is it you actually want?" he deflected, studying Lee Chang as he asked. "Why did you come to me?"

[jeoha]

He hadn't expected to have his question turned around on him, and he watched the man for a long minute before taking the bottle back and taking a much longer drink, this time.

He had never drank so freely until he had travelled with Mu-Yeong. Every glass could contain poison, every smile a dagger. He knew that better than anyone.

But he was tired. And he had nothing anyone wanted, here.

He frowned down into the bottle, trying to understand why he was drawn toward Mingyu at all. Why had he come, summoned thus like a servant?

Was he that desperate for companionship of any kind? Sure, they had shared an escape, the discovery of a foreign world. A language. But he could say similar things for others here. And yet he did not gravitate toward them in the same way. By all accounts, Mingyu was the same kind of shrewd that did well in the palace. The kind that often sought him dead. But maybe it just meant he thought he understood Mingyu better. Mingyu was a survivor. And who else would you want with you in an alien world?

Was it simply that the man had a face that could be carved from jade?

"Because you asked," He replied after a moment, finally turning his head to look at Mingyu slumped against him.

[descendency]

Mingyu watched Lee Chang in return, lips thinning in displeasure, discomfort. He, too, felt drawn to Lee Chang in ways he could not fully comprehend, ways he could not stem or control, and that set him on edge. There was a wrongness to it, the way Lee Chang disarmed him, drew him in. The man reminded him too much of himself. The inherent loneliness, the apparent self-loathing. Lee Chang was him but by all accounts a better man. Mingyu should feel revulsion, should resent his mere existence, and yet—

He found himself keeping Lee Chang close while wanting him even closer.

Unable to tear himself away, with no real reason to burn this bridge here in this place, all that was left was to see if Lee Chang was who he appeared. To look into the darkest corners of the man's heart, see the truth of him. Perhaps the act of it would repulse Lee Chang enough to walk away so Mingyu would not have to, or Mingyu would see some unpalatable truth and be able to leave this behind.

So he slid his hand over Lee Chang's torso, delved past his robes, until his palm rested against bare skin.

"You just might regret that," he warned.

[jeoha]

Lee Chang's breath hitched, his brow's pinching sharply as he stared at Mingyu as if the man had grown a second head. The very concept of someone touching him like this - without his strict and vocal permission - was so beyond him it made him speechless.

He should stand up. Bat the hand away. Put Mingyu in his place.

But what place was that, exactly? Lee Chang was no one here, a beggar, living from charity. And in their uneasy alliance, he found himself offering Mingyu a modicum of trust. Not to be loyal to him. But to look out for himself, at all times. And maybe that was better. Maybe Mingyu wouldn't end up bleeding out in Lee Chang’s arms in the middle of a birch forest.

"What are you doing?" He asked carefully, slowly, trying to ignore the way his pulse had picked up as if on its own. He spent a good amount of the waking day trying to ignore any idle thoughts of Mingyu and his erotic work, but that restraint did not seem to follow him into the night. In the night, when he wasn't dreaming of death and decay and blood, he dreamt of reddened lips and elegant limbs, a cocky glance and a smug smile--

He shook the thought forcibly from his mind, swallowing. "I'm not a client, Mingyu."

As if the man had to be reminded. As if they weren't both very aware.

[descendency]

"And I am not a simple whore," Mingyu replied, aching dully. Would that he could be so relatively unfettered and carefree. He took in a breath, focusing on his lotus tattoo. No turning back.

'Show me why you hate yourself,' he asked of the cursed bloom inked into his wrist.

He stood in an ancient building, all wood and paper screens. Chased by a monster, a rotting corpse that chased him, making terrible, rasping screams.

Father. It was father, and in the memory Lee Chang recalled a more distant past, Mingyu taking in glimpses of being a bastard child, a crown prince, a son being taught, commanded to live.

Father's head rolled from his own blade. It was a clean cut, though his hands were shaking. He went numb, went still. A warrior first, then a son. A terrible son. Failed, unfilial.

(Mingyu remembered standing in the rain. Was it raining that night? Was it another night? He remembers screaming his heart out into the storm. He hated them. He hated all of it. He hated being alone. He would be alone for the rest of his life.)

Then it was day and he stood in a field. Another monster, once a mentor, a good and just man. His sword hand was steady, full of resolve. This had been asked of him. It was fulfilling a promise, it was necessary, it—

He sliced through the air, unflinching. He was used to this now. The head tumbled neatly to the ground.

Mingyu felt the searing cold in Lee Chang's lungs as he tried to pull in breath that wouldn't come. They were somewhere else now, a third memory, knelt on frozen ground, the forest around them silent save for the slurred words of the man bleeding out in his arms. The man was a friend, a companion, mumbling apologies with the last of his breaths. It didn't even feel like a betrayal, what Mu-yeong was apologizing for here at the end. It was Lee Chang who failed him, surely. Not protecting him better, not being strong enough as a leader, not seeing this coming.

He hadn't seen this coming.

He kept such a careful eye out, for everything, and he hadn't seen this coming.

His tears choked each of his breaths as he wept for all the loss. He couldn't do this alone. He had to anyway. That was his whole life in summation. He couldn't do it alone. He still had to.

The lotus closed its petals, the memories receding. Its effects lingered. Mingyu felt numb from the cold of the forest, felt all of Lee Chang's various aches and pains, the echoes of every injury.

He couldn't speak. Tears ran down his own face as he clutched at those fading emotions, clutching Lee Chang by the shoulder with white-knuckled grip. There wasn't enough time. There hadn't been enough time to say goodbye, not to anyone, and—

[jeoha]

It wasn’t the first time he had re-lived any of those memories. He dreamt of them, on repeat, mixed and matched them until it was all one solid and twisted lump of grief in his chest. He’d managed to compartmentalise it, for the most part. Managed to shove it in a box solely because his people and his country needed him. He hadn’t had time to mourn. Hadn’t had enough time to say goodbye.

He sucked in a breath, the air stinging viciously down his throat, his sight blurred and greyed by gathering tears. He sucked in another breath, shaky, suddenly aware again that he wasn’t in that moment, wasn’t in any of them. Wasn’t kneeling in a cold birch forest holding the only person that he’d ever really felt knew him—

His hand moved before he noticed it, striking out like a cobra, fingers gripping tight into fabric before he even knew he was grabbing on. It was taking everything he had to keep his wavering breaths from turning to sobs, everything in him to try to bring himself back to the present, and not to the worst moments in his entire life. His eyes were searching Mingyu’s face helplessly and thoroughly as he tried to understand what had just happened. He could see those same tears, that same grief, echoed and amplified in Mingyu’s eyes, and it tore at Lee Chang’s heart in more ways than he understood.

He knew, somehow, that Mingyu had done this. Had felt him there, in memories where he should not exist. None of his flashbacks had ever felt so real before. Mingyu had done this, somehow. Had taken this. His breaths were coming quicker, fingers tightening sharply in Mingyu’s sleeve as if he expected the man to pull away.

He could have asked what that had been, or how Mingyu had done it. But it wasn’t really important. The only burning question that remained after being forced to re-live his loss all over again was:

“Why?”