chilled to the marrow in them bones || The Baes BDRP Memory Event
@justkeepdancing-nemo
tw: suicide attempt, drowning, poisoning
Word count: 2650
MU-YEOL
The sun had long since reached its peak in the sky, but wasn’t near ready to set. It was a beautiful day.
Five months ago, So-yeon had greeted him when he got home from work at 4:00 AM and threw her arms around his neck to tell him she was pregnant with their second child. It had been two months, one week, and three days since his beautiful, vibrant So-yeon was murdered and died with her blood covering his clothing, his hands glittering with the offensive, golden liquid as he tried in vain to save her. The day preceding that night had also been a beautiful day.
Beautiful days, Mu-yeol had decided, often betrayed that there were ugly things on the horizon.
As he stood barely taller than the tallest blades of grass by the riverbank and the rushing water filled his ears, and his fingers slid back and forth across the smooth pebbles in his hands, Mu-yeol was at peace for one fleeting moment. When the moment passed he was left numb again but no less certain of his next step.
He slid the pebbles into his pockets and stared straight ahead.
NEMO:
Nemo opened his eyes into a world that wasn’t his own.
At first, he thought it was just Enchantra-- Enchantra’s skies, Enchantra’s sun, Enchantra’s clouds drifting over the treetops. This field could be the glen, which was always filled with the most beautiful wildflowers in the spring. Nemo flitted through the blades of grass in an easy pace, the small breeze buoying his wings so he could glide easily.
It was the river, then, that told him this was not Enchantra. When Nemo heard it, he paused in the air, his lips parting. The river did not flow through the glen. So why…?
And then, without even a blink, suddenly Nemo was by the bank of the river too, looking at his Appa.
Nemo’s eyes widened. “Appa?” he said as he carefully touched his toes to the sandy bank. But Appa didn’t look at him. Because...this was a dream?
Why didn’t it feel like a dream?
MU-YEOL
Mu-yeol pulled his hands out of his pockets, and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a plant. His insurance if you will. Korean monkshood, and a generous helping of it, would kill a human quickly, a regular fairy slower, and a healing fairy...maybe. Mu-yeol wanted to be damn sure, if he was following through with this. He stuffed the plant into his mouth and chewed furiously, not even making a face at the taste.
It really, truly was a beautiful day.
He sighed and looked up at the sky one more time before he closed his eyes and just walked, calm as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, into the rushing river.
NEMO:
Nemo tried again.
“Appa, what are you…” he began, but he stopped when he saw his father take out a fistful of something. He didn’t know what it was. It didn’t look like any herbs that Nemo knew, and he had been around a lot of them...forced to drink tumeric teas, suck on tart cherries and chew on willow bark all for his inflammation and pain. Appa had wooden boxes full of different natural remedies at home under his cot. They were just in case medicine, much like Nemo’s thick wad of just in case money. Appa was always, always careful but those things.
So Nemo knew his herbs. He just...didn’t know that herb. Or why Appa was chewing it. Or why--
Appa stepped into the water.
It was like being punched in the face all over again.
Someone screamed, and Nemo didn’t even realize it was him until he was darting forward with all the speed of his talent. He zoomed forward to try to catch his father, but passed right through him as if he was a ghost. He crashed on the other side of the bank instead, rolling onto the ground with a yelp. Nemo scrambled up onto his knees and elbows and he screamed again.
“APPA!”
MU-YEOL
The water at first was cool on his skin and if it were any other day it would maybe be refreshing. But words like refreshing didn’t fit today. Final, in conclusion, those were fitting words.
A small part of him automatically told him to fight the river, to get to dry land as soon as he could manage it, but his mind had been made up. It hurt too much to delay it anymore. He’d thought it through, you see, he really had.
Nam-min deserves more than his broken shell of a father could give him. It was best he just politely saw himself out of the picture.
And he would have gotten away with it too, his body perhaps carried away by the river, if it weren’t for a meddlesome healing-talent fairy bolting out of the forest, zipping through the air almost as fast as a fast-flying talent.
“Hyung! Hyung!”
Bae Jun-ha called for his brother at the top of his lungs, and within moments his eyes found him in the river. Not even fighting to stop himself from drowning which was actively happening.
Recalling the story later, Jun-ha said he didn’t so much think as he just acted. Jun hovered above the water, risking soaking his wings and ending up just as dead as his brother intended to be, and tangled his fist in the fabric of Mu-yeol’s tunic. With an iron grip he fluttered his wings, flying perpendicular to dry land.
“One second more, Hyung!”
But Mu-yeol was a dead weight in his grasp. It was probably already too late.
NEMO:
Nemo didn’t understand.
He watched the other fairy dart forward, rusting the blades of grass and diving for his appa, but Nemo’s brain couldn’t catch up. For once, he was completely still. Completely stuck. Sobs rattled his chest, breath uneven and vision blurry. He kept seeing that moment. When Appa closed his eyes and stepped forward, letting the water take him.
But Appa knows we can’t swim, Nemo thought stupidly. Uselessly. Even a healing-talent couldn’t swim. Even a healing-talent would sink. Even a healing-talent would drown.
But he knows. He knows. Nemo’s brain repeated it over and over. His whole body was shaking. He couldn't believe what it meant. This was all just a bad dream.
Nemo pressed his arm against his wet, dirty face. “Wake up,” he warbled to himself. “Wake up!”
Instead, he flinched as he listened to the other fairy struggle to stay aflight with his appa weighing him down.
BAE JUN-HA:
Jun-ha practically threw his older brother into the grass and scowled when a bit of plant fell free from Mu-yeol’s pocket. The younger brother’s face paled as he whispered, “You rotten son of a bitch.”
He tried to drown himself after eating Korean monkshood. This wasn’t an impulse in the slightest. No, this was meticulously planned.
Jun wasted no time in working to revive his brother, both with frantic not medically recommended gentle face slaps, and genuine attempts to encourage his slowed down heart to pick up the pace.
“Come. On. Hyung.” Jun said. “Don’t do this to me, don’t do this to Nam-minnie, don’t be too late.”
And after trying for what seemed like ages but was in reality just a couple minutes, Mu-yeol gave a hoarse gasp for air and Jun signed in relief and threw his head back to give thanks to the Deities he wasn’t too late so keep his nephew from being orphaned.
MU-YEOL
Mu-yeol was brought violently back to his senses when he found himself on the forest floor gasping for air. He sat up coughing, and coughing, until he finally vomited up water and stomach acid into the grass.
He sat there in silence apart from the occasional vomiting for a good few minutes before he turned to see if he was alone in these woods. A peek to his left showed he wasn’t at all alone here.
Jun-ha. Junnie.
He only just met his younger brother’s teary eyes when they instantly morphed into rage.
Crack!
“너 미쳤어 (neo michyeoss-eo)?” The question of whether or not Mu-yeol was crazy followed the sting of his youngest brother’s hand against his cheek. Bae Jun-ha held a crumpled suicide note in his other hand as he stood across from his brother, seething. “What the fuck, hyung?”
The younger brother threw the note to the ground and crossed the remaining distance between them to grip his brother’s shirt by the collar.
“You want to die so bad? Fine. Try this again and I’ll save you- again - and then kill you myself for being selfish enough to do this to Nam-min.” Jun-ha hissed, shaking him until he released him with a push to the forest floor.
Mu-yeol didn’t get up. He didn’t deserve to.
“You’re so goddamn lucky Su-mi found your suicide note before eomma or abeoji did. What if our mother saw this, eo? Eo? What if I was at the Hollow clinic and she couldn’t find me in time? Were you just going to make your son an orphan because you feel sorry for yourself? Did you not think of him? Or of us? Or your wife?” As the questions flew from Jun-ha’s mouth, the venom gave way to desperation as he choked on his own tears.
NEMO:
Nemo was on the other bank of the river.
He didn’t know how he happened. He blinked and he was there, holding his knees to his chest as he watched his father’s still, soaked body, wings thin as paper underneath him. He watched as his uncle-- that was his uncle, wasn’t it?-- pumped his chest and sobbed over his body. He heard his name, over and over. Nam-minnie, Nam-minnie. And Nemo wondered where he was.
Where had Appa left him? Was Eomma still alive? That couldn’t be. But if Eomma wasn’t alive...then who was holding him? Who was playing with him? Who was watching over him? His aunt? His grandparents? A Nursting-talent?
Who was there for Nemo, when Appa had decided to leave him all alone?
Blink. In another second, Appa was up again, gasping for breath, still soaking wet. Another, and Nemo’s ahjussi was yelling at him. Nemo flinched again at the smack.
“You want to die so bad? Fine. Try this again and I’ll save you- again - and then kill you myself for being selfish enough to do this to Nam-min.
Nemo stared, curling his knees even closer to himself. Holding himself tighter and tighter.
Where you just going to make your son an orphan because you feel sorry for yourself?
“Appa…” he whispered. He didn’t want to watch this anymore. He didn’t want to believe this. His Appa wouldn’t have left him. He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Appa, wake up,” he pleaded. “Appa, please-- please wake up.”
MU-YEOL
“I should have known- I should have been a better shoulder to lean on.”
Mu-yeol shook his head and opened and closed his mouth but no sound but the occasional hoarse cough would come out. There was so much to say but his tongue was paralyzed in his mouth.
“I should have known something was up when you suddenly started getting out of bed and walking around the house with that stupid, eerily content smile.” Jun-ha’s voice cracked and he clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Hyung,” Jun said, crouching back down on the ground to hold his brother’s hands. “Nam-min needs you.”
Mu-yeol let out a choked sob, the first sound he’d made since Jun-ha caught him mid-suicide attempt, and shook his head furiously. “No, he doesn’t. He needs somebody better than me. I don’t - I shouldn’t be here. It should be her. She was worth so much more to the world than me.”
“You can’t bring her back to life by killing yourself, hyung.” Jun-ha said slowly, quietly. “And So-yeon- So-yeon would be heartbroken to see you now. She loved you. She’d want you to do your best for Nam-min.”
“The best thing for Nam-min. Would be anybody but me.”
“That’s not true. You’re Nam-min’s favorite fairy in the world; he cried for you all day your first day back at the clinic.”
“He’s a toddler, he loves me because he doesn’t know any better.”
“You bastard.” Jun hissed. “Exactly. He is a baby who won’t understand why his father isn’t coming to get him ready for bedtime anymore, or why when he calls ‘appa’ nobody answers, or why his father isn’t coming to lay down with him at naptime, or why the kimchi tastes different because it’s halmoni’s and not appa’s, or why-”
“Stop!”
NEMO:
Appa wanted to die.
Nemo was dry, but it felt like he’d been drenched with cold water, and everything Appa said was another downpour. He wanted to lift his head, and fight, and tell Appa he was wrong. But his words kept falling through the air. He hands couldn’t reach. Didn’t touch. And besides, whispered a cruel voice all of Nemo’s own, if he hadn’t wanted to live for you when you were a baby, why would he believe you now? Especially now?
Especially now that Nemo and Appa fought more than they laughed together.
Especially now that Nemo wanted all the things that Appa was afraid of.
Especially now as Nemo drained him of his time, his energy, his money, because of Nemo’s expensive dreams and habits.
Maybe Nemo deserved to be left.
No. Nemo sniffed, lifting his head and rubbing at his cheeks. No, he didn’t-- and when he was a baby, he hadn’t deserved it either. And Appa didn’t deserve to die, just as his eomma should never been taken away. There was more to life, though, then all the things that had gone wrong. If Appa deserved to die, then Jun-ha wouldn’t have saved him. He was saved. He was saved for Nemo.
“Appa…” he warbled and crawled forward, the rough shore scraping his knees. He was just a dream, a barely-there wisp, but if Nemo didn’t try, then he had a feeling neither of them would ever leave here. Nemo didn’t have any other choice. “Appa, it’s me. It’s Nemo--Nam-min. It’s Nam-minnie. You have to wake up, Appa. You gotta go find me. I love you.” And now, in Korean-- “사랑해, Appa.Wake up--” And he reached out for his Appa’s hand.
MU-YEOL
Mu-yeol’s body ached with both pain and the need to be with his baby boy. Not yet, he’ll go to Nam-min after he stops crying, he told himself, he told Jun. Jun agreed and held his older brother and talked with him until they were laughing and Mu-yeol’s eyes weren’t red anymore.
At least, that was what really happened, in the forest in Korea, years ago.
There was a barely-there shifting in the grass that Mu-yeol wrote off as a beetle or cricket at first but the sounds...the sounds were a language, one that twenty-four year old Bae Mu-yeol didn’t actually speak, but inexplicably he understood even before the words switched to Korean.
Appa, wake up, Appa…
The touch of a hand on Mu-yeol’s startled him, his head jerked to the side to look over and see-
Jun-ha disappeared. Or maybe he didn’t, but there was nobody by this river except himself and - and in that instant, twenty-four year old Bae Mu-yeol knew everything and every face that thirty-eight year old Marlin Bae knew.
“Oh, oh god, oh god, no.” Marlin muttered, recognizing his son through the eyes of his twenty-four year old self. “No, no, you can’t be here, you’re not supposed to be here, you’re - you’re…”
And violently, Marlin Bae was thrown out of Bae Mu-Yeol’s body and was back in his bed in the Hollow in Swynlake, gasping for oxygen as if Marlin Bae had been the one who just drowned.
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