[Fic] Gravity : 7/18
Jan. 19th, 2010 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotus_beautyTitle: Gravity
Author: LotusBeauty
Rating: R to NC-17
Pairings: Min+Su, Min+Kumi
Genre: AU, fantasy, romance/drama/emo (lots of emo)
Summary: Prequel to Feel and Redefine. This arc encompasses Changmin’s past; how he became a vampire and how he and Junsu met.
Notes: You don’t have to read the other two before you read this, but it would probably be a good idea to have some general vampire myths down.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never were.
Prologue
1: Cold
2: A Beautiful Lie
3: Haunted
4: Crawling
5: Away from the Sun
6: Daylight
Part 7: Right Where it Belongs
Junsu clawed up through his blankets and came awake with a gasp. He whipped his head back and forth and only saw the blackness of the hut.
“What is it?” Junghyun’s voice asked. Her hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, jerking away from the touch, expecting pain. He sighed as he realized where he was and saw the contours of her face from the moonlight through the window. He let his face fall into his hands and rubbed it, wishing he could scrub away what he’d seen. “What’s wrong?” she asked, carefully this time.
“I don’t know,” his voice came out as a whisper. “Must have been a nightmare.”
“Tell me,” she said softly.
He closed his eyes, trying to call the dream back, but couldn’t. “I only remember images. There was a man on a large chair, and he seemed very important.”
“A throne?”
“Yes, and he was holding a chain. Then I see books and maps and then I think paintings of landscape?” He shook his head and looked up at her. “What does that even mean?”
Junghyun shrugged and touched his shoulder, rubbing it gently. “It’s just a dream, or the meaning will come to you later.”
He nodded, but didn’t relate the image that frightened him the most. It wasn’t so much an image as a feeling of worthlessness and being trapped—wanting to die. He couldn’t fathom what it would take to make someone feel that way, but why did he feel it in the dream? He liked living with Junghyun, and she was honest with him. Usually dreams reflected life, and he’d never seen or felt these things in his life before. Or had he? “Could they be memories from when I was in the hospital?”
“It’s possible,” she replied with a slight shrug. “Though I’m not sure there would be a throne or any maps…” she trailed off as her eyes took on a more pensive quality.
“What is it?” he asked, hoping she had a theory.
“It’s nothing.” She shook her head and smiled. “Would you like to go back to sleep, or go hunt?” She glanced up through the window. “The moon looks to be at a decent height.”
“You go on if you want. I’ll sleep.” Junsu waited as she climbed out of the bed they shared.
“Don’t wait up for me,” she said with a wink, and was gone just as fast.
Junsu shifted to lean back on the wall that the side of the bed was against. He drew his knees up to rest his chin on them and wrapped his arms around them. He had wanted to ask Junghyun more, but he couldn’t tell her much more. He really wanted to ask if they were part of his power. He had been living with Junghyun for the better part of a year and while he normally had dreams, he’d never had a nightmare like this.
The images were foreign to him. Like she said, there wasn’t a possibility for a hospital to have a throne, and from what she’d told him, he had been living in Korea. He didn’t recognize anything he’d seen as being from Korea. But the books were definitely foreign. They had Chinese characters on them and Junsu wondered if he was having some sort of premonition. What it meant though, he would never understand. Maybe he could tell Junghyun the details when she returned.
Junghyun—Junsu sighed. They shared a bed and while he’d figured out what ‘sharing a bed’ meant while they were in the village, the only reason they shared it was to sleep. For the humans, they were masquerading as a married couple, and he’d overheard many things just by being there—how lucky Junghyun was to have Junsu, and how beautiful Junghyun was. And she was very beautiful, but…
Junsu felt his cheeks grow hot, something Junghyun hadn’t seen a vampire do before. She swore she’d never seen a vampire blush until she met Junsu. Then again, she’d never met a vampire who had vague memories of his past and wasn’t attracted to her. It made him a bit sad to know this, as she was attractive and everything a man could want. He found himself attracted to the young men in the village and wanted nothing more than to keep this fact to himself for the rest of his days. He couldn’t even bring himself to tell Junghyun, even though he had a feeling she would be more than understanding. She assumed that Junsu saw her as his mentor, and nothing more. This was true, so he went along with it, but he wished he had the courage to tell her where his real preferences lie.
Along with this, his own behavior made him different in a way. Junsu had never lived a human life before being turned into a vampire, or at least not one he could remember, so he didn’t really miss things that he could do as a human. He still acted like one, and this often amused Junghyun or made her smile. She told him that she liked being around someone that understood her, yet still had the ability to be human and feel curiosity and wonder at everything they learned. It was a compliment, and Junsu took it to heart. But while she liked the way he acted, she told him if he met other vampires, it was best to stay guarded.
Junsu pushed the entire affair from his mind and leaned his head back against the wall to meditate. Thinking too much would only make him want to get up, and he liked sleeping, even if, as a vampire, he didn’t have to. Once he’d calmed himself, Junsu slid himself under the blankets and let himself drift off to sleep.
And life went on.
Junsu did mention some of the details to the dream, but Junghyun suggested he wait to see if he have more before jumping to conclusions about the meanings of each item. Over the next year, Junsu had more dreams, but they all seemed normal, and half the time, he never even mentioned them to Junghyun. All the while, they lived life as normal—well, as normal as they could anyway.
As the months went by, Junghyun taught Junsu more things. She’d taught him to speak the language of the people in their area immediately after his change and he’d it picked up far more quickly than he thought someone should. Already being immersed in the culture helped him absorb all that there was. So she also taught him better Korean grammar and writing, because he needed it, and with it, Chinese writing to be able to read more.
“You should keep a journal,” she suggested one day as he wrote out vocabulary.
“You think so?” he cocked his head to the side as he thought. “What would I write in it?”
She hummed thoughtfully. “Lots of people write activities in their day they want to remember. I’ve heard about people writing down their dreams too.”
Dreams. Junsu sat up straighter at this. “That sounds interesting. Why dreams?” he asked casually.
Junghyun shrugged. “People think they show symbols about the inner self, and others think they show the future.”
Future—Junsu repeated the word in his mind as he pondered this idea. “They make books with blank paper?”
Junghyun smiled. “We could make one.”
~*~
Junsu liked the idea of having a journal to write down his personal thoughts. The night Junghyun suggested he start the journal, he began to have odd dreams again. As soon as they finished making a book for him, Junsu began to write what he could remember from his dreams. They were all manner of different things, and he sometimes wondered what the machines in some of his dreams were for and how they were made. A month after the clearer dreams came to him, he saw the man he’d dreamed about sitting on the throne before, but instead of that man being the center of his dream, it was another. About once a week, this second man appeared in his dreams. Sometimes the first man would be there, but often times he wasn’t. And while he could now see the dreams clear, he couldn’t hear anything going on with the images. One thing was clear to him though—this young man he was dreaming about was in pain.
For a while, he called them nightmares, but as the young man recurred in them, it was obvious they were more. He was seeing everything that happened to the young man, but wished he couldn’t. He was put through pain and humiliated, and yet would deal with it only to be hurt again. And Junsu couldn’t do a thing but watch it happen. He felt useless just letting things go on without being able to stop them. He wasn’t sure what to do besides write them down so if he found a way to change things, he might go back and find out what the young man needed healed.
Finally, one morning, he was cleaning one of the cups he’d used when he felt it—the fog. His senses began to cloud and before he could even say a word, it smashed into him, leaving him helpless to watch the events unfold. It was the young man again, and the other who had been in the throne. While Junsu was almost used to the other man beating the young man, and mocking him, he wasn’t ready to see the other violate the young man in a way he’d never wanted to see. Junghyun had been more than gracious to teach him about sex, and when he’d admitted he was attracted to men, she’d laughed and openly explained it all to him. This was nothing like she’d described about two people being passionate and loving. This was destructive and agonizing. While watching it was horrible, feeling it was even worse and increased the pain tenfold. He knew the young man hated every minute as he pretended to enjoy it. Anger and hate radiated from his very core as Junsu tried to understand why.
Everything went black before the real world slammed into him and he saw the floor coming toward him. Junsu caught himself on his hands and knees as he noticed he was sobbing, and didn’t even bother to stop. Why did have to witness it? Why? And then he realized—the fog—it was back. Fear made him shake and he knew he couldn’t escape it forever. It was back to claim him and he wouldn’t be able to live again. What was he supposed to do?
Junsu couldn’t keep quiet anymore. But how would he tell Junghyun? He was so disturbed, he sat in the corner of the hut resting his forehead on his knees. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep, because the images kept coming back when he would close his eyes—images he would rather not see.
Junghyun was shocked to find him sitting there when she returned from hunting. She crouched down to ask what was bothering him and Junsu found himself spilling everything out all at once, babbling incoherently at her about the dreams, all the things he’d seen and particularly about the young man that kept appearing. He didn’t even know how to describe his vision that morning to her, but forced himself to, and the word she said explained it with deadly accuracy.
“Rape,” she said quietly as he glanced away. “The other man raped him.”
“Why do people do that?” Junsu couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper as he felt tears run down his cheeks. “He didn’t even fight back.”
“The one wants to prove his dominance over the other, and that’s why he does it. Maybe he thinks or knows he can’t fight back. Maybe he has revenge planned…” She trailed off as Junsu shook his head.
“I can feel some of what he’s feeling. He’s scared! Every time! And then the image today comes and he takes it, and plays along. I don’t understand why!” He curled his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. “And why am I so angry? It scares me that this affects me so much. And I’m scared Junghyun! The fog hit me so hard before this happened. It’s coming back!”
“Emotional transfer,” she murmured.
“What?” Junsu blinked and wiped at his cheeks. “But—”
“You’re getting emotional transfer from what you’re seeing, which means it must have to do with your power. You either have farsight or foresight.”
“What does that mean?” He didn’t understand what she was talking about.
Junghyun shifted to sit down cross legged in front of him and asked for him to do the same. She took his hands and held them loosely. “Farsight is when you see things happening a distance away, but they’re happening at the same moment you’re in. For instance, say you wanted to see if an army was advancing from over a ridge, but didn’t want them to see you’d sent a scout. You have a farseer use their power to tell you.”
“Ah.” Junsu nodded. “And foresight is…?”
“Seeing the future,” she said simply.
Junsu stared at her. “The future—you’re joking, right?”
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but she fought it. “It’s no joke, Junsu. Foresight might be what you have.”
He sighed. “I doubt it, with my feeling everything that is happening.”
“You can still get emotional transfer when the feeling is intense. We will figure it out.”
“How?”
“You and I are going to meditate, and by testing what you can do, we should be able to tell which you have. Both can be a bit dangerous to use, but with the proper training and precautions, I believe you can figure out how to master the power without it ruling you, the way it did when you were a human.” She smiled and he felt better about having her helping him.
“When do we start?” he asked quietly, scared to use his power again.
“We should start as soon as possible.” She confirmed with a nod.
“I don’t want to see that again,” his voice was at a whisper.
“I’m sorry, but the faster you get it under control, the more you can decide what you see when, and how much you see and feel.” She squeezed his hands.
“But.. the fog… I don’t want it coming back,” he murmured as fear gripped him again and she patted his hands with one of her own, the gesture calming him a bit.
“The fog is a warning that it is coming. That it is going to fill your vision with what the power has chosen for you to see. You need to start training so that you can control that part of the power to try to view what you want to. Eventually, you might be able to see more than one possible future. If you don’t want the emotional transfer, I believe you can keep it from affecting you as well.”
“How do you know all of this?” he asked as he felt a little frown tug his eyebrows together.
“A friend of mine had a weak form of foresight. She could only see a few hours before something would happen, and it had to be something or someone near her. There were times when she would get intense visions, but these were always few and far between.” She squeezed his hands again. “From what you’ve told me, yours is far more powerful than hers. I understand that the things you will see might be painful, but sometimes, we all see things we wish that we could just forget.”
As her voice grew quieter, Junsu understood that he wasn’t the only one who had seen painful things. He squeezed her hands back and gave her a hopeful smile. “I don’t even know this man, but I want to help him somehow.”
“If you master your power, you can help him. You don’t have anything to lose by trying,” she offered.
“Then I will try.”
~*~
Learning about a new skill was always easy, but training and honing it took time. And lots and lots of patience. It was a good thing that they had plenty of time. Junsu was unable to control the visions at all for the next year. Mostly they came to him in dreams and he would write down anything he could remember from them. He would show them to Junghyun who would discuss them with him weekly. Though some dreams were outlandish and didn’t make sense to either of them. Others seemed to feature symbols that Junghyun would try to understand, Junsu found these dreams useless as the symbols could often mean many different things, and they didn’t know what those meanings were until the event came to pass. A dream that Junsu had thought featured three random symbols that had nothing to do with one another actually hit him when they’d heard a woman in the village had a stillborn child. Hearing the things that the women mentioned about the family, it was then Junsu realized why those three things actually had a connection. When they were returning home, he mentioned this to Junghyun who then agreed that dreams of symbols were useless to try to interpret without being open about the meanings, and having more control over his gift.
It was then they went forward with the idea that Junsu had foresight. The symbols hadn’t made any sense until a month later when the miscarriage occurred, so it was the safest conclusion. From there, Junghyun suggested Junsu concentrate specifically on the area they lived in. She had him target a particular area of the forest that they knew to flood in the spring, the child of a family they chose at random in the village, and a cat that would visit their hut from time to time. Each day, during his meditation, Junsu would clear his mind before concentrating on one of the three. He added a fourth as Junghyun a few months later, to see if he could sense when she would do a particular thing or return, because she would usually leave to hunt while Junsu meditated.
Eventually, Junsu started to see disjointed images and feelings about each of the objects he had chosen. The more familiar he was with it, the more he could see, though not necessarily understand. So, when he went into the village market, Junsu would greet the little boy so that the boy would know who he was. It was months later when Junsu was concentrating on the forest area when an image of the cat came into his mind.
Opening his eyes in surprise, Junsu frowned and sat back for a moment. He was usually so good with his meditation, he didn’t understand why the cat would appear. He pulled his journal off of the small table next to the bed and began to write what he’d seen. Not ten minutes later, he heard a nyaaaoo and looked up in surprise at the image he’d seen in his mind of the cat in the doorway. He stared as the cat watched him and cocked its head to the side curiously.
Had he…no… There was no way he’d just predicted this, had he? Junsu coaxed the cat over and it climbed into his lap without a care and purred as he ran his hands over its back. He had to tell Junghyun about this. Would she be excited? He was starting for feel excited. Then again, he hadn’t really predicted it as it had interrupted one of his meditation sessions. But it hadn’t hit him like other visions had in the past. Maybe the meditation and training was helping.
“Back for more, is he?” Junghyun asked as she entered the hut with a smile.
“Mm,” Junsu nodded and let the cat leave his lap. “I saw him come to the door.”
“Oh?” Junghyun leaned down to pick the cat up and pet him.
“Before he came to the door.”
She looked like she might drop the cat as she stared at him. “You predicted it?”
Junsu nodded. “But it was when I was concentrating on the forest area that floods.”
A thoughtful expression appeared as she scratched the cat behind his ear. “The cat is familiar to you though, so it was one of the only things that could interrupt you, maybe?”
Junsu slumped back against the wall. “I thought I was improving, but I’m not sure.”
“You haven’t had the clouds hit you for months. And your dreams about the young man have changed to once every two weeks, and you are having normal dreams half of the week. I think you are getting better, even if you can’t see it. A powerful gift is hard to control. Yours must be powerful to let you see the things you are seeing.”
He sighed and rubbed his head that was now starting to throb. “I’m starting to get headaches though. If I meditate for too long, they come.”
“You strain your body with your power, and you haven’t fed. You should go and I will stay with the cat and read your notes,” she suggested as she moved closer to crouch before him. “You can’t learn everything in a day, Junsu. It will get easier as you practice, but don’t overdo it.” She smiled a little then, and he frowned at her. “My friend who I said had a weaker power than you. She tried to find her own death in the future. She wanted to know if she would ever be at peace.”
“And?” he asked warily.
Junghyun smiled as she glanced away in amusement. “She may have been a vampire, but she bent her power too much and awoke to a two day headache that made her extremely sensitive to light.” Junghyun chuckled as Junsu snorted. “You will get better little by little. To be honest, foresight is a very difficult power to control to begin with, because it flows with time and the choices we make.”
“Choices?” he asked as she sat next to him against the wall.
“Yes, depending on what a person chooses to do, or how an event transpires, determines how the future will go,” she explained as the cat vocalized its dislike of her ignoring him.
“So, my decision to go out and hunt could affect what happens in other areas, correct?”
“Exactly.” Junghyun nodded as she petted the cat. “Which is why I told you to concentrate on two objects, and an event. You watch the boy to see his decisions, as well as the cat. And if you can, predict when the flood will hit the forest, so that we can understand how far in advance you get warning, or if you can tell when it will hit.”
“And the decisions, they branch off like branches in a tree?” he asked.
“I would suppose it would be something like that? Maybe pick the option that seems most likely, or feels like the most likely for the object to choose. I am sure a person would have positions they lean toward more than others and that might show in your visions.”
Junsu pondered over this as he thought about hunting. It might be like cheating, but he could try it out. “Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind for my next try tomorrow.” He said his goodbyes and went out to do his hunt and decided that today, he would try to anticipate the animal’s choices so he could kill it quicker.
It never hurt to at least try.
The hunt went better than expected. Anticipating the animal’s move, Junsu had an image come to him that helped him avoid an attack and make a counterattack of his own that got him his meal. Feeling victorious, yet a bit bad about cheating, he made his way back to tell Junghyun.
He stopped at the edge of the trees when he saw her talking to a man. Somehow, he almost looked familiar to Junsu. The man was leaving and waved to her as he walked away on the path to the west. Junsu waited in the trees until Junghyun wandered toward the hut. Only then did he step out to meet her.
“A new friend?” Junsu asked when in earshot.
“Ah, an old one.” She smiled. “How was the hunt?”
Junsu grinned then. “Delicious.”
~***~
man, tomorrow is my 6th work day in a row T__T; anyone have fic requests? i thought of a really emo series and i'm not sure i wanna do it >>; need plotbunnies ;-;
Part 8
Author: LotusBeauty
Rating: R to NC-17
Pairings: Min+Su, Min+Kumi
Genre: AU, fantasy, romance/drama/emo (lots of emo)
Summary: Prequel to Feel and Redefine. This arc encompasses Changmin’s past; how he became a vampire and how he and Junsu met.
Notes: You don’t have to read the other two before you read this, but it would probably be a good idea to have some general vampire myths down.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never were.
Prologue
1: Cold
2: A Beautiful Lie
3: Haunted
4: Crawling
5: Away from the Sun
6: Daylight
Part 7: Right Where it Belongs
Junsu clawed up through his blankets and came awake with a gasp. He whipped his head back and forth and only saw the blackness of the hut.
“What is it?” Junghyun’s voice asked. Her hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, jerking away from the touch, expecting pain. He sighed as he realized where he was and saw the contours of her face from the moonlight through the window. He let his face fall into his hands and rubbed it, wishing he could scrub away what he’d seen. “What’s wrong?” she asked, carefully this time.
“I don’t know,” his voice came out as a whisper. “Must have been a nightmare.”
“Tell me,” she said softly.
He closed his eyes, trying to call the dream back, but couldn’t. “I only remember images. There was a man on a large chair, and he seemed very important.”
“A throne?”
“Yes, and he was holding a chain. Then I see books and maps and then I think paintings of landscape?” He shook his head and looked up at her. “What does that even mean?”
Junghyun shrugged and touched his shoulder, rubbing it gently. “It’s just a dream, or the meaning will come to you later.”
He nodded, but didn’t relate the image that frightened him the most. It wasn’t so much an image as a feeling of worthlessness and being trapped—wanting to die. He couldn’t fathom what it would take to make someone feel that way, but why did he feel it in the dream? He liked living with Junghyun, and she was honest with him. Usually dreams reflected life, and he’d never seen or felt these things in his life before. Or had he? “Could they be memories from when I was in the hospital?”
“It’s possible,” she replied with a slight shrug. “Though I’m not sure there would be a throne or any maps…” she trailed off as her eyes took on a more pensive quality.
“What is it?” he asked, hoping she had a theory.
“It’s nothing.” She shook her head and smiled. “Would you like to go back to sleep, or go hunt?” She glanced up through the window. “The moon looks to be at a decent height.”
“You go on if you want. I’ll sleep.” Junsu waited as she climbed out of the bed they shared.
“Don’t wait up for me,” she said with a wink, and was gone just as fast.
Junsu shifted to lean back on the wall that the side of the bed was against. He drew his knees up to rest his chin on them and wrapped his arms around them. He had wanted to ask Junghyun more, but he couldn’t tell her much more. He really wanted to ask if they were part of his power. He had been living with Junghyun for the better part of a year and while he normally had dreams, he’d never had a nightmare like this.
The images were foreign to him. Like she said, there wasn’t a possibility for a hospital to have a throne, and from what she’d told him, he had been living in Korea. He didn’t recognize anything he’d seen as being from Korea. But the books were definitely foreign. They had Chinese characters on them and Junsu wondered if he was having some sort of premonition. What it meant though, he would never understand. Maybe he could tell Junghyun the details when she returned.
Junghyun—Junsu sighed. They shared a bed and while he’d figured out what ‘sharing a bed’ meant while they were in the village, the only reason they shared it was to sleep. For the humans, they were masquerading as a married couple, and he’d overheard many things just by being there—how lucky Junghyun was to have Junsu, and how beautiful Junghyun was. And she was very beautiful, but…
Junsu felt his cheeks grow hot, something Junghyun hadn’t seen a vampire do before. She swore she’d never seen a vampire blush until she met Junsu. Then again, she’d never met a vampire who had vague memories of his past and wasn’t attracted to her. It made him a bit sad to know this, as she was attractive and everything a man could want. He found himself attracted to the young men in the village and wanted nothing more than to keep this fact to himself for the rest of his days. He couldn’t even bring himself to tell Junghyun, even though he had a feeling she would be more than understanding. She assumed that Junsu saw her as his mentor, and nothing more. This was true, so he went along with it, but he wished he had the courage to tell her where his real preferences lie.
Along with this, his own behavior made him different in a way. Junsu had never lived a human life before being turned into a vampire, or at least not one he could remember, so he didn’t really miss things that he could do as a human. He still acted like one, and this often amused Junghyun or made her smile. She told him that she liked being around someone that understood her, yet still had the ability to be human and feel curiosity and wonder at everything they learned. It was a compliment, and Junsu took it to heart. But while she liked the way he acted, she told him if he met other vampires, it was best to stay guarded.
Junsu pushed the entire affair from his mind and leaned his head back against the wall to meditate. Thinking too much would only make him want to get up, and he liked sleeping, even if, as a vampire, he didn’t have to. Once he’d calmed himself, Junsu slid himself under the blankets and let himself drift off to sleep.
And life went on.
Junsu did mention some of the details to the dream, but Junghyun suggested he wait to see if he have more before jumping to conclusions about the meanings of each item. Over the next year, Junsu had more dreams, but they all seemed normal, and half the time, he never even mentioned them to Junghyun. All the while, they lived life as normal—well, as normal as they could anyway.
As the months went by, Junghyun taught Junsu more things. She’d taught him to speak the language of the people in their area immediately after his change and he’d it picked up far more quickly than he thought someone should. Already being immersed in the culture helped him absorb all that there was. So she also taught him better Korean grammar and writing, because he needed it, and with it, Chinese writing to be able to read more.
“You should keep a journal,” she suggested one day as he wrote out vocabulary.
“You think so?” he cocked his head to the side as he thought. “What would I write in it?”
She hummed thoughtfully. “Lots of people write activities in their day they want to remember. I’ve heard about people writing down their dreams too.”
Dreams. Junsu sat up straighter at this. “That sounds interesting. Why dreams?” he asked casually.
Junghyun shrugged. “People think they show symbols about the inner self, and others think they show the future.”
Future—Junsu repeated the word in his mind as he pondered this idea. “They make books with blank paper?”
Junghyun smiled. “We could make one.”
~*~
Junsu liked the idea of having a journal to write down his personal thoughts. The night Junghyun suggested he start the journal, he began to have odd dreams again. As soon as they finished making a book for him, Junsu began to write what he could remember from his dreams. They were all manner of different things, and he sometimes wondered what the machines in some of his dreams were for and how they were made. A month after the clearer dreams came to him, he saw the man he’d dreamed about sitting on the throne before, but instead of that man being the center of his dream, it was another. About once a week, this second man appeared in his dreams. Sometimes the first man would be there, but often times he wasn’t. And while he could now see the dreams clear, he couldn’t hear anything going on with the images. One thing was clear to him though—this young man he was dreaming about was in pain.
For a while, he called them nightmares, but as the young man recurred in them, it was obvious they were more. He was seeing everything that happened to the young man, but wished he couldn’t. He was put through pain and humiliated, and yet would deal with it only to be hurt again. And Junsu couldn’t do a thing but watch it happen. He felt useless just letting things go on without being able to stop them. He wasn’t sure what to do besides write them down so if he found a way to change things, he might go back and find out what the young man needed healed.
Finally, one morning, he was cleaning one of the cups he’d used when he felt it—the fog. His senses began to cloud and before he could even say a word, it smashed into him, leaving him helpless to watch the events unfold. It was the young man again, and the other who had been in the throne. While Junsu was almost used to the other man beating the young man, and mocking him, he wasn’t ready to see the other violate the young man in a way he’d never wanted to see. Junghyun had been more than gracious to teach him about sex, and when he’d admitted he was attracted to men, she’d laughed and openly explained it all to him. This was nothing like she’d described about two people being passionate and loving. This was destructive and agonizing. While watching it was horrible, feeling it was even worse and increased the pain tenfold. He knew the young man hated every minute as he pretended to enjoy it. Anger and hate radiated from his very core as Junsu tried to understand why.
Everything went black before the real world slammed into him and he saw the floor coming toward him. Junsu caught himself on his hands and knees as he noticed he was sobbing, and didn’t even bother to stop. Why did have to witness it? Why? And then he realized—the fog—it was back. Fear made him shake and he knew he couldn’t escape it forever. It was back to claim him and he wouldn’t be able to live again. What was he supposed to do?
Junsu couldn’t keep quiet anymore. But how would he tell Junghyun? He was so disturbed, he sat in the corner of the hut resting his forehead on his knees. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep, because the images kept coming back when he would close his eyes—images he would rather not see.
Junghyun was shocked to find him sitting there when she returned from hunting. She crouched down to ask what was bothering him and Junsu found himself spilling everything out all at once, babbling incoherently at her about the dreams, all the things he’d seen and particularly about the young man that kept appearing. He didn’t even know how to describe his vision that morning to her, but forced himself to, and the word she said explained it with deadly accuracy.
“Rape,” she said quietly as he glanced away. “The other man raped him.”
“Why do people do that?” Junsu couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper as he felt tears run down his cheeks. “He didn’t even fight back.”
“The one wants to prove his dominance over the other, and that’s why he does it. Maybe he thinks or knows he can’t fight back. Maybe he has revenge planned…” She trailed off as Junsu shook his head.
“I can feel some of what he’s feeling. He’s scared! Every time! And then the image today comes and he takes it, and plays along. I don’t understand why!” He curled his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. “And why am I so angry? It scares me that this affects me so much. And I’m scared Junghyun! The fog hit me so hard before this happened. It’s coming back!”
“Emotional transfer,” she murmured.
“What?” Junsu blinked and wiped at his cheeks. “But—”
“You’re getting emotional transfer from what you’re seeing, which means it must have to do with your power. You either have farsight or foresight.”
“What does that mean?” He didn’t understand what she was talking about.
Junghyun shifted to sit down cross legged in front of him and asked for him to do the same. She took his hands and held them loosely. “Farsight is when you see things happening a distance away, but they’re happening at the same moment you’re in. For instance, say you wanted to see if an army was advancing from over a ridge, but didn’t want them to see you’d sent a scout. You have a farseer use their power to tell you.”
“Ah.” Junsu nodded. “And foresight is…?”
“Seeing the future,” she said simply.
Junsu stared at her. “The future—you’re joking, right?”
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but she fought it. “It’s no joke, Junsu. Foresight might be what you have.”
He sighed. “I doubt it, with my feeling everything that is happening.”
“You can still get emotional transfer when the feeling is intense. We will figure it out.”
“How?”
“You and I are going to meditate, and by testing what you can do, we should be able to tell which you have. Both can be a bit dangerous to use, but with the proper training and precautions, I believe you can figure out how to master the power without it ruling you, the way it did when you were a human.” She smiled and he felt better about having her helping him.
“When do we start?” he asked quietly, scared to use his power again.
“We should start as soon as possible.” She confirmed with a nod.
“I don’t want to see that again,” his voice was at a whisper.
“I’m sorry, but the faster you get it under control, the more you can decide what you see when, and how much you see and feel.” She squeezed his hands.
“But.. the fog… I don’t want it coming back,” he murmured as fear gripped him again and she patted his hands with one of her own, the gesture calming him a bit.
“The fog is a warning that it is coming. That it is going to fill your vision with what the power has chosen for you to see. You need to start training so that you can control that part of the power to try to view what you want to. Eventually, you might be able to see more than one possible future. If you don’t want the emotional transfer, I believe you can keep it from affecting you as well.”
“How do you know all of this?” he asked as he felt a little frown tug his eyebrows together.
“A friend of mine had a weak form of foresight. She could only see a few hours before something would happen, and it had to be something or someone near her. There were times when she would get intense visions, but these were always few and far between.” She squeezed his hands again. “From what you’ve told me, yours is far more powerful than hers. I understand that the things you will see might be painful, but sometimes, we all see things we wish that we could just forget.”
As her voice grew quieter, Junsu understood that he wasn’t the only one who had seen painful things. He squeezed her hands back and gave her a hopeful smile. “I don’t even know this man, but I want to help him somehow.”
“If you master your power, you can help him. You don’t have anything to lose by trying,” she offered.
“Then I will try.”
~*~
Learning about a new skill was always easy, but training and honing it took time. And lots and lots of patience. It was a good thing that they had plenty of time. Junsu was unable to control the visions at all for the next year. Mostly they came to him in dreams and he would write down anything he could remember from them. He would show them to Junghyun who would discuss them with him weekly. Though some dreams were outlandish and didn’t make sense to either of them. Others seemed to feature symbols that Junghyun would try to understand, Junsu found these dreams useless as the symbols could often mean many different things, and they didn’t know what those meanings were until the event came to pass. A dream that Junsu had thought featured three random symbols that had nothing to do with one another actually hit him when they’d heard a woman in the village had a stillborn child. Hearing the things that the women mentioned about the family, it was then Junsu realized why those three things actually had a connection. When they were returning home, he mentioned this to Junghyun who then agreed that dreams of symbols were useless to try to interpret without being open about the meanings, and having more control over his gift.
It was then they went forward with the idea that Junsu had foresight. The symbols hadn’t made any sense until a month later when the miscarriage occurred, so it was the safest conclusion. From there, Junghyun suggested Junsu concentrate specifically on the area they lived in. She had him target a particular area of the forest that they knew to flood in the spring, the child of a family they chose at random in the village, and a cat that would visit their hut from time to time. Each day, during his meditation, Junsu would clear his mind before concentrating on one of the three. He added a fourth as Junghyun a few months later, to see if he could sense when she would do a particular thing or return, because she would usually leave to hunt while Junsu meditated.
Eventually, Junsu started to see disjointed images and feelings about each of the objects he had chosen. The more familiar he was with it, the more he could see, though not necessarily understand. So, when he went into the village market, Junsu would greet the little boy so that the boy would know who he was. It was months later when Junsu was concentrating on the forest area when an image of the cat came into his mind.
Opening his eyes in surprise, Junsu frowned and sat back for a moment. He was usually so good with his meditation, he didn’t understand why the cat would appear. He pulled his journal off of the small table next to the bed and began to write what he’d seen. Not ten minutes later, he heard a nyaaaoo and looked up in surprise at the image he’d seen in his mind of the cat in the doorway. He stared as the cat watched him and cocked its head to the side curiously.
Had he…no… There was no way he’d just predicted this, had he? Junsu coaxed the cat over and it climbed into his lap without a care and purred as he ran his hands over its back. He had to tell Junghyun about this. Would she be excited? He was starting for feel excited. Then again, he hadn’t really predicted it as it had interrupted one of his meditation sessions. But it hadn’t hit him like other visions had in the past. Maybe the meditation and training was helping.
“Back for more, is he?” Junghyun asked as she entered the hut with a smile.
“Mm,” Junsu nodded and let the cat leave his lap. “I saw him come to the door.”
“Oh?” Junghyun leaned down to pick the cat up and pet him.
“Before he came to the door.”
She looked like she might drop the cat as she stared at him. “You predicted it?”
Junsu nodded. “But it was when I was concentrating on the forest area that floods.”
A thoughtful expression appeared as she scratched the cat behind his ear. “The cat is familiar to you though, so it was one of the only things that could interrupt you, maybe?”
Junsu slumped back against the wall. “I thought I was improving, but I’m not sure.”
“You haven’t had the clouds hit you for months. And your dreams about the young man have changed to once every two weeks, and you are having normal dreams half of the week. I think you are getting better, even if you can’t see it. A powerful gift is hard to control. Yours must be powerful to let you see the things you are seeing.”
He sighed and rubbed his head that was now starting to throb. “I’m starting to get headaches though. If I meditate for too long, they come.”
“You strain your body with your power, and you haven’t fed. You should go and I will stay with the cat and read your notes,” she suggested as she moved closer to crouch before him. “You can’t learn everything in a day, Junsu. It will get easier as you practice, but don’t overdo it.” She smiled a little then, and he frowned at her. “My friend who I said had a weaker power than you. She tried to find her own death in the future. She wanted to know if she would ever be at peace.”
“And?” he asked warily.
Junghyun smiled as she glanced away in amusement. “She may have been a vampire, but she bent her power too much and awoke to a two day headache that made her extremely sensitive to light.” Junghyun chuckled as Junsu snorted. “You will get better little by little. To be honest, foresight is a very difficult power to control to begin with, because it flows with time and the choices we make.”
“Choices?” he asked as she sat next to him against the wall.
“Yes, depending on what a person chooses to do, or how an event transpires, determines how the future will go,” she explained as the cat vocalized its dislike of her ignoring him.
“So, my decision to go out and hunt could affect what happens in other areas, correct?”
“Exactly.” Junghyun nodded as she petted the cat. “Which is why I told you to concentrate on two objects, and an event. You watch the boy to see his decisions, as well as the cat. And if you can, predict when the flood will hit the forest, so that we can understand how far in advance you get warning, or if you can tell when it will hit.”
“And the decisions, they branch off like branches in a tree?” he asked.
“I would suppose it would be something like that? Maybe pick the option that seems most likely, or feels like the most likely for the object to choose. I am sure a person would have positions they lean toward more than others and that might show in your visions.”
Junsu pondered over this as he thought about hunting. It might be like cheating, but he could try it out. “Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind for my next try tomorrow.” He said his goodbyes and went out to do his hunt and decided that today, he would try to anticipate the animal’s choices so he could kill it quicker.
It never hurt to at least try.
The hunt went better than expected. Anticipating the animal’s move, Junsu had an image come to him that helped him avoid an attack and make a counterattack of his own that got him his meal. Feeling victorious, yet a bit bad about cheating, he made his way back to tell Junghyun.
He stopped at the edge of the trees when he saw her talking to a man. Somehow, he almost looked familiar to Junsu. The man was leaving and waved to her as he walked away on the path to the west. Junsu waited in the trees until Junghyun wandered toward the hut. Only then did he step out to meet her.
“A new friend?” Junsu asked when in earshot.
“Ah, an old one.” She smiled. “How was the hunt?”
Junsu grinned then. “Delicious.”
~***~
man, tomorrow is my 6th work day in a row T__T; anyone have fic requests? i thought of a really emo series and i'm not sure i wanna do it >>; need plotbunnies ;-;
Part 8
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-19 10:14 am (UTC):D
you updated thankyou! im really excited for junsu to actually start searching for changmin! this is get really intersting!
damnn 6th work day. where do you work? must be tiring :(
as for fic requests *smiles sneakily
i always loved the go ara/changmin couple- but there's never enough fics for them :( but HOMIN FTW :D
maybe you can..? :D :D
and EMO!SERIES!! KUDOS TO THAT! >:D
no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 07:14 am (UTC)ah i have no idea who go ara is so... yeah XD;;
i'll have to think of a plot for homin. i finished a short jaemin last night because i finally thought of a few plots and stuck pairings to them, so i'll see what i can do XDv
no subject
Date: 2010-01-19 05:14 pm (UTC)/in serious withdrawal
I LOVE THIS!~!!!
Poor Su...having to watch Kame...T^T
no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 07:16 am (UTC)yeah, watching kame isn't exactly fun T__T;
no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 07:17 pm (UTC)/flails
T^T-poor Su...and poor Min~!!!!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-19 09:08 pm (UTC)update quickly!! Junsu has to help Changmin!! :DD
no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 07:17 am (UTC)he'll get there eventually 8D;;
no subject
Date: 2010-01-19 11:49 pm (UTC)Haha, I love how you described Junsu's gift ^^ And how he was getting visions of Changmin ^^ I hope Changmin get's away soon >.>
Fic request wise, can't think of anything >.> and anything I would request would probably be Min focused (or MinSu, I have a very obvious bias >.> LOL)
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the next chapter ^^
no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 07:17 am (UTC)lol, minsu... well, you'll get that eventually in this fic ;Dv
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 07:18 am (UTC)