Mists of Celeste - an Ateez Fanfic

act six ➻ part one

chapter warnings: suicide is mentioned but not in detail, talks of death

...

You presume that hell is meant to be a miserable place full of horrible and awful things, but if you're being honest with yourself, that fate sounds much more enjoyable than the one you find yourself trapped in right now.

The first day spent on Jisung's ship goes about as smoothly as expected, and by that, you of course mean that you picked a fight with at least three different people — including the ones you recognized from Wooyoung's time on the very same ship who tortured him and San. And while you were quite literally held back from killing either of them by Jisung, you imagine they understood the extent of your fury given how one nursed a broken arm and the other earned himself a very broken nose that you hope doesn't heal normally. Given your "uncouth behavior" as Jisung put it, he said you were not allowed to leave his side as long as you planned on harming anyone and everyone in your vicinity.

Unfortunately for you, that included nighttime when he forced you to stay in his quarters throughout the night while he went off and celebrated his precious little victory with his crew members outside. You didn't get a wink of sleep that first night, not even after Jisung returned to the room and promptly fell asleep on the couch pushed into the corner of the room rather than joining you on the far too large mattress.

The second day offers much of the same atrocities, but at the very least, Jisung doesn't force you to leave the confines of his room and instead brings two meals that day — one in the morning, and a second in the late afternoon. It's almost amusing how he trusts you enough to give you a fork and knife alongside a spoon, things you could easily use as weapons, but he leaves almost immediately after delivering the food to you on the coffee table outside the bedroom. You're growing familiar with the room thanks to your night spent without an ounce of sleep. It's simple, just a square room attached to another square room meant to be the bedroom and a bathroom nestled behind that which contains a mirror you could easily break with a quick punch. He has a desk, some couches, chairs, a table here, three bookshelves there, some random memorabilia that looks to have little value in your eyes, and that's pretty much it. The items, while basic, add some layer of humanity to the man, as odd as it sounds.

He's just some guy.

That's what you learn to tell yourself every time he makes a sorry attempt at interacting with you.

He's just some guy. Hardly a man who held you under bloody waters and tried to end your life years ago.

Certainly not a man who sent an assassin to kill your former teammate simply because he didn't want you knowing the truth about what he did to you.

Kidnapped three of your crewmates, threatened murder and all sorts of less than pretty things, fully engaged in psychological torture on multiple occasions to get you to comply with his wishes.

If you think about those things, you feel more inclined to slit his throat, and it takes a great deal of restraint to remind yourself that you only need to suffer through this for a little more than a week, depending on how long it takes The Horizon to catch up to you. The tracking device Hongjoong gave you sits on the underside of the mirror in the bathroom, at the place where the glass pulls up a hair and doesn't fully stick to the wall.

On day three, Jisung asks if you're behaved enough to at least leave the room to walk around the ship some. You let him extend a hand in your direction when he thinks you aren't going to lash out, then you twist his arm and dislocate his elbow for good measure.

The way Jisung reacts to your aggressive behavior is probably the most peculiar thing you've noted while here. He cracked a smile when you yanked his arm out of place, then laughed as he pushed it back in as best he could before walking out the room with a simple 'I suppose not yet then'. It's unsettling at best and dehumanizing at worst. And while you aren't doing yourself any favors given how you're acting, he treats you with about the same amount of care and patience that a trainer does to a dog minus the punishments for bad behaviors.