Iris field • woosan

Ten.

A/N

Before we start, I would like to thank you all for arriving here with me. This story meant a lot to me, I started this journey when my best friend and I talked about this possible woosan fiction, we talked about it all night thinking at how amazing would it be if someone had written it so... I thought I could do it and I started it. I didn't expect so many of you to support me once again and every star and comment that I got meant a lot to me.

I have to thank two authors too that were my main 'muses' for many of the scenes that you read and are going to read: they're both on ao3 under the nicknames "guiltyparties" (with the ff "In degrees") and "iOAnnabella" (with the ff "Penance"), so far those two are my favorite and I recommend all their works 'cause they really reached my heart with their words like no other story could!

Last but not less important: big thanks to my main editor, my sister Inevitabilmente_Dea that even if she doesn't stan Ateez (she couldn't even pronounce Wooyoung's name at the beginning lol) read all the chapters and helped me with the development and grammar.

While reading this one (or before you do so) I recommend to listen to Iris by Goo Goo Dolls that was another great inspiration for this story. Okay I'm done, now let's resume from where we had stopped in chapter nine...

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Wooyoung couldn't really remember what had happened during the last few hours. Fragments of moments, that's all he had: chattering voices, eyes staring, the cold feeling of white tiles under his fingers, screams and lights flickering as the car moved in the silent night. All those moments kept mixing inside of his head, meaningless, like he had never really lived them. Only one scene stayed clearly before his eyes, he could picture it perfectly, indelible and painful: he remembered the sudden gunshot, how he had jumped scared by the unexpected noise without really realizing what had happened until his eyes fell on San's shirt.

Panic. It was all he could feel, any other emotion inside of him disappearing to something deeper, heavier that took the air out of his lungs as he launched himself forward to catch San falling body between his arms. And then it came the blood, so much Wooyoung couldn't believe it all came from San's body and it kept spilling, over San's clothes, on his hands and jacket, on the cold and now sticky floor. And that feeling intensified making him feel like he was suffocating when they entered that weird abandoned building. They locked the door and San started screaming, every yell tearing pieces of Wooyoung's heart apart. A heart he would have willingly ripped out of his chest and offered to San if it meant he could stop all his agony. But he was useless.

Once again he had found himself powerless, confined on a dirty plastic chair outside of a room he wished he could have entered but he couldn't. But then that door opened and his body found new awareness, rescuing itself from the numb feeling it was falling into as Wooyoung stood up. He couldn't even call it panic at that point, all his being succumbed to an indescribable pain that suffocated him as he stared at the man covered in blood standing between him and that door he needed to cross. San was behind him in that room, so close but so unreachable. Wooyoung wanted to scream but there was nothing left: he was spent. Empty and hollowed out, he held his breath and waited for the man to say the words that would break him to the point of never being the same again. He's dead.

"Kim Hongjoong-ssi" voice tired and defeated, a sound that reached Hongjoong's ears too because he unwillingly sobbed, but the man didn't stop there "He's alive. He didn't look good for a minute but he really is strong. The bullet passed through the clavicular head of his pectoral's muscle but it seemes like it hasn't touched..."