FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Chasm

She hears the rain - thrashing against glass and thunder rattles her bones. The pain shoots up her knees like flames, setting fire to her blood - searing on her muscles. It vibrates in her throat like a groan, escapes her lips in a hiss. Her limbs are heavy and she lies helpless - just like every other night waiting for the footsteps to come.

“So…” she mutters in her feverish frenzy.

The doors of her mind, shut on the truth are thrown open by the shock of recent events. She sees him clearly now - the man who dragged her into Attorney Yoo’s car, gently placing her on the passenger seat and putting the belt around her. He looks like So - looks so painfully similar that her heart burns. Through the pain, the head splitting ache it is hard to form his name - but at the same time she knows - it isn’t him. This man has no cut across his face, the blood he wears on his skin is not his own.

She flinches when his fingers caresses her face, they run down her throat and wrap themselves around the peony that she wears. “No…” she murmurs, and he ignores.

“You don’t need this - mermaid, forget him, forget this. You are mine.” The fine silver cuts her skin before the chain comes apart, he throws it away and reaches in to kiss her forehead. His clammy breath fans across her face. “Come back soon…”

The doors lock just as she is beginning to wake up, through the pain - her heart writhes in fear. The first jerk feels like an earthquake, it knocks breath off her lungs. The car launches forward as it is hit from the back and she sprints face first into the blooming airbag.

The second hit comes with a crunch of denting metal and she feels the loss of ground beneath wheels. The water she does not hear, but the light is soon cut off.

Somewhere in the darkness a woman screams and voices rise and fall, she can hear the wheels against asphalt, feel the gathering speed at the pit of her stomach and a silent scream chokes her as she imagines herself back in the car.

“Left - left - left!” Someone - a man - exclaims.

“Faster - shit - they are still coming!” Another man groans and she feels the steep turn the wheels make, the jerk almost tosses her against the metal but a hand wraps around her head absorbing the force instead.

“So - we can’t lose them, what is happening?”

It reminds him of the aftermath of lady Oh’s death to see her so broken, small and pale. His arms refuse to let go of her even when it breaks him to see her flinching at his touch, pleading in that hoarse tone not to hurt her. The words that fall from her lips makes no sense to others, but he knows - he knows exactly what moment she is reliving and it kills him to be unable to wake her up from that terrible nightmare. Only faintly he fears what her mind might show her. Does she see his car crashing into the one she is locked in? Does she see him driving it? He would not be surprised, not after he saw that devil with his face - is that the man she pleads to be spared from?

In his own mind he remembers only the darkness, the impact of the collision. He had felt it in his bones just as he was waking up from the fog that had swallowed him and found himself inside the trunk of a car, locked and being pushed into the water. Luckily the hit that had sent it to the water had demolished the lock, even with his bound hands he could push it open and roll out.

He tugs at his bounds with his teeth, the water burning its way into his lungs. When he comes up for air the sunlight blinds him, the wind whips him. He takes only a single gulp, before diving back after her - before the dark depth swallows her completely.

Yo’s voice pulls him back to the present with the nerve wracking jerk of the car taking another sharp turn. Still being chased, still in danger.

“Damn it So - we are going to get ambushed!” Yo berates his lack of attention only halfheartedly as he takes in the condition of his older brother. But then Jung is cursing aloud and they don’t have time for guilt and second thoughts. “How in the world -”