Hearts Awakened, Live Alive

Epilogue: Seonghwa

"You're not a monster. You've never been one, even if you've felt like it. You don't have to throw your life away to atone for every wrong decision you've ever made. Let's live on despite everything. Together."

Seonghwa stood in front of a tall standing mirror, clumsy and uncoordinated fingers doing their best to button up his dress shirt. With each button, Seonghwa watched the reflection of the scars on his chest disappear behind the silky fabric. They had been healing nicely, but Seonghwa still found the wounds unsightly, to say the least. He didn't feel any pain anymore from them; his surgeries had been effective; and he'd suffer through everything all over again if it meant Hongjoong's safety, but he was still working on getting over the side effects from it all.

He'd lost consciousness after getting shot and he'd been informed later that he'd actually died for around two minutes before the paramedics were able to bring him back and stabilize him enough to where death wasn't as big of a threat anymore. Even after being resuscitated, however, he didn't regain consciousness due to the severe (and by this point life-threatening) blood loss he'd already undergone. He'd been relayed this information by a doctor after the fact and to this day he was surprised he'd through it all.

After being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency surgery to fix any major internal damage the bullets might've caused, the doctors were still worried about the amount of trauma his body had undergone. He'd been dead for two consecutive minutes and lost at the very minimum two liters of blood before getting a blood transfusion going; when he didn't wake up after being resuscitated, doctors feared he'd suffer brain damage if not properly handled. So in an effort to improve blood flow by lowering his internal temperature, he was placed in a medically induced coma to hopefully retain his full brain function. The doctors were unsure if he'd ever wake up, but it was a risk worth taking if it meant saving him from permanent damage.

Seonghwa remembered almost nothing from his month-long coma in the hospital. He'd heard stories of people being fully aware the entire time they were comatose but Seonghwa only recalled a few faint memories before waking up feeling like absolute shit a month later.

He remembered being violently jostled as if someone had come running from across the room and jumped on him followed by shouting:

"What the fuck, Wooyoung? Be careful!"

"What? I'm just worried about him. I'm being careful."

"Ger off him, you gremlin."

Knowing Wooyoung? That memory always made him laugh.

He remembered someone holding his hand and quietly crying and how much it ached that he could do nothing to stop the tears.

He could recall bits and pieces of incomplete sentences; maybe a word or two here or there but for the most part there was just an entirely blank month within his memory where he laid unmoving in a hospital bed.

But despite being unconscious and almost completely unaware of his surroundings, he was told later after waking up that the city had decided to go ahead with his trial. The Governor was dead, and his brother's case was pretty cut and dry; he was found guilty without much effort at all, thrown in jail without hope of ever getting out. But the city's anger, along with most of the country's, wasn't satisfied with just that and to practically every outsider to the conflict, Seonghwa was just as much an enemy as everyone else in his family. ATEEZ had played a big part in Seonghwa's defense—much to everyone's surprise—and though they pressed for the trial to wait until Seonghwa was at least awake before his life was picked apart, the prosecution was out for blood on behalf of the people Agony had squashed under their foot for so long.

Hongjoong had thrown himself thoroughly into making sure everything Seonghwa had done to help was shown just as much, if not more so, than everything he had done to unwillingly hurt. It became public knowledge that the ever mysterious and illustrious Ghost was actually Park Seonghwa, created to directly go against the orders he was given at Agony. Once this information hit the right people, almost all the families who represented a tally mark on Seonghwa's arm came forward and told their stories. How Seonghwa, disguised as Ghost helped them escape Agony and start a new life. Seonghwa was utterly shocked into silence when he'd learned that had happened; to learn how many people saw him as a hero, the man who helped them lead normal lives, the reason their children got to grow up... It was a lot to take in and he made a point after he was able to leave the hospital to go and personally thank every family who had showed up to help his defense.