Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In one version of events, Guanheng manages to get Yangyang out before he’s faced with the brunt of their imprisonment. He manages to make his way back with the help of the few other members who played a heavy hand in his family’s rescue and he plays the part of a spy when he returns to Ten’s dream. 

Here, Yangyang doesn’t nap in his own room. Rather, he trades with Dejun, as the older wanted to borrow his things and Yangyang didn’t want him to take them out of his room and lose them the way he does everything else. He punctuates the allowance with an exasperated sigh that he exaggerates before waving a hand goodbye and crashing into Dejun’s bed. 

He’s forgotten as he lazes in the hazy near-evening sun, gold speckling over his still form in bed as the sun peeks through the windows. He’s awoken, suddenly, by a slam at the bedroom door.

Yangyang jolts, barely conscious but startled into wakefulness. His head whips to the door and he hears the knock again, watching wood splinter as something swings into it. He has to hold back a quiet yelp before he scrambles to get out of bed, legs twisted in the blankets as he gets up. Yangyang isn’t sure what’s going on but he’s more than sure it’s not any of his gēges playing around as they usually do. 

No, this is something that has him trembling in genuine panic as he gets himself free from the blankets, runs to the ensuite, and shuts that door behind him just as his bedroom door is knocked down in what sounds like a small explosion. Yangyang flinches but he glances around, looking for something, anything that he can use to—What, protect himself? Escape? Call someone—? 

There are no weapons here—of course, there aren’t, he’s in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and he isn’t supposed to need weapons because he never anticipated being in danger— but recalling the sound of whoever broke down his door, he gets more and more panicked at the situation that he can barely even understand to begin with.  

Yangyang isn’t given any more chances to think when the closest door is kicked down and he shouts in surprise, panic overtaking him at the sight of the men swarming his room just past the main culprit. Yangyang can’t get out of this, he doesn’t know how to get out of this, he—

The man grabs his arm roughly and Yangyang twists away— or attempts to, but he’s stopped by a harsh tug that nearly pops the limb out from his socket, making him yelp. “What the fuck—” He manages to choke out, eyes watery with pain. “Who are you, what—what is this, what—” 

A backhand across the face silences Yangyang. He gasps from the aftershock and kicks at the man as hard as he can. He must hit a soft spot somewhere because the man grunts and loosens his grip for a moment. Yangyang ducks around him and runs, shouting, almost screaming, as he does. 

“Gēge!” He screeches, halted in his tracks by another man grabbing him around the waist and yanking him back and away like he weighs nothing. It would be humiliating if Yangyang didn’t think he was losing his mind. He has no idea what the fuck is going on and he’s fucking terrified.  

He vaguely hears a noise from below, a voice, maybe, but it’s drowned out by the shuffling in his room and he can hardly focus when another man grabs him by the shoulder and forces him down the hall and downstairs. Yangyang is still flailing as he tries to get out of their grips and he bites at anything that gets near him, kicking as they have to drag him against his will. 

“Yangyang!” He hears someone call his name, desperate. His head snaps to the voice and he sees Guanheng in a similar situation, getting dragged away by people dressed similarly to his own captors. When they make eye contact, it’s as though he’s invigorated with superhuman strength, kicking at his captors squarely in the leg only to get nothing in return but a hand fisted into his hair and—

Yangyang gasps and almost gags as he pulled away from the wall his head is slammed into. His hair feels matted and his face burns and he can hear Guanheng yelling, screaming, voices all mixing into a cacophony before the hand fists in tighter and his rapidly reeling mind takes the second of realization to brace itself and—

Everything goes black. 

When he awakens, he’s fed three pieces of information that make him want to curl into himself and die, but he’s left with little to nothing to do but comply. 

One; Ten is responsible for whatever this is. 

He met Yangyang in a terrifying interrogation room and told him that he struck a deal with someone before drugging him and sending him into a coma that was god knows how long. Yangyang could hardly believe what he was hearing but it was almost immediately confirmed when he saw those same men who dragged him out of his home by Ten’s side, menacing and looking as though they were flanking a leader. Yangyang felt tears prick his eyes but he doesn’t get the chance to grieve before he was already swirling into black, endless black. 

Secondly; There is no escaping this. 

He gets force-fed pills that keep him from leaving Ten’s dream and ejects his own from his head amidst a panic attack while Ten wraps his arms around Yangyang and rocks him back and forth on the floor like he’s a baby, unreasonable for crying and feeling like he’s going to fall apart as he’s told by his gēge that he’s going to be experimented on whether he signs his stupid fucking papers asking for consent or not. 

Because Ten admitted to forging his gēges signatures and he tells him that he’s going to forge Yangyang’s as well and Yangyang feels the heartbreak in his chest with such intensity that it physically hurts. He wants to ask what happened, how could he do this, what’s wrong with him, what did Yangyang do, but he can’t force a word out of his lips when he bursts into a sob that can’t be held back by his righteous anger. 

He chokes on his tears and his face is a disgusting mess, but Ten still tenderly wipes the tears from his eyes when he’s woozy and light-headed and feeling like he’s about to burst into a supernova of an explosion. It’s all too much, one thing after the other. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s freed from the choice when he passes out for the third time after Ten calls for a medic. 

All the while, Ten is begging him to trust him, as though he hasn’t shattered any fragile sense of that the moment he brought Yangyang into a hellscape like this one. It would be pathetic if it didn’t make Yangyang want to die. 

Lastly, he doesn’t do well when he’s lonely. Not in the slightest. 

Yangyang was never meant to be lonely. He’s learned languages he never had reason to speak to people and adopt cultures so he can grow closer to them. He chronically travels the world when he gets the chance and he waves at babies on trains and grins at grandmothers and helps adults with their groceries when they’re struggling and pushes kids on swings on gray days when their parents are tired from work and he happens to pass by. Yangyang is a person built up on other people and this cut-off from everything— 

From his quiet conversations and his gēges and his cats and oxen and farmhouse and cereal for breakfast and strawberries as snacks and grassy fields, from his sunsets and picnics and errands that he complained about but never really minded doing at all, long grass and the feeling of soft, short cow’s hair under his hands and churning butter by hand. 

From his and Guanheng’s nights spent stargazing with unending monologues and Sicheng’s quiet comfort when he let himself get engulfed by his worries and Kun’s homecooked meals that were home in a way he had never experienced before and Dejun and his shared hobby of making a quilt together when they had little else to do and Xuxi’s lively attitude that never seemed to falter in the face of any adversary.  

All of it was taken from him and he can’t cope, he doesn’t think he can at all. 

He’s left with nothing but the room his dream is slowly drawn out into and visits from Ten, who brings his medicine. He’s so glad he gets to see Ten, even though an equally large part of him is torn and hates himself for being happy to see him at all when he was the one who tore them all apart so violently. Ten visits to give him pills and tell him tidbits of information he needs about the others so he doesn’t go insane but even this is enough for him to cling to the man in spite of his betrayal. 

It’s hard to reconcile Ten, cold and quiet and always looking at him regretfully with the person who had once been someone he had looked up to and wanted to be like. Yangyang wishes it was as easy as never having admired him at all, but life is rarely that simple. He learned that through this. 

He thinks he might be going insane after he breaches something in his and Ten’s little agreement, trading compliance for information. After Ten tells him—

“I can’t justify this,” Ten says, and his hands are trembling. Yangyang can only tell because the cup of water he never takes a sip from anymore is spilling droplets onto the concrete and staining the pale stone darker.  

There’s anger in his eyes, dark and unwavering, and Yangyang crawls back when that gaze is fixed on him for a moment. He presses his back against the wall and stares as they stay in that rocky silence for a moment, two, three, and then a minute’s passed where he’s said nothing.  

“Ten?” He questions. The man doesn’t respond. Then, he turns and leaves.  

“Ten— Hyung?!” Yangyang calls after him, panicked. “Come back, come back, wait— Please!” He can’t lose him, he can’t lose Ten, he’s his only anchor here, his only reminder of who he used to be, of what his life used to be, he can’t lose that part of him. He needs Ten, he needs updates on the rest, and he needs to know what Ten means when he says Xuxi needed surgery and that Kun was hurting himself and that Dejun hadn't woken up and if he’s okay, he needs— 

Yangyang is alone, again. 

He doesn’t know how long it's been at this point, but he isn’t sure he can handle it anymore. 

It’s the same thing, day in and day out, over and over, without Ten to act as an anchor for his rapidly wandering mind. The guards only come in to give him his pills and Yangyang is too exhausted to try and argue with them to see Ten the same way he used to. His dream slowly manifests around him as he’s left feeling emptier than he was before, as though he was scraped dry of something he didn’t know he needed until it was gone. 

The walls are white and there are sports balls scattered across the floor, tennis and basketball and soccer and even a couple of badminton birdies. There are a couple of beanbags dull beanbags that are far more uncomfortable to sit in than before. He can always hear something that sounds like airplanes flying over but when he looks up, all he can see is a pinkish, cloudy sky that is permanently out of reach. It makes him swallow down a sob. When he flings his tennis balls up into the sky, they float and disappear, and they don’t reappear after that. Yangyang quickly stops throwing them. 

Alongside that, his room keeps manifesting stationery for him to scribble with. It gives him markers and pens and crayons and spray paint and buckets of acrylics stacked up in the corners. His room is suffocating, it feels too small, but the art supplies give him something to do in his perpetual loneliness. 

Yangyang draws and writes and tags and scribbles and he tries to keep his memory about him as he does, even though his hands are shaky and his thoughts are slower than they should be. It’s like his brain is lagging behind when he’s trying to think the way he used to and he’s terrified of that change. 

He wants to go back to normal but Yangyang doesn’t think he can remember what normal used to be. 

“Yangyang?” He hears a voice from somewhere, quiet and soft, as though testing something. Yangyang’s head snaps up. It’s the first time he’s heard anyone say his name in weeks. 

“Hello? Hello, who’s there?” Yangyang asks, looking around. He can’t see anyone in his room, covered in scribbles in various colours, some resembling words and pictures and some just half-crazed marks he puts on the walls for the sake of having something to do with his trembling hands. 

He doesn’t see anyone and that’s when the panic truly sets in, his breathing picking up. 

“Who was that? Who’s there? Are you watching me?” Yangyang asks. He’s sure there are cameras, of course, there are, but he didn’t know there might be speakers somewhere in the room as well. Maybe someone’s trying to taunt him, trying to trick him by appealing to his humanity and his wants. 

The voice doesn’t come back but Yangyang can’t relax. He’s tense, paranoid, and unsure. He doesn’t want his back to anything so he presses himself to the corner in his cell nearest to the door the guards come in from so he can see everything. 

The voice doesn’t come back and Yangyang doesn’t move from that spot for three hours, eyes flitting around the empty space as he hears echoes of his name whispered against the plaster and wax coating it. 

Maybe he’s going crazy, Yangyang thinks, scribbling a flower into the ground by him. It’s the closest he can reach without feeling lightheaded and he doesn’t feel like leaning against the walls right now, lying down on his stomach with his chin on his forearm. Maybe there is no voice and he made it up. Or imagined it, or heard something wrong.

But there’s still doubt in the back of his mind. It started off slow and quiet but it’s built a nest in his head and now he can’t look at anything without suspicion. He stopped drawing altogether for almost a week, afraid of his paints before his hands itched for a release again and he couldn’t claw at his skin because he had already bitten his nails down to the bed. 

He’s lazing, eyes half-lidded as he stares up at the sky, hand absently tracing clouds from what he can see. It’s a better day for him; his head isn’t as dizzy and he only threw up the night before, not this morning. Whatever this is, morning, afternoon, and evening but not night. Yangyang’s not sure. He isn’t sure how long it’s been, either—surely more than a few months at this point. 

Yangyang doesn’t know what to do anymore. He hasn’t seen Ten in so long. He hasn’t seen his gēges in longer. He thinks he might genuinely be losing his mind. His heart hurts and his skin is cold. He hugs himself to find comfort and gets none and his tears have dried up a long, long time ago. 

“You could try to climb out,” A voice says. Yangyang sits up with a jolt. It’s a familiar voice— 

“Ten?” He questions, looking around. 

“You could try to climb out,” Ten’s voice suggests again. It’s soft, quiet, the same way he used to be before this hell. Yangyang’s voice almost breaks when he speaks. 

“Where are you? Where’s that coming from?” He questions. 

“From you, silly,” Ten’s voice says, almost happily. “C’mon, climb out, don’t you think it’d be fun? You could see the gēges again, maybe.” 

Yangyang—

He doesn’t want to think about this—That Ten’s voice is coming from—Him? He pauses in his search and stares at the doodle of the others he made when he was bored and lonely and near tears. Ten is nowhere to be found in the small family portrait. He wonders, absently, if this is karma for excluding him in the first place. If Ten will follow him and haunt him wherever he goes and he won’t be free from him wherever he goes. 

Quietly, Yangyang thinks that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he was. 

“You’re not real,” He says out loud. It’s not something that he doubts at all. Ten’s voice doesn’t come back for a moment, and he almost thinks that he’s made it up, but—

“Well, no,” He hums. “But you need a friend, don’t you?” 

The words leave him reeling. He doesn’t know what to think, so he just. Doesn’t think about it. He sits up and stares at the sky before turning to the beanbags in his room, alongside drawers that he’s never touched. It seems doable, now that this voice has brought it up. 

“I might fall,” He mumbles to himself as if testing that this voice—Ten—can hear him. 

“That’s okay,” Ten’s voice says, “It’s all part of the fun, right? What’s a little risk?” Yangyang swallows harshly, eyes burning. He doesn’t know what to make of this, he doesn’t know what to think, so he doesn’t. 

He slowly starts pushing the beanbags together, moving them and the drawers to make a strange mix of a ladder and a staircase. 

“Attaboy,” Ten praises when he gets up completely. It’s too similar to how he used to praise him quietly in their other dreamscapes, punctuated with a ruffle of his hair that Yangyang used to try and playfully hit him for. There are no playful touches here, nor are there hands that could catch him in case he falls.

Yangyang clambers onto the makeshift pile he has in his cell and finds that he’s far closer to the top of the white walls than he’d expected to get. He hesitates now because he still fears the vertigo that his strong dosage gives him. It’s frightening and he doesn’t want to fall over and hurt himself and give them another excuse to drag him out of his cell and mess with his head more than they have. 

“Go,” Ten’s voice urges him against all these thoughts, almost clearing them. “What are you waiting for? You’re almost at the top, anyway. You can reach it. Just don’t fall. It’s easy.” 

“I’m going to end up—” He’s cut off before he can continue. 

“No you won’t,” Ten’s voice says, sounding a little annoyed. “Just do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.” 

Suddenly, all he can hear is Ten’s voice, echoing and repeating those two words in his head again and again until he jumps for it and he just manages to grab the wall. His arms are shaking. He’s lost a lot of his strength without his usual exercise at the farmhouse. 

“Good job, bǎobèi,” Ten’s voice praises. It’s almost a punch in the gut, to hear such kind words from him when he’s been so, so awful these past few months. It has him reeling and it has him wanting more. Something in Yangyang wants to chase the high of the compliment, so he does. 

He clenches his teeth, trying to drag himself up, slowly, arms trembling with effort, when—

Yangyang groans, getting up slowly from where he lands on the stone ground. He can blearily see a small clump of blood where he landed and he gingerly puts a hand up to his nose, coming back with fingers stained dark, dark red. Yangyang’s head spins and he thinks he’s going to throw up if he doesn’t lie down, but—

“We should do that again tomorrow,” Says Ten’s voice. Yangyang can’t find it in himself to disagree with this vague afterimage of the man he loved. 

When he wakes up next, he finds that they’ve fastened a manacle around his ankle and left him enough room for him to walk around the room comfortably. It tugs against his skin and leaves angry red marks when he tries to climb the walls, again, just to see what’s on the other side. 

Yangyang wants to say that he took the disappointment with something close to grace, but he cried and sobbed and yelled for them to let him go until his voice went hoarse and it felt like he was choking on blood. When he spat, it was nothing but bile, but his hands still shook and his tears were drying on his face in a way that made him shudder. 

In the end, Yangyang curls on his side on a beanbag and tries to rock himself to sleep so he can stop thinking about all this. 

Ten’s voice is singing to him, quietly. It’s comforting and frightening at once. Yangyang falls asleep to it. 

“Why did you do everything?” Yangyang asks. “Why’d you give us up?” 

“I don’t know,” Ten’s voice answers. “Why did I give you up? Why? Why, why, why, why, why? Do you know why? Why did I give you up?”

He repeats this, again and again, and again until Yangyang pushes his hands over his ears and squeezes his eyes shut. 

“The farmhouse,” Ten’s voice says. 

“Farmhouse?” Yangyang answers. 

“You miss it,” He says. “You should go back. We can pick strawberries. No one’s picked them yet. No one’s there to pick them. We should go back.” 

“I can’t go back,” Yangyang tells him. 

“Why not?”

Yangyang thinks. “Because we’re here.” 

“Oh.” 

“You have to stop taking the medication,” Ten’s voice tells him one day. “You have to. It’s going to kill you and you have to stop. They’re poisoning it. It’s poison. It’s fake. It’s not medicine, it’s metal and it’s going to kill you. They’re going to kill you.” 

“No, if they… No, it’s not poison, it would’ve killed me earlier, they—” 

“What if they only started giving you poisonous ones now? They only started giving them now, you have to get rid of them. Get rid of them. It’s poison, get rid of them, get rid of them—” 

Later, Yangyang tries to fake taking them. The guard notices and holds his jaw open while he shoves them down his mouth and plugs his nose until he swallows and gasps for air with the pills settling in his stomach. 

“I’m your only friend,” Ten’s voice said, interrupting Yangyang as he tries to answer a question about fireflies he thinks he heard, earlier. He pauses, then—

“You are.” He answers honestly. Ten’s voice hums, content. 

“I’m your only friend,” He repeats, happy. 

His thoughts speed up, sometimes, going too fast for him to hear. It’s like a cacophony of voices being shoved in and out of his head before he can grab a thread to catch a glimpse of the thought he’s already erasing from his mind. It makes him dizzy, so he lies back down and tries not to throw up. 

In the meantime, Ten’s voice converses with him more and more. It’s pleasant for the most part, quiet and not quite the perfect recreation of the man he knows, but it’s better than silence, so Yangyang talks out loud more and more, winding into conversations that he can’t remember the path of.

He gets rabbit-holed into talking about screws on his motorcycle and the wheels that need to fit on that when five minutes before he was talking about chameleons and their colour-changing that was actually much slower than it seems. He rambles in Mandarin and English and Korean and German because Ten knows every language he does but Korean sticks the most because the most paranoid side of his brain tells him that the researchers might not know it at all. 

Yangyang wants to test the theory when he can’t sleep and Ten’s voice isn’t making any sense anymore and the back of his mind sounds like the waves he hears from the inside of a seashell but he always gets distracted. His mind always works itself up and he ends up hugging himself, pressed against the corner as he twists his fingers into his hair and tries to tell himself that no one can get him, he’s safe in the corner, nothing is watching him from the small dip that goes to the toilet. 

He keeps seeing something out of the corner of his eyes and he can’t be sure if it’s real or not but Ten’s voice keeps insisting it’s real and Ten is supposed to protect him so he should listen, but real Ten didn’t, so—

So Yangyang hugs himself and tries not to think about it and fails and has a panic attack every four or five days, or something of the like. He’s not sure how long it’s been between his longer rests. 

All he really knows is that he misses the others dearly.

One day, he's given three pills instead of his two, and Ten’s voice screams at him not to take it and that it’s a trick and he’s going to die and he’s going to die and he’s going to die and Yangyang works himself up into a panic attack after a guard force feeds it to him when he doesn’t listen to their demands. 

Barely an hour later, he starts feeling stranger than he usually does, and Ten’s voice can’t reassure him the way it usually does because it’s still yelling at him, calling him stupid for taking the pill when he’s going to die from it but he can’t even muster the energy to tell Ten that he’s didn’t take it on purpose because didn’t Ten see? He didn’t, he didn’t want it. 

His head spins and his body is cold under the surface of his skin he wants to claw off to get it out but Ten’s still yelling and he can’t focus so he shivers and wraps his arms around himself and begs him to shut up, words slow and muffled as he speaks into his knees.

There are dried tear tracks on Yangyang’s cheeks from his scolding when he gets yanked out of his cell and dragged back into an interrogation room with a psychiatrist he hasn’t seen before, plain and normal looking. He’s more than sure that he’ll forget her face by the time he leaves. 

“Hi, Yangyang, I’m Doctor Jane,” She greets him kindly. He thinks so, at least. His brain is lagging behind sluggishly and the lamp is messing with his vision. “I want to ask you a few questions, okay?” 

“Don’t tell her anything,” Ten’s voice says. “You have to be quiet. She’s going to kill you. She’s going to tell everyone and she’s going to kill you. Don’t say anything.” 

“I—I dunno…” He trails off, his head lolling forward a bit. “He says not to,” Yangyang mumbles. 

“He? Who is he?” She asks. 

“Don’t tell her!” Ten’s voice shouts. Yangyang jolts from the loud noise. 

“He says not to tell,” Yangyang answers. He doesn’t know if it's the right answer, but the doctor leans forward. 

“Do you hear voices, Yangyang? Is it more than one?” She asks. Yangyang hums lazily, an affirmative note. 

“Just once… Not more than that… No space,” Yangyang tells her slowly. Ten’s voice is still playing in his head but it’s less prominent—Not quieter, but white noise to him, now. 

“She’s going to kill you, she’s going to kill you, don’t tell her more, she’s going to tell everyone and she’s going to kill you, she’s going to kill you,” Ten’s voice repeats, increasing in urgency. Yangyang’s beginning to believe him, trying to push his chair back but getting nowhere with his jelly limbs. She seems to notice this, leaning forward a bit. 

“What’s wrong, Yangyang?” She asks. 

“Don’t… get near—me,” He manages to say. He wants to say more but his head hurts and talking makes his chest vibrate in a way that sends pain shooting up his temples. “Don’t, don’t.” 

“Is the voice telling you not to?” She presses. Yangyang shakes his head, groaning. 

“He doesn’t matter, he’sss… Not real, he doesn’t matter,” Yangyang slurs. 

“You know he’s not real?” She asks. She sounds almost surprised. Yangyang nods but says nothing more. Ten’s voice is still going and it’s making his head ache more. “You must be very lonely, I understand why you want someone to talk to.” 

Yangyang nods again, head tipping forward and almost hitting the table in front of him. “Do you remember your dreams, Yangyang?” Jane asks. 

“No,” Yangyang answers truthfully. “‘S… Nothing, jus’ nothing.” The room spins and he thinks he’s seeing stars, milky ways and Saturn and Pluto and Neptune wrapping around the void that isn’t lit up by the too-bright lamp in the room. 

The lady says something else to someone else and all of a sudden, Yangyang’s getting dragged away from this room as well, but not back to his small room with his crayons and portraits and everything else he holds dear. He struggles against the hold the guard has on him and finds himself unable to even shake one arm off when he tries his hardest, so he gives up. 

“Where are we going?” Ten’s voice asks. 

“I ‘unno,” Yangyang answers lazily. He thinks one of the guards looks at him but he isn’t sure. 

“Find out. You have to find out,” Ten’s voice insists. 

“I… I can’t find out, it’s… They’re not gonna lis’en,” Yangyang tries telling Ten. 

“You have to,” Ten repeats. Then, randomly, says. “D’you remember Bella?”

“Bella,” Yangyang echoes. “Miss her.” 

“Fucking crazy,” He hears a guard mumble as he’s pulled into a new room, getting jostled and manhandled on the way there. Everything hurts and his heart is going too fast or too slow, he can’t tell, and he’s scared but Ten is here so it’s okay but it’s not really Ten, so is it? Yangyang doesn’t know. He’s confused. He wants to go home. He wants his gēges. 

He’s put on a table, none too gently, and stripped before his clothes are replaced. He can’t even muster up the energy to say anything to argue but there are tears that drip down the side of his face and they’re sticky and awkward and cold on his skin in a way that Yangyang truly hates. 

He’s dragged away again and the world resumes its out-of-control spinning. He feels like he’s on a rollercoaster but with none of the thrill and all of the motion sickness afterwards. He’s dragged further, deadweight, and he’s given up trying to focus on the world around him when it’s so much easier to just listen to Ten and his voice, the familiar comfort he forgot he needed. 

“I miss Louie and Leon. Do you miss Louie and Leon? Louie, Leon. Louie, Leon. Cats. You should get a cat. Kill a cat. Get a cat, get a cat. Pet a cat.” The voice giggles and Yangyang tries to mumble back. 

“Can’t kill a… a cat,” He says. His lips are numb. “Gēges will be upset.” 

“But I won’t,” Ten says. 

“I’ll be upset,” Yangyang tries. 

“You don’t matter,” Ten dismisses. Yangyang is dropped to the floor and blacks out before hearing anything more.

Chapter Text

When Yangyang slowly wakes, it’s a mixture of slow realization and the sensation of touch coming back to him after feeling painfully numb. 

His clothes are pressed against his body and his shoulder blades ache, slightly, against the stone floors. He blinks lazily, head turning to the side as his vision slowly clears up from the blur it’s become. Every sensation feels like it’s a little bit too much, static buzzing in his fingers and sparkling pops going off in his head as it aches. Yangyang always aches, now.

He can hear murmuring from outside, and for a moment, he wants to dismiss it as his head again before he drags himself further into consciousness and realizes that it’s voices he recognizes that isn’t Ten’s—

Yangyang drags himself up, almost stumbling as he leans against the bars of his small cell, still half-curled up. “Hello?” He calls loudly in Mandarin. There’s a pause as the voices subside and Yangyang’s almost scared that he’s imagined them, he’s made them up, before— 

“Yangyang? Is that you?” He hears back. It sounds like Kun and just hearing the man’s voice makes him want to break down. Yangyang swallows the urge and replies frantically. 

 
“Yes, yes! It’s me!” He’s sure his voice sounds distinctly tearful to the others, but he isn’t sure what to do about it when he can’t hide his emotions behind a mask. He’s never needed to with such intensity, before. When he answers, the previously silent hallway bursts into chatter, some voices close and others far. They overlap in a way that makes him want to press his hands over his ears but he doesn’t, if only for the sake of speaking to the others. 

“Yah, calm down!” Kun shouts over the mess. There’s a smile in his voice that Yangyang wishes he could focus on but his slowly building panic at all the sound is freaking him out. He’s grown so used to one voice with him, just Ten’s, that all this is overwhelming. 

“Dibs on first to talk!” He hears Guanheng shout. Farther away, he hears a scoff. 

“What are we, five?” Sicheng retorts from a distance. Yangyang presses a hand over his mouth as he can hear Xuxi’s voice under the mess, looking across from him to see another cell. At first, he thinks it’s empty, but upon closer examination— 

“Gēge?!” He calls, panicked. The noise drops and the air of relief and humour are dropped once they hear how distressed he sounds. “What’s wrong with Dejun—He looks—” 

Half-dead, honestly. From what Yangyang can see, he’s laying down and his skin is gaunt and pale. Yangyang can barely tell if he’s breathing at all, eyes squinting to see if his chest is moving at all only to come up with nothing that he can see with his bleary vision. He realizes suddenly that tears are prodding at the corners of his eyes and he can do little to stop them at all. 

“He’s fine, bǎobèi,” Kun says softly. All the joy in his voice previously was gone. “He’s got a higher dose than us so he sleeps more than the rest of us, and it’s hard for him to wake up, okay? He’s—fine.” 

Kun stutters on the word, which makes Yangyang wince imperceptibly. He knows that their definitions of ‘fine’ have gotten extremely skewed since they got here but just the reminder of this is painful to him. 

“Are you okay, dìdi?” Guanheng calls. “You looked fucked up when they dragged you in here, I…” His voice trails off in a vague tremble. He sounds closer than the rest and Yangyang presses himself further against the wall to get as close as he can. The stone walls around him have never felt as awful as they have until now. 

“It was just medicine, it’s— I’m… Okay,” Yangyang answers. He hesitates for a moment, just barely, but it’s enough for Guanheng’s voice to grow sharp with concern. 

“What—Where have you been? Were you with Dejun?” He asks. Yangyang grows a bit confused. 

“No? Why would he be? It was just me and—” He cuts himself off before he can speak further. Yangyang blames his slip-up on the drugs, still wearing off, but as his voice pauses, Sicheng butts in. 

“You and who? What happened?” Sicheng asks. He sounds worried, and Yangyang hears Kun say something lowly but he doesn’t catch any of it. 

“Don’t tell them about me,” Ten’s voice comes back suddenly. He flinches at the sound. Yangyang thought, for a moment, that he might’ve dodged his voice completely, but Ten’s voice is almost louder in the smaller space. It’s terrifying in a muted way. 

“They’re safe, it’s fine,” Yangyang tells Ten quietly. 

“Yangyang?” He hears someone question. He ignores the voice for a moment. 

“No, they aren’t. They’re going to kill you. They’re talking about you behind your back. They’re going to hurt you. They’re going to hurt you. They think you’re useless,” Ten’s voice is steely and hard and makes tears prick in Yangyang’s eyes. He doesn’t want to think about this anymore, so he deflects. 

“Are you all okay? Xuxi-gē, your—Surgery? Are you okay?” Yangyang latches onto that piece of information as a conversation starter. It felt like years ago he heard it but—Well, honestly, Yangyang doesn’t know how long it’s been. He didn’t try to keep track of the days in his cell and his markers and drawings were far more entertaining for doodles than marking down days. 

“I—? How do you—I’m fine, yeah,” Xuxi answers, voice trailing off. His voice is wobbly. Yangyang scrambles for more, anxiety ticking up as he feels like ants are crawling under his skin. 

“Kun-gē, you’re okay too, right? Because—He said you were h—hurting yourself, and I… Kun-gē?” He asks, desperate. The cellblock is silent after he speaks and Ten’s voice doesn’t waste time in filling in the gaps. 

“They hate you, see? They’re not telling you anything on purpose,” His voice hisses. Yangyang flinches. 

“I…” Kun’s voice is hazy, almost blurry. “Yeah, bǎobèi, I promise, just— Who told you all that?” 

Yangyang holds his breath for a moment. “Ten-hyung—” 

The name by itself draws an explosion of noise from the group of them, making Yangyang flinch back. It’s entirely too much like the inner monologue, stream of consciousness, overlapping yelling that he gets from Ten’s voice in his head. 

Vaguely, he can hear Sicheng shout over them to shut up, which they listen to, thankfully, but Yangyang’s already biting down on the meaty part of his hand in an attempt to stifle anything he might say by accident. 

“Yangyang, what are you talking about?” He asks. His voice is soft and Yangyang can almost see his gēge’s expression in his mind, if not for the fact that his face is blurry in his recollection. Yangyang realizes in a muted panic that he can’t recall Sicheng’s face. 

“I… With my pills, Ten-hyung came. He gave them to me, and if I took them without arguing, he’d let me ask questions, so I asked about— You,” Yangyang answers haltingly as if afraid someone’s going to shout over him again. No one does, but the silence somehow feels worse. 

“Why would he—?” Guanheng starts to ask, only to be cut off by Sicheng. 

“He’s always been soft on Yangyang.” 

“Didn’t do shit to help him,” Xuxi retorts. It’s cutting, his fury, so Yangyang wraps his arms around himself in a pale imitation of comfort. 

“Xuxi,” Kun’s voice warns, and he falls silent. Yangyang chews on his thumbnail anxiously, eyes darting around as Ten’s voice makes a return. 

“They’re angry with you,” He tells the teen. Yangyang shakes his head, mumbling into his hands. 

“They’re not, they’re not,” Yangyang says, chanting the same way Ten’s voice in his head sometimes does. He ignores the call of his name, as though asking him to speak up, engaged in this conversation. 

“Why wouldn’t they be? You’ve had it easy. You got answers from Ten and everyone else was left in the dark. You’re barely even hurting at all. They hate you. They resent you. They hate you. They want you gone,” Ten’s voice almost snarls. 

“They don’t,” Yangyang argues back. 

“Who’re you talking to?” Guanheng questions. His voice sounds odd, but Yangyang ignores him, still. 

“He thinks you’re crazy,” Ten’s voice says, singsongy. Before Yangyang can answer, the crackling sound of gears turning echoes through the space and Yangyang looks up, spooked, before drawing back further into his cell, away from the hall. The speaking from the others is cut off and after the clattering stops, it’s punctuated with rapid footsteps. 

“Yangyang—!” Ten says once he catches sight of him. The voice is so familiar it makes him stare, wide-eyed, even though he knows it’s been Ten’s voice living in his head. It’s strange, hearing it out loud for the first time in months. “Are you alright? They told me—I didn’t know anything was happening until it already—” 

“What makes you think you can talk to him?” Kun questions, his voice loud and tight with anger.

“Shut up, Qian,” Ten snaps, greeted with Guanheng and Xuxi jeering in Cantonese. The tones are harsh to Yangyang’s ears and the stress is starting to build up against his chest, making him scratch at his arms under his clothes. 

“You can’t keep him isolated anymore,” Kun challenges. “Whatever mind games you were playing with him are finished.” Yangyang doesn’t know what he says in reply because Ten’s voice is whispering in his ear again. It’s strange to hear him and see him in person.

“He’s here to finish off what those guards couldn’t,” Ten’s voice whispers urgently. "You have to get away. You have to, he’s going to kill you. You have to get away. He’s going to drug you again.” 

Yangyang shakes his head, hard, and hopes that’s enough response for the voice to be satisfied. 

It’s not, of course. It never is. 

“He’s going to hurt you. He has more drugs but they have poison. He’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you.” The words echo, again and again, and again, overlapping and angry and making Yangyang’s head hurt and eyes burn with half-shed tears. 

“He’s not,” Yangyang insists, eyes screwed shut. Vaguely, he hears Ten call his name, but he isn’t sure if it’s the real one. 

“He is. I know what I’m talking about. He’s going to kill you,” Ten’s voice says again. Yangyang shakes his head furiously. 

“Yangyang, are you—What are you doing?” Ten asks. This time, it sounds a little farther away, muffled slightly by the glass between them. “I came to talk to you, are you alright?” 

Yangyang opens one eye, face in his hands before he peels them away to scratch at his arms again. “Why?” His voice is shaky. 

“You know why, Yangyang. I’m worried about you.” Ten punctuates the words by moving to the machine mounted by his cell. A red card flashes out of the corner of Yangyang’s eye and he feels his breath catch in his throat. 

“Don’t!” He yelps. Ten pauses in his movements. 

“What?” He asks. His voice sounds wounded, almost. Yangyang doesn’t know what to make of it. 

“He’s going to kill you, I told you, I told you and you didn’t listen,” Ten’s voice hisses. 

“I don’t want you near me,” Yangyang says shakily. He isn’t even sure what language he’s speaking, but it must be one that the others understand because Guanheng responds in kind. 

“Get the fuck away from him!” He shouts down the hall. Ten barks something back that Yangyang doesn’t catch, all his focus on Ten and his hands until he backs up one, two steps. 

“Why not? Yangyang, baby, I just want to make sure you’re okay—” 

“You’re lying,” Yangyang cuts in before Ten’s voice in his head can. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life. “I don’t believe you. You’re going to hurt me, you’re going to hurt me like the guards did and you’re going to kill me.” 

Ten looks upset the more Yangyang goes on his tangent but he can’t stop, words vomiting out of him before he can stop them. “I don’t want you near me, I don’t, I don’t, I want you to leave, I don’t need you near me anymore, you left me alone and—And it fucking sucked and I hate you for it and I don’t want you near me, I don’t want to see you—” 

Ten puts his hand on the dirty glass between them and Yangyang stares, cutting himself off to see what he’ll do next. He doesn’t do anything, just stares, before he opens his mouth to speak. 

“I’m sorry they drugged you again,” He whispers. “I know I said they wouldn’t, but I’m trying to help now, and—” 

“I don’t want your help!” Yangyang shouts. The whispering down the hall pauses as well, and Yangyang shudders as Ten looks increasingly miserable. It’s not enough for him to regret his words. He’s so shaky he feels like he’d fall over if he tried to stand and his breaths are hard to take and his hands are visibly trembling. 

“I love you,” Ten says, quietly, but he’s sure that the others can still hear it and it makes him uneasy. “I’m sorry I can’t do more, but I’m trying. I’m trying to help you, all of you.” 

Yangyang stares and Ten’s voice whispers in his ear again. 

“He’s lying. He’s lying and he hates you he’s lying, why would he love you? Why would he?” 

“You should go,” Yangyang says. His voice is shaky. “You should go.” 

“Yangyang—” 

“Please,” Yangyang pleads, breaking away from his anger for a moment. All the fight seems to leave Ten’s body at that. He steps away from his cell, hand peeling away from the glass to look back at Dejun’s cell, fleetingly. The space between his eyebrows furrows before he turns back to look at Yangyang, eyes impossibly soft. 

“Could I please just—” Ten reaches a hand through the bars, kneeling to Yangyang’s level. “Just hold your hand, for a moment—?” 

Yangyang stares and for a moment, wishes. 

Wishes he was back at his farmhouse or in any number of the other dreams his gēges have built up or somewhere kinder than these stone walls or somewhere where Ten’s voice doesn’t haunt him. Wishes he was still under the sun, growing tan in its gold rays as he picks corn by hand on lazy afternoons when he’s bored with little to do. 

The moment passes, almost. Before it does, Yangyang moves forward and reaches one shaking hand out to meet Ten. The moment they make contact, Ten clutches on tighter, his other hand poking through the bars to cup his in both of them and rub his thumbs over his antsy skin reverently. 

“He’s going to hurt you, he’s going to hurt you, he’s going to hurt you, he’s going to HURT YOU—” 

Yangyang yanks his hand back when the voice graduates to a yell. He almost regrets it when he sees Ten’s face before he’s reminded of their situation. 

“I’ll see you soon, okay?” Ten asks, voice soft despite the hurt look on his face. Yangyang nods silently and he watches Ten leave. 

“Yangyang? You okay?” Kun asks the moment the clattering gears pause after Ten’s departure. Yangyang nods before he realizes that won’t work as a reply. 

“I’m okay,” He answers. His voice is steadier than he feels, but he’s quickly shut up by Ten’s voice returning with a vengeance. 

“Why would you let him touch you? ” He hisses. He sounds murderous. 

“It’s fine, he didn’t do anything,” Yangyang says back, forgetting to lower his voice. 

“Okay, that’s… that’s good,” Kun answers, thinking he’s being spoken to. Ten’s voice gets louder to drown him out. 

“He’s trying to kill you, he’s stealing your DNA to give to the doctors to make poison to kill you. He’s going to kill you. He wants you dead and he’s not sorry, why did you touch him? Why did you touch him?” Yangyang hates when Ten’s voice gets like this, he hates it. He wishes it was inane rambling he could join in on because all he can do when he’s faced with such intense paranoia is fold to its influence. 

“He’s not going to kill me, stop saying that,” Yangyang replies, getting upset. 

“Yangyang?” 

“Why else would he have you here? For fun?” Ten’s voice challenges. 

“He wouldn’t!” Yangyang insists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Who’re you talking to?” Guanheng asks. He sounds worried but Yangyang’s attention isn’t on him. 

“You’re going to die. You’re going to die, you’re going to die, you’re going to die—!” 

“Stop saying that!” Yangyang bursts, frustrated. “You’re not real!”  

“Yangyang!” Guanheng shouts. He sounds terrified. 

“What?!” Yangyang shouts back, panic building in his chest. 

“Focus on me, okay? Just focus on me, on us, not—Whoever you’re talking to. Ignore them.” This is echoed by the others, calling for him and reassuring him from their cells. It’s hard to focus when he can’t see their faces, but Ten’s voice is slowly starting to sap away as he tears his attention away from it. 

“Are you focusing?” Guanheng asks. Yangyang nods again, forgetting before he clears his throat and speaks. 

“I— I am, I am,” Yangyang answers. Guanheng blows out his breath shakily before his voice returns, steady. 

“Just talk to us for now, okay? Who’s—Who’re you talking to, Yangyang?” Guanheng asks, trying to get information. Yangyang doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to say he’s talking to Ten because that doesn’t make sense, but it’s the truth, isn’t it? 

“I think it’s… It’s—I was just lonely, and the drugs, it has to be the side-effects, right? It's probably just the side-effects...” Yangyang says, his voice quickening at the end, as though he’s figured something out. Because doesn’t it make sense? Yangyang only started hearing all these voices when they started giving him pills and once he got here, not anytime before then. It has to be because of the drugs. “I don’t know why they had a doctor come and talk to me about this—this stupid voice when—When it was just side effects from their drugs.” 

“Oh, Yangyang,” Kun breathes. His voice is sad and quiet and Yangyang doesn’t know why. 

“—Hallucinations—?” He hears far off, and he latches onto that. 

“Hallucinations?” Yangyang cuts in. The hall falls silent before Yangyang continues. “Of course, I know it's not real, I just—it's just the drugs, I know that.” He knows he sounds more snappish but he can't help it, now.

Maybe Kun and the others besides Dejun didn’t talk to their voices, or pay attention to them and—Maybe because they all had each other, they didn’t need to talk to it all? Yangyang knows he only spoke to his because he was lonely and he wanted company but Kun and all the others wouldn’t need it as much. He clings to this, because surely if it was a side effect of the drugs all of them had one, maybe just different people—

Something in the back of Yangyang’s mind is laughing at him and he doesn’t know if it’s Ten or not.

“What? What did I—Do you not talk to yours? I just—It was lonely, in my cell, I wanted someone to… Talk to, I can stop now. You guys are all here, I can just talk to you all instead, it’s… Why isn’t anyone saying anything?” Yangyang’s voice trails off at the end as he grows quiet. Insecure. Ten’s voice jeers in the back of his head. 

“They think you’re crazy,” It giggles. He ignores the voice resolutely. He doesn’t want to go back on his words immediately after making a promise. 

“It’s nothing, bǎobèi,” Kun reassures. His voice is resoundingly steady. “You know we love you, right?”

This time, Yangyang knows how to respond, so he does so in earnest. “I love you guys, too. So much, I missed you all so, so much. It’s all I thought about when I was…” Yangyang’s voice trails off. 

“You’re not alone, now, I promise,” Guanheng says. His voice trembles and Yangyang doesn’t know why. 

When Yangyang awakens next, Dejun is awake in the cell across from him. He gets up and when he looks across him, Dejun is staring, cross-legged with his hands cupping his chin as his elbows rest on his knees. 

“Gēge?” Yangyang greets him groggily, eyes widening as he sits up. Dejun smiles at him, weak and unsteady, but he still looks genuinely happy to see him. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Dejun breathes. Yangyang drags himself up to press against the wall closest to the bars, sticking his hand out uselessly, as though he’ll be able to reach Dejun that way. Dejun sticks his hand out as well, but they barely reach the middle of the hall, let alone reach the other’s hand. 

“I’m—Are you okay, gēge?” He asks, desperate. He hadn’t heard any news of Dejun past him being in a coma from Ten weeks ago and just that alone was enough to scare him. The lack of updates had been driving him insane and even seeing him earlier, quiet and passed out while he spoke to the rest of his gēges was unnatural. 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” Dejun says with a smile, stronger this time. As though he’s putting on a smile to reassure him. He wants to doubt him but just looking at him proves that he might be fine like he says. He’s sitting but he looks okay for the most part, skinny and gaunt but still flush with life. 

“I was—” Yangyang cuts himself off as he remembers a tidbit of information from his conversation with the others, earlier. He lowers his voice, wanting this much to be private. “Is your voice bothering you?” 

Dejun startles, as though he wasn’t expecting to hear that. Yangyang hears Guanheng suck in a breath and he’s sure that he didn’t succeed in being quiet but it might not have reached the others so Yangyang stares and awaits an answer. 

“They told you—?” Yangyang blinks at the odd answer but nods, once. 

“Becuase,” He swallows harshly. “I have one, too.” 

It feels a little less shameful to admit to someone who has the same issue as his. He sees Dejun’s face, eyes wide with shock and mouth slightly agape and feels his heart shrivel in his chest. He stammers an explanation, barely. “Because… well, I think it’s because we both—were you alone for a while, too? I talked to mine because I was lonely, I don't...” He asks, voice trailing off. Dejun, slowly, nods. He still looks shocked, and a little sick. He curls his hands into fists and Yangyang bites his lip. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Yangyang tells him, quiet. Dejun seems to be debating something before he puffs out a breath, shakes his hair out of his eyes and speaks again.

“What was your room like, Yangyang?” 

Yangyang gets the message. He swallows back his sadness and answers. 

“We should talk about something,” Ten’s voice tells him. Yangyang hums lazily, lying on his back as he stares up at the ceiling. It’s nothing interesting, but he stares anyway, counting the cracks. 

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” Yangyang whispers, hoping it’s quiet enough to dissuade Dejun’s attention, only to find the man staring at him across the hall silently. Yangyang turns away with a flushed face and blinks away his startled expression. 

“They shouldn’t keep us from talking,” Ten’s voice says. It sounds angrier. “We’re supposed to be friends. I’m your only friend. We should talk.” 

“I don’t want to anymore,” Yangyang replies, small. Ten’s voice says nothing else.

When his gēges speak, now, Ten’s voice always tries to butt into their conversations to make Yangyang feel awful. 

It’s been a few weeks now, Yangyang thinks. He gets his dosage the same as he always does and the others dance around the topic of his and Dejun’s voices, they don’t talk about what happened to them past the first time Yangyang brought it up and the group of them almost always bicker the way they do when they were at their farmhouse. 

Guanheng goes on passionate rants that no one cares for. They say as much, at least, but the hypotheticals and scenarios are enough for Yangyang to stay occupied. The others treat him like glass, at first, but once Yangyang makes an honest effort not to talk back to Ten’s voice, they return to teasing him like normal. Yangyang never thought he’d feel normal again, let alone be spoken to like he was. It’s odd. 

Xuxi contributes to Guanheng’s rants and Sicheng acts as a voice of reason in the most illogical sense. While his arguments are good, they make little to no sense once there’s any amount of real-world logic applied to them, which makes it more fun. Dejun ribs at him from across the hall and Yangyang returns the light-hearted barbs. 

Kun is still every little bit the impromptu leader he was before they were here, calm and collected when needed and bringing them down when they get too worked up in their debates but still fun to talk to. He plays into their jokes and conversations and he dances around serious things and they all ignore the elephant in the room with skill. 

Every now and then, Ten's voice will butt into his conversations and try to convince him that the others were trying to conspire to kill him by using code words that he didn't understand on purpose. Yangyang always tried to rationalize but Ten's voice would bully him into a corner until he was silent and crying and didn't speak to the others despite how much they called out for him. 

They learned to leave him alone, then, and eventually, when Ten's voice would fade into the background, he'd reinsert himself into the conversation and no one made any mention of it. It was almost as though it never happened at all. Yangyang wasn't sure if he should feel comforted by that or not. 

This continues for a while, until one day when Yangyang gets his breakfast in the morning, but no pills. 

“No pills?” He asks, looking up at the guard. He simply nods silently. No one says anything, but he’s sure they heard because sound bounces around the walls like nothing else. Yangyang feels like he should be glad but there’s something unsteady churning in his stomach that makes him feel anxious. He says nothing and eats his meal in silence until they leave. Once they do, the others burst into chatter. 

“Why didn’t they give you your pills?” Dejun asks from across him. He looks anxious. Yangyang shrugs, anxiety building under his skin as he picks at the top of his hands. 

“I don’t know, I didn’t—They didn’t do this with any of you?” He calls the last sentence down the hall, louder. He’s greeted with multiple negatives, which only makes him more nervous. 

“It’s the medicine that keeps us here, right?” Guanheng clarifies. Kun makes an ‘eh’ sound. 

“Something like that. I don’t think it’ll be that easy, of course, it won’t,” This last part is mumbled to himself. “Maybe an experiment?” Yangyang’s blood runs cold at that. 

“I don’t want them near me,” He says, nearly whispering. Kun sounds truly sorry when he replies. 

“I don’t think we can do anything about that, bǎobèi,” He says, and this sends Yangyang down a spiral. 

Over the course of the next few hours, he paces his cell anxiously, running his hands over his arms despite Dejun trying to coax him into calming down. The others continue conversing, as usual, trying to prompt Yangyang into joining them, who offers half-hearted responses that show he’s not really paying attention at all. 

Yangyang tugs at his hair and tries to ignore his rapidly spiralling thoughts trying to drag him downwards to no avail. Eventually, the voice escalates from whispering in the back of his mind to telling him that he was right before graduating to full conversations in the span of an hour or two.

“This is it,” Ten’s voice whispers to him at some point. “It’s just like I said. They’re going to kill you now. They’re going to do it and they’re not going to be sorry about it at all. They’re going to kill you and dissect you like a bug, like a frog, they’re going to pick your insides out of your chest and eat them, they’re going to eat your heart, Yangyang, your heart. Your heart, your heart.” 

Yangyang groans lowly, pressing his hands over his ears as he leans against his cell door, back to Dejun. He wants it to stop, he wants Ten’s voice to stop, but it just keeps going, jibbering nonsense that he can’t parse out. 

“They’re going to eat your heart and spit it out in front of your gēges, they don’t care about you and they want you gone. They’re going to drag your corpse back and dress it up in your cell and Ten will watch you, he always will. You should kill them before you go. You should kill yourself before you go. You should kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself—”

“Stop,” Yangyang moans, low and pained with his eyes squeezed shut as he slides down the wall to sit, curling into himself. 

“Yangyang, what is he—Is the voice loud right now?” Kun asks. Yangyang barely chokes on a whine. 

“Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself before they do it for you, KILL YOURSELF, KILL YOURSELF—” 

“I don’t want to, stop, stop it, stop, stop,” Yangyang begs, pleading for a break. His head aches horribly and he can barely think and Ten’s voice is drowning everything else out. “Please, please, please.” 

“Yangyang, it’s okay, just ignore it, talk to us,” Guanheng tries, voice still light in an attempt to pretend everything’s fine when it’s not, none of this is fine and Yangyang feels like he’s losing his mind when he thinks he already has, and—

“ —KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF KILL YOURSELF—” 

“Just shut UP!” Yangyang screams, hands pressed over his ears to no avail. He thinks tears are twisting down his face but he can’t tell if they’re new or old or even there at all, his reality is splintering around him and he wasn’t built for this, he wasn’t built to survive all this, he doesn’t think he ever will be, Yangyang is— Yangyang— 

His breath is catching in his throat in an ugly way and he thinks he’s choking on a sob. He lets it out to relieve the pressure on his chest and the others try to say things to comfort him but he doesn’t hear them over his cries nor does he hear them over Ten’s voice still echoing and bouncing around in his head. 

Yangyang doesn’t think he will ever get out of this hell, nor does he think he will ever be the same again and he doesn’t think he’s going to be okay tomorrow, Ten’s voice won’t let him believe otherwise. Yangyang wants to go home. He wants to go home. A home is never a place but a people but now all he wants is his farmhouse and green, rolling fields of flowers because bees would never force him into captivity and poison him. 

He cries himself to sleep with a pounding awful headache that twinges at his temples and makes it hurt to blink and when he wakes up for breakfast the next day, he’s dragged away from their cell block and back to the medical ward he vaguely remembers being in once, a thousand years ago. 

Yangyang’s vision is bleary and awful and he works himself into another panic as they tie him down in a room on his own, past the doctors and machinery and lights. There’s nothing in the room save for the bed and dim light and he’s losing his mind. 

“They’re killing you, this is it, this is it, you should’ve said your goodbyes, said better ones—” 

“Stop,” Yangyang whimpers. The guards continue and he doesn’t know which of the two he was talking to. 

“Should’ve said goodbye,” Ten’s voice giggles. “Said goodbye, said goodbye, said goodbye.” 

“Stop—Stop, please, stop it—” Yangyang pleads before a guard covers half his face with one hand, silencing him abruptly. 

“Shut up,” She commands. When she pulls her hand away, Yangyang gasps for breath as though he was going to die if she left him under her palm for a moment more. The guards say something to each other he doesn’t catch before they leave him alone with nothing but Ten’s voice and his own panic. 

“Dying, dying, dying,” Ten’s voice says. “We should talk. You should’ve picked those strawberries before we left. Snack before dying. You should’ve picked those strawberries. You should’ve. You wouldn’t be here right now if you listened when Kun told you to pick them.” 

Yangyang chokes on a sob. He doesn’t even notice Ten enter the room until the man is next to him, staring down at him with a blank face. 

“T—Ten—?” He questions, barely, before the man raises a clawed hand at Yangyang. There’s a tingling sensation in the back of his head that abruptly burns before—

He falls asleep.

Chapter Text

At first, everything is quiet. Then—

Then. Yangyang starts to realize that everything until now was simple mercy. 

Ten watches. He watches all throughout Yangyang’s slow, painful, agonizing, reconstruction of his already fragile psyche. He doesn’t say a word throughout it all. 

Yangyang thinks he might have preferred death to this. 

He truly can’t comprehend it. He doesn’t know how to drag back infinity to cram inside his skull. It burns and he opens his mouth to scream but nothing comes out. He can feel something creaking under the stress of it all. 

There’s pressure and pressure and pressure and Yangyang thinks he’s crying and his head is slowly spiking with pain, harsher and sharper as a cacophony stabs into his ears and Ten’s voice mixes into it all, screaming and screaming and screaming until he feels something snap and then— 

Everything quiets. Yangyang can hear nothing in his head but the distant buzz of an airplane flying overhead. 

When he opens his eyes again, he sees a concrete ceiling. He immediately panics, throwing himself away from wherever he woke up to press himself into a corner. Yangyang’s head hits the stone walls with a thud and he feels a sharp pain in his head but it barely feels like anything, now. 

His vision is unclear. It’s fuzzy, as though he’s applied a gaussian blur to it and can’t shake it off. Yangyang scrubs at his eyes until they ache and he looks up and it’s barely gotten any better. He sees things crawl on the floor and kicks out at them until they scurry back. 

Everything hurts. Everything aches but he feels empty. Scraped dry even though his head is too full. It burns, just staring at gray with blurry eyes, so he closes his eyes and tries not to think. It’s awful. 

Ten never leaves, now. 

He stays in the opposite corner of the room from Yangyang. It terrifies him into stillness. The Ten that looks up at him is strange. Odd. His face is blurry even after his vision’s gone back to normal. 

There’s an awful, awful smile on his face when it clears and something in his eyes that makes Yangyang want to scream. When he gets to his feet for the first time after a long, silent stare-off, Yangyang does scream . 

He screams and screams and screams and writhes in his corner and slams his head against the concrete until someone has to come in to sedate him forcefully and there’s a wet patch on the back of his skull. All the while, Ten is staring at him from the corner of the room. He doesn’t get closer but that horrible smile never leaves his face and Yangyang can’t get past the feeling of bugs crawling down his bare skin even when guards are pinning his arms behind his back so he can’t claw at them anymore. 

There’s nothing on them but bloody scratches, now. Yangyang thinks if he digs into them, he’ll find ants. 

They give him crayons again. It’s after they force-feed him pills through a panic attack that ends up bloody, but they give him crayons. 

Yangyang’s not sure if it’s because he spends all his time pressed into the corner of his room, shaking and shuddering and rocking back and forth with his hands pressed over his ears, but they must take pity on him over something because they bring him crayons. 

There’s barely anything for him to draw, now. He tries, but he quickly gives up on anything legible. He doesn’t think he can do it if he tried. Yangyang resorts to scribbling on the ground haphazardly. Ten’s voice is saying something in the back of his mind but he pays it no mind. 

Then, a new voice joins in. 

“There’s something watching you,” Kun’s voice says. Yangyang flinches so violently that he snaps the crayon he’s using in half against the concrete, slowly turning to the white that he’s more used to from his dreamscape. 

“What?” Yangyang whispers. His eyes dart around the room, trying to catch sight of anything around him. 

“They’re watching,” Ten’s voice hisses, joining in. Kun’s makes a noise of agreement. Yangyang’s hands slowly creep upwards to twist into his hair, strands poking out from his pale, gaunt fingers like hay. 

“Where?” He asks, urgent. Kun’s voice suddenly grows louder, urgent as well. 

“Everywhere. You can’t run from them. You can’t run. You have to run. You have to run. You have to, you have to run you have to run away Yangyang you have to run, run run run run run— ” 

Yangyang chokes on a strangled cry and stumbles to his feet, ending up in the corner of the room again. He kicks a basketball in his rush and the sound of it bouncing against the floor makes him want to peel his skin back. He needs to be able to see everything. Kun wouldn’t lead him astray—He needs to listen to him now because Kun is safe and nothing else is. 

Ten is still standing in the opposite corner of him. He doesn’t wear the smile any more but Yangyang doesn’t want him near him at all. He thinks it’s not the real Ten but he can’t be sure even though Ten’s voice in his head comes from the image of the man he sees. But he doesn’t know if Ten’s voice has disappeared and if it’s the real Ten. So he stares and Ten stares back and they’re at an impasse. 

“You have to run,” Kun says again. Yangyang splinters. 

“There’s nowhere to run to!” He doesn’t realize he’s screaming until his voice breaks. “There’s nowhere! Nowhere to go!” There’s silence, and then—

“Home,” Kun says, and he sounds wistful. Yangyang sobs abruptly, arms curled around his knees as he crumples into himself. 

The pinkish sky returns to his room at the end of the week, and that’s when Yangyang is yanked out by guards once more. 

They didn’t put the manacle back on him, and this is one small mercy that Yangyang’s grateful for. He thinks that if they put it on he might’ve broken down and never been able to pull himself back together again. He’s spent too much time trying to pull himself together. He doesn’t have the energy for it, anymore. 

Kun’s voice stays. When Yangyang’s panic faded, hours and hours and hours after he sobbed until his tears ran dry, Kun’s voice was still murmuring nonsense. 

Yangyang remembers being tired, very, very suddenly. He imagines going back to his gēges after all this and something in his heart twists painfully, even though he thinks he’s already felt all the pain there was to experience. 

They’ve been strong, the group of them. Yangyang doesn’t think they’ve spoken about what’s happened, yet, but they’ve all been strong, and Yangyang is abruptly incredibly sad that he wasn’t able to carry that strength over as well. 

He’s shattered, he thinks. He thinks that he’s shattered and not even his gēges would be able to fix him after this.

Yangyang’s trailing his fingers against one of his inane scribbles on the walls when the guards open the door, and he immediately scurries away to try and find someplace to hide. He thinks again and he doesn’t want to talk to her, not when he can’t string words together under the harsh light of the singular lamp in that room with his hands cuffed and eyes on him from the shadows, things creeping there. 

They throw clothes at him and it’s obvious, now, that Yangyang’s being taken somewhere else. He doesn’t want to go somewhere else but he doesn’t want them near him and he can’t have both so he ducks behind the small curve made for the bathroom and tries to be fast, hands trembling as he changes into blues and blacks. 

“Get away from them,” Ten’s voice snaps at him. Yangyang wants to listen, this time. 

He creeps out from behind there when he’s done, but he doesn’t move to get closer. 

The guards don’t seem to have time for this. They ignore his pleas for them to stay away from him when Yangyang startles at their sudden march forward, stuttering in German, and bulldozes past the imaginary walls he’s drawn out on the floors to protect himself. 

“Idiot, idiot idiot idiot!” Ten’s voice hisses. It’s awful, listening to him. Kun joins in not a moment later. “You have to run you have to run now, right now, kill yourself, run, get away—” They overlap and fill his head with noise and he has to crouch down to press his hands over his ears even though they do nothing. 

He screams when they get near him but they don’t listen to any of the gibberish he says. Yangyang can’t put together a sentence that makes sense in Mandarin but he tries, he tries so hard and he just can’t get it. One of them grabs his arm so tightly he thinks he might’ve broken a bone, or at least put enough pressure on it for it to creak under his skin. Bugs crawl under that spot. 

He’s carried somewhere—down a couple of hallways, he isn’t sure where. They didn’t inject him with anything, but his head’s syrupy. It always feels like he’s floating when the guards get near him again. Yangyang hates the feeling but he loves the disconnect from the world when before he would have to sit through reality and force himself to swallow blood that welled up when he bit his cheek so hard his teeth cut through the skin. 

Ten follows him. He doesn’t know if it’s the real Ten or if it’s the one he’s been imagining but he can’t figure it out and he’s shaking so intensely he feels like his vision’s blurry because of it. 

Yangyang’s barely walking himself, his feet dragging when he can’t take steps to keep going. Eventually, he stops trying and lets himself become deadweight in their arms. His head is hanging low because he can’t keep it up and he doesn’t want to look ahead to see Ten staring at him, silent. 

It’s almost silent. Then—

There’s commotion ahead. It’s violent. “Yangyang?!” He hears someone shout from down the hall. Yangyang’s head snaps up and he sees Dejun, wide-eyed and scrambling against a guard. 

His heart rate spikes. His breath picks up. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. 

“Dejun?” The word is barely a breath from him, as though he’s forgotten it completely. Then, everything dawns on him much, much faster than he thinks it should. 

“Dejun?” He repeats again, louder. He stops trying to drag his feet, trying to stay upright to stop them in their march past them as they quicken their pace. “No—Dejun! Where are you taking him?” Yangyang tries to demand, still shaking horribly. No one answers him. 

“Yangyang!” Dejun calls again, “Are you okay?” Yangyang doesn’t get a chance to answer before he’s yanked past him and Dejun’s going up the elevator they just came down. 

Yangyang falls silent once he’s gone. It’s like all his courage has disappeared. Yangyang thinks it’s not far from the truth. 

They make their way past two sets of doors before Yangyang’s dragged back down the cell block. He knows he must look horrible to them, shaking and unsteady with a gaunt face and a haunted look to him. His eyes drag over his gēges faces, trying to memorize them even as they’re painted in something like horror before he’s dumped on unsteady legs in his cell. Yangyang collapses immediately and he doesn’t move for a long time. 

“Yangyang? Are you okay?” Guanheng tries asking. Yangyang curls up into himself further. 

“What happened?” Kun tries asking. At his voice, Yangyang’s quiet tears—tears he’s been trying to push back, press down, ignore—bubble over the surface. He makes an awful, gaspy sound. All quiet murmurs pause at that.

“I’m sorry,” Yangyang chokes out. He sounds wrecked. Not being able to see him is probably freaking the others out but he can’t bring himself to care, now. He can’t bring himself to do anything that could begin to rationalize this or manage to calm them down, somehow. All he has left is apologies. He’s been scraped dry of everything else and trying to think hurts. 

Ten’s voice is still circling around his head, endless and taunting. “They hate you they hate you they hate you they want you gone and Dejun back they’re going to send you back—” 

“Please,” Yangyang begs. He isn’t sure what he’s asking for, anymore. He's not sure who he's asking, either.

“Yangyang, bǎobèi,” Guanheng tries, sounding desperate. Yangyang doesn’t care. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I think they—” He catches on an inhale and tries to ignore the feeling of tears sliding down his nose bridge. “They broke me, gēge.” It’s almost a whimper. Then, everything else comes out in a vomit of words he can’t hold back. “I couldn’t be strong, I’m sorry, I tried, I tried, it—It hurt so much , I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” 

He’s sobbing in earnest, now. “I tried,” He practically wails. “I tried, I tried so hard, I’m sorry—” 

“It’s okay, Yangyang, you don’t have to apologize, it’s okay,” Guanheng tells him. “It doesn’t matter, we love you, we’ll always love you.” He sounds upset, Yangyang thinks. His mind can’t parse out emotion right now. 

“I’m sorry, Yangyang,” He hears Kun say. Yangyang doesn’t ask why. He drags himself up and presses himself against the wall of his cell until he thinks he’s as close as he could possibly be and closes his eyes as he hears them murmur reassuring words he can barely understand to him. 

Yangyang can’t stop crying. He doesn’t think that he ever will. This seems permanent. There’s no hope left. Something deep in his soul has been pulled apart and Yangyang can’t see it being fixed.

After Yangyang’s calmed down, mellowed, barely, to the point that he can sit through a conversation about everything without melting down, they talk. They parse everything out between them. They talk about their rooms and what they went through. 

Yangyang feels painfully numb as he listens to it all. He wants to try and care but he feels like he’s been slowly sapped of his empathy. Everything is hard for him. Everything is tiring. He never realized how much effort was put into emotion until now. 

Eventually, they fall silent and Yangyang realizes that it’s his turn to speak, now. He takes in a slow breath, trying to remember. Figure out where to start. If there was any way he could boil this story down to something tangible. 

“I don’t… Remember a lot of it. I think it blended together. I just remember being alone. For a long time. My room was—White walls. The ceiling was open, and I could see the sky. It was always pink. Pinkish-gray clouds, floating. Sports balls and beanbags and drawers, but nothing else. I could always hear, like, airplanes,” Yangyang explains. 

“Airplanes?” Guanheng questions gently. Yangyang nods, even though he can’t see him. 

“I never saw them. Just heard them. And Ten would come with my pills and tell me about you. But he stopped coming.” No one comments on the lack of honorifics that he used to use before, and he’s glad. 

“I had crayons, too. Markers. I’d draw when I could to pass the time but I was always dizzy. Sleepy, sick.” 

“And…the voices?” Kun asks, hesitantly. 

“They…” Yangyang swallows. He thinks, for a moment, because he doesn’t want to talk about this. But then he thinks that no one else wanted to talk about any of this, either, and he should try to be brave, even if he was just pretending. 

“I was lonely,” He starts. “And one day I started hearing Ten’s voice. And it was just—Just him. And then, after—” Yangyang cuts himself off, shuddering. “I started hearing Kun-gē’s,” He admits quietly. “I know they’re not real but—I talked to Ten’s, a lot. And now neither of them leave me alone.” 

“Leave you alone?” Sicheng questions. 

“They’re not nice, anymore,” Yangyang says. He feels stupidly like a five-year-old, but he can’t help it. “Ten’s used to be nice. All it does it freak me the fuck out, now.” 

The swearing makes Guanheng giggle, a bit strangled. Yangyang sighs, then, hesitantly, continues. 

“And—What happened…” The hall falls silent almost immediately. Yangyang gulps at the sudden absence of everything. 

“The pills, they take our dreams out, right?” He asks. His voice is already trembling. He doesn’t wait for a reply before he continues. “They—When you stop taking them, all that’s left is for your dream to—to force itself back in, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want it to, because it does it, anyway.” 

He takes a deep breath. “It burns. It’s wrong, it’s wrong and it shouldn’t happen, it’s—It hurts. It just hurts. You’re trying to fit infinity into your skull and it feels like it’s scraping you dry to make space where there shouldn’t be any,” Yangyang’s voice grows a bit more frantic as he’s trying to explain. 

“It hurt. It hurt and hurt and everything was loud and I think—I think I snapped and then, it was. Quiet,” Yangyang says. All he can hear is the faint sound of the others breathing. His chest feels tight. He needs to get everything out. “Ten was there, he watched, he just watched, it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt in my life and he just watched—” 

Yangyang gasps, trying to catch his breath after talking so much without pausing. 

“Yangyang, bǎobèi—” Kun tries, but he cuts him off. 

“I think they’re doing it to Dejun-gē,” Yangyang admits. “I saw them taking him away, I think they’re doing it to everyone. I’m sorry, I—” Yangyang stops there. He can’t keep talking. 

“God, I’m so sorry we weren’t there,” Sicheng says. He sounds put together but Yangyang can hear something in his voice that makes his skin crawl with regret. 

“You don’t need to apologize,” Yangyang says. Ten’s name goes unsaid but he’s sure the rest know what he means to say. 

Eventually, their conversation continues and melts into something—less. Less of everything. 

Dejun comes back. There’s something haunted in his eyes that makes Yangyang’s heart sink and they slowly catch him up on everything. Now, when Yangyang looks across their hallway, Dejun’s almost always staring back at him. It would be unnerving if he didn’t see the worry tightening his shoulders. Still, it reminds him a little bit too much of his visions of Ten, so he doesn’t look. 

It’s almost normal, again. Sure, Yangyang feels paranoid almost always and Ten and Kun’s voices bother him in his nightmares and waking moments and Dejun can’t seem to look him in the eyes and they’re all barely held together, but there’s some strange sense of camaraderie from sharing all their pain with each other. It’s as though they’re shouldering each other’s burdens, now. Sharing them across six pairs of shoulders. 

It’s not enough. It probably never will be, but it’s a lightening of a load Yangyang thought permanent, so he welcomes the brief reprise from reality. 

Then, Ten visits a week later. 

He only knows by how much they heckle and shout at him, sounding equally angry and scared. Yangyang just knows that he’s pushed himself to the corner of his cell and everything’s stopped. He can barely breathe. Something is blocking his lungs and it feels like he’s trying to swallow cement when he tries to gulp past the lump in his throat. 

“He’s here to watch them. He’s going to watch them like he did you,” Ten’s voice says. It’s horribly ironic. “He’s going to watch, he’s going to watch you. He’s always watching, always waiting and watching and waiting for you to fall asleep so he can hurt you, he’s going to hurt you.” 

Yangyang doesn’t stop spiralling for a while. Long enough for him to realize that Ten’s stopped talking to Dejun and the man’s standing by his cell, now, close enough for him to reach for his hand through the bars. Yangyang’s eyes go wide and he doesn’t even hesitate to curl his hand around Dejun’s, squeezing so tight his knuckles go white. 

Ten’s standing right by him, eyes trained on Yangyang’s face, but he ignores him. He just stares at Dejun, something in the man’s eyes that’s indiscernible. Yangyang’s not sure what to make of it. Then, the moment passes and Dejun reluctantly walks away, to another cell. 

Yangyang stands there for a long time, even as he hears Dejun enter Xuxi’s cell, Ten leave and the others start speaking again. He stands there for a long, long time, hand hanging limply through the bars. 

Kun’s voice, despite the real person being here, now, never quite leaves him alone. Yangyang wants to hit his head against something until it leaves, but he knows now that it’ll never work. He’s tried already, only to get an aching head and ugly red imprinted in plaster in terrifying contrast against the white walls of his cell. 

Ten’s voice is ever-persistent as well, but what scares him more is the brief times he hallucinates the man being there in the hallway, pacing. 

It takes the others a while to realize that he’s seeing the man at all. It only becomes clear when Dejun questions him, which—

(“What are you staring at, Yangyang?” Dejun asks, cutting off a conversation that’s been ongoing for a few minutes, now. Yangyang’s eyes leave Ten’s slowly pacing figure for a moment, looking at Dejun. He’s sure he looks awful. Tired and quiet and too slow catching up on the conversation. 

“He—” Yangyang cuts himself off, then, asks quietly. “Ten’s not in the hallway, is he?” Dejun’s eyes grow sad. 

“No,” He says. “He isn’t.” Yangyang hums, shaky, then asks Sicheng what he was saying about rowboats and rivers and the conversation, gone silent, picks up from where it had been before.) 

They cope. It’s slow, but they cope. The others stop treating him with kiddie gloves when Yangyang joins in on the joking and conversations, albeit a slow process of growing comfortable enough into interjecting. They stop asking him who he’s talking to when he’s trying to get Ten and Kun’s voices to shut up. Dejun tells him Ten’s not there when he notices his gaze tracking nothing in the hallway. 

They joke and they talk and they have brief therapy sessions when they can. They never run out of things to talk about because Guanheng seems to have an opinion on every-fucking-thing there is. It’s both comforting to know they’ll never run out of things to say and irritating in a light-hearted way, perhaps the way they’d tease each other about if they were anywhere but here. 

It’s almost comforting. Familiar. A schedule he doesn’t anticipate changing. 

Then, Ten shows up and gives them clothes and tells them they have to be presentable. 

Then, Ten drags them to a meeting. 

Then, they meet the people in charge of everything. 

Then, Sungchan shows up and kills one of them and himself. 

Then, Yangyang’s alone again. 

Chapter Text

Yangyang isn’t completely alone when he gets locked up again, but he wishes he was. He really, really wishes he was. 

Sungchan showing up and killing himself in front of Yangyang after killing one of the women in charge shocked him into silence when they were rushed back to their cells, though Yangyang was in a new, blank one, divorced from his dream’s manifestation and his tennis balls and his colours. He isn’t given any new paints and he isn’t given any explanation on what’s been going on. 

He’s just left with his voices and an empty room for them to bounce around in, somehow making them louder even though he knows that’s not how it works. 

It's odd. Isolating. He hates it. 

When he thinks about it, the one thing he’s glad for is that Ten isn’t here to give him his medication, though he isn’t too sure what to think about Ten now, either. He thinks he saw the man getting arrested alongside the rest of them but he wasn’t sure at the time if it was the real Ten or the one he had been seeing pacing the halls for weeks after his dreamscape’s slow rebuilding and extraction. 

It wouldn’t make sense for them to arrest him unless it was because he was involved somehow, or they thought he was, and that meant he wasn’t as much on their side as he seemed to be. But Yangyang couldn’t divorce that idea of Ten from the man who was there during the painful, agonizing reconstruction of his dreamscape in his head and did nothing but watched. He also couldn’t stop seeing him as the same voice in his head that would torment him endlessly, feeding him more and more paranoia until he was flinching at shadows. 

Ten’s voice seemed to only accel after Sungchan’s death in front of him, as did Kun’s and a few others, mixed between Dejun’s and Guanheng’s and Sicheng’s voices twisting into strange amalgamations of their unique accents that confused Yangyang further. 

When they first show up, Yangyang can’t stop stumbling around the room, looking for speakers somewhere or to see if he’s close by the others, but after hours of trying to yell through the walls, he sinks to the floor with a choked little oh no no no and tries to bury his head in his arms. 

His head is syrupy. It’s always syrupy, now. He thinks he loses time and he can’t keep track of the days. He’s never been able to, but now especially it’s hard for him to figure out when it’s night or day or if it’s been a week or a month or if he’s spent hours asleep or days. 

The voices cycle between feeding his paranoia and rambling nonsense and screaming at him and reliving Sungchan’s death in his head again and again and again and again. He sees shadowy figures out of the corners of his eyes but he has little to no energy left to try and respond verbally, now. 

He just sits in his corner, places his hands over his ears, and waits for something to give. 

Eventually, they take pity on him and give him some paints back, but Yangyang isn’t sure what to do with them, anymore. He just draws circles, again and again, and again where he can reach from his small corner. It feels a little bit like he’s caging himself in. 

It makes the voices feel claustrophobic and one of them tells him if he leaves the boundaries he’s made for himself, he’ll die just like Sungchan, so he sits and doesn’t move and screams like he’s dying when the guards show up to shove pills down his throat to make sure he’s actually taking them. 

Every now and then, Yangyang thinks he can hear faint screams in the distance, but he’s never sure if he’s making it up or if he’s actually hearing one of his gēges. It freaks him out and he covers his ears but the sound never disappears. 

He starts pushing his meals away, unwilling to eat. Sicheng-Guanheng’s voice tells him that they’re poisoned and if he eats them he’ll be dragged back to that room with Ten and forced to rebuild his dream again, so he leaves plates full and ignores his growling stomach. 

Then, he’s told to eat or his acting out is going to be taken out on his gēges so he swallows his complaints and eats with tears in his eyes and tries not to choke on the crumbling, gray taste of everything he’s given. 

After ages, he doesn’t even know how long, at this point, and after a very uncomfortable conversation with a psychiatrist he doesn’t remember seeing again, he’s taken back to their cellblock. Guards escort him there and he changes into new clothes before the group of them is gathered up, again. 

At first, the understanding is made that they’ll discuss everything calmly once they’re as alone as they could possibly be, here, but that’s quickly thrown out the window. 

Sicheng, Kun, Guanheng, Dejun and Xuxi argue about Ten, for a few minutes. Yangyang’s reluctant to join, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to talk about Ten when his voice is still living in his head and he doesn’t want to speak at all, really. 

In the end, all they conclude is that Ten might not be doing these things out of his own free will, but they aren’t going to start trusting him right away, either. This much is enough for Yangyang. 

Ten comes around exactly once afterwards, and Yangyang ignores him through all of it, save for the last moments when he’s leaving. 

Yangyang heard him and Dejun speaking about looking into where his voices came from and for a moment, even though he can’t trust his perception of Ten, anymore, he’s faintly jealous. 

It doesn't make sense, he knows it doesn't. He doesn't want to be near Ten, speak to him, betrayal still burning into his mind from his dreamscape being rebuilt and hearing malicious comments from his voice near-constantly, but he still feels jealous. 

It's like—

He wants Ten to care about him , too. He knows it’s selfish to think because he wouldn't want Dejun to suffer but just for a moment, he wants his voices to be looked at as something that needs intervention by Ten. He wants Ten to look for a solution for him, too. 

It's entirely illogical, so he doesn't bring it up. But when Ten leaves, Yangyang’s eyes drag after them and he just— 

Wishes. 

The others start playing a new game, one that Yangyang actually likes quite a bit. They ask questions in reverse-age order and answer in age order. It’s a break from their bleak atmosphere and gives them more to talk about than Guanheng and Dejun arguing while the rest join in belatedly. 

“My turn,” Dejun says. Yangyang can see him in his cell, lying on his back as he toys with the clothes he has on. He hums before oh ing once, not sitting up but turning his head to the side to face Yangyang. 

“What was the weirdest thing you’ve heard someone say since we’ve been here?” Dejun asks. Kun hums from further down the hall, as though he’s thinking. 

“Maybe one of the doctors? I think I heard one of them surprised I had a heartbeat when we first got here,” Kun says. Guanheng snorts. 

“Really imprisoned with the brightest minds,” He snarks. “Sicheng-gē?”

“Don’t remember. I was pretty out of it whenever people were around, or they didn’t speak when I was near them.” 

“One of them said they wanted to pet my wings when they thought I couldn’t hear them,” Xuxi comments. 

“What the hell, like a pet or something?” Dejun asks, sounding annoyed at this prospect. 

“Probably? It was fucking weird,” He complains. 

“I didn’t hear anything too weird but I still think it’s funny that I heard one of the guards call the other 250,” Guanheng says. Xuxi snickers at this and Yangyang takes an anticipatory breath for his turn. 

“I think the weirdest was Ten’s voice in my brain telling me that they’d eat my heart. Or, like, that if I crossed this little border in my cell that I drew with my crayons that these bugs would eat my eyes,” Yangyang says. “But, like, the border was opposite the toilet, so I kind of just gave in when I had to pee.” 

Instead of the awkward silence he half-expects, Sicheng snorts from far off in the hall. Yangyang takes it as a win. 

The next day, Dejun quickly spirals. 

Yangyang knows that he and Dejun have voices. He’s heard Dejun speak to his now and then, mumbled and quiet, but never too loud. He’s sure that it’s worse in isolation, the same it is for him, but he’s never seen the true extent of how much his voices tormented him. 

Strangely enough, he thinks he’s subconsciously been assuming that Dejun’s voices were, somehow, not as bad as his. He hates himself a little bit for thinking it in the first place, horrified with himself for trying to compare when they’re all suffering, honestly. But some sort of karma must hit Dejun as a result of his assumption. 

Dejun starts pacing his cell and he cuts himself off when he speaks with others, arguing with himself in Korean. Yangyang feels increasingly more uncomfortable watching. Not because he’s scared of Dejun, but because of the idea that he might’ve looked like this when he had his breakdowns. That he might’ve scared his gēges like this without realizing it. 

Dejun stops speaking Mandarin altogether and soon, after hours of snapping at nothing and stumbling over his words and driving Yangyang further and further back into his cell so he didn’t have to watch, he starts screaming. 

“Just shut up!” He screams, hands curled in his hair. It’s eerily similar to how Yangyang thinks his one or two breakdowns in front of the others had been. “Stop—you can’t say that, you can’t, please, please please please .” 

“What are we supposed to do—?” Yangyang questions, desperate. He doesn’t remember what the others said when he broke down ages ago, so long ago when he was getting dragged away for his dream reconstruction. 

“We can’t do anything, bǎobèi, it’s—” 

“They can’t just let this happen—” 

“Well, what are we supposed to—” 

“Please, please please please, I—I need— Stop! Stop, stop, leave me alone, leave me alone.” 

Yangyang feels like throwing up. He stumbles to the toilet in the corner of his cell and retches, nothing but bile coming up. He can hear Dejun hitting himself in the head and he curls away from him, in the corner. 

He doesn’t want to look at Dejun right now. It makes him feel selfish but he can’t watch. 

“Ten-hyung,” Dejun sobs. “He—He said he would—He’d figure it out, I need—I need—” He almost hyperventilates the words between his senseless shouting, mumbling, screaming. Yangyang presses his hands over his ears and screws his eyes shut. 

Eventually, after a lot more yelling with Dejun’s voice slowly getting hoarser, he hears the muffled sound of the door opening and hurried footsteps down the hall. Yangyang can’t listen to them speak, Korean garbled in his brain as he tried not to devolve into a panic attack. He doesn’t want to see Ten. He doesn’t want to see Ten, he really doesn’t want to see Ten. 

He can hear his muffled voice and it’s almost worse than just hearing the man’s voice crystal clear because he can’t make out what he’s saying and he feels like that’s more dangerous than understanding him. Or the voice in his head. He keeps getting them mixed up and he hates it. He keeps having nightmares of things the voice has said cutting into innocent memories. 

Finally, finally. Ten leaves and Dejun’s quiet. He waits for the doors to close before he moves his hands, but it takes a long time for him to open his eyes. Then, he pulls himself to the glass doors. 

He sees Dejun. His back is to him but he looks—normal, almost. As normal as he could be. 

“Yangyang?” He hears Kun call. “You okay?” 

“That was—a lot,” He hears himself say, voice strangely steady. “Is that what it was like when I—?” Yangyang questions. 

“Yeah,” Guanheng answers, quietly. They fall silent after that. No one seems to want to speak. 

Slowly, Yangyang watches Dejun stir, hours later. He hasn’t slept a wink, waiting for him to wake up. 

“Are you awake?” He calls, voice soft. He’s sure it catches the other’s attention but no one says a word yet, almost holding their breaths. 

“G’morning,” Dejun grunts in response. Yangyang blinks. 

“How’re you feeling?” Guanheng asks. Dejun sits up, rolling back his shoulders and stretching. He looks entirely too blase. 

“What d’you mean?” He asks, frowning. He turns to Yangyang with a questioning look but something about his face is just slightly off. Yangyang isn’t sure why, but Ten’s voice whispers something in his ear that makes him freeze, slightly. 

“That’s not really Dejun,” He hisses. Yangyang ignores it. 

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Yangyang asks. 

“Um, that game Kun and Guanheng played, about idioms or something. It was stupid,” He dismisses. “Is something wrong? Did something happen?” 

“You’re… missing a few days. It was a lot, for you, please don’t panic,” Yangyang says, careful in his words. Dejun looks at him, a bit confused, and Yangyang continues for him after seeing this look, trying to soothe him. 

“Your voices were just—really, really upset with you, I think. You said they were. I think it’s ‘cause you were with us and then alone again and back and forth, and it's—I get it, y'know? I know what it's like—how it's like for me. Just—I’m glad you don’t remember, okay?” 

Dejun nods slowly, though he doesn’t look away from Yangyang. His skin crawls from the weight of his gaze.

Then, after that, everything is just—pieces. It’s all bits and pieces, for Yangyang. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Trusting Dejun,” Ten says as the doors open. Yangyang presses himself in the back of his cell until Ten opens his door. Dejun leaves confidently and he walks into Yangyang’s with soft, apologetic eyes and offers him a hand. 

He looks between Ten—God, he doesn’t even recognize the man’s face anymore, it’s so fucking weird—and back to Dejun. Kind, trustworthy Dejun who utters a soft, Just trust gē, okay? And Yangyang can do this, so he takes the man’s hand and he’s lead him out of his cell. 

“They’re all working against you, all of them, why are you letting them touch you—” 

There are alarms blaring and Yangyang can’t focus, he’s getting pulled along by Sicheng and he can’t focus, his head is syrupy and everything’s so loud, everything in his head is overlapping again and again. 

“So stupid, you’re so stupid, stupid stupid stupid—” 

He hears them saying something but it’s getting drowned out by the voices again—

“Worthless, worthless, worthless! ” 

“Can we leave Yangyang with Ten when he’s—?” 

“They all know your secrets, they know them, they’re going to use them against you—” 

“Why would you trust him, why would you—” 

Yangyang floats. 

“Yangyang, we need to go, I’m sorry about this, but we have to—” 

Yangyang feels a stinging pain in his face and blinks, once, or twice, and he feels—solid. Someone’s holding onto his hands tightly, thumbs rubbing circles into them as he feels like he’s waking up. 

The first thing he hears is Ten’s voice and he tenses up, but he realizes that it’s the real Ten than the one he’s been hearing for months, now. 

“—Breaking you all out was always the plan, but I couldn’t do that explicitly when one wrong move could’ve ended up cutting you off from the others, and I knew if I wasn’t there—these fucking people and their greed—they wouldn’t have let you go.” Ten explains. Yangyang, with a clear mind, hears this and wants to believe it. 

He knows he’s being broken out and he knows that the others are very lightly placing hesitant trust in him but everything is still screaming at him to be skeptical. To put his walls up, to argue, to shout, to get away. But this is—he wants to believe it. He wants to believe it with everything in him. But he’s still so, so frightened. 

Vaguely, Yangyang remembers something that he has to ask Dejun when Kun and Ten leave to get research papers. 

“Was any of it real?” He asks with arms crossed as he chews on the inside of his cheek and looks over to Dejun, side-eyeing him. Not maliciously, not curiously, but something else he can't identify. 

“The fear was,” Dejun admits. “And the hurt and the dream reconstruction, but—the voices weren’t. I’m sorry, Yangyang.” 

“Don’t be sorry,” He murmurs after a moment. “I’m glad you didn’t have to deal with that.” 

Dejun winces, and Yangyang—

He means what he says. He doesn’t want Dejun to be sorry. He doesn’t want him to deal with that. But he thinks back to Dejun and his breakdown and how much of himself he saw mirrored in it and wonders, quietly, if he saw Yangyang losing his mind and was inspired by it. Or took bits and pieces to authenticate his performance. 

It’s hardly the first thing to worry about. Really, it’s very, very low on the list of things that he should be worrying about, but his skin still crawls at the thought and he can look Dejun in the eyes but he isn’t sure how he’ll feel after all this. 

After that, everything’s gone. 

His memories are all in bits and pieces, fragmented. It’s nothing to do with dreamscapes and that probably makes it worse, really. Yangyang just knows that after a year in that place—God, a year, it felt so much longer, sometimes—Ten revealed that he was working with Dejun and the other Neos to escape all this time and things would be okay and they were safe. 

He knows this because Kun tells him, but it’s hard to believe. The others don’t try to push it, but they tell him in passing because it’s something that’s suggested to them by one of the other Neos Taeyong works with. Repeating it will make his subconscious start to accept it, or something. To accept the fact that he’s free and safe. 

Yangyang gets told he got shot but he was okay, and that’s why he feels a phantom ache in his chest sometimes, but he can’t remember it at all. In all honesty, he doesn’t want to. 

They find out, belatedly, that his voices were caused by a mix of multiple things; trauma, constant stress, isolation, extreme grief, lack of sleep, hunger, and, scarily, post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a laundry list of reasons but PTSD is the umbrella term he gets diagnosed with. 

In normal circumstances, he’s told, the hallucinations would’ve stopped after a month. But the near-constant state of terror he was in and the repeated infliction of trauma fed the blackhole that Yangyang kept getting sucked into. 

Of course, understanding these things doesn’t really help. The voices are still there. 

They have to reconstruct their dreams again. 

For the others, it’s their first time, but with Dejun and Yangyang, it’s twice and thrice, now, that they’ve done it. Yangyang is still terrified, slightly, but he promised Dejun forever ago that he would help the others. 

So he does. And it’s fucking awful, but—

But. It’s not as bad as the first time. And with Dejun there, it’s easier. It’s easier when he knows he has to help others, too. It’s easier with people there. 

“Do you think you could forgive him?” Dejun asks, one day. It’s thrown out there without context but Yangyang knows who he’s talking about. 

At this point, he knows what’s happened. He knows what Ten believed and why he did everything he did, and he’s slowly divorced the Ten in his mind from the Ten that helped them escape, but it’s still—

“I don’t know,” He says, after a long, long time. “It’s still—Everything. It’s still stuck with me. I can’t get rid of it, yet. I need time.” 

“That’s entirely fair,” Dejun says. Then, his voice drops a bit lower. “Can you forgive—me?” 

Yangyang frowns at this and opens his mouth to speak before Dejun is speaking over him. 

“Don’t say I shouldn’t be sorry, it’s—I lied to you, I lied to all of you, but it’s worse, with you. Because I pretended we had this camaraderie over something that was only happening to you. And I’m sorry I broke your trust like that, I really am,” Dejun says. He’s working himself up as he speaks but Yangyang lets him because he thinks that this is something that’s been on his chest for a very long time and he hasn’t been able to get past it. 

“I told you already, you shouldn’t be sorry,” This much he remembers, and Dejun looks ready to push back before he puts a hand on top of his and he pauses. Then, Yangyang continues. “I didn’t want you to experience any of that. It was—Honestly, gēge, it was really, really fucking scary. I’m glad you didn’t have to live through that.” 

He takes a breath he doesn’t need and continues. “And, honestly? I’m not mad. I think—You did what you could for us to get out. For us to survive. I think if you didn’t do anything at all, we would’ve been there for years. Decades, maybe. I’m really proud of you, gē.” 

Dejun tears up and Yangyang pulls him in for a hug, the two silent. It’s a humane quiet, one for both of them to bask in than fear. Yangyang’s tired of being afraid.  

They have to discuss the punishment for Ten. Dejun leaves himself out of the conversation and the others are brought to Taeyong’s dream to discuss with him and a few of the others Neos. Ten’s not there when they get there, but Yangyang still feels his skin crawl. 

They end up in a meeting room, something that looks like it should be fancy, but is still comfortable. The chairs are plush and the walls are deep blue and white rather than dull grays. It’s a change from what he remembers of VVV’s headquarters, despite his memories being in bits and pieces. 

Taeyong asks them to recount their experiences, at first, if they’re comfortable with it. They go from oldest to youngest almost automatically, Sicheng skipping his turn and Guanheng getting through his slowly. and Yangyang feels sick just listening to it. Then, they reach him, and he— 

“I—I don’t remember a lot. I’m sorry,” He says. He doesn’t look up, one hand picking at his clothes as he sits cross-legged in the office chair and the other held tightly by Kun’s, fingers laced with each other. “I just—It was lonely, a lot. And I feel like I’m never going to be myself, again.” 

He doesn’t say anything else, tears already pricking at his eyes. No one pushes him, but Kun squeezes his hand once and Yangyang pretends that it’s something comforting. 

Despite everything, despite how impossible it seemed, despite all Yangyang’s fears—

The voices do, eventually, fade. 

They were never there before, so Yangyang should have guessed that they would’ve left after the constant stressors, too. That’s what he was told when he was diagnosed, but yet. 

But yet. 

He woke up one day, and his head was silent. It usually was, but this continued for a week and when he realized, he—

Honestly, Yangyang cried. He cried for a long, long time. Then he told Kun the next day and they both cried, together, though Kun was quieter about it. He would’ve told the others, but they scattered and honestly, Yangyang just wanted to. Live in silence, for a moment. 

Slowly. Slowly. They all heal. 

Yangyang concludes, a long while later, that he thinks he can forgive Ten. 

He’s not any more grown up. He feels like he’s been the same for years, but he thinks that he’s far enough from everything that’s happened that he can see it in more of a neutral light. Rather, he can see Ten as less of a puppetmaster and more of someone scrambling to keep them alive. 

He can see it as something like—Like trying to scoop water out of a sinking boat with nothing but his hands until Dejun came by as something of a lifesaver. He’s more sympathetic to him now, he thinks. 

Of course, he’s always been endeared to Ten. He’s been by his side for so long he thinks he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t, but—there’s something in him screaming for him to trust Ten, trust in his ability to change, not to hurt them, that makes him take the first step. 

Eventually, he goes to Kun with this knowledge. 

Dejun comes back with Guanheng, after a long, long time. He thinks it’s been half a decade, but he can’t be sure at all. Sicheng follows, and then Xuxi does and soon it’s everyone. Everyone save for Ten and Kun. 

Yangyang closes his eyes, leaning against Dejun on the couch as Sicheng flips through the channels lazily, looking for something to watch before sighing and turning the TV off. Dejun makes his way to get up for a moment before Yangyang pulls him down, one hand wrapped around his elbow. 

He doesn’t open his eyes as he speaks. “Be my pillow, gē,” He whines. Dejun scoffs playfully, cuffing him around the ear before sinking back next to him. 

“I charge for my services,” He warns Yangyang. The younger just flaps a hand at him. 

“Stop talking like you’re a stripper.” Guanheng snorts as Dejun sputters and a smile crawls up Yangyang’s face. 

When he feels sleepy, finally, he tugs on Dejun’s arm again and waits until the man’s head turns to face him. “Come with me,” He says simply. Dejun seems to understand because he hums, and then both Dejun and he are asleep. 

Yangyang’s dreamscape is already built-up. He just wanted Dejun to come with him and see it, again. When he reconstructed his dream, so long ago, he was hesitant to come back. When he did, he felt sick just staring at the pinkish skies he used to love. So he tore it all down, got rid of it all. 

It was odd. He knows that some of the Dreamies do it often, but it is odd, and he slowly built it up from scratch again. It’s something he’s proud of, and something that carries none of his previous baggage. 

They wake up in a large parking garage, first. They’re at the very top and Dejun scoffs when he sees the tire marks from Yangyang doing repeated donuts. 

“Are you even allowed to drive?” He asks playfully, prodding him. Yangyang swats at his hands. 

“Fuck off, yes I am,” He tells him matter-of-factly. Dejun looks up and sees everything else, curious. 

The sky’s a beautiful turquoise, mixed with yellow and creating a magical ombre that’s punctuated by fluffy white clouds that look soft to the touch. There are stars glittering between them that are present even in the middle of the day. 

Past the parking garage, there’s a small city, people shuffling around in it from a distance. Yangyang doesn’t go there often, happy to watch from where he is. Further down, where there are trees dotting the spaces between concrete and the woods surrounding the city, isolating it from the rest of the world, almost, they’re bright reds and oranges, fall colours in the middle of spring. 

Past the woods, it’s just… fog. He can’t see past it. Dejun breathes out slowly as he looks, amazed. Yangyang watches with a smile on his face, small and nervous. 

“D’you like it?” He asks. Dejun laughs, a bit breathless. 

“It’s so… you,” Dejun replies, in earnest. Yangyang can tell he means it, genuinely. 

“Explore with me? I haven’t gone past the garage, yet,” He tells him. Dejun nods and takes his hand, and they leave. 

“We should get back,” Yangyang tells him, maybe two hours later. He knows it’s been longer, outside. “He’s probably there by now.” 

“Who?” Dejun asks, his voice twisting in confusion. 

Yangyang pulls out his apple. Then, he gestures to Dejun. “I’ll be right behind you, c’mon. Let’s go.” 

It’s a tearful reunion, one that Yangyang hangs back from. They speak casually and they don’t acknowledge the elephant in the room. 

Then, it’s late. Late at night and Yangyang is left in the living room alone with Ten. He’s sitting on the couch, flipping through channels before he lands on old episodes of Scooby Doo, grainy and slightly gray. 

The man hesitates before he takes a seat next to Yangyang. The younger doesn’t say a word but he leans his head against Ten’s shoulder and feels his stiff shoulders melt into something more comfortable under his touch. 

It’s the most himself he’s felt in a long, long time. Yangyang’s head is quiet and Ten is next to him and the moon is full. He can hear a cow, distantly, and the drip of the sink is a familiar tic. 

He breathes, even though he doesn’t really need to, anymore. He smells grassy fields and a smile curls up on his lips, faint. It’s home.