Nadir ◈ Seungjin

41 ◈ Mordred

Forewarning: Grieving/Dissociation/Depression stuff

It's strange.

While his world shatters and tears, ripping apart in his chest while he frazzled and clawed his body apart,

Days pass on as if nothing happened.

While Seungmin finds himself time and time again, at the industrial complex, on that night. In his memories, in his dreams, in his mind. Whenever his thoughts wander too far, he always was moored back to that pinpoint in time.

Weeks had passed.

He thinks.

He collected all he was able to that following night, and escaped back to his own apartment while Felix was asleep. Cuddled up with the wreck of Jeongin on his couch, keeping the younger bundled tightly in his arms as tears slipped down his swollen cheeks even in his unsettled dreams. Part of Seungmin wanted to join him; Wanted to be him, enveloped in the warm embrace of arms steadying his shattering breaths and catching his tears, kept against another's heartbeat, reminding him he wasn't alone, he wasn't on his own, he didn't need to carry the burden of those burned images on his mind. The other part of him, fucking, hated him. It wanted to grab a knife from the kitchen. It wanted to strangle him while he was vulnerable. It wanted to destroy that man, it wanted to make him feel that pain, feel the same exact misery Seungmin was trapped inside.

Investigated, questioned by the department for days and days until they finally ruled him out as a suspect in the Sergeant's murder for reasons he didn't know. The glances from his coworkers as he sat silently in the interrogation rooms, wandering through the halls of the department to be left alone, their eyes seethed. They blamed him. Rightfully so, it was his mistakes that lead to these circumstances. It was his poor choices, blinded foresight, inability to be capable by his own mind, that caused Minho's untimely death.

He didn't deserve that.

He...

Minho was so young.

Seungmin learned early on in his career with law enforcement, some cases aren't fair. Most crimes aren't fair. Murderers do not care who you go home to. Killers do not have sympathy for those who still wish to be ambitious. They take the stars from children, wives, brothers, sisters, ruthlessly. This case was no different.

Yet Minho hurt more than any case set on his desk before.

Minho was...

He didn't deserve it.

And Changbin.

Changbin, how...?

He came to his doorstep a few times, knocking nervously before wandering around the hallway like an abandoned penguin waddling with clueless eyes until someone could point him in the direction of the nearest fishing spot. Once by himself. Once with Felix, a weak smile on the blond's face as he caught Seungmin's eye watching them through the peephole. Three times to slip a bar of dark chocolate into his postal box. Seungmin just threw those sweet candies away. Twice coming, raising his hand to knock at the door as Seungmin stilled himself with a kitchen knife on the other side in case he would attempt to break through, before he would sigh and sit against the parallel hallway, head buried in his hands until security stopped allowing him inside the building.

Seungmin had stitches in the back of his arm for a while, per Felix's suggestion. Those were eventually removed. Though he could feel the remnants of their healing gaps.

He had some type of cast for something in his arm, also per Felix's insistent suggestion which forcefully dragged him from the solitude of his bedroom to see a doctor. He didn't... He didn't really pay attention to what happened to him. The cast was taken from him as well. At some point.