Buried alive and still breathing

Anonymous

Summary:
When Kim Dokja dreams, it’s about the scenarios.

The apocalypse is ruthless, but Kim Dokja’s own mind is worse, and as long as that stays true, he will succeed.

Sometimes, though, Kim Dokja dreams other dreams, and those are worse.

Notes:
I just wanted to write something short and for once I managed it, mostly about Kim Dokja's inner desires and the yearning, and this is what came out...

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:
Buried alive and still breathing

When Kim Dokja dreams, it’s about the scenarios.

His subconscious expands, stretches out, walks familiar footsteps, makes different choices. He’s stuck in a loop where his brain pushes and shoves him through those memories, blood and blades and monsters and split decisions that spin out of control.

It’s not dreams, it’s not nightmares –it’s merely his brain twisting reality, makes him aware that he walks a fine line, and every step can be his last.

There are so many choices to make, so many steps to a plan Kim Dokja only thought would exist in his mind and nowhere else, and it is within his mind that he sees the failures staring back at him, the hesitation, the fear of misstepping.

Sometimes he’s not the one who ends up sacrificed so his precious people will live on for one more day –sometimes, he watches, helpless, one of them die in front of him because of his actions.

He watches the bloody, betrayed eyes of his friends, his companions. He watches Yoo Sangah dying to her own stigma, the Nebula backing her retracting their help to spite him. He struggles against his own body while Shin Yoosung and Lee Gilyoung get devoured by the very same creatures they sought to tame. Han Sooyoung, Lee Hyunsung, Lee Jihye, Jung Heewon… they all falter and fall.

Yoo Joonghyuk, dying in front of him, regressing and leaving him behind.

The Constellations fall, too –the ones he grudgingly realised matter to him more than as distant backers. Uriel with her wings ripped out, Probability taken from her in her attempts to protect him, Sun Wukong turned into a Disaster, upending sky and earth as he burns himself alive, even the shadowy figure of the Secretive Plotter vanished in the darkness, disappearing within the same Outer Gods that had once attempted to devour Murim.

Persephone and Hades, separated and turned into dust, their bodies fading away in the breeze before Kim Dokja can reach out to them, their stories lost forever.

One misstep is all he needs, and he has to watch, miserable, as his poor decisions crumble like a house of cards.

There is no Fourth Wall there to absorb his shock. It’s all Kim Dokja then, the screams, the raw, gut-wrenching pain, the guilt.

He stands in the darkness, surrounded by the corpses of those he promised to protect that he failed to save, tears cold down his cheeks, emptiness in his chest.

Countless times he screams himself awake, not a word passing his lips, tightly pressed together, the afterimage of dead eyes glaring at him in judgement, heart racing in his throat.

It all fades away when he blinks the sleep out of his eyes, slowly returns to the one timeline he’s guarding with the severe eyes of a dog herding unruly sheep, keeping them safe from dangers.

They are all alive, still. He has not yet failed them.

The nightmares telling him of other possibilities are pushed down, shoved into the darkest recesses of his mind. It’s easy, to ignore the choices he didn’t take when he has to make more to keep himself afloat against the current.

The scenarios are ruthless, but Kim Dokja’s own mind is worse, and as long as that stays true, he will succeed.

Sometimes, though, Kim Dokja dreams other dreams, and those are worse.

Gentle fingers brush against his forehead, searching for a fever that isn’t there, warm hands tucking him in a big bed, a soft smile, weary but loving, as his mother’s voice wraps around him, lulling him to sleep with a lullaby that follows him as he wakes.

Fragments of a past he doesn’t want to think about mix with the bittersweet notes of the present, and his mother has age lines around her mouth, tired and tried from years in prison, yet still remembers every word of his favourite fairytale.

There is no father there to sour their time, no pain lingering behind softened gazes, no disgraced mother unable to protect her kid, no broken son turning his back on her.

Tiny arms wrap around his midsection in a hug that feels like coming home after a long day in the cold, happy voices asking inane questions as hands gently lead him towards a meal ready for them, his precious kids squabbling over who gets to sit on his lap, no dangers waiting for them afterwards, only a long stretch of time to be together, enjoy each other’s presence.

A house he’s never seen surrounds them, warm and bright, with childish crayon drawings perfectly framed hanging on walls, nothing he’s ever drawn himself, it’s all them –portraits of a happy family, his kids and himself, a furnished fridge, twin bedrooms on each side of his own.

He’s never desired children, the taste bitter in his mouth at the very thought, but this is warm, this is love, this is everything he’s ever wanted, coating his tongue like luxurious chocolate.

There’s vague flashes of afternoon spent playing with plushies and dolls and dressing up, embarrassed but content, and a book in his hands and kids with their heads on his lap, dozing off in the sun.

A bigger house, where all his friends live with him, each with their own room, and he steps from one door to the other, always welcome, never alone. They surround him like an embrace, happy voices in the air, the promise of every spring, and summer, and autumn and winter, seconds of a lifetime with no regrets.

Cooking lessons, swimming together, walks in the park, watching movies, and Kim Dokja always surrounded by the love he never allows himself to have.

In his dreams, all he wanted to have, all he wished he could taste, is close by and he doesn’t even have to reach out for it.

Warm smiles, content laughter, the stretch of a life together with no expectations.

Kim Dokja, in his dreams, is happy.

Roughed hands filled with scars cupp his chin, a thumb tracing idly down the curve of a cheek, deceptively gentle, a burning touch that lingers even after Kim Dokja awakens, chasing him like fire, leaving ashes in its wake. Eyes he knows so well, gentled in ways he doesn’t allow himself to notice at any other time, lips pressed against every inch of his skin, so soft their ghostly touch fades, leaving only tingling behind.

A voice that he remembers from daring his enemies to come to him murmurs gently against his ear, for nobody else but him, things he can barely remember.

It is soft, and content, raspy from waking in the late morning, lazy and languid from a shared night spent together.

Strong arms wrap around him like he’s meant to be held and protected, exposing the secrets he’s always tried to bury, a blanket wrapped around two bodies pressed so tightly together that they could be one, breaths intermingling where their lips touch.

It’s skin exposed to be marked, it’s lips parted to murmur out a name like a prayer, it’s kisses pressed over faded scars, leaving behind a past so that it stops hurting, it’s eyes only looking at a future together.

It’s the promise of learning to love life.

The moment he wakes, his skin cold, missing a touch that was never there, eyes straying towards his companions, is when he falls apart, every time.

Words push against the inside of his lips, begging to be released, only for him to swallow them back down, acrid and toxic, gnaws at them with desperation, denial and anger, ashamed at his own weakness, that something like this is enough to shake him.

The nightmares are easy to forget, cold and abrupt like a blade through his sternum, but the dreams, alluring in their warmth, feel like a punishment.

For one second, Kim Dokja lingers between wake and sleep, chases the fading warmth of loving hands cradling him like he matters, exhales a name through parted lips with no sound, yearning in ways he doesn’t let himself be.

In that second, he thinks –maybe, if he reaches out, he can have a fragment of his dreams, feel that flame within his palms, growing, if only…

Then the Fourth Wall descends on him, sharp, the blade of a guillotine falling. The world rights itself, and Kim Dokja with it, stretches and stands.

Left buried inside him, the dreams scatter, fade away, the once-vivid colours opaque and lacklustre, and his mind, protected from the yearning that almost unravelled him, cools.

To the eyes following his every move, to the protagonist who glares at him from the other side of the room, to the one he pledged his very existence to, all he can offer then is a cheeky, empty grin.

Kim Dokja gets up, tired, exhausted, held together by the steely edges of a fragment of a Wall, and keeps moving.

Notes:
this is tagged as not really unrequited simply because kjd doesn't realise, but yjh cares so deeply for him and he worries, sees that split second where kdj wants to reach out, only for that frantic desperation to fade away into nothing as something (the fourth wall) drops down to chain it back down. yjh is frustrated, and can't help.