Chapter Text
"Seonghwa!"
"Seonghwa wake up!"
"You can't die, not now!"
"You promised!"
"You promised we would find the green together!"
"You promised to grow an apple tree and make a house out of wood!"
"You promised!"
"You..."
"You..."
Seonghwa jerked awake, his head was throbbing harder than ever and his vision was blurry, it felt like he woke up from a coma, what if he did? What else could explain the dryness in his throat, the pain in his back, the memory loss, that's what people described it to be like, that's what Yunho had told it to be like.
His head felt like it could explode at any moment and when he tried to move, he found himself almost screaming in pain from a sudden shock coming from his leg.
The pain drove him back to almost passing out again but he held firm and gave himself some time to make his eyes adjust to the darkness of whatever place he was in and to try to remember what the fuck happened.
It took him a lot longer than he wanted, the still overwhelming headache was like a blockade from his memories and he could only recall certain parts of it, small parts. Parts that seemed a bit random, everything he could think of gave him a wave of sadness, the dry lands he saw every day, the dead remains that once were supposed to be alive and colourful, the village, the fire...
The fire!
All the memories suddenly came flooding back like a wave, he had been attacked, him and his family, his friends, the entire village. Everyone had been attacked by them, they had started a fire. They had dragged his mother out of the little stone house they had spent years creating and advancing and set it on fire.
They had pushed his dad who had come running to save his pregnant wife into the growing fire that had started to catch onto the neighbour's house, the screams, he could clearly hear the screams his mom let out when she saw her husband be burned alive knowing that she would either suffer the same fate, or worse.
He could suddenly remember how they had taken his little brother who had been playing with his friend when the attack started, they had dragged him next to his mother and hit him on the head, making his mom sob even harder.
He remembered making eye contact with his mom during that moment, he had tried to rescue them aswell but that's when everything had become black, just void. That was the last thing he could remember.
His vision hadn't even gotten the chance to clear, water had filled them up again while Seonghwa looked into his past.
They had put their lives on the line to find a place that the Roses and Lilys wouldn't find, they had sacrificed so many lives to get where they are now, to start their own little civilisation, All of the buildings they had made, the fireplaces, the organised hunts that he had finally taken part of for once, the story nights, the friends he would hang out with whenever he got the chance.
The ups and downs that made him feel alive, made him feel human, something the other half of the human population never felt like doing. The way his friends would cheer him up whenever he once again messed up during bour which is what they used to call the time they would spend learning how to use a bow.
He never had a big friend group which was understandable when there were only a few people in the camp around the same age as him, the ones that had only just become an adult. Yet there was one boy he could never be apart from ever since they were little kids, Yunho.
More tears fell from his eyes as he tried to move his arm, it worked and he blocked the sun with it, he was still in the awfully familiar wasteland that he had grown up in, the never-ending view of dead grass and dried-out dirt was the only thing he had ever seen together with the small pond that was hidden in a cave a few miles away, the only watercourse they had.
Every single part of his body hurt, his leg the most. His head had probably been hit by one of those long metal sticks the Lilys carried around whenever they were on a hunt for their kind. He didn't have an explanation for his leg however and it took every ounce of remaining strength to even just lift his upper body in the slightest.
He didn't even think he would want to see what would be displayed in front of him if he looked around but he didn't have much of a choice, it was that or slowly dying from dehydration and then being eaten by the birds.
The constant throbbing of his head had become a little less bad but that didn't stop the dizziness from taking over at the slightest movement, he must have been lying there for multiple days. It was practically a wonder he was still alive in this heat without water.
He first scanned the area in front of him. wasteland, as expected. Still the same dead world he had known his entire life, at least something stayed the same then.
He slowly managed to fully sit up and his vision was mostly clear by now, ignoring the small amount of tears that managed to escape. It was stupid of him to waste the remaining form of water in his body on crying but he couldn't help it, it was too much for him. This would be too much for anyone.
In the span of an hour, he had gone from being happy and sitting on a big stone with Yunho next to him talking about how they were going to marry soon and get kids and that they would be able to run around with them and be fathers to everyone he had ever known is dead, his home, the only place he would be accepted was burned to the ground, all the recourses he had spent years of his live getting together to make life doable, gone.
He clenched his teeth hard enough that he was scared he would break them as he inspected his upper leg, It didn't seem as life-threatening as it felt but a big red stain could be seen through the thick material of his pants. Maybe they had shot him?
He tried touching the fabric and ignored the stinging it caused, He needed to know if they were alive, if anyone was alive.
The fear of being alone had been lingering in his mind the moment the memories returned, he had been home alone from time to time but his parents were always close by, this was a whole new level of being alone, one that was slowly eating him up alive already.
No matter how much he wanted his parents to be the ones to have survived, he knew his dad would have never made it out of their house alive, his mom might stand a chance and could have been taken to Taill which was the capital of their country, the place where all the Roses and the more important Lilys live.
His brother was a lost cause, the odds of him having been murdered were way too big but there was a little hope that they had taken him aswell. He was a young and athletic boy, they might have found him useful for work they didn't even want to give the middle class, and he might have been taken to be one of the contestants in the game if he was lucky.
Not that lucky was exactly the right word for being put in an arena that wants to kill you, with other kids that want to kill you and a bunch of rich people practically in the sky that want to kill you, death in there wasn't quick. That was no fun for them, but that way he had a chance to live. Any person who wins the games would be considered a Lily from then on, they were still treated way worse than a Lily but at least it would be illegal to kill them.
He just hoped his mother, little brother and unborn sister would be alive but most of all, he hoped that Yunho made it through.
He couldn't imagine a life without his best friend, his soulmate to be by his side. They had been together from the start and they had made a promise a long time ago that if one of them didn't make it, neither would the other. They had promised each other to find the green that the Roses had. Just to see it at least once.
They would've given anything to see a flower that wasn't dried out and flattened out peeking through the cracks that littered the dry ground back then, now Seonghwa only hoped for him to be alive.
Now that the pain had quieted down as much as it would, he slowly tried lifting himself off the rough underground. All of his limbs protested but he didn't stop, he had to check even if he fell down dead doing it, he couldn't live without him anyway. He didn't even have to find him alive as long as he didn't find a body...
He purposefully tried to keep his body weight on his left foot since the wound was on his right thigh, that way the pain would at least not be bad enough to stop him from slowly stumbling in the direction of his village, or at least what is left from it.
Nothing could be recognised anymore, everything had been either burned down, taken or demolished. Nothing was standing anymore and the entire street was filled with bodies.
It took everything in Seongwha to not throw up at the sight, all of these people were familiar to him, he had spoken to all of them, helped all of them out at least once, and he was even close to some of them. His entire body was shaking and he wanted nothing more than to fall to his knees and cry till he would pass out again.
He had no idea how he had gotten this far away from his home during his unconsciousness, he had been only a short distance from his home when it happened and yet he woke up on the other side of the village, just outside of the furthest circle of houses.
His house got closer and closer and the more he walked, the stronger the bad thoughts became, he had to step over dead bodies more times than he could count and he had already run into a friend of his that had been shot in the head. No Yunho yet though which made him feel somewhat better.
His leg was slowing him down drastically, forcing him to spend even more time in the terrible smell of rotting meat. If there would have been anything in his stomach, it would have left by now and the constant gagging made the situation only worse.
The moment he saw his house from the corner of his eyes, he wanted to run but his worn-out body didn't allow him. The first thing that he noticed was the emptiness on the spot where he had seen his mother and brother earlier before he got knocked out, not even blood.
They are alive
He couldn't get himself to continue walking however, his dad was in there and he didn't want to see it. He would rather die than go in there and witness that level of horror.
His house was made out of stone so the basic structure was still standing but almost everything inside was made out of leather, the beds, the tablecloth, a part of their clothes, they even had a small rug of it. It had all caught on fire and was now gone.
Instead of going inside, he continued his search in the hope of not finding his best friend. He had no idea where he had been when everything went down and on top of that he was an extremely fast runner so he could have easily run to the other side of the village in under a minute.
He spent a total of at least multiple hours looking for any hints on where his friend could be but he didn't find any, his house had been burned down as well but there hadn't been a body inside and no matter how much it hurt, he tried identifying every single body on the street to see if it was him.
The only choice for him was to go to the pond and hope he was there, if he wasn't there he was most likely also taken by them, the Roses...