Changkyun hadn't used his magic in several hundred years. Unsurprisingly, death magic wasn't very popular, or often applicable. It was all great and well when Changkyun had scores of enemies he wanted never to resurface, but when there wasn't anyone in particular he wanted dead for good, his magic wasn't very useful at all. And when he'd taken in a stray cat one day and had decided rather quickly to keep him forever, his magic had become entirely useless.

Changkyun had stopped using his magic in an effort to fade out of witch society. He wanted to leave his dark reputation behind, to live in peace so Hyungwon could live in peace.

But everything had gone wrong, wrong enough to balance out the hundreds of good years they'd had. Everyone falls eventually.

And so eventually had come, sooner than Changkyun would have liked but later than he probably deserved.

Hyungwon's words about Changkyun saving him were funny to Changkyun because he'd always thought that it was the other way around, with Hyungwon saving him. He'd been gifted - or as many said, cursed - with the touch of death. Attachments - physical, emotional - had always been impossible for him because of his magic. Nobody had wanted to get close to him knowing the power he had to end them, utterly and completely. And yet Hyungwon had stayed. The trust he placed in Changkyun led him to believe that maybe Hyungwon was his chance at acceptance, at salvation.

Another joke, as it was his touch of death that would come to claim his salvation.

***

Changkyun emerged from Hyungwon's room some time after eventually. His hands were clean, and that felt wrong to him. He wanted blood, he wanted gore, he wanted evidence of the life he'd just cleaved. But his hands were clean.

"Is everything all right?" Jooheon asked, emerging from Changkyun's bedroom, where'd he'd been waiting for hours. "You were in there a long time."

"The collar is gone," Changkyun said. He remembered distantly that one could input emotion into their voice to better convey their meaning, but he couldn't find any emotion to input. Maybe he'd killed that, too. "And Hyungwon is dead."

Jooheon stared at Changkyun. Didn't say anything, just stared. And that was worse.

"I'm going to-"

"Why?" Jooheon asked abruptly. The emotion was gone from Jooheon's voice as well, but Changkyun could hear the restraint he was exercising. "We talked about this, and we decided that it wasn't even an option-"

"It ended up being the only option."

Jooheon's face pinched as anger burst within him. "And who decided that?"

"Hyungwon did."

"Are you so damn selfish that you think his life is worthless just because you can't be the center of it?" Jooheon snapped. "There are so many other people around him. Witches who risked their lives for him - Hoseok, Hyunwoo, Minhyuk, Kihyun. And what about Taehyung?" Jooheon paused, his eyes wet and beginning to puff up due to his anger. "What about me?!"

"Hyungwon asked me to do it," Changkyun said. He didn't know what his face looked like. He wasn't sure which muscles he was controlling, if he was crying or smiling or frowning or what. "He asked me to."

"If I asked you to kill me, would you kill me too?" Jooheon asked, his fists clenching at his sides. He didn't want Changkyun to kill him, he just wanted to point out Changkyun's idiocy.

"No," Changkyun answered truthfully.

"And why not?"

"Because you're not my fault."

"Hyungwon was more than just a mistake, more than just a curse," Jooheon said. He was trying to hold onto his anger, but it was slipping away fast. He hadn't even seen the body - he didn't know if there'd be one at all - but he didn't doubt the truth of Changkyun's words. "Who am I..." Tears slid down his face as he thought of Hyungwon's tail going limp against the ground. "Who am I going to make lunch for now?"

Changkyun stayed quiet in his gluttony for guilt. He thought of the apple bunnies still sitting in Hyungwon's room that would forever go uneaten. "Witches...we weren't meant to mingle with humans," he said eventually. Words he'd heard many times, words he'd fought against for Hyungwon's sake. He'd resisted the ideology only for it to swallow him whole. "Even cursed ones," he added bitterly.

"You can't tell me you believe that bullshit too now," Jooheon argued, missing a breath when Changkyun didn't reply. "What, you're the new Seungcheol? Death to all humans and all that?"

"No, I don't wish them death," Changkyun corrected, staring at the ground. Lost. He felt lost. Hyungwon had been his anchor for centuries. Even getting Hyungwon back had been another goal, another anchor to tether him to a life he'd enjoyed living, for a brief while. Immortality was long when lived in unhappiness. "I just wish to never deal with them again. Of all the creatures in the world, I now know humans to be the most painful."

"But what of the joy he gave you?" Jooheon asked softly. He could not veil his rage, but he knew that Changkyun was suffering too.

"The joy has been engulfed by absolute sorrow," Changkyun said, his eyes dead, as Hyungwon's had been for the past week. "No, I don't think that I'd like to deal with humans again." His empty eyes traced the walls before falling back on Jooheon. "His soul is in transition. The body will disappear soon. If you believe in saying goodbye, you should do it quickly."

And then, like a flame winking out of existence, Changkyun disappeared, teleporting somewhere where he could be alone to let out the shadows prowling in his heart, somewhere they couldn't hurt anyone else but himself.

***

Jooheon wept.

He cradled Hyungwon in his arms, crying without restraint, and the teardrops journeyed from his eyes and down his chin, plunging to spatter across Hyungwon's cold body. His ears were still, his tail limp as Jooheon had imagined, but Jooheon ran his hand over it anyway, crying harder when his fingers ran into a knot. Hyungwon hadn't let him brush his tail the past week, and now here he was, dead, his body a tortured shell, his tail full of knots. Moments later, the brush was in Jooheon's hand, and he gently moved it along the length of Hyungwon's tail, stopping when he came to a new knot and working it out of Hyungwon's fur. Even when the fur was smooth, he continued brushing, his muscles moving on memory alone because his brain couldn't take the wheel. His eyes squeezed shut in an effort to stem the tears, but it was a futile task.

He decided at some point that he wanted to cry, wanted the decades and centuries he'd known Hyungwon to mean something physical, even as the tears fell and vanished as they rolled off Hyungwon's unyielding skin and were absorbed by the blood-stained linen sheets.

It was the blood that caught his eye, and his eyes unwillingly jumped up to Hyungwon's face as he took in the blood dashed across his lips as well as the thin stream that had spilled out from his nose before drying a rusty red-brown. He knew that it hadn't been Changkyun's doing; Changkyun's magic granted a swift, painless death. Jooheon didn't know quite how it worked, but he knew that Changkyun would not have made Hyungwon suffer but instead ease all of his suffering.

Jooheon sniffed, his tears gradually slowing as he set down the brush and began cleaning up Hyungwon. He wanted it to look as though Hyungwon were sleeping while he waited for Jooheon to prepare his afternoon snack. He started by propping him up against the pillows lining the headboard before sifting his fingers through Hyungwon's hair, straightening his bangs out evenly across his forehead. Then he used the tear-stained linen to wipe off the blood from Hyungwon's face. He sat back to take in his handiwork, and his stomach dropped when his mind tried to convince him that Hyungwon was fine, that he was just sleeping. But Jooheon knew about the blood underneath his nails. No matter how hard Jooheon tried to fix things on the surface, there would always be shadows about Hyungwon that he couldn't dispel, blood he couldn't wash off, death that he couldn't deny.

Once again, Jooheon's eyes begged for further torment as they slid ever so slowly to the left, where Jooheon saw the empty plate waiting for him on the bedside table. He slid off the bed, moving closer, and he stared down at the plate, at the vague reflection that stared back at him.

Hyungwon had eaten his last meal, one Jooheon had prepared for him. Hyungwon hadn't waited to say goodbye, but this was a goodbye in and of itself, wasn't it? A reluctant goodbye? A final thank you? But what did it mean to Hyungwon?

In the end, was it just that he was hungry in his final hours?

Jooheon took the plate in his right hand, the cold from the ceramic leaking into his skin. He'd clean the plate like he'd cleaned up Hyungwon, only Hyungwon would disappear. The plate wouldn't.

Jooheon turned back to look over Hyungwon. Maybe it was because he was standing up now, or maybe it was because of the way he'd propped Hyungwon up, or maybe it was just because Hyungwon was dead, but he looked so small on the bed. Like the pain he'd endured had formed the majority of his muscle mass, and now that he was at peace, it had all left him, skin and fur and bones.

Jooheon reached over with his free hand, flinching back for a moment before continuing forth and placing his hand on Hyungwon's head, ruffling his hair for the last time. "Good boy," he whispered, his voice choked up. "You were a good boy."

He pulled back, his eyes hesitating on Hyungwon's bare neck, no longer oppressed by the vile collar.

The collar is gone, and Hyungwon is dead.

Not The collar is gone, but Hyungwon is dead.

Because there'd been no possibility of one without the other. But Jooheon despised the phrasing, as it seemed to claim that the collar and Hyungwon's life were of the same level of importance. Jooheon just didn't see how that could be true.

Jooheon left the room, taking the plate with him and leaving Hyungwon behind.

***

Changkyun had always been a man of mystery, but now he was a man of secrets as well.

He held secrets of the past, like how he'd once been something of a friend to Seungcheol, but how that had all changed once he'd looked into the scared eyes of a street cat and the thought that perhaps humans weren't so bad after all first crossed his mind.

Secrets of the present, like how he'd seen the apples on Hyungwon's bedside table and had taken it upon himself to eat them, knowing what it might mean to Jooheon if he saw them there, waiting.

Of the future, like the one he was about to create.

"What's going on?" Hoseok asked, stirring restlessly on the couch and receiving an elbow from Kihyun, who sat atop the armrest. Minhyuk was squished in the middle of the couch, Hoseok on his right and Hyunwoo on his left. Taehyung was seated in front of the couch, a frown already etched on his face. Changkyun stood before them. Jooheon was in the kitchen, scrubbing and scrubbing at a ceramic plate.

Hyungwon's chair was empty.

"Is Hyungwon better?" Hoseok asked, and Minhyuk perked up at the mention of the partial human.

"No, he's dead," Changkyun said flatly.

Taehyung was the only one to react. "Changkyun, I get that you're a super old witch, but that's not how humor works."

"His magical signature is gone," Hyunwoo spoke softly.

"Seungcheol," Taehyung said, his eyes widening as his small form tensed. "He took Hyungwon, right? We need to go fight him and end this for good-"

"There is no more fighting, and no one left to fight," Changkyun said, his eyes twin moons, impossibly heavy in his face, spinning on their own gravity. He'd found that his head could still function - he could speak, maybe even conduct logical reasoning - without having to use the emotions residing within his rib cage.

Changkyun had heard a story once about the rib cage being exactly that, a cage for the heart, to keep it safe, locked away where it couldn't be hurt. He was starting to think that it worked the other way as well, that it could restrain his heart from leaping out of his chest but also function as a cage to keep others from breaking in. He wished in hindsight that he'd heard that before he'd met Hyungwon. A cage to keep Hyungwon out. Maybe in time, it would be a cage to trap his memories in, to hold the thought of him close so it could never escape his mind and memory. But he wasn't ready for that, not yet.

"What do you mean?" Taehyung asked. This whole time, from day one when he'd been convinced that having an allergy to cats would be the lowest low he'd encounter, he'd always felt a step behind. Always the one to ask questions, always the one left wondering, left confused. He'd had the feeling that everybody else knew things before him, and they just stood by, waiting for him to understand as well. "There's always someone to fight. Seungcheol, or the head coven, or-"

"Hyungwon asked me to kill him, so I did," Changkyun said. "I suppose that makes me the one to fight."

Taehyung stared at him. The idea that this wasn't a joke was just starting to scratch at his skin, clawing away a layer at a time. "That's impossible, you'd never hurt Hyungwon."

"It was the only way to stop hurting him," Changkyun replied quietly. Not calmly. Calm was intentional. Changkyun had abandoned his emotions for the time being. He was running on empty. He was in control of nothing. He knew what'd he done. He accepted it as truth. Whether he accepted it as the right course of action, whether he accepted it as an honorable death given as an act of mercy, whether he believed that he'd done what a true friend would do...that had yet to be determined. Another thing he'd abandoned in order to keep himself functioning in the present. He was a robot, ripping out nonessential wires here and there. All he had to do was keep moving. He'd find the wires later, maybe, maybe he'd even figure out how to plug them back in. But for now, he just had to keep moving forward.

Taehyung stood up, already swinging a fist at Changkyun's face, a fist Changkyun had no intention of dodging but also knew to be no real threat, but before Taehyung could land the blow, a blue plane appeared in front of Changkyun. Taehyung's fist glanced off the plane, and his second and third punches did as well.

"Please," Jooheon muttered, stepping into the room. His right hand was immersed in a familiar blue light, and his left hand was tightly clutching a ceramic plate. "No more blood. Not for today. I've washed away enough as it is."

"You knew about this?" Taehyung asked, whirling to glare at Jooheon. "That Changkyun murdered Hyungwon?"

But Jooheon ignored his words, already heading back into the kitchen, mumbling something about washing the blood off as he shoved the spotless plate back under the sink and resumed scrubbing.

"I don't care if you agree with what I did," Changkyun said, staring at Taehyung. He thought that, in another time, he could sympathize with Taehyung's indignation, his anger, his repressed grief. Another time. Not today. "That's not what you're here for."

"Then what?" Taehyung asked. His voice held anger, but his face gave away the shielded emotion just beneath that, one of disbelief quickly changing into devastation. "To say goodbye to his body?"

"There is no body," Changkyun countered. "It disappeared when his soul started the voyage."

Taehyung made a choked sound. "Then what am I here for? What is left?"

"Hyungwon valued you," Changkyun said. He struggled to find words he didn't have emotions to back. "He trusted you, despite having reason not to. He enjoyed his time with you. He said you made him feel normal, accepted. Human." Changkyun paused. "Thank you. For doing what I could not." Strange words on his tongue.

Taehyung didn't respond, just knelt on the ground with wet eyes, the result of crushing news piled on too quickly for him to escape the rubble.

Changkyun took the chance to nod at Hyunwoo, who gave a solemn nod back before his hands glowed a soft orange, and he touched two fingers to Taehyung's shoulder.

"What are you-" Taehyung began before noticing the orange light. He tensed, panicking. "What are you doing?! Are you using magic on me? You can't-"

He went still abruptly, his eyes open but the irises disappearing.

"I'm in his mind now," Hyunwoo said softly. "How much do you want me to remove?"

"All of it," Changkyun said. "From the first day he set foot in my apartment. He never met Hyungwon."

"And you're sure?"

"I'm done with humans," Changkyun said, looking down at Taehyung. When he looked at him, he felt the sparks of emotions he wasn't ready to face. Even now, outrage, bitterness, betrayal. There were some things that Changkyun would likely never be able to forgive. He knew that their times of peace had to come to an end at some point, but it had been Taehyung's arrival that had brought about the eventually Changkyun had been running from. And yet, despite all that, he felt that Taehyung should be spared from the weight of knowing a friend's death. "It's for the best if he's done with us as well."

Hyunwoo nodded before closing his eyes, and with several motions of his fingers, Hyungwon ceased to exist for the second time.

- 5 months later -

Taehyung sighed, leaning back on his couch and staring at the ceiling. He felt like framing it, he stared at it often enough. He'd been feeling off for the past few months. Jungkook had claimed that it had something to do with Taehyung's nonexistent sex life, to which Taehyung had protested but not properly denied. Truth was, he didn't know why he felt so out of place in his own body. He just felt like he was missing something, and for one reason or another, he always turned to his ceiling for direction.

Jungkook had also thrown out the idea about maybe seeing a psychologist. But Taehyung wasn't sure he wanted to. Something about the idea of someone poking around in his brain just rubbed him the wrong way.

He shivered, rubbing at his arms. That was another thing; he'd been warm-blooded all his life, but just recently, he'd started feeling cold at random. As he rolled off the couch, he made a mental note to himself to buy more long-sleeved shirts if the trend continued.

He saw the problem when he got to the kitchen. The window was open, letting in a cool breeze. So maybe he wasn't crazy, just forgetful. He went to pull the window shut when he noticed a small creature cuddled up on the sloped roof of the downstairs apartment. He noticed how the cat trembled in the cold air, pulling its tail in even tighter to form a compact ball of heat.

Although Taehyung knew how he got around cats - he'd had an allergy all his life, but it had seemed to have disappeared lately, and he now felt the strange urge to stop at the pet shop and coo over the kittens - he couldn't help but feel bad for the poor thing, especially since he himself was feeling the chill.

"Hey, kitty," Taehyung called, not quite sure how to get the cat's attention. He'd never had one of his own before. Jungkook had tried to convince him that he'd cat sit for someone before, but as with 90% of what came out of Jungkook's mouth, it was total garbage that Taehyung didn't even bother with.

Surprisingly, the cat looked up, one of its ears twitching in his direction.

Taehyung couldn't help but melt a little as he took in the cat's dark eyes. "C'mere, kitty," Taehyung said, holding up his fingers and a thumb and rubbing them together the way he'd seen others do. He clicked his tongue twice, trying to figure out how to entice a stray cat to jump the six foot gap between the roof below and his kitchen window, which was a fairly difficult-

He stumbled forward, lunging just in time to get his arms around the cat's midsection, as the cat had been about to fall back down and possibly roll off the roof and plummet to his untimely death. "I got you, I got you, don't worry," Taehyung murmured, more worried about the small heart attack he'd just received than the cat, who looked rather smug, as though he'd known Taehyung would catch him just in time. Not that Taehyung knew for sure that the cat was male (and he certainly wasn't comfortable with checking), but he had a feeling. "Don't scare me like that," Taehyung said, huffing out a breath as he pulled the cat into his arms, cradling it. He wasn't sure if he was holding it the right way, but the cat seemed comfortable enough (or at the very least, hadn't attempted to claw his eyes out), and he liked the way the fur felt against his arms, warming them up just enough to balance out the chill Taehyung had felt earlier.

"Aw, poor guy," Taehyung mumbled, frowning as he saw that one of the cat's ears looked to be injured. "Did somebody hurt you?" He clucked his tongue, already feeling protective of a random cat he'd just so happened to invite in. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I'll take good care of you."

He paused, the words spilling out of his mouth. Upon first seeing the cat, the thought of taking him in had never crossed his mind, but the idea didn't sound so crazy now that it was out in the open, spontaneously prompted or not. Maybe it would just be nice to have someone else to warm up the apartment a little bit.

"Now, what to name you, kitty?"

***

"Hyungwon," Changkyun said with a sigh, observing the interaction with a small smile on his face. Jooheon exhaled, his eyes full of restrained longing as well as genuine happiness that had been missing for some time.

"I'm happy that he's doing well," Hoseok agreed. "Although I never did get the chance to heal that ear."

"I'm sure he's fine," Minhyuk replied before nudging Hoseok gently. "You did a good job, healing him."

"I think it'll be good for Taehyung too," Hyunwoo said in his usual soft manner. "The magic I used has had several odd effects. Can't really avoid that when you work with the human mind, but still. Maybe this will balance it out."

"Well, finally," Kihyun said, crossing his arms. "I thought his soul would never arrive."

Changkyun had come to some sort of peace over the past few months while he'd been waiting for Hyungwon's soul to finish the journey from his human body to his feline body. Once he'd sensed that Hyungwon was back in the world, he'd wanted to find him immediately and bring him back home, but he stopped himself from doing so. He knew that if he continued to meddle in the human world, he'd only cause more trouble for everyone.

It was better this way, for him, for Taehyung, for Hyungwon. He and the others could still watch from afar to make sure that Taehyung was treating Hyungwon well (although he truly believed he had nothing to worry about with Taehyung). And maybe, just maybe, if Hyungwon was still around in a hundred years or so (or whenever Taehyung left the world of his own natural accord), maybe Changkyun would find Hyungwon again, just as he'd done several hundred years ago, and restore their family.