Hyungwon found life with Changkyun to be...peaceful. Changkyun didn't force him to do anything he didn't want to. He would quietly suggest that Hyungwon eat more, but he wouldn't force feed him. Changkyun even agreed to do a small workout each night. It was all Hyungwon had left of Wonho.

It was after a short exercise routine that Hyungwon fell into bed and stared at the ceiling, the covers pulled up to his neck. The fingers on his right hand ghosted by his throat, and he shivered. He knew what the night would bring. It was inevitable.

But avoiding sleep only prolonged the anxiety.

So Hyungwon closed his eyes.

***

The same scene as always. Hands around his neck, squeezing. He could feel ten distinct fingertips pressing into the soft flesh of his neck with violent intent, thumbs cutting into his throat. His exhalations came out in coughs, each one uniquely painful, his body shuddering but unable to recover from the constant pressure being applied. Coughs turned into a pitiful wheezing as the last of the oxygen filed out of his lungs. A choked gargling came out from his mouth as his vision began wavering. He knew, somewhere in the forgotten logical part of his mind, that moving would only burn his oxygen that much faster, but it was pure instinct to writhe and thrash. Anything to try and stop the inevitable.

Death.

He raised his hands up, trying to push away his attacker, whose face he had never seen, but his hands batted weakly against the air. He had no strength left, no oxygen left to burn.

This was the end.

And in his final moments, as his vision faded out, his hands fell back down to his sides, and he watched them fall, watched his palms turn towards his body, turned faintly upward in supplication, hope, prayer, before falling to his sides.

And then he died.

***

Hyungwon jerked up, his heartbeat loud in his ears. As always after resurfacing from a nightmare, he spent his first few minutes of consciousness just taking in one breath after another, trying to let himself calm down in the certainty of reality.

There's plenty of oxygen.

Nobody can stop you from having it.

Take all you need.

And so he did, for a while. Just breathe. In, out. No hands on his neck trying to prevent him from doing so.

He was safe.

He was breathing.

He was alive.

He kept breathing. It was supposed to be an involuntary motion, one your body did automatically without the mind's telling it to do so, but Hyungwon didn't trust his body to handle it. He himself forced each breath in before expelling it, letting the oxygen slowly convince him of three facts.

He was safe.

He was breathing.

He was alive.

After they had begun to sink in, he moved his arms, slowly, so that his hands covered his eyes. He didn't want to think about the nightmare. He always did his best to forget them. But this nightmare hadn't been like all of the others. He'd never gotten to the part where he'd raised his arms. That was new. It was new, which meant it was important, and if it was important, then it meant it was worth the pain of remembering. Any small detail made it worth it.

Like most dreams, the details were quick to escape if not captured quickly after waking up, and Hyungwon had lost some of what had happened, but he used what he remembered to keep himself going.

The hands. He'd remembered raising them, and he mirrored his nightmare while sitting in his bed, raising his hands up like he'd seen. He closed his eyes, trying to focus, to remember what had happened. He'd...he'd tried to do something. He couldn't remember what. But the more he focused, the more it felt like he'd had this dream before, only he'd forgotten it. That happened sometimes if he went back to sleep too quickly and it all just melded together before being forgotten altogether.

But this time, he was determined to flesh it out. He needed to know why he'd seen it.

He'd put his hands out. He remembered that much. His palms had been facing away. And then...and then...

With his hands out in from of him, he tried several different actions. He tried putting them straight down, but that felt wrong. He hesitated before throwing a punch at the air, but that felt wrong too. Then, after a moment, he slowly drew his hands towards himself, and something about it seemed familiar.

He paused before tilting his hands and, feeling that it was right, he turned the palms to face himself.

He'd seen it before.

That was what had been in the nightmare.

And something else, something far more important.

He dropped his hands to his sides. They didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter how he put them down or if it was the same way as before.

Because the hands in the nightmare weren't his.

The left hand in his nightmare had had something unique, something Hyungwon had seen before, but something that he didn't have.

A scar, long and ropy, running from side to side.