[ORV] Buried alive and still breathing

Tiếng Anh [English]

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.