Wakanda is a fucking shithole. Hyukjae is having a horrible time here and he would very much appreciate it if they could wrap this shit up and go the fuck home. Like, seriously.
Well, maybe that’s a bit unfair, all things considered. Hyukjae already came here once and really it hadn’t been all that bad.
That was back when there’d been some… unresolved unpleasantness between Steve and Tony. Bucky being Bucky—which is to say, a rude brat with the diplomatic skills of a rabid dog—he somehow found himself stuck in the middle. And then because where Bucky goes Hyukjae usually has to follow, for fear that his stupid best friend might die, he also got dragged along into it. That meant causing international conflicts, stealing quinjets, laying low for over two years, and—for fuck’s sake—fighting against his own boyfriend.
Visiting Wakanda for the first time had been the only perk of their clandestine trip. The people here are wonderful, ruled by a fair and kind king that Hyukjae’s already met once or twice, not always in the best of circumstances. Dense forests and emerald lakes blend with the high towers of tech-driven cities. Technology coexists with nature in a way that’s truly fascinating, just like how modernity seems to go hand-in-hand with traditions.
So, yeah—Wakanda isn’t actually all that bad. Except for the fact that it’s at war.
Thanos—fucking Thanos—gathered all of the infinity stones, and—fuck. Hyukjae’s never been so scared in his life. His first thought goes to Donghae. He looks around frantically as he tries to find him amongst the fights and the corpses on the ground. His heart beats painfully inside his chest, like a hammer pounding at its ribcage. Donghae, he keeps thinking, like a mantra for good luck. Please, fuck, Donghae. Cold sweat runs down his face as he breathes raggedly. Aliens try to reach him and he brutally fights them back with outbursts of ice. His hands hurt from the blasts that he’s been firing continuously; long stretches along his arms and some parts of his fingers are frozen up from the effort.
Fuck, Hyukjae thinks in a panic, where the fuck is he?! Somewhere at the back of his mind, he can almost hear Steve scold him. You can’t let your feelings distract you in battle, even if it’s about Donghae, he’d say, looking somehow both apologetic and stern—it might cost your life. But he hasn’t seen Donghae in over two years, except for those little moments that they’ve managed to steal from time to time, when they were sure that no one would trace Donghae back to Hyukjae. He hasn’t kissed, hasn’t even touched his boyfriend in months—fuck if he’s not going to worry about him.
Another bunch of Outriders speed at him then. Hyukjae swears under his breath. He gathers his power at his core, coldness spreading through him in intense pulses—so cold that it’s hot—and then lets it explode. Ice spreads from his feet and erects from the ground into spikes that brutally impale the aliens.
And then finally—finally—a lean panther leaps over another group of Outriders and viciously bites their heads off. Hyukjae almost sags in relief. The feline morphs into an enormous lion before his eyes, snarling as he tears the aliens apart with its gigantic teeth.
“Fuck, Donghae,” Hyukjae swears. “Where the fuck were you?!”
Donghae growls at him and then they’re off rushing to the other Avengers’ sides, assembling once again for possibly the fight of their lives. But then Thanos goes through Banner’s Hulkbuster armor like it’s just made of mist. He brushes Steve aside with a wave of the fist; punches Bucky and T’Challa to the ground. Natasha goes down, too, and—fuck, this is not good.
Hyukjae pushes hard on the muscles of his legs as he forces himself to run faster. Everything around him freezes from the intensity of his rage and fear—the ground under his feet, the vegetation, the minuscule particles in the air. He sends blasts of ice at Thanos, freezing his legs and up, and up, and—… But then Thanos punches him hard in the stomach, and he’s sent crashing into a tree.
Donghae goes next, shiting into a tiger mid-way through a jump. He sinks his teeth into Thanos’s left arm and tries to bite off the gauntlet. Thanos only grunts and shakes him off easily; Donghae slams into a hard rock. Yelping, he shifts back into his human form as he falls onto the ground and cradles his broken ribs.
Steve tries to stop him again, but Thanos strikes him hard in the head—so hard that Hyukjae’s surprised that he’s still alive. Then Thor comes flying in and stabs Thanos’s chest with a gigantic axe.
For a fraction of second, Hyukjae hopes.
But then Thanos raises his hand, snaps his fingers, and—
—and everything just collapses. It goes so fast, so slow, so many horrible things all at the same time. Hyukjae’s ears are deafened by a piercing buzzing; it takes him a few seconds to realize that it’s his own terror resonating inside his head. He struggles to get up and immediately his eyes go to Donghae, my love, Donghae, please. He rushes to his side, just as Donghae meets his eyes, looking terrified and panicked.
“No, no, no,” Hyukjae pleads, begs. But already Donghae’s legs are disintegrating, falling apart like ashes. He’s breaking apart right in between his hands, fuck, no, please, not him, I only just found him again. “No, please—Donghae, please.”
“Hyukjae,” Donghae mumbles. His voice is small, scared, but his eyes are warm and determined as they stare into Hyukjae’s. “Hyukjae—look at me.”
Hyukjae does. Donghae smiles at him shakily, lovingly, and then—
—then—fuck, fuck, fuck—
—then Donghae disappears. Falls apart into brittle little pieces that fall listlessly onto the ground. He’s—he’s gone. And Hyukjae’s breaking inside—he’s sobbing, crying, screaming his heart out as Donghae slips through his open fingers like ashes in the wind.
“No,” Hyukjae cries, “no, no.” But Donghae’s gone—there’s nothing left of him.
His first thought—besides the numbing, piercing pain that slices through his heart—is to find Bucky. He wants to collapse into his best friend’s arms, cry all of the tears in his wrecked body. He turns around and—and Steve’s kneeling on the ground, staring blankly at a heap of scattered ashes.
It’s like a blow in Hyukjae’s stomach. He realizes then—realizes all of that he’s lost, in just a second—a fraction of a second, in the blink of an eye. His heart drops inside his chest, stuttering to a pained stop. His breath catches in his lungs while his blood freezes inside his veins. He doesn’t know if it’s literal or figurative—but his whole body feels it.
Hyukjae doesn’t think that he’s ever, ever felt so much pain. He chokes, gasps, unable to utter even a single sound. No, no, his mind continues to cry, begging for Donghae and Bucky to come back to life, to him. No, please, no. His vision starts to blur around the edges. It darkens and darkens, and his heart hurts and hurts, and—
*
—and then it’s just blackness, and it’s almost a relief.
*
Hyukjae has always considered Avengers Tower to be his home, even when he’d been on the run. No matter what might have happened in the past two years—no matter the disagreements or the bad blood—it’s the first place where he truly got to settle and feel safe since he left Korea. It’s where he made friends, and where those friends eventually became family.
He used to have his own space at the tower, a whole floor with wide windows and an open view over the city. The decoration and the furniture had been an elegant mismatch between sleek and urban; an odd yet pretty contrast between his Korean culture and his new life here in the United States. His floor had been right above Bucky’s, and just two down below from Donghae’s. It used to be his home.
Then Donghae stole a piece of Hyukjae’s heart and never gave it back. Between a fraction of a second and the next, he suddenly became an inherent part of his life. He was his best friend, his lower, his light at the end of dark tunnels. He just became—everything. It’d been so good, their relationship—simple and easy, just two people in love and trying their best to fit neatly into each other’s fucked up lives. Some time after the beginning of their relationship Donghae moved to live permanently on Hyukjae’s floor, and it became their home, just like that.
But that had been back then. Back when—when Donghae had still been—alive.
Now it’s just empty space. There’s still all of the furnitice, all of the pictures and memories, but they barely matter anymore.
Hyukjae just stares at his surrounding with blank eyes and a numb brain. He takes a step further inside the suite; he chokes on a strangled sob. Fuck, but it—it still smells like Donghae, like the woody cologne that he liked to spray on after his showers. A well-thumbed book lies open on the floor somewhere near the couch, and there’s a half-empty glass of smoothie on the coffee table, indicating that Donghae left in a rush when the Children of Thanos first invaded New York.
And—fuck, but—Donghae had still been living here after all, in their home. Even after Hyukjae had to leave—even after everything.
Hyukjae feels his heart break a bit more with each additional step that he takes into the bedroom. Grief makes his powers go wild, entirely out of control. Ice just flows out of him in reckless, helpless waves that freeze the floor, the furniture, the walls. Soon, everything is but ice.
But Hyukjae doesn’t care, doesn’t give a fuck. He just sits there, on the bed where they used to make sweet love; where Donghae fucked him hard and good whenever Hyukjae pushed him one step too far with his teasing; where they used to cuddle and whisper together about the future.
Everything’s frozen, and he wishes that his heart was too.
*
Time never stops—not even after the snap. Seconds continue to become minutes, and then hours, trickling by at an excruciatingly slow pace, like drawn-out torture. Every time that Hyukjae dares to glance at his watch, his mind reminds him cruelly of how long that it’s been since Donghae turned to dust in his hands. Just thinking about it—about the look on Donghae’s face, of the fear and the tears in his eyes—it makes Hyukjae choke on a strangled sob. After a while, he just stops checking the time altogether.
Pain still resides somewhere deep inside his chest, like a sharp piece of shrapnel aiming for his heart. It’s here when he wakes up in the morning, wet tears drying at the corners of his eyes; it’s here when he wanders aimlessly around the tower; it’s here when he seeks their presence and silent support. It’s still here when he trashes around his bed, trying and failing to succumb to days of bone-deep exhaustion.
Intense fatigue and grief make him lose control over his powers. It’s been days, maybe even weeks, since they’ve been wreaking havoc around the tower. But Hyukjae’s too hurt, too broken inside, too weak to rein them in properly—and so he just lets go. Just watches blankly, as ice continues to creep up walls and freeze the expensive furniture. Several floors are quickly declared inaccessible when temperature reaches arctic lows.
None of the other Avengers tells Hyukjae to snap out of it. They’re just here for him, a warm and steady presence by his sides that he can choose to either accept or refuse. Bruce gives him painkillers and brews him strong tea when his headaches become too much. Natasha spars with him in the communal gym when neither of them can sleep—when they need to unwind and forget about the dead, even just for a minute. Thor has his own grief to deal with, a whole country and its people to mourn, but he’s always there when Hyukjae needs him. Rhodey doesn’t say much, but he’s always the first to hand him a full plate of food whenever Hyukjae finds the strength to go down to the kitchen to have dinner with the others. Tony—… fuck, but Hyukjae doesn’t even know if Tony’s still alive.
And then there’s Steve. Captain America. These days he’s mostly Steve.
They hadn’t gotten along all that well in the beginning, when they’d both been worried about Bucky choosing between them. Then there’d been the SHRA conflict with Tony, which hadn’t really helped things in general. But Steve still became a precious friend somewhere along the way, against all odds—and Hyukjae would trust him with his life, always. He’s—he’s maybe one of the only people who understands a bit of Hyukjae’s pain. He, too, lost a best friend and—and whatever it is that Tony really means to him.
They don’t talk much—they almost never do anymore, all of them—but they sit next to each other in the living-room, staring vacantly out the windows, as their mutual loss unites them.
*
Hyukjae feels like an empty shell. Feels like there’s no more meaning to his life. On the best of days, and there aren’t much of them lately, he scrambles to find a new goal, something, anything, and only ends up drowning again in the enormousness of what happened.
He knows, on some level, that it’s a bit egotistical of him—that so many other people lost a lot more than he did. He should be out there and try to find a solution with the other Avengers, like the superhero that he’s supposed to be.
But his wounds are too raw, still bleeding. It’s like a part of him turned to ash in the same breath that the others did. Now there’s a hole in his chest, aching and wide open, where Donghae and Bucky should have been.
And sometimes, in the quietness of his own mind, Hyukjae thinks that he’d rather have left with them.
*
The first time that Hyukjae hears about Fury’s pager, he just stares at Steve uncomprehendingly. His brain’s still too numb, and his eyes are still too swollen from all the crying—he doesn’t have the strength to try and figure out what it is that it means. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
“A pager?” he repeats. His voice sounds hoarse and croaky, like he didn’t speak for days—which he probably didn’t. “Look, I’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about, alright?”
It’s a testimony of how crap Hyukjae must look that Steve doesn’t call him out for swearing. He just folds his arms across his enormous chest and sighs, looking just every bit as exhausted as Hyukjae feels.
“It’s been emitting some sort of signals for weeks now,” he elaborates quietly. “Since the—the snap. I’m not too clear on the details, but apparently it can be reached from space.”
Hyukjae stares down at his arms, unable to meet the concern and earnestness in Steve’s baby blue eyes. His skin is covered in long stretches of ice, so cold that it actually burns him, and crystals of ice have started to form along his jawline, too. He’s been like that for a while now; he wouldn’t be surprised if he turns into a block of ice at some point.
“Ah.” He breathes out shakily. “Are you saying—… what exactly are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” Steve says. He takes a step forward, and then takes a step back again when he realizes that it wouldn’t be welcome. Hyukjae hasn’t slept in days now, and he always has a hard time accepting his friends’ help when he’s so worn out. “I don’t know, but—… maybe.”
Hyukjae scoffs. Then turns around and walks off. He doesn’t believe in maybe’s. A maybe won’t bring Donghae and Bucky back home, where they belong. A maybe won’t take him weeks back in time, so that he can kiss Donghae again, and make love to him one last time, and remind him just how much he loves him. A maybe is just not fucking enough.
Maybe’s can fuck off.
*
There’s not—there’s not even a body to mourn.
*
Hyukjae’s intense grief eventually morphs into intense anger. It’s the ugly, nasty, destructive kind—deep negativeness that storms inside him and turns him into the bitter man that he once was, before Bucky and the Avengers. Before Donghae.
It was all so long ago, fuck, but it’s almost too easy to fall back into those familiar, dark thoughts. Suddenly the whole world is against him, and no one gives a fuck whether he lives or dies, no one cares. Everything’s just so unfair.
His powers react instinctively to his resentment; he knows that he should try and rein them in, but he’s just—he’s so angry. Snowstorms break erratically in the lower floors of the tower, destroying everything, leaving nothing but the evidence of his own desolation in their trails. Ice bursts from the grounds and the walls in deadly stalactites. He almost seriously injures someone a couple of times—Natasha, when she’d been on her way to the communal gym; Thor, when he’d startle with a sudden clap of thunder. The other Avengers are kind enough not to call him out on it.
Hyukjae can’t bring himself to feel grateful. In fact, he almost wishes that they did—that they got angry with him so that he’d finally have a reason to start a fight. Fuck, but he wants to hurt someone so bad. He wants to punch them until they bleed out under his angry fists. He wants them to kick him hard enough that he’ll forget about the pain that tears constantly at his heart, even if only for a fraction of a second.
Fuck, but Hyukjae just wants to know why. Why did this have to happen to them? Why couldn’t they find a way to stop Thanos before it was too late. Why Bucky, and why Donghae?
Just, why?!
No one has an answer for him, and it just makes him feel even more furious. He just—he just hates the whole fucking world, because the world fucking sucks, and he just—he just wants—
He just wants Donghae, for fuck’s sake.
*
For days, Hyukjae stays holed up on his floor, crying, swearing, screaming—until his throat is sore, and his eyes are burning, and he doesn’t have enough strength to do anything but collapse in exhaustion.
*
The pager continues to beep for several days, until it finally stops.
By that point, Hyukjae is too tired to be angry anymore. He just feels defeated, drained out of his energy. After days of fighting against it, he finally gives in and leans a shoulder against Steve, seeking some kind of human warmth and comfort. Denial didn’t help; anger didn’t help; crying didn’t help—he just doesn’t know what to do anymore. His friends, though, they do help a little.
“Hi,” he mumbles. Steve wraps a comforting arm around his shoulders and pulls him a bit closer. Across the room, Natasha gives him a look; most people would’ve mistaken it for flat and indifferent, but Hyukjae can catch the concern and warmth in her sharp eyes. Rhodey pats his shoulder comforting and offers him a cup of tea. “Uh.” He clears his throat. “What’s up?”
“Whatever signal it was sending,” Bruce says wearily as he nods in the pager’s direction, “it finally stopped.”
“I thought we bypassed the battery?” Hyukjae frowns. That was one of the last thing that they all discussed before he became too furious with everything and anything to keep himself updated.
Rhodey releases a frustrated noise as he says, “we did. It’s still plugged in; it just… stopped.”
Steve stays silent for a few seconds. “Reboot it; send the signal again,” he orders darkly, and Hyukjae glances up at him. Dark circles surround his eyes, something that he didn’t think possible for a supersoldier.
Bruce frowns uncertainly. “We don’t even know what this is.”
“Fury did,” Natasha says quietly. She glances at Bruce. “Just do it, please. Tell me the second that we get a signal; I want to know what’s on the other end of that thing.”
Then Natasha turns around and—stiffens. As if startled, and Hyukjae never saw her startle at anything before. Immediately alert, he whips around and struggles to gather his powers at the ready.
A blonde woman stands stiffly at the lab’s entrance, staring at them. She’s wearing a dark red and blue suit, with a golden star on her chest. Something about her reminds Hyukjae of Steve, but also not, because she looks—she looks strong. Stronger than all of them. Like she could easily beat them to the ground with just one punch.
Her eyes sweeps over them warily. Then she asks, “where’s Fury?”
*
Her name is Carol Danvers, and she’s—well, she’s great. She’s just as strong as Hyukjae imagined her to be, and she’s confident and has a dry humor that reminds him of Tony. But while he took an immediate liking to her, he doesn’t think that her plan to just “get the infinity stones back from Thanos and use them to bring everyone back” really is all that well thought through.
“What, just like that?” Hyukjae raises an eyebrow. He folds his arms over the table where he’s seated at and frowns up at Carol skeptically. “Really?”
“Yeah, just like that” Steve shrugs, and obviously this guy needs to get a good night’s sleep, because, just what?
“No offense, mate, mateys,” Hyukjae scoffs, “but that plan sounds like a crappy one.”
“And even if we do this,” Bruce asks, rather derisively, and Hyukjae tends to agree with him on that one, “how do we know that this is going to end any differently that it did before?”
“Because before you didn’t have me,” Carol says matter-of-factly—and yeah, she definitely reminds Hyukjae of Tony, and usually that’d be a good thing, but today he just wants to punch himself in the face repeatedly.
“Hey, new girl?” Rhodey frowns, obviously annoyed. “Everybody in this room is about that superhero life. If you don’t mind my asking, where have you been all this time?”
Carol stares back at him and raises a challenging eyebrow. “There’re a lot of planets in the universe,” she scoffs, “and unfortunately they didn’t have you guys.”
Hyukjae grimaces, both at Carol’s statement and at the thick tension in the room.
“Well, she does have a point,” he comments lightly. “I really don’t know what I’d do with myself if there were two Captain Americas out there; probably shoot myself in the head or something.”
Steve throws him a half-exasperated, half-amused look.
Then Thor stands up and stares down sternly at Carol. He raises a hand in the air and summons his axe without a word. It flies right past Carol’s head, and yet she doesn’t look even slightly fazed by it. Instead she smirks defiantly, and Thor smiles back, amused.
He declares, “I like this one,” and apparently that’s that.
Hyukjae just rolls his eyes and mumbles, “show off, both of you.”
*
“Let’s go get this son of a bitch,” Steve says darkly.
Hyukjae gasps in mock-outrage. “Golly gee, Captain! Please mind your language!”
Steve snorts in amusement and pushes him playfully, except he doesn’t really mind his strength, and Hyukjae’s sent crashing into Natasha’s side embarrassingly easily.
*
Things get a bit—blurry, after that. Hyukjae doesn’t really know what happens, doesn’t really know if he’s supposed to trust that Carol will really be of any help. As powerful as she seems to be, she’s only one person, and Thanos has six infinity stones at his disposal.
It just seems—unlikely, is all.
But then maybe—maybe, if there’s even a glimmer of hope that they can fix this—that they can bring Donghae and Bucky, and everyone else, back, then—
—then maybe Hyukjae is ready to take a chance.
“Whatever it takes,” Steve declares, and in any other circumstances, Hyukjae would tease him about being overly solemn. “This, is the fight of our lives.”
And Hyukjae believes him.