#but obviously it has stuff to help bring down nam jeom et al.

[rhysiana]

I used an orbiting metaphor in the Seonhwi MC:TNA lyric prompt I wrote a little while ago, and now I can't stop thinking about a space-y sci-fi AU for them.

One where Seon-ho has an emotion-dampening augment. Maybe it's "for work," maybe he got it black market, it doesn't matter; the main thing is that it was made very clear he should use it sparingly. Ideally only a few hours at a time, a few days at most.

Definitely not for months on end.

The less said about the job that goes wrong and leaves him stranded in the middle of space in a single-person ship with dwindling capacity the better. He doesn't remember a lot of the immediate aftermath anyway.

By the time Hwi finds him (and how did Hwi find him? no one should have known where he was, but he won't say), the life support systems are at their limit, but the worst part for Seon-ho, the only part he's really aware of, is that his augment has run out of adjustment chem.

The weight of everything he'd been refusing to feel for so long crashing down on him at once was too much and he's nearly catatonic when Hwi pulls him out.

~*~

Seon-ho wakes up in the tiny med bay of Hwi & Yeon's little salvage ship disoriented and with tears on his face. Yeon is wiping them away gently and it looks like she's been there for a while. He's angrily mortified, but they won't stop.

"You're awake!" she says, sounding happier about it than anyone he can remember being around in years. "Don't move. Stay here. Let me get Hwi." She shoots him a look on her way out like she expects to see him leaping up anyway, but he's too exhausted to even consider it.

"Seon-ho," Hwi says as he enters, looking both warm and worried in a way Seon-ho has been specifically avoiding for so long now. His eyes leak some more. His fingers twitch to activate his implant, but of course it doesn't do anything now.

Hwi's sharp eyes don't miss the motion, small as it was. His expression shifts, graver, serious. "We had to flush your system. There was too much chem build-up. It was..." he pauses, restarts, "...bad."

Another pause, so delicate Seon-ho could laugh. "The readouts from your implant indicate you've built up a resistance." Implied: That shouldn't be possible. Implied: What have you been doing to yourself? Implied: Let us help you.

It's too much. Seon-ho has to turn his face away.

Hwi steps closer to the bed. Takes his hand and squeezes it supportively. Seon-ho feels the data chip pressed between their palms. "You had this on you," Hwi says quietly. "Was there anything else you needed from your ship?"

Seon-ho shakes his head.

Hwi smiles, relieved. "Good, because we already left. It didn't seem like a good idea to stick too close to it." They both know too much about Nam Jeon's fondness for trackers, after all.

Seon-ho feels his eyes slipping shut again. He falls asleep with Hwi still holding his hand.

~*~

The ship isn't large, so they move Seon-ho into Hwi's room, where a long unused second bunk has been flipped down out of the wall. Seon-ho is sure he would be having a lot more inconvenient emotions about it if he weren't stuck having ALL the emotions at once.

The comedown process is... not great. Huddling exhausted in bed for days doesn't seem to help, so he turns to exercise in the hopes it will speed things along. He's running on the aging treadmill in the corner of the rec area, trying to let his mind go blank, when Hwi enters.

Hwi hits the cool down button without asking. Seon-ho glares as he slows to a walk. "Let the motor rest for a while," Hwi says. "Bit hard to get parts out here."

Seon-ho huffs an aggrieved sigh like a teenager and then gets even more annoyed with himself for such excessive emotional volatility.

Hwi just smiles, which is also annoying. "I did raise Yeon," he says mildly, and an offended "Hey!" echoes down the corridor from the cockpit.

Hwi leans back against the table, crossing his arms, trying to look relaxed and failing. "More seriously, though, have you thought about what you want to do?"

Seon-ho has not. The past decade catching up with him all at once hasn't left him a lot of room to consider the future.

Hwi taps his fingers distractingly against his bicep before asking in a rush, "Do you want to, um, exist anymore?"

Seon-ho blinks at him. Clears his throat. "What?"

Yeon pops through the hatch. "Your ship wasn't exactly in great shape when we pulled you out, and we stayed long enough to wipe it. No one knows what happened to you. You can stay with us!"

"Yeon," Hwi says, pained. "We don't even know if he's interested in doing that. Let him make up his own mind."

She starts to retort, but Seon-ho is barely paying attention. He could stay with them. He could just never go back. His father, the emperor, no one would ever know.

The possibility blooms gloriously across his mind, but then it begins to wither. "They won't actually let me disappear. You know that." As much as his father hates him, he'd never give up such a useful tool without a fight.

Hwi gives a crooked smile. "Bang-won likes the fact I have such strong pirate contacts, but he rarely thinks about what that actually means." He drops his hands to the table, leaning forward earnestly. "We can be gone tomorrow. Like we never existed at all."

"And we can take you with us!" Yeon adds.

"I... I had plans," Seon-ho starts, but he's realizing, without the false clarity of the dampeners, none of those plans seem as important as they once did.

Hwi is watching him closely, trying not to sway him one way or the other. Trying to support him, the way he always has. It sharpens something in Seon-ho, and he tries to isolate his true goals, to slice off all the outside expectations.

"I still want to destroy Nam Jeon. I want to see all his plans turn to dust."

Hwi nods. "We can do that. Do you need him to know it was you?"

Seon-ho considers. It has been his driving motivation for so long, but does he really need it? At the expense of staying here, with the only people who actually love him? Does he want to go back to erasing himself slowly just to stand over Nam Jeon at the end?

He realizes he doesn't.

Yeon must see it on his face, because she grins and turns to Hwi. Hwi studies Seon-ho for a long moment, and then smiles like the sun rising. He nods to Yeon without looking away from Seon-ho. She squeals and runs to the computer on the wall.

"It's done!" she announces triumphantly.

"What is?"

"She told Chi-do to start deleting records. Like I said, we can be gone by tomorrow."

Seon-ho frowns.

"You too," Hwi says. "We've been planning this for a long time."

"For me too?"

"Always."

Seon-ho has to blink rapidly against tears again. Yeon huffs and yanks them both into a hug. He's sure Hwi can feel how soaked his shoulder is getting, but he doesn't mention it.

He sounds a little shaky himself when he finally pulls back. "I better get started on dinner, huh?"

Yeon nods happily before she skips back to the cockpit to check on things, so Seon-ho moves toward the counter to offer his help.

"No," Hwi says, waving him back to the table. "Sit right there, where I can see you. That's all I want."

For now, Seon-ho thinks to himself. The universe is opening up before him, before them, and he thinks there are more things they can finally let themselves want.