Thinking About The Expert Masseuse Alfred Hired For The Family That Is Paid A Small Fortune Annually

Kang Yeosang, son of Hades

“That's what being a demigod was all about, not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.”

Fic

it's been repeating over and over again; the ending that came before my eyes

GENRE: gen, tua au, angst, hurt/comfort

SUMMARY: Renjun is thirteen when the world ends around him. He's seventeen when he tries to save it. Title from 그냥 괴물을 살려두면 안 되는 걸까 (Can’t We Just Leave The Monster Alive?) by TXT

WARNINGS: temporary character death, apocalypse, child abuse, child neglect, grief, alcoholism

Chapter 1

Renjun is thirteen when he jumps forward in time. He gets into an argument with his dad the same as any other day and sees the promise of punishment in his eyes. He’s done dealing with it. He turns and runs out the door and ignores his siblings' call of his name at his back. With any luck he’ll be able to return to before he even had his stupid fight with Dad and rub it in the bastard’s face.

He jumps forward for the first time and laughs in delighted glee when he realizes he’s done it. The shops around him have changed and the style of dress is different. He does it again and again until he lands in the rubble of his childhood home with acidic air burning his mouth and ash falling in his hair. 

He looks around desperately for some sign of life and doesn’t see any. He pulls his fists towards his chest and like so many times before his powers sputter out around him. He’s completely exhausted himself. He tries over and over again before he finally gives up for the night. 

Instead, he decides to start his search for other people again and throws up when he finds them. His siblings’ are older, more filled out, and taller in their teen years than they were when Renjun left, but he recognizes them all the same. Their bodies are coated in blood. His old bastard of a father had warned him against time travel, and he guesses the old man was right. 

Renjun checks his brothers’ pulses over and over again just in case but eventually reality sets in. He digs his siblings' graves himself with slow care and love in every push during the first and second weeks of his hell trip to the future. 

The first brother Renjun buries, on the third day of being stranded in the future, is Donghyuck. He pulls his brother out of the rubble as carefully as possible and sobs as he realizes he’d died trying to protect Jisung. He’s slumped over the boy with some type of sharp metal piercing his side and Jisung’s chest. Renjun spends longer than he’d admit sobbing over his desperate brother trying so hard to save his little brother, but there’s no one to tell. It seems even the animals have died out. 

Eventually, he gathers the strength to bury his brother. He has to stop himself from crying again as he sees the evidence of the years he’s missed. Donghyuck must’ve dyed rainbow streaks into his hair at some point because the faded color reflects in the harsh sun. He’s skinnier than Renjun would expect him to be and his hands are tattooed. There are smears of eyeliner around his eyes from where he must’ve cried before he died, and his clothes aren’t from the academy. Renjun barely recognizes him. 

He buries the other boy while crying over him until his throat aches and his face is itchy. He can’t keep going after him so he sits beside his brother's grave and desperately wishes he had Donghyuck’s power instead before chastising himself. Donghyuck’s power had never let him see who he desired, and there’s no reason for Renjun to believe it would work any better for him. 

The next day he buries Jeno and Jaemin and tries not to think about how they must’ve died holding hands. Jeno is heavier than Donghyuck, and Renjun exhausts himself all over again while dragging his brother’s body to the grave. He has to take about a day break in between moving Jeno’s body and Jaemin’s. In the meantime, he utters his remorse for separating them and for leaving them. It takes him a while before he’s able to move Jaemin but on the fifth day he gathers up his other brother, who is still too light even in death, and gently lays him to rest next to their other brother while reattaching their hands. 

The effects of time aren’t as apparent on Jeno and Jaemin as they were on Donghyuck, but they’re there nonetheless. Jaemin’s hair is a faded pink their dad must’ve had a fit when he saw, but he sports no new tattoos. Jeno looks almost the same with his black hair and plain workout clothes, but he’s changed subtly. The absence of his easy smile and the blankness of his expression ages him unsettlingly as well as the height he must’ve eventually gained.

He wastes time trying to memorize the strangeness of his brothers' new faces before he buries them as well. He’s crying as he does it and keeps missing with his shovel because his vision is so obstructed by tears, but he doesn’t give up until they’re completely buried. He sleeps on their grave and desperately hopes he wasn’t the one to kill them. 

When he gets to his baby brothers he has to stop. On the first day he’d gently moved Jisung’s body and laid him down next to Chenle. He’d closed both their eyes and placed a blanket he’d found over them like they were asleep. He can not imagine burying them. He lays down and holds their cold hands before crying for days. 

It takes him a week before he’s ready to bury his baby brothers. He keeps them together and leaves them wrapped in the blanket. He sobs until he literally can not. 

The only person left to bury is his older brother, but he can’t find Mark at first. He knows Mark and Mark would never leave his family especially not in a time of need so he looks around the academy tirelessly. He never finds his body.

At first, he childishly holds out hope his big brother is still alive. That he’ll come to help Renjun fix this. He pretends he’s in the library or locked away in the music room like always, and he’ll come get Renjun for dinner soon enough. 

He imagines eating with his brothers as Jaemin and Jeno quietly play a card game together, and Donghyuck makes obscene faces at Mark and himself until Mark snorts and gets them all scolded. He thinks of Jisung sitting quietly while Chenle scrapes his least favorite foods onto their youngest brother’s plate and he yearns . It’s worrying. It’s the only thing keeping Renjun going. 

He finds Mark’s destroyed memorial on day 106. He’d sworn never to go far so he could find Mark and has instead spent months scavenging for food and sleeping around the horrid remains of his home. It was all for nothing. His big brother died, and he wasn’t there.  For all Renjun knows Mark died looking for him right after he left. Every one of Renjun’s loved ones died without knowing what happened to him. He curls up in front of Mark’s memorial and cries until he pukes. 

It is the last time he cries in the hell known as the future. 

A day goes by laying on the statue.

Two. 

Three.

At first, he spends hours at a time desperately trying to bend time backward doing his best to let him go back to his life before but eventually he stops. He can barely spatial jump anymore much less time travel. 

Renjun is forced to leave his brother after the bottle of water he always has with him runs out. He walks across the world just trying to find other people. 

On day 208 he’s sure he’s the last one left alive.

On day 332 he starts planning his equations for how he’ll get back to his brothers. 

Renjun spends 1221 days writing equations. 

He spends hours at a time going over them again and again and again. He reworks them if he thinks they could be even a decimal off. 

And finally it pays off. 

Renjun laughs as he pulls his wrists to his chest for the first time in almost four years. 

He’s going home. 

☂︎☂︎☂︎

He realizes he may have gotten his calculations slightly wrong when he is about six feet in the air and free-falling from a storm of his own creation. Distantly he hears his siblings scream in terror and yells, “Catch me, you idiots!”

“Definitely Renjun,” Jeno mutters as he runs under him. Jeno does not catch Renjun. More so he acts as a crash pad for him. They both mutter and groan after Renjun flattens his brother. 

“What the hell?” Donghyuck asks. “Everyone else sees him too right?” Jisung lays a gentle hand on his shoulder and nods. 

“What day is it?” Renjun demands.

Jaemin frowns. “It’s December 6th. You’ve been missing and presumed dead for four years.” A chill settles around them as Renjun’s eyes bulge. 

“No, I was trying…I was trying to go back to before…Before that stupid dinner,” he insists stubbornly. His head swerves as he frantically starts looking around, and he deflates as he catches sight of Mark’s statue. 

“So he already…” He trails off, but Jeno sees where Renjun is looking. 

“He uh…he died on a mission. When he was sixteen. About two years after you left,” he says faintly. “Dad put up that memorial not long after.” 

No one says anything for a minute. 

“Where is Dad?” Renjun finally asks. Jeno grimaces bitterly at the urn he’s holding. “Uh here. He had a heart attack so I guess he really did have one after all.” He winces as his joke falls flat. Renjun curses his father in his head. He must’ve been so afraid of seeing him again his consciousness wouldn’t let him go farther back than the day of the bastard’s funeral. The old man was ruining his life even four years and an apocalypse down the line. 

Jaemin moves closer during Jeno’s explanation and moves around Renjun. He inspects him like he always did after missions. Back then Renjun couldn’t hide anything from Jaemin; he was always calling him out for hiding injuries and lying about how exhausted he was after teleporting. 

It seems time hasn’t deprived Jaemin of this ability. “You’re malnourished,” he says bluntly. “You’re covered in scrapes and bruises, smell like death, and exhausted. You need a bath, Mom to look over your wounds, soup, and a nap. We’ll deal with…everything else later.” Renjun attempts to protest, but Jaemin is as stubborn as he was when they were thirteen. 

Renjun adamantly tells Jaemin he does not want to eat soup, get checked over by Mom, take a bath, and take a nap. 

Renjun eats soup, gets checked over by Mom, takes a bath, and takes a nap. 

And by nap he means he sleeps for almost twenty-four hours straight. He almost bowls Chenle over in his desperation to use the bathroom. Once everyone has gathered in the living room after Chenle shrieks about him being awake Renjun finally starts crying. 

“What?” Jaemin demands. “What’s going on?”

“Mark hyung says you’re overwhelming him,” Donghyuck advises, and they all startle as that makes Renjun cry more. 

He pulls his knees to his chest on the couch and sobs as his family awkwardly tries to hug him. It should make him feel better. All their warm bodies do is make him remember how it felt to hold their cold ones. 

”You don't need to say anything.”

Red Tornado: You are all insane and I want to study you under a microscope so I’m your babysitter now

Robin:

Impulse:

Superboy: Hey what the fuck

can't stop thinking about bobby and its consuming all my thoughts haha (also depth perception is my worst enemy so hopefully this turned out alright)

I think the world needs more positivity, so what are your funniest comic moments?

you have no idea what you have let upon the world, I have way too many comic panels saved,, brace yourself

stormbringers

i did a thing yall!

full disclosure i started this project back in like? march??? i think? i drew almost all the panels entirely out of order over the course of a year, which is why the quality varies wildly, but i refuse to spend any more time on this so here take it

the fact that tim, bart & kon literally annoyed red tornado out of hibernation is still the funniest shit to me and i think about it daily