The ghost of you is close to me

[Ahn Bongju]

Sometimes, he wished death would come. Stretches of time slowed to a crawl. The painful hole left behind felt gangrenous, infected. It was sore and raw and death never came, no matter how he invited it. Traffic didn't kill him. Drowning didn't work. Letting a vampire sink its teeth into his flesh didn't work. Spells worked... but not death spells. Death pervaded him. Death owned him, cradled his throat in her bony clutches, but she wasn't squeezing.

People in Hazleton called him all kinds of names. Not hateful names. Some of them were fearful. Some were amused. He was sure some pitied him: the crazed man who spoke to himself in mutters, in starts and halts. They saw him with his head in his hands, crouched in the gas station parking lot. They saw him lying underneath the park bench with a hood over his head. They saw him but they couldn't help him. There was the nice girl who tried to take him to the clinic. There was the teenager who left him a candy bar on his way to school. There was the little girl who asked if he needed water, only to cry when he looked up at her.

It
had
to
STOP.

Bongju wanted to believe with all of his heart that Gabriel would be there, at Belmont Park at 8pm. Part of him doubted it, though his hopes remained high. Gabriel used to be so kind, so sweet. Even so, Bongju wanted to hate him for killing him. The call to his heart was so strong that he followed that call to a beautiful man. All of those dreams he had about him, the nightmares about losing him--they all culminated in that moment when he finally laid eyes upon him. Gabriel. His angel. His literal angel.

Not long afterward, however, he killed him. Gabriel killed him. Born of that, Bongju was resentful, but he understood after a time. It was what had to be done in order to stay together. Forever.

Except forever was a joke. Gabriel abandoned him. Just...

he was gone. He left Bongju in such a state that he didn't know what to do with himself anymore. He wanted to die. He just wanted to die... until he saw him again. But even then, Gabriel denied him. Bongju set his jaw, fingers drawing into fists. But... he agreed. He agreed to meet him. Finally, they could put everything to an end.

[Gabriel Lee]

Belmont Park, 8 pm.

Gabriel looked down at his watch. 7:55 pm. He still hadn't left the Moonlight Inn yet, despite knowing that it would take at least fifteen minutes to get to the park. That was, if he could make himself go. The minutes ticked down.

7:57 pm

7:58 pm

8:01 pm

Finally, Gabriel stepped out the back way and flipped his hood up over his head. He started walking, taking slow steps, mentally running over what he wanted to say to Bongju. Ahn Bongju was a name he learned when he took over this body. This... wasn't his body. He was nothing before he was summoned and when he came here, the vessel was already waiting, already prepared to receive him. One dark night, he came through the portal and took it over, and he became Gabriel Lee.

But he didn't know that Gabriel Lee was attached to Ahn Bongju. He didn't know that they were linked, and that Bongju would be so persistent in hunting him down. Despite Gabriel's well-meaning warnings, Bongju was stubborn to his original goal of... something. Being with Gabriel, most likely. A bond like that left remnants--Gabriel felt them sometimes, strongly.

There was nothing that he could do, though. Once he took the body, the bonds were severed. He couldn't reconnect them; he wouldn't have wanted to, either. Gabriel had a specific task to carry out and he couldn't do that with Ahn Bongju constantly trailing him.

Maybe he won't be there.

8:13 pm.

He was a block away. All of the children had gone home now and it was dark. A thin mist was rolling in rapidly, tendrils of it clinging to the corners of buildings and to street lights. Gabriel glanced up at the sky; gray and dull. It was almost time. He had to persuade Bongju to leave--to leave him alone, to leave the town before it became impossible to do it.

A streetlight illuminated the way into the park, lighting his path. Gabriel slid the hood off of his head and looked around, spying one lonely figure in the distance. His heart--Gabriel's heart--lurched in his chest. He couldn't help but feel like he knew the shape of the man in the distance. Already, his body was reacting, steps getting faster, heart beating faster, anticipation spiking. Approaching him, Gabriel's steps finally slowed.

"...you shouldn't be here."

[Ahn Bongju]

He isn't going to come.

It wouldn't be the first time Gabriel ignored him, although it would be the first time he set up a meeting. That brought the hopeful flutter in his chest, which steadily slowed and died as he stood in the cooling air. The trees made it feel even colder and the fog came rolling in, ominous and thick. His hair felt heavy with moisture, his eyelashes dotted with drops. He stood almost perfectly still, arms around his body. Waiting.

What if he doesn't come?

Would he wait here through the night?

Yes.

There was nothing else left for him. He tried his best to communicate that to Gabriel over the phone. He so rarely allowed him in now. Why? At first, it seemed as if he didn't remember Bongju--but how could he be the one to forget when he was the one who called him to his side? What did Bongju did wrong for Gabriel to forsake him so harshly? He disappeared for so long. Years and years passed without word, without him. Bongju didn't even know why he still existed. If it weren't for Gabriel, he shouldn't exist now.

He's not coming.

The darkness gave way to the eerie glow of street lights. In the distance, he heard the hoot of a lone owl. Bongju's gaze fixed upon the grass, watching as a cricket hopped across his feet and down toward the park.

He felt Gabriel before he saw him. When he lifted his head, he saw his silhouette, illuminated by the lights that lined the park. Bongju didn't move, feeling rooted to the spot even while adrenaline began to rush though his tired body. Gabriel drew closer. Stopped. Just out of reach. It was strange, how large the distance between them felt when they were within sight of one another.

"You..." His voice felt strange. How long had it been since he really used it? "You wanted to meet here."

[Gabriel Lee]

"I meant... here in this town."

Gabriel tried to warn him without outright saying it--that the town and all of its inhabitants were doomed. He lifted his head to look up at the sky. The fog had rolled in fully now, obscuring his view of the moon and the stars and even the sky itself. All around them the air was quiet and the wind that had formerly blown across them also fell still. So it was starting already... and it was too late for Bongju to save himself.

"It's too late," he said quietly, and a little sadly. He thought that they had more time, that he could meet Bongju here to convince him to leave. Gabriel lowered his head and looked at Bongju. He knew him. Every feature, every expression, everywhere inside and out. He knew that Gabriel and Bongju had a past together--perhaps a complicated one--and that there were feelings which ran intensely, deeply underneath the surface. He felt them even now, albeit weakly, as if what remained of the man inside was fighting to get out.

"You should have left when you had the chance..."

[Ahn Bongju]

But he was here. He was here. Gabriel. He was here. How could Bongju be anywhere else? Didn't Gabriel understand that? It wasn't a childish naivety that caused him to say he couldn't do it without Gabriel. He said there were things worse than death for him but didn't he realize there could be nothing worse than these past several years without him? Gabriel was his angel, his destroyer and his savior. Without him, Bongju was literally nothing, just a body, a corpse. No drive. No will to live. No reason.

His Gabriel had never been so negative. Now he was only full of sadness. Melancholia so deep that his entire soul seem saturated in it, to the point that Bongju could hardly feel him in there at all. Gabriel felt much like Bongju did--a shell, empty and hollow. Nothing left to give. Maybe that was why he hadn't been there. Or a fate so horrific befell him that he couldn't speak of it. He wanted to save Bongju from the same fate. That was more befitting his view of Gabriel, though it still made so little sense to him.

He was...
so close.

Even in the impending darkness, Bongju could make out his features. He had memorized them and even time hadn't swept the details away. Bongju stepped forward because Gabriel had stopped and somebody, one of them, had to close the gap between them. Without words, he reached out and pulled him in for an embrace and at once, all the tiny, minuscule parts of him that shattered and scattered on his departure seemed to come together once again.

"Stop," he whispered. "Stop talking like that."

[Gabriel Lee]

He saw Bongju stepping forward but he didn't stop him, not even when arms slipped around him and pulled him forward. Gabriel's arms lifted of their own accord... his fingertips briefly touched Bongju's sides... then they fell back down. He turned his head away from Bongju, in order not to encourage him.

It was still dangerous for Bongju to be seen with him--to be with him. Gabriel was... gone. There was no Gabriel. There was only his body, and the being that inhabited it. Thinking otherwise--that he could be Gabriel, that he felt what Gabriel felt in Bongju's arms and so his existence was somehow validated by his human feelings--was merely delusional.

"It's too late," he repeated to the fog, watching it moving, hovering, closing in on them. It was like a living entity; it was moving without wind, without anything to drive it forward. Gabriel thought that if he reached out a hand, he might encounter something solid and real instead of fine mist.

He did feel something, though. A tug. A pull and a push. A flicker of recognition, of life, where there used to be a void. Gabriel's jaw tightened as he willed the sensations away. He didn't want to feel. That was dangerous for both of them, but especially for Bongju. Something in him needed to protect Bongju from what was to come and for that, they had to go their separate ways. The Reapers knew their targets well and if Bongju kept his distance, nothing had to happen to him.

"Let go."

[Ahn Bongju]

"It's been too late for a long time..." His voice was soft. His grasp on Gabriel was soft, too. He didn't squeeze him tight like a child with a cherished teddy bear. No, he held Gabriel close, so that their bodies pressed against one another and his arms wrapped around him and his face brushed against Gabriel's. But he could feel Gabriel turning away. He could feel the hands that started to envelope him as they shied away, as they dropped to his sides instead. It was only then that Bongju tightened his grip, fingers in Gabriel's coat, grasping at the cloth. It was then that he buried his face against his shoulder and closed his eyes, then tightened them briefly against a tidal wave of mixed emotions held back for so long.

He felt like a stray dog, hopefully waiting for a kind hand to settle against his head. Anything, something warm to remind him that the world wasn't just miles and miles of aching and yearning and walking forever in an unknown direction toward an unknown future.

For a moment, the chaotic electric storm inside his head and heart calmed. Everything was warm. Everything was right, like that moment when an infant cried for its mother and finally found her arms around him once again. That was how it felt. Like being brought back home, where he belonged.

But the moment was short lived.

Slowly, he untangled his fingers from the back of Gabriel's jacket. He lowered his arms stiffly. Then he took a step back. The hope was draining out of him at every turn. Without pride, he sank down to his knees before Gabriel and he clawed at his hands, trying to hold them, to grasp onto them.

"Gabriel... please.... please don't leave me alone again. If I can't be with you, then do it... Kill me and free me from this agony... please..."

[Gabriel Lee]

Gabriel's jaw tightened as he fixed his stony gaze on the fog. It was impossible to miss Bongju on his knees, begging and pleading with him. He tried to remove his hand--gently, though--and he kept grasping onto it, holding it with frenzied desperation.

Kill him.

Gabriel could have killed him. He could have done it then and there and put Bongju out of his misery. It would have made things easier on both of them. Bongju would be dead and Gabriel would be rid of the nuisance that haunted him at every turn. So why...

Why was the thought so revolting? Why did everything in him protest against it--a mere thought? Every cell screamed in rejection as his heart--Gabriel's heart--shivered and shook.

Kill him? If only Gabriel could.

Slowly, he too sank to his knees, facing Bongju. The hysterics would do him no good; Gabriel couldn't be moved, even if he himself wished it. He didn't belong to himself anymore. He was a servant, a puppet, and no amount of begging would change that. "Stop," he said firmly, commandingly, taking hold of Bongju's face in his hands. "I am not Gabriel. Do you understand? He... is dead. Gone."

[Ahn Bongju]

Death would be a release. He would finally be free of all this torment. He would be free, no longer tied to this earth because Gabriel was here. Kill me. He longed for death, the sweet relief, the peace. Gabriel did it once, out of necessity to create their bond. He could do it again, surely. Silently, he waited, the sound of his pitiful pleas echoing in the back of his mind.

Once, he was far too proud a man to beg, let alone fall to his knees in order to beg for death. He used to be quite the stubborn mule. A fighter, a bit of a brat, if he was to be completely honest. He held grudges for far too long, it was hard to genuinely make him laugh or cry. His existence was just another unwanted concubine's son in 18th century Korea so leaving it all behind was hardly a sacrifice. Yet he had no control over where fate led him and he had no control over the connection he formed with Gabriel nor the death that established it more securely.

For once... he wanted some form of control. Kill me. His head lowered and he waited, waited for his head to be removed from his shoulders, a knife to the back, anything. Magic. Maybe he would simply be snuffed out. His eyes closed. But still death did not come. He heard Gabriel moving and when he opened his eyes to mere slits, he could see his knees dropping before him. No. For a moment, he stubbornly kept his gaze on the ground, not looking up at Gabriel even as his face was taken in his hands.

Lies. His gaze darted toward Gabriel's, jaw set. He raised his hands to Gabriel's wrists. "No." It was ragged but the connection was still there. He felt it, like a corroded cord tied too tightly around his limbs. "You're still here."

[Gabriel Lee]

Gabriel felt their connection too, like an open wound. It wouldn't heal; it couldn't be ignored. When he laid in bed awake at night, he felt the tug and the pull and some nights he felt Bongju's loneliness acutely, reaching out to him through their bond.

But there was nothing that he could do. He couldn't keep Bongju by his side and keep him safe. Bongju would be very unsafe with him and if he thought that this was the worst that life to offer, he was so very, very wrong. And Gabriel couldn't let him discover that for himself. He couldn't give in now, only to set Bongju up for a greater fall later.

"Gabriel is gone," he repeated softly, as his thumbs traced down Bongju's cheeks. He traced the invisible paths that tears would have taken, gently wiping them away. The action wasn't his own; he didn't do it purposely but the part of him that was still Gabriel, buried away deep down inside, flickered.

Was there no other way to convince him? Looking into his eyes and seeing the stubborn set of his jaw, Gabriel believed it. He hesitated, and then leaned in to place his lips by Bongju's ear. He whispered to him, about what transpired the night that he slid out of the portal and into Gabriel's body. And he told Bongju, in a whisper that was barely audible, about the hellish things that were about to happen.

[Ahn Bongju]

"No."

He was not gone. Bongju refused to believe it when he saw him right there in front of him. When he could still feel the tattered remains of their bond. His eyes stayed trained on Gabriel even as Gabriel's thumbs stroked his cheeks. The time for tears had passed. When grief broke out, he couldn't control his emotions but enough time had come and gone with no sign of Gabriel. One night, he went to sleep with him beside him and the next morning, he was just... gone.

His expression didn't change as Gabriel leaned in to whisper to him. It didn't change as Gabriel's breath brushed his ear and his words washed over him. The words were so awful that he couldn't properly process them at first. Such words couldn't come from lips so sweet. As the words took root and sank in, however, his eyes started to brighten and mist over before he finally blinked. Then he pushed Gabriel back, as if waking up from a stupor. Stumbling to his feet, he took a step back and stared at Gabriel with a heaving chest.

Gabriel would never say such things. His eyes narrowed, fists forming and shaking before he bounded forward and punched him as hard as he could.

[Gabriel Lee]

He deserved that--the punch, which landed squarely on his jaw. For someone so lanky, Bongju packed a punch. Literally. Gabriel fell side-ways, reaching out quickly with a hand to stop himself from toppling over altogether. His palm scraped against the rough pebbles and stung as the skin broke.He only let out a soft noise, though, and righted himself slowly, rising to his feet with a stinging hand and smarting jaw. Something behind his eyes stung too; he ignored it.

Bongju was visibly angry, and Gabriel was... was glad. Maybe now, armed with the truth at last, Bongju could make the rational decision. Go away. Leave Gabriel alone. Save himself, before it was too late. They were coming; their presence was heralded by the fog that had begun to envelope the town. Gabriel was one of them now, unfit to stay and protect the person that he used to hold so dear.

"Go," he said softly. "Stay away from me."

[Ahn Bongju]

"No!"

His voice rang sharply in the silence. Even the crickets were silent and gone now. The owl he heard hooting earlier--gone. Even the air seemed thick and stale, with no wind movement. It felt like they weren't standing in a real place anymore. The fog was so thick and swirling around them that it almost suffocated him. Or maybe that was the emotion strangling him, the way his throat constricted, his nostrils flared, and his chest nearly burst with conflicting emotions. He stared at Gabriel hotly, fists still balled up, as if he were ready to hit him again.

"He's still here!"

And he pulled--tugged, desperately wrenched--the ragged thread that connected them as if it were a real and physical thing. He could feel him, some remnant of Gabriel. It couldn't just be the shell of a body that the disgusting creature wore as a mark. It couldn't be. Bongju felt something and that couldn't be a lie, no matter what spewed forth from the lips of an angel despoiled by... by some demonic entity.

[Gabriel Lee]

Gabriel nearly jumped at the vehement response; as it was, he twitched, his shoulders tensing. The gaze he fixed on Bongju was sorrowful, apologetic--in contrast to the stark, naked hurt and anger blazing from Bongju's eyes. That hurt him, too. It shouldn't have but it did and when he forced the connection, when he yanked so desperately on it that it was almost like a physical tug, Gabriel looked away.

"If he is still here... he won't be for long."

It was the quiet truth, the sad and unhappy truth. After the Harvest, nothing would be left, not a soul, not a fragment of a soul. There was a chance for salvation and rebirth, but Gabriel wasn't holding out much hope for it. His own hands twitched at his sides, balled into a loose fist and then relaxed.

He began to turn away, feeling as if he couldn't stand here all night arguing with a man who refused to accept the truth.

[Ahn Bongju]

What? What was that supposed to mean? Flashes of the words that had been whispered to him--menacing words in a deceptively soft tone--ran through his head like frantic ticker tape. If Gabriel was still here--and Bongju refused to cave to the idea that he wasn't--then whatever was here instead was now threatening him. Tightening his fists, he came at the Gabriel puppet-thing again as he turned away. He had some nerve!

Grasping his shoulder, he swung Gabriel's body around to face him. This time he didn't punch him--although he caught a glimpse of the place where his punch landed earlier. This time, he stared at him heatedly for a long moment.

How could he see Gabriel again? How could he ensure that nothing happened to him? The sadness in Gabriel's eyes felt like Gabriel, not some other thing. Not something that could burn out a hollowed hole to enter inside a body that wasn't his. His hand moved roughly from the back of Gabriel's shirt to the front, holding so tight that his knuckles whitened. Instead of another punch, he pulled Gabriel in for a kiss, as if this were a fairy tale. A kiss could wake him up, bring him back. It always worked in the tales and he knew that most tales were rooted in some truth.