Sometime later, he woke up. There was a stray cat with matted orange fur snuggled against him for warmth. It would have been a cute cat if it wasn't so filthy. With an effort, Hyunsun pushed himself away from the machine, leaning forward against his knees, pressing his palm against his head. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious for (though it had been a few days) and had a slight headache from power over-use. But he could tell he could use his powers again. The cat, noticing his change of position, stood up and stretched, yawning heavily before sitting back down beside him, flipping it's tail across the floor contentedly. Hyunsun reached back and rubbed the cat's head and stood up. He almost fell right back down as he gasped in pain, holding the machine for support. His knee didn't want to hold him, but he forced himself to stand up straight.

"Sorry cat, I can't take you with me. Besides, I don't think you'd like the submarine," he said, looking down at the sole witness of just how much pain he was in, who in turn yawned again and its lips. He was going to try not to show it once he got to the others, because he didn't want them to worry about him. Although, his chest was full of bullets and he was bleeding everywhere, so they were bound to worry anyway. Taking a painful deep breath, he steadied himself and concentrated on where he wanted to go. Hopefully, there were still people at the pier. He found himself at the end of the pier on the land side. With a shrug, he limped down it to the man at the other end. The man's eyes widened at the sight of Hyunsun and he took a step forward to catch him just as his knee gave out again. With the man's help, Hyunsun stood up straight and managed a bloody smile.

"You must be Hyunsun. Your brother is with ChAOS in the submarine. They told us to wait for you, and we almost gave up on you to be honest. After all, your brother showed up three days ago and said you'd be here 'soon.' We thought a day at most, but Taeyang insisted that we wait a little longer," the man said. Hyunsun nodded.

"I don't want them to see me like this, is there any way you can get me in and into a room to get fixed up without them seeing me?" he asked, swaying slightly. The man looked him up and down.

"You're lucky we have a healer on board. I'll take you to your room and send the healer over," he said, gesturing for the crew to open the hatch and leading Hyunsun down into the large military submarine and to a room with a bed, a closet, and a table with a light. Everything was bolted down so that it didn't move around and potentially hurt someone. The door closed behind the man as he left to find the healer. And that...was when I met him.

I knocked timidly at his door to let him know I was there and pushed it open. He was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, his face to the ceiling. He looked like he was tired...and in pain. I took in the bloodied shirt and gasped lightly. I carefully composed myself as he opened his eyes and looked me over. Not that there was much to see. I was short with dark hair and blue eyes. The eyes came with the abilities, so don't ask me why I got blue eyes instead of brown like I should have had. I didn't have any clothing left of my own because the clothing I came to them with was in tatters, so I borrowed from the men on board, which meant that anything I wore hung loosely on me. The crew found me near death a few weeks back and took me in, but they didn't have any other females on board that I could borrow clothing from, and going out was a bit dangerous for the crew because they were merely human. The only reason they had gone out when they found me was because they needed to restock on supplies. Taeyang had gone with them that day, and the crew almost left me there. To die. But Taeyang slung me onto his back as if I was nothing and they finished their mission with relative ease. I took a few shy steps forward, finding it hard to take my eyes off of the boy's bullet-riddled chest.

“N-normal people would be dead by now,” I muttered, smacking myself mentally for starting off with something like that. He smiled at me through blood-flecked lips.

“Normal people would have been dead after the first two, and therefore wouldn't have ended up like this,” he said. Even though he tried to seem nonchalant about it, I could tell he was in pain.

“It , doesn't it... to be able to feel all of the damage you take but not die from it,” I mumbled, remembering how it felt to lie on the road, all cut up and bleeding all over the place, dying by inches. His smile faded as he looked away.

“Yeah... so much for being 'immortal.' If we were truly immortal, we wouldn't even feel the pain as wounds formed on our bodies,” he said. I rested my hand softly on his bleeding chest.

“Then allow me to remove your pain,” I said softly as my hand glowed a soft blue. He was injured more than he appeared.

There was a lot of internal bleeding, many broken ribs, and far too many torn muscles. How he still managed to stand up was beyond me. Even Guardians can only take so much... Finally, the last wound healed as we stood in a circle of bloody bullets. I tried to smile at him even as the world spun and my knees crumbled beneath me. His eyes widened as he caught me before I hit the ground.

“S-sorry... There was a lot to heal,” I said weakly. He sighed and helped me back up. I swayed a little as I tried to get myself to stand properly.

“I can take a lot of damage,” he said, keeping a hand on my shoulder to keep me up. I took a deep breath and steadied myself as the small cabin finally stopped spinning. I was about to leave when the door opened. I turned quickly and saw the man who saved me, Taeyang. In his hand were some clothes, a white button down shirt, a black leather jacket, and lighter blue jeans.

“What the hell happened?” he asked, taking in the bullets on the ground and the blood on Hyunsun's shirt. I took a step back and looked back and forth between the brunette and the blonde. “You send your brother back, but don't follow? What if they killed you? Hyunmin told us that they were waiting, that he knew you were planning to fight them, that you didn't give him a chance to smack some sense into you. And look at your shirt! What happened?!” I tried to hide behind something, but there wasn't much to hide behind. I had never seen Taeyang look that angry before. I guess it was because he cared about what happened to his team. I wanted nothing more than to leave, but Taeyang stood in the doorway and I was terrified to ask to leave, to draw attention to myself.

“I'm fine now, so you don't have to get mad, alright? Nothing happened, and I'm okay,” Hyunsun said, giving Taeyang a stubborn glare. “Besides, it wasn't that bad.” I scoffed, which caused him to shoot a glare my way and Taeyang to look at me.

“Yuri, why don't you tell me how bad it was? After all, you can't hide any injury from a healer,” he said. I regretted making any noise as they both stared at me. One set of eyes told me to tell the truth, and the other set told me to shut up.

“I-I would like to leave... this is really none of my business, please stop looking at me like that both of you,” I murmured timidly. Hyunsun exhaled angrily and looked away. Taeyang threw the clothes at him and gestured for me to leave with him.

“Get yourself cleaned up, Hyunsun. You don't want the others to see you and ask just how bad it was,” he said as I shuffled over to him. He put a hand on my shoulder and steered me out of the room, casting one last look at Hyunsun before closing the door. Hyunsun stood there, glaring at us until the door closed and we could no longer see him. Taeyang put an arm around my shoulders as we walked in silence.

“It was bad,” I finally muttered softly. “Even for a Guardian.”

“I thought as much... He never did know when to give up and retreat. One day, it's going to get him killed,” he said with a sigh. I nodded slowly in agreement. “I would feel better if he had a healer with him at all times, but I wouldn't want to put you in any dangerous situations, so I guess I'll keep looking for another healer.” I stopped walking and he took two steps before he turned to look at me.

“I'll stay with him. You know how hard it is to find healers. After all, it's a rare skill. I'll be fine, I'm sure,” I said, giving him a look that said 'I'm not as weak as you think I am.' After a moment, I smiled at him. “For your sanity as much as his safety, I volunteer to stay with him, to keep him alive. Besides, chances are, if I'm with him, you'll be there too. I know you'll do your best to keep me safe, just like you have for the past few weeks.” Taeyang closed the distance between us and hugged me tight.

“Even if I'm not around, I know he wouldn't let anything happen to you either... I just don't want you to be in that kind of situation ever again,” he said softly.

“I'm not as defenseless as I look. I do have my other powers as well, so I can help him without being a burden. And about what happened before... Don't worry about it. The circumstances were not in my favor and I chose to stay and fight anyway,” I said, hugging him lightly back.

“I just wish you could heal yourself as well,” he said, pulling away from me and looking down at me with concern.

“I think the ones who gave out the powers keep trying to teach me my place, but I refuse to stay at the back, healing when needed, but not doing anything else. Again, it's my choice to fight instead of hiding,” I said. He nodded slowly and ruffled my short dark hair.

“You're a good kid, Yuri. And I promise, as long as I'm around, I'll do my best to protect you,” he said. I poked him lightly in the chest.

“I'm not a kid, I'm twenty! If you want to call someone a kid, go find Duhwan!” I said with a playful pout. Taeyang, in the few weeks I've known him, has been like a brother to me. He's very protective of me, mostly because of the condition he found me in, and partially because of how small I am. He laughed lightly at me and put his arm around my shoulders again.

“Let's go find the others, then,” he said, leading me down the hallway of the submarine.

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I haven't written this kind of story since I started Days of Infinite, so it's good to be back and stretch my fantasy mental muscles ^^