Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
About
"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
"How inconvenient to be made of desire."
"It's me, hi, I'm the problem its me."
Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. Quote collecters and lyric hoarders, unleash your archive. For this round, every prompt must contain a quote - you can combine them, add commentary, link to articles, do whatever. Steal from a literary classic, or copy WeVerse drama.
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[FILL] sisyphean
Major Tags: major character death, murder
Additional Tags: resurrection, necromancy, lovers to enemies(-ish) to lovers to enemies to--
Permission to remix: Yes
***
In the ancient stories, Sisyphus is cursed to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity. This is his punishment for attempting to cheat death.
But just as Sisyphus pushes, the boulder is pushed.
Why do we never stop to wonder — what did the boulder ever do to deserve this fate?
—
Wonwoo wakes up cold. He feels the gooseflesh on his skin even before he opens his eyes. His body convulses with a shiver, and then his eyes fly open.
Someone next to him lets out a cry — of distress, of relief, Wonwoo can't tell.
He turns his head. There is a young man there, hands clapped over his mouth, obscuring most of his face. All Wonwoo can see of him are his eyes, and they are swollen and red like he's crying.
"You're back," the man gasps out, "You're really back."
Wonwoo frowns. Back from where? He tries to remember. Beyond the strange crying man, he sees an apartment cluttered with books and papers and beakers and vials. Odd-looking machinery next to black pewter cauldrons. Strings of herbs hanging from bookcases, a complicated chart of many colours pinned up on the wall.
A surge of familiarity wells up in Wonwoo. He pushes himself to sitting, which is when he realises he's lying on a large wooden table. There are scattered crystals around him, and dark etchings in the surface of the wood itself. He swings his legs off the side of the table and stands up.
The man reaches out towards him, then seems to falter in his resolve. His hands hang uselessly in the space between them.
"Wonwoo," he says, "Do you remember?"
Wonwoo stares at the man.
"Your name is Soonyoung," he says, before he even realises he is saying it. And then his chest clenches, and suddenly he is crying, tears rolling down his cheeks. "Your name is Soonyoung and I love you."
Soonyoung crumples forward, into his arms, and Wonwoo tries to hold him close even though he can't quite remember how to.
—
It takes Wonwoo a few hours to remember the rest of his life. He doesn't get to remembering his death, because by then it is time for him to die again.
—
Wonwoo wakes up cold.
"This time we'll make it last longer," Soonyoung says, the smile he offers Wonwoo shaky and uncertain. Soonyoung scribbles some notes on a sheet of parchment, which he then pushes aside. "I've changed some things, it should work better this time."
Wonwoo doesn't remember much but he remembers Soonyoung.
Sunlight dappling through the leaves, the two of them curled up on the wicker furniture in their sunroom. Soonyoung talking animatedly about his research, and Wonwoo sipping on his tea, quietly listening. Kisses pressed against warm, earthy skin. Soonyoung's delicate fingers brushing against his cheek. Wonwoo's arms curled around Soonyoung's slender waist. Music tinkling from the water fountain that they'd bought at a street market and enchanted to play FĂĽr Elise, the only classical tune Soonyoung knows, except Soonyoung calls it FĂĽr Wonwoo, because it's for you, Wonwoo, everything I do is for you.
This time, when Wonwoo dies, Soonyoung doesn't cry.
"I'll bring you back again," he says. "I've done it a few times before now, I can do it again. Go back to sleep, I'll see you soon."
Wonwoo slips back into darkness. In the background of his mind, the familiar notes from the music fountain sound off-tempo, discordant.
—
The eleventh time Wonwoo wakes up, he looks at Soonyoung and he remembers.
"You killed me," he says.
Soonyoung freezes. "It was an accident," he says, barely an exhale. "The experiment went wrong, you weren't even meant to be home—"
He falls to his knees before Wonwoo, weeping.
Wonwoo climbs back onto the table, lies flat on his back, and wills himself to die.
—
He forgives Soonyoung immediately. Tells him, the next time he wakes up. Soonyoung cries so hard he throws up.
"It's been two months," Soonyoung croaks out. "You wouldn't wake up. I thought you would never wake up again."
It occurs to Wonwoo that time passes for Soonyoung, in between wakings. He wants to know how long Soonyoung waits for him, how long Soonyoung keeps trying each time. How long Soonyoung would keep trying.
They sit down in the sunroom and Soonyoung talks him through his work. Necromancy is more Soonyoung's thing than Wonwoo's, but he tries to listen. They spread out the loose sheets of parchment and Wonwoo marvels at the wonders of Soonyoung's mind, the scattered, free-wheeling, utterly brilliant way in which he works.
"Sometimes it's easy," Soonyoung says, quietly. He touches a sketch of Wonwoo's face, which he's made in a corner of a parchment that's otherwise covered in mathematical equations. In the sketch, Wonwoo's eyes are closed. "And sometimes," Soonyoung continues, "it's difficult. It's so difficult I think I might give up."
He's still looking at the drawing of Wonwoo, eyes shut like he's just asleep. Next to him, Wonwoo has his eyes wide open. Soonyoung isn't looking at him, though.
—
He makes notes for himself, so he won't forget.
- Your name is Jeon Wonwoo.
- You love Kwon Soonyoung.
- You were killed by Kwon Soonyoung.
- You have forgiven him for killing you.
Number of times he has awakened you:
—
Wonwoo counts the marks on the page.
Twenty-nine.
Soonyoung helps him add one more line. "Thirty, now," he says. Looks up at Wonwoo, dark circles beneath his eyes and a terrifying gauntness in his cheeks. "That means you've died thirty times too."
Wonwoo stares at the page. In his life — his actual life, not this pathetic shade of the real thing — he didn't even live to see thirty. And here he is, thirty times dead and thirty times back to life.
"You should stop," he says. Turns to Soonyoung, heaviness in his limbs and in his chest. "Thirty times, and each time I live for what, no longer than a few days? Why would you do this?"
Soonyoung blinks at him, then surprise morphs suddenly into anger. "Why would I do this? Because I love you, of course. Because I love you!"
Wonwoo gets to his feet. He backs away from Soonyoung. "I don't want this. I didn’t ask for this."
This is his second day since waking up. He knows that he is going to die again, if not today then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then the day after. He turns and stumbles through the apartment, towards the wooden table that is both his cradle and his grave. He has died in many places other than on the table, but it is only on the table that he can choose to die.
Soonyoung rushes in after him, hands stretched out, clamping onto his arm. His nails dig into Wonwoo's flesh, hurting him in the attempt to make him stay. "Wonwoo, please," he cries out. "Please, don't go. Please—"
"I'll go if I want to," Wonwoo snaps. He wrenches his arm out of Soonyoung's grasp.
Soonyoung stops in his tracks at the far end of the apartment. His gaze goes dark and cold as he watches Wonwoo climb onto the table. Wonwoo turns back, and they look at each other.
"Fine," Soonyoung says. "Go if you want to. I'll only bring you back again."
Wonwoo chokes out a breath. He closes his eyes and tries to die again, for the last time.
—
It is not the last time.
"Where are my notes?" he hisses. They're not in the neat pile on what used to be his desk, where he'd always left them. "Kwon Soonyoung, where the fuck—"
"I burned them," Soonyoung says. He doesn't sound remorseful. Wonwoo knows that he isn't.
He dies again, he wakes again. Soonyoung loves him so hard that he turns into a fire and burns them both to the ground.
—
"How many times?"
Soonyoung kisses him. They're in bed, drenched in something that might once have been love but has since gone sour. Wonwoo kisses him back, because despite himself, despite everything that has happened between them — he’d still rather have the curdled, rotted, festering love than nothing at all.
"If I tell you, do you promise not to leave?"
Wonwoo nods. "I promise," he says.
Soonyoung smiles against the skin at the curve of his neck. "Sixty-three," he whispers. Like he's proud of the number, like he's in love with it more than he's in love with Wonwoo.
Sixty-three.
Wonwoo shudders.
—
The sixty-fourth time Wonwoo wakes, it is not him but Soonyoung who dies. Wonwoo stands over him, blade in his hand, blood pooling on the polished wooden floor, and—
—
Soonyoung wakes up like burning fire.
He turns his head, and a man with wire-framed glasses and dead, dark eyes is there. Staring at him, watching and waiting. Soonyoung has seen this face before, in joy and laughter, in sadness, in anger. And, more recently, in something cold and hollow and frightening.
"How many times?" Soonyoung asks.
Wonwoo doesn't move. "This will be thirteen," he says.
Soonyoung drops his head back onto the table and stares at the ceiling. "I loved you," he says. "I really, really did."
"And I loved you too," Wonwoo replies. This Wonwoo — Wonwoo number sixty-four — is cruel and cold. Soonyoung doesn't know if this Wonwoo had always been there, or if this is something that Soonyoung has created.
He sits up, legs swinging off the edge of the table. In a day or two, he will be dead. In a few more days or weeks beyond that, he will be alive again. Meanwhile, all this time, Wonwoo will have been alive. As it turned out, all that it took to save Wonwoo was for Soonyoung to die.
“I brought you back because I loved you,” Soonyoung says. “You’re bringing me back for revenge.”
Wonwoo touches him on the knee, presses his other hand onto the table next to Soonyoung’s hip. Leans forward, until they’re inches away from each other, one person’s exhales turning into the other’s inhales. Sharing breath, sharing life.
“At some point,” Wonwoo says, “those two became the same thing.”
Wonwoo kisses him. And Soonyoung kisses him back, because, despite it all — this is what he’s always wanted. Together, they climb up the hill against the endless drag of death, and together, they roll back down again.
Re: [FILL] sisyphean
The ending makes this part hurt: Sunlight dappling through the leaves, the two of them curled up on the wicker furniture in their sunroom. Soonyoung talking animatedly about his research, and Wonwoo sipping on his tea, quietly listening. Kisses pressed against warm, earthy skin. Soonyoung's delicate fingers brushing against his cheek. Wonwoo's arms curled around Soonyoung's slender waist. THEY WERE SO HAPPY... RIP T___T HOW CAN THIS BE IN A HORROR PIECE
Thank you so much for writing this I loved it!!