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Round 2: Alternate Universes
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Status: Closed
Seventeen Holidays
About
Sometimes its the characters that move us, but sometimes we fall in love with the the world behind the story. Something transformative occurs when we place the characters we love in an unfamiliar world, like the light has shone on a new side and we're seeing them anew. Run to the classics; revisit the magic of Harry Potter, the heart-punch of a Pacific Rim drift, the warmth of a Coffee Shop AU. Or maybe dig your fingers into a story that blew your mind - Battle Royale, The Raven Cycle, Interstellar - or demand better from a book that let you down (The Poppy War fin- mmph). Perhaps! You might combine two of your fandoms for maximum joy (Haikyuu and Tennis adjacent mutuals, I'm looking at you.) The possibilities are literally endless. Do it for the aesthetic, do it for the drama. Examples
Wonhui x MDZS/Untamed
Wonwoo as Lan Wanji, Jun as Wei Wuxian (Minghao as Jiang Cheng?). I want a cast that feels betrayed and shocked at Junhui's demise but then gradually learning his reasons behind it.
Mingyu/Seungkwan Debating AU
Imagine them as third speakers in the high school circuit. Rivals! Mortal Enemies! Prepared case summaries derailing into personal attacks, and then when their coach calls them out on it they become passive aggressive e.g. "there are major flaws in the opposition's arguments..."
Jeonghan as Mal from Inception
Any Jeonghan ship will do. I just want him to chaotically haunt a person while being sexy about it.
Rules
How it works
Prompting
Filling
Filling with art/media
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[FILL] part of me (gone)
Major Tags: Major Character Death
Additional Tags: sci-fi, angst, vague Star Trek universe
Permission to remix: Yes
I AM SO SORRY TO FILL THIS LITERALLY A YEAR LATER I was just cleaning out the docs and found this draft nearly finished and... 17hols is forever right?!
***
“When I desire you
a part of me
is gone.”
—Anne Carson, Eros
When the Voyager emerges from the wormhole, she’s halfway across the Alpha quadrant. It takes Seungcheol an agonizing three minutes to recalibrate the navigation board and make contact with Starfleet base. He rattles off their exact location to the agent, feeling Jihoon’s eyes hot on the side of his face.
“The Barzen wormhole jumped 0.78 parsecs to intercept our flight path at warp. We’ve been moved into unmapped space,” he concludes, running a heavy hand through his hair.
“Captain Choi,” the Lieutenant’s voice returns, shaky and unfamiliar. Seungcheol double-checks they’re on the correct frequency. “Please confirm your mission ID.”
“This is the starship Voyager, mission ID Alpha-496-X. We are 3 years and 5 months into our 5 year mission and we’ve just been misdirected. Please put us in contact with Director Kim immediately.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
Seungcheol exchanges an incredulous glance with Jihoon. “Lieutenant, let me be clear, this is an urgent situation—”
“Director Kim is dead.”
The words don’t register to Seungcheol at first. He sits tall, righteous in the leather-backed chair, with Jihoon’s grip tightening on his shoulder. His thoughts fizzle into static. That can’t be possible. They spoke just this morning.
The Lieutenant continues softly, “Your mission ID has been inactive for 47 years, Captain.”
Time dilation is a phenomenon scarcely mentioned at the Academy. Seungcheol remembers an old campus horror story about an elderly professor who died in her young father’s arms when he returned home from a mission gone wrong.
It doesn’t feel real until they break the news to the crew. Junhui cries. He folds himself onto Jihoon’s shoulder and weeps, “My husband. My husband, I left him.”
Joshua shatters a mug with his bare hands.
Seungcheol stays in the mess hall long after everyone else has left. He sits by the window and holds his holoreader in both hands, watching its dead face glitter with the silver lights of passing stars.
He does the calculations. His parents are dead. His sister is elderly. His—Jeonghan is—
Seungcheol can’t bear to reboot the hologram. He doesn’t know what would be worse—seeing hundreds of missed messages and calls that slowly trickle into silence, irrefutable proof that time marched along without him in tow—or seeing nothing at all, every message lost to the gnawing infinity of space.
47 years.
When Seungcheol tries to sleep that night, he sees Jeonghan’s face. His young, smiling face.
Three weeks later, they dock at headquarters and Seungcheol is accosted in the entrance corridor by a not-quite-familiar face. When the Voyager embarked on her mission, Lee Chan was an energetic first-year student at the Academy who badgered his seniors for advice about mechie exams.
Now he’s the Director.
“Choi Seungcheol, I never thought I would see you again.” Director Lee bows and shakes his hand.
Recognition hurts. Seungcheol feels like he’s had the breath knocked out of him. His own face is a memory for Lee Chan, his body an anachronism in the hallway. He feels, oddly, like a child.
“Thank you for greeting us, sir,” Seungcheol says, and his voice does not shake.
“Of course,” Director Lee says warmly. Wrinkles line his kind face. “I had to welcome you personally. I’m sure this has been a shock. Do you know where you’re headed? Need a guide?”
“No need for a tour, sir, we’ve been told to report to Medical. After that, I’m afraid we have no immediate orders…?”
Seungcheol lets his question hang heavy in the air.
Director Lee looks surprised. “Orders? Captain Choi, you’ve…” His eyes cut to the side, where the crew have lapsed into silence in favor of staring at the skyline of a Seoul they do not recognize. “You’ve done your duty. No orders. You’re all let go with lifetime pensions.”
This time, it’s Jihoon who starts to cry.
On their last night together, they bundled themselves into each other’s coats and drove out to the grassy field where they’d first met. The stars were a backdrop of the future. Seungcheol got Jeonghan flat on his back, blonde hair like a blanket beneath his neck, lips pink from the kissing and the cold.
He dug around in his own jacket sleeves to find Jeonghan’s hands, swallowed by fabric, warm and soft.
That’s where I’m headed, Seungcheol said, and pointed vaguely to the Alpha quadrant. His breath became a plume of steam. They were huddled so close that Jeonghan sucked it back when he replied, exchanging air between their bodies like they were one and the same.
Jeonghan’s eyes glittered. He twisted the ring on his finger. So far away! Be careful out there. I’ll miss you.
I already miss you, Seungcheol said. It’s only five years, but—
I’ll be here when you get back, Jeonghan said, and kissed him.
A lifetime ago.
It takes almost a week to track down Yoon Jeonghan, 76 years old, living in the suburbs of Yongsan-gu with his husband. Six days of wandering down the guest corridors of Starfleet Headquarters in the dead of night, avoiding interview requests from the media, avoiding the stares of curious strangers. Avoiding himself.
Seungcheol is a ghost until he gets Jeonghan’s address. Then, he gears up to be a memory.
He wears a pretty little suit and drives a pretty little company car and his hands shake the whole goddamn time. The name of Jeonghan’s husband is blown out of his head like a dandelion seed. Inertia keeps him in motion.
At the quaint two-storey house down Gieok Lane, Seungcheol knocks.
A stranger answers.
Seungcheol’s breath whooshes out of him, relief tangled with disappointment. It’s not Jeonghan. This man is around the same age, with a gorgeous smile and deep-set crow’s feet. His moles are a constellation worth photographing. He’s horribly handsome in a soft frock and golden specs.
The man’s face goes slack with shock. It would be comical if Seungcheol weren’t terrified out of his mind. “You’re here.”
“I am.” Seungcheol laces his fingers behind his back; in distress, falls back upon company training. “My name is Choi Seungcheol. I’m looking for—Yoon Jeonghan-ssi. Is that okay?”
“Yes! Please, come in. I’m Lee Seokmin.” Seokmin opens the door wider. The smell of fresh bread and parsley warms the air. “We heard about the Voyager. We were wondering when you’d come.”
Jeonghan is as accommodating as ever.
They sit on the back porch overlooking a little pond. Cattails wave from the marshy shore. A hare darts from underneath the wooden baseboards and bullets into the undergrowth. Behind the house, the sun is setting, and the sky is ripe with pink and gold.
Seungcheol’s mouth is dry. He can’t bear to look at Jeonghan directly, it’s worse than staring into the sun. Like knowing a star has already blown out millions of light years away and you’re looking at a dead thing before it’s dead.
But he can feel the warmth of Jeonghan’s eyes on his face. So he takes a deep breath and readies himself for conversation.
Jeonghan is still beautiful.
No, more beautiful. His forehead has wrinkled into worry lines. His hair is white and cropped below the ears, so close to the silver he had during the first year of university. Strands blow across the bridge of his nose and he peels them back with the same perfect wrists. When he sat down, his knees cracked, but his spine is straight and his eyes are clear.
His voice, when he speaks, is slower. “Cheollie, it’s good to see you.”
“You too,” Seungcheol says quietly.
“Aish, drop the honorifics.” Jeonghan smiles. “It’s still me.”
Seungcheol nods and fakes a smile right back. This man is in so many ways a stranger. He has no clue what to say. There’s no easy way to bridge 50 years. But part of Seungcheol, a selfish and masochistic part, wants to hear everything.
“On our last call,” he begins at the beginning. “You said… you were thinking about going back to school.”
“Oh. I did, after a few years. I became a teacher.”
“I bet you’re good at it.”
“I was.” Jeonghan smiles down at his own lap, reliving a private happiness. “I won a few awards, isn’t that funny? But I retired years ago.”
Seungcheol rubs a hand over his face. Starts jiggling his leg. “Jeonghan,” his voice wavers. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t—”
“I left you behind.” I got left behind.
An awful silence falls over the porch. Seungcheol tries to swallow around the fist of emotion in his throat and can’t.
“Seungcheol,” Jeonghan says his name like a prayer. “You died. In my life, I mourned you. Getting to see you again, like this—” He gestures to Seungcheol’s face. “It’s a blessing. There’s nothing to apologize for. Of course not! I’m happy knowing you get a chance to live, even if it’s not with me.”
Seungcheol lowers his head and cries.
It hurts worse knowing that Jeonghan is still the same person inside. That’s exactly the selfless kind of sentiment he would’ve shared when they were kids getting different test scores, when they were teenagers unsuccessfully teaching each other to play piano.
If he tries, Seungcheol can still recall the piney smell of the piano bench, the warmth of Jeonghan’s hands eclipsing his own over the keys. The teasing laughter that Jeonghan left in the curve of his neck.
“I wanted it to be you,” Seungcheol confesses.
If it were me, he thinks, I still would’ve loved you after 50 years. After a hundred.
Jeonghan lays his hand on Seungcheol’s knee. The oval diamond of his wedding band is embedded like a teardrop in gold.
“Me too.”
Seungcheol doesn’t stay for dinner. Can’t.
He bids goodbye to Jeonghan on the porch and they both know it’s for the last time. Their hug is gentle, and Jeonghan smells different—wrong—like another man’s cooking, another man’s cologne. Sharp and cool.
It lingers in Seungcheol’s nose when he backtracks through the house. Moving photographs are scattered throughout the living room. Children with frizzy hair falling into the pond. Younger children smearing tomato sauce all over their chubby, shining faces. Seokmin laughing.
Last along the row: A middle-aged Jeonghan with a cat in his arms, turning over one shoulder to smile at the camera, backlit by the afternoon sun. He’s wearing someone else’s coat; his arms drown in the sleeves, his hands obscured.
Seungcheol hesitates there. Seokmin is leading him toward the front door, but he stops and follows his gaze.
“That’s one of my favorites,” Seokmin says gently. “Jeonghan has a knack for animals. They’ll do anything he says.”
Seungcheol draws a shaky breath. When he imagined his future, it always looked like this. He brushes his fingers over the frame.
“I know,” he says simply.
Seokmin’s eyes go soft. “He never forgot about you, you know. If… I mean, you could come back to visit anytime.”
Seungcheol flinches and drops his hand. “I can’t. But thank you.”
Seokmin probably thinks he is being kind by offering. But Seungcheol has changed his mind: he doesn’t want to know the specifics. How long Jeonghan hoped. If he kept the ring.
The sun slips below the horizon. Seungcheol has an hour and a half of driving ahead of him. He nods uncomfortably to Seokmin and hurries out the front door, taking deep gulps of clean air like he can expel the metaphorical stones in his chest with a good sigh.
He feels so heavy. Lonelier than he ever felt in deep space. Seungcheol’s halfway down the front path when a voice calls out behind him.
“Wait!” Seokmin walks outside, eyes round behind his specs. “If you aren’t coming back—do you—would you like to take this?”
He holds out the moving photograph of Jeonghan.
Seungcheol bites his bottom lip. He can’t even hate Seokmin? He’s not granted that mercy, at least? His hands shake when he accepts the photograph. Thank you gets lodged in his throat like he tried swallowing a tombstone.
He leaves. Doesn’t look back.
Later, Seungcheol will install that moving photograph at a neat grave site that he only ever visits once.
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
(Anonymous) 2022-01-03 01:00 am (UTC)(link)p/s. i just want to ask can i have your permission to translate this beautiful piece into Vietnamese because the whole work is really beautiful, i will try my best to show all those feeling and send the link of the translation for you. thank you so much in advance and wish you have a nice day!
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
- I wrote the top part before I even started reading and kept the notepad app open to copy quotes but now I'm back 30 minutes later because the breath has been knocked out of me, I had no idea it was going to go this way. Rug pulled under my feet, thrown overboard into ice water, told I have 2 weeks to live.
The premise blew my mind - I've read a lot of sci fi and felt a myriad of feelings from what I've read but this was completely new to me. Sci Fi stories has always felt thrilling in a calculated and safe way, like fantasy. Man is in control of the universe, and if not, at least the narrative. Even if we don't win, disasters and alien invasions and meteorite impacts are foreseen.
But this story starts with an accident, where everything was okay one moment, but then the dread and the realisation descends, and everything real becomes true (My husband. My husband, I left him." // "seeing hundreds of missed messages and calls that slowly trickle into silence, irrefutable proof that time marched along without him in tow") -- this is crazy, you're crazy. Seungcheol meeting Lee Chan as an old man when he remembers him as a baby boy, onto to habe the table flipped (He feels, olddly, like a child"). And then gearing up to meet Jeonghan again. Seeing a life lived without him, dreams realised without his support, and people moving on. Like you were displaced and now you're misplaced. When you know that everyone you met had already grieved you and moved on, and the world no longer has a space for you. ;____; my feelings about this are overgrowing.
There were so many lines that hurt, but my favourite is the moment when Seungcheol meets Jeonghan again and they're sitting together on the back porch but Seungcheol can't bare to look at Jeonghan directly, "like you're looking at a dead thing before it's dead. This is so powerful, one for the fact you're making similes out of abstract science and the wonky time lag of lightspeed, and two, because it's so painfully resonant the more I let myself think about it. Exactly seeing something beautiful knowing that you are seeing it 2 billion years later. The paradox of knowing something is true but you can't still bear to see it with your eyes because it will make it more true in a different way. It makes me think of the feeling when you see an old photo of your grandparents, or the 'before photos' when urban areas get developed. Understanding that there's a piece of history beyond your reach forever is ;_____; heartwrenching and so powerful because it all reflects back onto the moment when Seungcheol sees Jeonghan again, because then he will truly understand that time has passed and what it cost.
(tangent, not sure if you have read lj user cantakeabreath's exo fic on time dilation [through the years and far away]. It's 2012 Sehun/Luhan and Sehun goes on a mission while Luhan stays on earth. So it would be akin to Jeonghan's perspective. I just thought of the moment where jongin tells lu han "You're in love with a memory" and then later "Lu Han wonders whether he's spent over two decades on a memory, on a shadow, on an illusion. He wonders if Sehun's even ever had to shave. Whether he's still growing. If he'll go to college when he gets back.. Reading these themes again from the traveller's perspective hit differently, because I can imagine what Jeonghan went through, but even worse because it was an /accident/ and they were treated as deceased) - btw I want to ask why you chose Jeongcheol? because they are so infamously tragic? or it just came into your head as jeongcheol. (or were you out to get me)
I think a reason why the premise resonates so hard is because the tragedy is unforeseen and I can't help but think this goes back to your themes of nature and climate change. The disaster narrative where catastrophe descends without warning and the characters wade through the after, the consequences. I can see that here even though it's science fiction. Having tangential thoughts about plot shapes but I will pause that haha it's 1am now and I started reading at midnight (I guess no fills tonight :'D).
I usually feel fear with disaster stories, but rarely with science fiction. And to feel that piercing terror, to know that your life could change in an instant. That's a feeling I will ponder over -- will definitely revisit this fill in the future to feel that again. Thank so so much klav, this was insane to read and the little story generator in your brain is something I want a lifetime subscription to.
(17hols is forever)
(also cool star trek references!)
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
Like you were displaced and now you're misplaced. When you know that everyone you met had already grieved you and moved on, and the world no longer has a space for you. - gah this is beautifully worded, making my feelings overgrow as well
Ahhh, the way you talk about the emotions that sci-fi usually elicits vs how you felt reading this, the fear from disaster stories crossing over, that is SO interesting!!! I had to sit down and really think about what science fiction is about. Truthfully I haven't read much sci-fi, I mainly watch it. The media that stuck with me most all had elements of horror, and I think that subconsciously became a cornerstone of the genre for me (on top of my interest in climate + disaster stories just spilling everywhere LOL). I'm wondering if my perceptions are out of whack, brb searching for a link to Interstellar or Voices of a Distant Star to test this -- are there any other, I'm not sure, softer sci-fi medias that you would recommend? Or, more focused on adventure rather than fear/fallout?
(Star Trek is sort of in that vein of depictions but I think so often of [voyages] by ao3 user junos, I can't remember if we've talked about this fic before?, but there's a line about Seungkwan there, A golden cloudlike parasite once used him as a host, undetected. After, after they lured it out and destroyed it with electricity, before it could feed from any more of the crew, Boo hung his head between his knees and sobbed and said it was so lonely, it was the last of its kind. The fic is in Trek verse and not otherwise Scary, but what I felt reading that line in particular - terrified, choked up, knocked off my feet, etc. - is I think how I understand the genre as a whole.)
I haven't read the exo lj fic!!! It looks like op has hidden it, or I just don't know how to request access yet - will poke around and see if I can read it because wow, what a concept. I've never eaten time dilation & had no idea it was such a Trope, would love to see more *__*
ANYWAY sorry this got a bit long, thank you for responding to this so generously!!! You always have the most eloquent thoughts on media + writing and I feel like I learn so much from listening TT__TT <3 Very happy if this could Get you!
Re: [FILL] part of me (gone)
“You died. In my life, I mourned you. Getting to see you again, like this—” He gestures to Seungcheol’s face. “It’s a blessing."
why have you done this to me
“I wanted it to be you,” Seungcheol confesses.
If it were me, he thinks, I still would’ve loved you after 50 years. After a hundred.
you need to take responsibility for what you've done to me!!!!
this reminds me also of 'the forever war' which involves a similar time dilation thing and was a metaphor for vets coming back after the vietnam(I think?) war and not recognising society that part of the book rly stuck with me and this fic dredged up all of those feelings again!! and now I can't stop thinking about the four(?) of them in the crew and how they all cope argh - if you're okay with it I might do a remix (someday) about that? I just have... feelings....
thank you for sharing this! funny how you filled it a year later and here I am commenting a year later haha