"If you don't want anything on top of that coffee? Uh, I guess we go cuff you like we were going to knock you out, only without the step where we knock you out, and then you can take off the bracelet - I usually cuff the opposite hand but if it were me I'd want to pull the bracelet off myself, I think, so you could do it on the same side to have the other hand free. And you can see how much you've got left to go, all I really know is 'still more than I pull in a dungeon by a long shot', and I can hug you or you can put the bracelet right back on if it sucks too much."

"Hmm, sure, I'll take it off myself. That all works."

Haru produces the handcuffs for him.

Alright. Cuffed. And then...

...this is scary but less scary than he thought it'd be. He can just get the key to unlock the bracelet mechanism that allows it to come off—he'd never actually touched it, before, and for some reason he thought it'd be made of the same material as the bracelet, but of course that makes no sense—and see if it's obvious how to work it, yes it is, alright...

...click...

Ah.

"Okay?" Haru asks, holding out his hand for Jaeha's free one.

Okay? No. Obviously not. What kind of moronic question is that. He has years of nearly untreated backlash, flavour depression with a side of sociopathy, and Traceless is asking him if he's okay? The only reason Jaeha doesn't spit in his face is because apparently his moral convictions managed to survive the shock, in something that must be a twisted god's idea of humour, since it's not like his moral convictions matter when he's never going to use them for anything. Pathetic, thinking that he wouldn't be a tool just because he's awake. He's still a tool, still being used, he's just walking into it with his eyes open. But he's not trustworthy. He's never gonna be trustworthy. Every little disgusting desire and impulse that made him do what he did to Tae-gun, to Insoo, to Kim Hye-jin, it's all still here, and he knows it is. He's never going to change, so why bother pretending? If he truly cares about fighting Nightmare or whatever else—or if he wants to pretend he does—then letting Traceless puppet his body and being subjected to Traceless's will is the best possible choice he could make bar none. He doesn't deserve redemption or forgiveness, and he shouldn't bother hoping for it, or for a life that's any better than this. He shouldn't even consider this good, he should just accept whatever he's given with his head down, shut the fuck up about his tiny little issues, and spend the rest of his miserable existence trying to make up for things it's impossible to ever make up for. Then at least when he's finally given the sweet release of oblivion he so craves he'll be able to get the pitiful satisfaction of claiming he tried, the only thing he can ever realistically dream of accomplishing.

Quite done?

Alright, he shuts his eyes, mentally prepares, and takes Haru's hand.

Haru's not nearly as compatible with him as Tae-gun. Nothing till they touch.

It's really very good within the "nothing till they touch" range of possible compatibility, though.

Haru obviously feels it, but he's not himself backlashed and doesn't need this the way Jaeha does, so he just barely-audibly hums and leaves his hand loose for Jaeha to interact with however.

So what's really obvious is that he doesn't actually want to die.

It's obvious that he doesn't want to die because now he kind of does. Because now, being alive hurts, and it hurts in a way it hasn't hurt in, in, he doesn't know how long. It's so impossible to believe, to truly believe that anything could ever get better. He lost Tae-gun, and he didn't deserve Tae-gun, because when he had Tae-gun he threw him away with his own hands and the backlash was just an excuse, and then he was obsessed with getting him back and, and, and for what? Because he loved Tae-gun? He did. He loved Tae-gun. He loved Tae-gun, once, and he thought that he didn't exist, couldn't exist, without Tae-gun, once. He was wrong about that, because he exists, he still exists, but the thing he did over the past several years wasn't love, either. It wasn't. And he can't feel love—he's not sure he even feels it with the bracelet on, but he definitely can't feel it now—so what was even driving him? (Fear. Always fear.)

What more is there for him? What life?

Only, really, what Haru will give him. But here, like this, he's... funnily enough... not scared of that.

"Five minutes," he says, voice only shaking a bit, "then I want my brain back."

"Of course." Haru holds hands and waits politely.

So he spends five minutes like this, marinating in this intoxicating feeling of hopelessness and despair and self-loathing, then he pulls away and—

"Could you uncuff me as soon as I clip the bracelet back on? I want to be alone. ...I think I still will."

"Yes, of course." Haru poises himself appropriately.

So on goes the bracelet—

And off comes the cuff, and Haru gets up to absent himself from the room.

...oh, he was gonna—okay.

"Thank you," he says, trying for neutral, and trying to—hold onto his state of mind—

"You're welcome."

—and then when Haru's gone he lets go, and starts crying. He remembers having trouble figuring out what he was feeling, while backlashed, and having to work it out from context, but he knows why, this time. It's because of Tae-gun, of course. It's always Tae-gun.

It's because he doesn't love Tae-gun anymore.

It's so—stupid—how he failed to realise this sooner, failed to—connect the dots. But it's obvious. It's so obvious. He misses Tae-gun, misses Tae-gun like he'd miss a limb, like he'd miss his own heart if it were carved out of his chest, he misses waking up next to Tae-gun and seeing him smile and seeing him cry and seeing him laugh and seeing him yell—but it's all just the same as his backlash. It's only the absences, only the negatives, the shapes around what's not there. He doesn't long for Tae-gun. He's been staring at the hole Tae-gun left in him for so many years that at some point he began to believe that that hole was him, that he was the absence.

He isn't. People aren't the shadows they cast, or the imprints they leave behind. And, and, and Kim Hye-jin was right. They spent so much longer apart than they did together, Jaeha kept trying to make himself believe that he really knew Tae-gun, knew him better than anyone else, but he didn't, and doesn't. Tae-gun—Lee Tae-gun—is a stranger. Jaeha doesn't know him. Jaeha doesn't know the person who wrote him that email, doesn't know the man his old lover became, never really met him.

The sick obsession, the stalking, the controlling, it was none of it ever about something real, and it became progressively less real as the years went on. 

He wasted so, so, so much time. He caused so, so, so much pain. And it was never, ever real, not any of it. 

This is going to be a long cry.

Haru teleports away. He can cry as long as he wants.

Yeah. Good. Or something.

Hey

Sorry about that uh

I'm a bit of a mess