Chapter Text
Every now and then, he dreams of sharp pain and the copper tang of blood on his tongue.
In the hallowed light of the temple, the imposing demon challenges him to a duel, one that he was not trying to win, because he knew he could not. Instead, he was there only to buy time, so that his xiongdi could leave, and escape from this hell that would soon burn up in fiendish, all consuming flame.
No matter how much, how hard he fights, he knows that it is a losing battle right from the start.
He fights not to win, but for his xiongdi to live.
As he resorts to his most powerful technique, he is met with a sentence that entails a tragedy.
"That technique…One blink, a hundred strikes was it? That is not the first time I've encountered that move."
It overlaps with the voice of his xiongdi, yet spoken by a soldier out to put him down for his disloyalty.
After all, if his xiongdi had known his father, then-
He opens his eyes, looking at the ceiling of his room. The clock tells him it is something close to seven in the morning, which means that he had managed to get some semblance of a healthy sleep schedule last night. Six hours had to count right?
The warm scent of lavender came to him, as he buried himself beneath the blanket and the pillow. It reminds him of home, of a time long lost. The closest scent that he could possess of his mother's, recreated using Kageo's expertise of perfumes and his own memory.
It is calming, washing away the wounds of his strange, distant and yet all too chilling memories.
He casts away the memory of Philip and the decimation of Kowloon for a while longer.
The past was the past. Here and now, the present was, with his xiongdis and his Uncle and Aunty, alongside McKing, Jiwon and Hyeon-il.
There is a little girl crying at the bus stop.
Thaddeus finds himself approaching her, especially with the chill that was coming about at this hour when the sun began to set.
Jiwon had headed off to some electronics shop to get something fixed up, and this was the bus stop directly opposite that shop. The only reason she had brought him along was because she insisted on dragging him out of the base to accompany her, saying that a blind lady should have an escort. Thaddeus doesn't complain, mainly because he was also itching to leave the base.
It's almost as if visiting the shopping mall had made him want to explore more of what Seoul had to offer, in terms of its bustling city life.
Yet here, as he approaches the young girl, who was sobbing into the sleeves of her jacket, Thaddeus kneels down.
"Hey kid, what's wrong?"
The girl stops sniffling for a second, as she looks at him. Looking to be about six or seven years old, she chokes back another sob, as she struggles to get her words out.
"...I'm lost." There are tears in her red-rimmed eyes, as she looks at him, body still shaking as he digs into his pockets and fishes out packet tissue.
Handing it over to her, he does his best to reassure her. "Ah? It'll be fine, we'll get you home!"
The girl shakes her head.
"Mama lef-left me behind." She sobs, even as she clutches at the tissue he hands to her and tries to wipe away her own tears.
Thaddeus doesn't know what to say. Looking at this girl, a child lost, without her mother, or her parents, it reminds him of that rainy day, even as the martial artist tries to swallow down that emotion and focus on helping the girl in front of her.
"Your mother wouldn't have left you behind! We'll go and find her together!" He does his best to smile at her, plastering the biggest grin he could manage as he looks at her.
She clutches at her damp and used tissues. "R-Really? But what if Mama didn't want me, and that's why she left me here?" The words come out all too quickly, but Thaddeus catches every last one.
"Don't think about it that way, kid. No loving mother would willingly leave their child behind." Thaddeus is startled, when he hears Jiwon step in behind him, Mcking seated on the pavement as the dog has half a mind to sniff at the girl.
"-Really? But Mama told me to wait here, and it's been so long…" The young child mutters, as Jiwon turns to try and get a feel of the surrounding area. It was quite a sparse estate, but many other shops were still open at this hour. There was quite a lot of noise, and the streets weren't deserted either.
The girl seems to brighten up when she sees Mcking.
"...Dog? Cute dog!" She reaches out to Mcking, who begrudgingly lets her pet him.
Thaddeus takes the chance to ask her more questions now that she is calmer. "Say, did your mom say where she went?"
"The…money…man?" Okay, that wasn't that helpful.
Jiwon taps her cane against the ground. "Did your mama tell you when she would be back?"
"...She said to just wait here until she came back. Normally Papa would come pick me up now, but…Papa and Mama fought, and he left," The girl seems to sniffle once more.
Oh. That was how things were.
Thaddeus has half a mind to go and find the girl's father and drag him over to her, or beat him up for literally just ditching his wife and daughter so easily. What kind of asshole just upped and left like that? The surge of anger within him is so startingling, even as he reins it in and focuses on helping the child in front of him.
"How about we wait with you until your mom comes back? If she doesn't come back after another two hours, we'll bring you over to the police, and they'll help you find your mom?" He suggests, as the girl looks at him with wide eyes.
She seems to realise something, as she says aloud, "...but the two of you are strangers?"
"Well kid, it's a little too late to be asking that question now, isn't it?" Jiwon lets out a chuckle. The girl seems to bury her hands deeper in Mcking's fur.
"But if doggy likes you, then you must be good! Mama tells me that animals know who good people are."
Jiwon raises her eyebrows. "I…also don't think it works like that, but sure."
"It sure does!" Thaddeus encourages the child, as the two of them join her on the bench.
He hopes that her mother comes back. As much as he itched to go and scour the area for her mother, there was little to go off of, especially with the scant clues and hints a seven year old could provide.
The two of them did not have to wait for long, when a woman came running back, a few bags in her hands as she seemed to pant in the cold.
By then, the sun had fully set, the street lamps and fluorescent lights of the bus stop lighting the way. Jiwon and him had somehow managed to entertain the kid and get to know her better, such as her favourite colours, games, food, animals and toys.
The mother thanks them for looking after her kid, as Thaddeus watches her hug her daughter and carry her into her arms. By then, watching the reunion seems to make him feel both happy for the girl, a relief that they didn't actually have to bring a child to the police station because her mother had abandoned her or something, and at the same time, it stirs something within him that he cannot name once again.
It is almost like a dissonance, between what he wishes for the girl, and what he makes of the situation.
Jiwon gets Alfredo to drive them back.
"You look like you got a lot of things on your mind, Thaddeus."
Jiwon uses her cane to tap against his side, poking at him as the two of them get out of the car. She had noticed that the younger man had seemed to be uncharacteristically quiet after that encounter with the lost girl, especially when she had expected him to start talking to her about the newest dessert he saw or something.
Thaddeus hums. "...Hm? It's nothing much. I was just mulling over what you told her,"
The younger man admits, as the two of them slowly walk over to the base. Jiwon gets Mcking to lead them down the slow, scenic route. Or at least as scenic as the port could get at this hour. There was still some time until dinner, enough for her to squeeze a few answers out of the martial artist.
"You said that no loving mother would willingly leave their child behind. What if her mother had never come back? Wouldn't she remember those words as the fact that her mother never loved her?" Huh. He really had taken words to heart back then.
Jiwon adjusts her glasses. "Oh, that? It's just a line I heard from 'Across Time and Space'. Seemed like the closest thing that the girl needed to hear. With all of us being orphans, that was the best I could come up with on the spot. After all, none of us know our parents in the first place."
There is a harsh chuckle from the other male, one that is smoothened over as quickly as it came.
"Does that mean that all of us never had a loving mother?" It is a question asked with such a fragile despondency, one that has the hacker pause mid-step. Maybe she had phrased things a little too harshly then.
Jiwon shrugs. "Different people have their own circumstances. But…if they did ditch us at Yeonggwang for god-knows-what reason, then they made their choice. There really isn't any point in thinking about stuff like that at this point in time, not when we are already in this deep." Mcking tugs her along.
"Maybe there was a point to thinking about it when we were just children, but when Yeonggwang showed us its true colours, that's the only purpose we knew. If our parents ever saw us now, I'd assume they were civilians who would not approve of what we do."
She uses her cane to poke at Thaddeus.
"But you…you weren't raised in Yeonggwang. Your father was the ex-Apostle Thaddeus, the Martial Artist of Holy Light. If he was Peter's sworn brother, then you can trust that he had his reasons. As for your mother…" Jiwon trails off. They could not find any traces of Thaddeus's mother.
No matter how hard she trawled through the archives and various databases, there was little to no information on her anywhere. At least there was something about his father, but his mother was almost like a ghost in comparison. She could find her birth records, but there was no marriage certificate (likely because they could not legally register a marriage except under a false identity), and the trail on her went cold soon enough.
"I hope she's still alive." The other man breathes, even if he knows there is little chance of that being true.
Jiwon does not say anything to refute him.
"...I wish she came back. I wish she never left me behind." With her sharpened hearing, she overhears those words, a soft plea to what would never come true, because the truth of reality had long since sunk in a long time ago.
Turning to him, she reaches for his hand and tugs him along.
The other man must be startled to some extent, but he does follow along.
"Hey, remember what I said? No loving mother would willingly leave their child behind. The point is 'willingly'. If she left you behind, trust that she did it because she loved you and had no other choice but to do so, in order to keep you safe. Your father sure as hell did his best to try and seek you out, despite the rules, his sickness, and everything else. Your mother must have also loved you as much, if not more so."
Thaddeus has never been more glad that Jiwon is blind, because he would otherwise be having a hard time trying to explain or conceal the expression on his face now.
"I guess you're right, sis Jiwon!" He tells her, as the older woman seems to puff her chest out in response to the title.
The two of them continue walking.
"Sometimes, I just think about that night a lot. About why my mother left me in the alley with nothing but the umbrella and the clothes on my back, and how I waited there for so long, hoping that she would come back." The words leave his lips before he knows it, leaving him surprised at his own honesty in front of Jiwon.
But Jiwon was…nice? And more open and understanding than he'd thought. He didn't really talk to her much, but she was fun to hang around and banter with when he did spend time with her.
"How do you feel about that memory now, especially after you have more context?" She gently prompts him.
How did he feel about that now? "...Still confused, sometimes."
"But, a part of me knows that she loved me. She loved me so much that she was crying that day, even when she told me it was just the rain. When she told me to stay put at that back alley corner, she told me that I was the greatest blessing in her life."
There is a hand that firmly pats his shoulder.
"Remember that, Thaddeus. Your mother definitely loved you, and she loved you so much it hurt her to leave you. Now stop trying to make me cry too! This is the kind of sappy stuff I see in those TV dramas…but you truly were loved as a child, Thaddeus."
Jiwon pokes him in the flesh of his forearm.
"Even now, you are still loved. Don't ever forget that."
Jiwon does not need to see to know that Thaddeus was smiling.
Gosh, why was he really just like an innocent boy sometimes?