Chapter Text
Hwoarang didn’t know what woke him up first: the alarm ringing in the corridor outside or the sounds of smashed glass coming from the room next door.
He felt like he had just barely started sleeping after turning restlessly on the bed all night.
“What the hell is going on..?” he exclaimed after opening his eyes “Was that..”
“That’s Jin!” Lars’ voice reached him while he was running in the corridor towards the room where they had left Jin to rest in a hospital bed.
“Fucking hell..” Hwoarang quickly put his pants and boots back on and ran after Lars.
By the time they opened the door, it was already too late. What they saw was nothing but white sheets and curtains flying around in the wind and the window’s broken glass covering the floor. Jin had ripped the IV drip from his arm, causing the alarm to ring, and had quickly jumped out of the window before they could get to him.
Right now they were on the top floors of Violet Systems’ building so Hwoarang was sure that Jin had transformed again in order to break the window and fly away in the night. By the time they could jump on a helicopter, it would be too late to follow him.
“Fucking hell!” Hwoarang repeated, this time screaming “You said he was knocked out for good!”
“Well, he was supposed to be..” Lars had one hand over his eyes, looking tired “The dosage of sedative I gave him was double the amount of any normal patient.”
“Since when has Jin been a normal patient?” Hwoarang retorted, looking at him in anger.
“After his last transformation he had no energy left. He was almost in a comatose state. I don’t understand how he could wake up so early and even have the power to turn into a Devil again and fly away.”
“Enough.” Hwoarang interrupted him “It’s too late anyway. He’s gone.” He looked at the floor clenching his fists, barely containing his rage.
How was this possible? He barely had had some time to hold Jin in this arms on the helicopter after they had escaped from the island where the 6th Iron Fist Tournament had taken place. Where an ancient and terrifying monster had been awoken and.. had killed Hwoarang in cold blood.
If Hwoarang closed his eyes he could still feel the long and sharp bone claw on the monster’s arm piercing his stomach and shattering his spine. He could still remember the sounds the claw had made when it separated and scratched his vertebrae. But he had saved Jin. He had managed to stop that monster before he could touch him!
After that moment of adrenaline, Hwoarang had only foggy memories. He had fallen on the ground because he could no longer feel his legs. Jin’s arms had caught him and he had watched him draw his last breaths. Hwoarang thought he had seen shock and pain on Jin’s face but he couldn’t be sure, his sight was already abandoning him and everything was getting dark so quickly. Still, he had tried to speak with the blood filling his mouth. He had wanted to tell Jin that it was okay, that he wasn’t feeling anything, the pain had been so sudden and devastating only moments before but it was already fading away, just like the sensations from his stomach down to his toes.. He didn’t know if he had actually managed to talk to Jin or not before everything had turned dark.
After that, Hwoarang could not remember anything else, except the feeling of being drowned inside an indescribable darkness where he could not think or speak or move. It had been all over. Well.. it should have.
But then.. inside all that darkness filling his body and mind, Hwoarang had felt something again. Pain. In his stomach, exactly where the monster’s claw had pierced him. Just a subtle feeling at first, but then it had turned into a fire. He had wanted to scream and maybe he really did.
In the end, he had heard a voice. At first it was like hearing a sound from underwater, distant and muffled. But then he had started to distinguish the sounds better and better.
“..Hwoarang.. Hwoarang, can you hear me?”
Hwoarang had opened his eyes. He had seen the sky above him, dark and stormy. And Raven was there next to him, watching apprehensively.
“I can hear you.” Hwoarang’s voice was weak and barely audible but Raven had gasped, like he couldn’t believe he had really answered him.
Raven had saved his life. Or better, he had given Hwoarang his life back. He told him everything on the plane back to Japan, after they had managed to escape the island.
Jin had turned into an even stronger and crazier Devil form after Hwoarang had died and he had finally been able to defeat the monster by not letting it regenerate his wounds quickly enough. Devil Jin had kept attacking, shattering his arms and legs again and again, letting them regenerate barely enough just to keep disintegrating them, piece by piece. Until Devil Jin had finally decided to hit the creature with a powerful, blinding laser to end its misery.
Unfortunately, besides the monster, Devil Jin also hit part of the island, causing a seaquake.
The creature’s body had disintegrated and vanished into ashes, never to return. Raven had observed everything from a distance in shock, holding Hwoarang’s corpse in his arms. At that point, he had luckily noticed that part of the energy or essence of the power that composed the monster, had not disappeared yet. It had condensed first into smoke and then into a purple sphere which had taken tangible consistency above their heads and had fallen on the ground. And so an idea had formed in Raven’s mind. An almost impossible and unbelievable idea, but it had worked.
Raven had quickly taken the newly formed sphere of purple energy and placed it inside Hwoarang’s open stomach. As he had suspected, the essence inside the sphere had immediately attached to its new host in order to survive. This power had kept the monster hidden on the island and alive for thousands of years and had regenerated its wounds time after time, which had almost caused Jin’s defeat initially.
Raven had hoped that it was not too late to heal Hwoarang’s body as well and his intuition had been correct. The sphere’s foreign essence spread throughout. Now, where the hole made by Azazel’s claw had been, new tissues had grown back and the only scar left was a little shadow of paler color on Hwoarang’s stomach.
That was when Hwoarang had gained conscience again. He had stayed dead for a few minutes. That was the time that Jin had needed to transform into the more powerful and scarier version of Devil Jin and destroy the monster. Still, it was a miracle that Hwoarang’s conscience had come back after his body had healed.
At that point, Raven had helped Hwoarang to stand up and asked him to run straight to the helicopter that Nina Williams had managed to pilot nearby and that was still waiting for them but Hwoarang had refused to leave without Jin. Raven had screamed at him that he was an idiot, the small island was about to get engulfed by the ocean and he would die again, this time forever. But Hwoarang, stubborn as usual, had insisted to find Jin, who had disappeared after his last attack on the monster.
“Fine, let’s find him and get the hell out of here!” Raven had given up. Hwoarang had followed him to where the fight had taken place and, luckily, Jin was there, lying on the ground near some rocks and debris, no longer a Devil but asleep. They had managed to carry him to the helicopter while the ground was starting to crack all around them, the earthquake becoming stronger and stronger.
As soon as they jumped on the back seats Nina, Jin’s bodyguard, had taken off without looking back, shouting at them that they were idiots for making her wait that long.
But in all that chaos, Hwoarang couldn’t concentrate on anything else besides Jin’s heart, barely beating in his chest. He kept checking Jin’s pulse all the ride back to Cairo airport and then also on the flight that brought them from Egypt back to Japan, to make sure Jin was still alive in his arms.
He had barely noticed that Zafrina, another participant of the Iron Fist tournament, had stayed behind instead of leaving with the other helicopters before theirs and had come with them to Japan. She had kept staring at him with a worried look on her face for the whole ride.
When they finally arrived at the Violet Systems’ building in Tokyo twelve hours later, Hwoarang barely had enough time to lower Jin to a stretcher before Lee Chaolang and Lars Alexandersson, who were there waiting for them, took him away.
Violet Systems belonged to Lee Chaolang, Heihachi Mishima’s adoptive son who had luckily managed to stay out of the conflicts surrounding the Mishima Zaibatsu’s conglomerate over the past years. Officially, it was an advanced pharmaceutical company but Lee had explained that he was also conducting some medical and military experiments on the side without the public knowing. Nina had brought their group there following Lee and Lars’s suggestion because bringing Jin back to the Mishima Zaibatsu that he currently owned wasn’t safe in his conditions.
Lars Alexandersson was the illegitimate son of Heihachi Mishima and the head of a rebel group that had tried to fight against the Mishima Zaibatsu in the past years, first against Heihachi and then against Jin when he had taken over its leadership. Lars had followed the progress of the Iron Fist Tournament from Violet Systems with Lee thanks to his spy-drones and had urgently reached out to Nina when things had gotten heated to help them escape.
It had now been a couple of days since they arrived back in Tokyo. Hwoarang hadn’t had time to see Jin at all because they had rushed him to take some medical exams too, to make sure that he was okay after.. well, after he had died.
And now, Jin had suddenly awoken and, without a word to anyone, jumped out of the window and disappeared again!
Hwoarang was so tired of this. He was tired of trying to get close to Jin just to fail miserably, again and again. It was like trying to catch a rope that was constantly being pulled away from him.
The sound of footsteps entering Jin’s room pulled him away from his deep thoughts. He turned around and saw Raven and Lee Chaolang at the door, looking stressed.
“What the hell! That glass was bulletproof! And look at this mess! That damn brat..” Lee blurted, a hand on his perfectly brushed hair.
Raven didn’t say anything but he became more tense than he already was.
“So what do we do now? We just let him go like this?” Lars asked around.
“Well, fuck him!” Everyone turned to Hwoarang after he shouted “If he left, it’s because he didn’t care to know where he was. Or who was here helping him to heal. Fuck him. I’m tired and I want to go back to sleep”.
“We can’t let him go.” Raven spoke with urgency in his voice “We can’t. He doesn’t know..” He looked at Hwoarang “He doesn’t know you’re still alive.”
“So what? It’s not like he cared before, why would he now?” Hwoarang’s voice was aggressive, but he tried to hide the sudden stab of pain he felt in his chest when he said that.
“You don’t understand.” Raven looked at him in the eyes “He must know, or he might do something he will regret.”
“What are you talking about?" Hwoarang was getting confused now. Why was Raven acting so strange all of a sudden?
“Listen.. there’s something I must tell you. It can’t wait any more.”
Raven’s tone was starting to make Hwoarang anxious “All right. Tell me.”
Raven looked at Lars and Lee, subtly inviting them to leave the room.
“Fine! Let’s go Lars. Private matter, it seems.” Lee made a scene of looking offended while turning back and leaving the room. Lars followed him outside, a suspicious look in his eyes.
After they left, Raven turned back to Hwoarang who was still standing near the open window. “Do you remember that time when you went to look for Jin in his secret base in Hokkaido?”
The stab of pain in Hwoarang’s chest intensified. Of course he remembered. He remembered how the guards had discovered him while he was trying to enter the perimeter and had thrown him into a cold cell. He remembered Jin showing up not long after just to tell him to stop looking for him or try to make him change his mind. Hwoarang remembered how he had begged Jin to leave the Mishima Zaibatsu. How he had hoped he would go back to being the person he had been during their time together at the safehouse in the mountains.
But in the end Jin had looked at him with ice in his eyes “I ordered the guards to let you out at dawn. I’ll be gone by then. Don’t look for me ever again.” And just like that, he had turned and left the room, with Hwoarang still shouting at him and kicking the cage bars trying to break free.
Noticing Hwoarang’s reaction, Raven continued “I was there too. I had followed you. I thought that you could need my help. I was watching when the guards caught you and brought you to the cells underground. But I decided to wait and see if Jin would let you go before trying to break you out. I was hiding on a tree nearby waiting for developments when I saw him. Jin.”
Hwoarang’s suspicion increased “When did you see him? When he left in the morning?”
“No. It was still night time. He came out of a hidden passage, I think. He was alone.” Raven was looking at the floor now “He walked to the exact area where I was hiding. I think his Devil gene gave him enhanced senses. No one has ever found me when in hiding.”
“So what happened? He wanted to tell you to fuck off too?”
“No. He asked me to come down and talk to him about you, so I did. I trusted he didn’t want to trap me or anything like that or he would have done so already.” At this point, Raven seemed to have difficulties to find the words to continue “So he.. he told me the truth. About how he really felt about you”.
“What truth? That he didn’t want to have anything to do with me any more? That he just pretended to be my friend because I was useful to him while helping him to control the Devil gene? I know all that already.” Hwoarang was angry again now.
“No.. Hwoarang please listen. That’s what he wanted you to believe..”
“What?”
“Hwoarang.. Jin, he.. he’s always loved you. All this time.” Raven’s tone was sad now “He told me he wanted you to stay away from him, because he was afraid you would get hurt again. He knew that his path was leading him to more and more fights. Against Kazuya. Against Heihachi. Against his Devil gene. He knew that if you had stayed by his side, your own life would have been at risk.”
Hwoarang’s heart froze into a block of granite, eyes wide open. No, that wasn’t possible. He barely managed to form his next sentence “What.. what the hell are you saying.. he couldn’t.. he said he hated me..”
“And you believed him?”
Hwoarang was in shock now. He felt like a fool. He had really believed Jin’s words. He had never thought that he could lie to protect him. He really had thought that Jin didn’t want anything to do with him any more, that everything they had gone through together before had meant nothing. But instead Jin actually.. loved him? And if so, in what way?
“It cant’ be. You’re a liar. And if it’s true why you didn’t tell me before?”
“Because Jin made me promise not to. He said he told me the truth so that I would understand and try to dissuade you from pursuing him further. Because Jin knew that I also wanted to protect you. However.. neither Jin nor me really considered how stubborn you can be. Even after Jin pushed you away at the secret base, you still signed up for the 6th Iron First Tournament later on when he announced it. You stayed to help him when that monster showed up and you even sacrificed your life for him! And you ended up dying in his arms!”
Hwoarang didn’t have the strength to interrupt him. His mind had gone blank, replaying some of the last interactions he and Jin had had at the Tournament not long ago. Jin’s eyes had really shown nothing but annoyance in his presence when Hwoarang had tried talking to him again.
But at that last sentence he looked at Raven in horror.
“So you understand now. He had fainted when we found him and brought him to the helicopter. And now he’s gone without knowing the person he loves is still alive.” Raven covered his eyes with his hand “He might lose control again when he is transformed. Or worse he could..”
“Don’t even say shit like that!” shouted Hwoarang. Now that the shock was passing he was getting furious “How could you hide this from me all this time? You’ve seen how fucking miserable I’ve been this past year and you let me! You both did! Why should I care now that he is the miserable one??”
“I’m sorry Hwoarang. I really am. But you’ll regret it if you don’t do something now”.
“What should I do? I don’t know where he went! He could be anywhere!”
“No. You know there’s only one place where he would go now”.
Raven was right. The safehouse in the mountains flashed in Hwoarang’s mind. The place he and Jin had called home for a while.
Raven knew he had understood “You must go there now. He must see you alive. He won’t believe anyone else”.
Hwoarang felt cold sweat running down his back. He was still in shock but now he knew he had to act. He couldn’t think about the truth that Raven had revealed to him just yet. “Fine. Call Lee back. I’ll need another helicopter to bring me there”.
“No, a helicopter is too conspicuous. He will hear it coming and might rush to do what he wants to do before you get there.” Raven turned around and left the room calling Lars.
Hwoarang heard them talking in the corridor but his thoughts had started to wander again. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jin’s face when he had to watch him die. Now he knew that the pain he had seen on his face was real. What would he had done, if it was Jin who had died in his arms instead?
“Hwoarang.” Raven called him back to the present “Alisa is coming. She’ll fly you to the safehouse. I’ll get the coordinates for her, you go get ready.”
“I am ready” replied Hwoarang “It’s not like I can bring a luggage with me anyway.”
Alisa arrived to Jin’s room a few minutes later following Lars and Lee, who must have been briefed by Raven of the situation. Zafrina and Nina had also woken up and ran to the room to see what was going on.
“He can’t leave the building. He is still doing tests because Azazel’s power is now in his body. He must stay here so we can protect him!” Zafrina was alarmed.
She had revealed to them during their journey that she was part of an ancient and well guarded order that had kept the place where the monster, whom they had called Azazel, was hidden in Egypt a secret for thousands of years, since he had been sealed on the island. She had chosen to take part in the 6th Iron First tournament to prevent them from finding Azazel but she didn’t know that it wasn’t a coincidence Jin had chosen the island as the location of the tournament and that he had already found out about his existence.
“No one else knows what happened besides us.” Hwoarang replied “And I feel fine. Normal, just like before”.
“But you are not normal any more. One can tell just by looking at you. Haven’t you had a look at yourself in the mirror recently?”
Since Hwoarang had reawakened with that new power in his blood, he had felt like nothing had changed in his body. However, his wounds were now healing instantaneously, just like Azazel’s. He had tried cutting his hand and arm a few times to confirm this. And also, his irises had turned purple, the same color of the sphere of power that Raven had crashed and dissolved into the hole in his stomach to bring him back.
“It doesn’t matter. I have to go. Or you want to wait and see if Jin decides to incinerate a couple of cities before?”
Zafrina bit her lip to stop herself from replying back. She took a long breath in “Okay, you go. But then you both come back here to hide. My order has kept Azazel’s existence a secret until now for a reason. We didn’t want anyone else to gain his powers or free him. But now what we feared most has actually happened and we don’t know what it will mean for you or everyone else. And we can’t let Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima find out and try to take the power for themselves. That will literally be the end of the world as we know it.”
“Understood. We’ll be quick. I’ll talk to Jin and we’ll come back straight away.” Hwoarang promised.
Zafrina looked at him, trying to figure out if she could trust him. In the end she lowered her head in agreement.
“Okay, so Alisa knows where to go. You go now and come back soon.” Raven closed the distance and put a hand on Hwoarang’s shoulder, squeezing it. “Please be careful. And.. I am sorry. For everything. If I had spoken before maybe this wouldn’t have happened. I hope you’ll forgive me some day.”
Hwoarang just looked at him and nodded. Raven had saved his life after all, but this conversation was for a different time. Now he really had to go.
Alisa approached, a timid smile on her face “Hello. I’ll grab you now so we can fly. Don’t worry about the wind or the cold, there’s a barrier around me protecting us from external atmospheric agents”.
“Please go ahead.” Hwoarang agreed.
Alisa looked weak but she was physically very strong. She was an android after all.
She put a hand behind Hwoarang’s knees and the other around his shoulders, lifted him up and jumped out of the same window Jin had used, her robotic wings immediately activating on her back. And so, they started flying in the dark night sky.