Hyejin knows something is up when Chris calls her at 4 pm on a perfectly lovely Saturday. For one, that means he's awake at 3 am which while, not uncommon, hasn't been a time he calls her regularly. Especially not recently when he's been staying with Thorne, when they've both been trying to get back on a regular sleeping pattern.

When she picks up the phone, the first word out his mouth is "Noona" and that's when she absolutely knows something is wrong.

Chris is curled up on his bed, blankets pulled up over his head as he lays there miserable. Bergamot has managed to worm his way under the covers and lays by the back of Chris' head, a warm presence that is the only thing managing to calm him. Keep him from utterly breaking down, from collapsing in on himself. A dying star, a dying galaxy.

"I think I ******** up," He mumbles miserably, mouth thinning into a line. "Actually, no I really ******** up. I ******** up badly."

Hyejin is silent on her end of the line and Chris knows she's just thinking, but it feels like judgement. Like she's deciding the sentence for his crime. He fiddles with a stray thread from a blanket, feeling worse by the second.

"What happened?" She finally asks, careful, measured. This is something she knows how to handle, but she knows it must be with delicate actions. Chris rarely admits he ******** up like this to her and she doesn't want to make this worse. He has a guilt complex and she knows it and knows to make sure to not feed into it.

On his own end is a long silence, fingers now twisting into the blankets. It was easy to call his sister, it was easy to admit what he did, but the actual actions are so much harder to admit. He doesn't want to say it out loud, he doesn't want to make it a truth. But not saying doesn't mean it didn't happen either and he knows that the words being put in the air won't mean he won't think about it any more than he already does. He's already run through what happened many times before, this won't make it happen any less.

"I fought with Thorne," He whispers to her, fingers clenching into a fist, his eyes squeezing closed.

"Oh, Hobi," She replies gently, and the childhood nickname nearly brings him to tears. He sucks in a tight breath and squeezes his eyes tighter, like it will make the pain lessen. Like it will take back his actions.

It's unspoken that she wants to know and Chris takes minutes to gather his thoughts, to put things to words. Hyejin is nothing but patient, a trait they shared between them when it really mattered, and he's thankful for it. For a long minute, he wonders if he should censor everything. If he should keep the magic from her. But she already knows what happened at Black Friars, the truth, not the edited version, and he knows this won't hurt her any worse. She can handle it.

"Thorne lied to me," He starts with, his voice quiet and shaky. "He's- Oh Noona where do I start. Everything's been such a mess lately, it's been such a mess."

"Start from the top. Give me as much detail as you're comfortable with," She says, a familiar saying between them. An old ritual, a reset.

Chris takes a shaky breath, lets the words comfort, ground him. Give him the power to speak what he needs.

"The ball, the one you know I called you for help dressing with? The other in Other Ashdown? It wasn't a peaceful invitation like I hoped it would be, polite as it was. We were sent there to stop a murder, to stop someone from being sacrificed. Thorne was.. Thorne was up to be sacrificed."

His hand releases the sheets, runs through his hair. He curls in further on himself. "He had been taken over the summer and I hadn't noticed, he had just been plucked from Ashdown and a fetch was set in his place and it copied him. It looked like him and sounded like him and remembered everything like him and I thought... I thought it was Thorne. I spent time with him. I thought it was real." His voice is thick with guilt, with emotion, but he still plows on. There is so much he needs to tell.

"Anyways him and the fetch, they were both at the ball. I got him out, he had to kill his fetch but I got him out. That's why I've been at Coalsmoke, I've been afraid to leave him. Afraid that he'll- he'll disappear again. I won't be able to see him again. It was getting better lately too, we were good. We could spend time apart and I could see us being better and I thought we were good. That we had something, that we were close but. He had been hiding stuff from me."

Chris gives a shaky laugh, bitter. "It turns out being in the court, being taken like that, it made him a Lord. It gives him these powers and a fetch of his own to command and he hid that from me. And I forgave him, when I found out not through him but accidentally running into his fetch, because he admitted he was wrong. And I thought he had told me it all."

"But no. No he didn't tell me anything at all. Just barely anything. He took Alg for starters, he took him as his own tithe to make him a lord and he didn't tell me. He didn't tell me and so I interacted with that fetch and I thought it was Alg and that, that was strike one. The fact he hadn't told me, the fact he hadn't even told Jer. But it turns out he's-"

"He's not in the cycle anymore Hyejin. He's not in the cycle and he'll have to watch me die and I can't do anything about it." His voice breaks here, rough, and he's close to crying again.

"He didn't tell me. He didn't tell me at all and here I am, thinking that this time I can end it all. That I can make sure we end this, that we'll win and I won't forget him again. But it doesn't matter because he's out of the cycle and I'm nothing, I'm stupid to think I could even do anything. Since when could Christopher Watts do anything?"

"So we fought about it. We fought and I said things I shouldn't have and I left and I don't know what to do. I was so mad at him, I was so angry. And I was angry for a long time but now I realize he didn't know what to do, what to say. That maybe he was hurting too, to know I'd die and he couldn't do anything. But I was so angry then and I'm still mad now but I don't.. I don't know what to do."

Hyejin's silent for long while, simply absorbing what Chris said. It was a lot of information, but things were falling into place. Why Thorne had answered the phone that one time, why Chris had been in places other than his apartment. The reason he had sounded so bad on the phone the one time she had called him at a time she assumed roughly was after the ball.

When she speaks again, she asks, "You don't want to lose him, do you Hobi?"

"No," He mumbles, "No, I don't. I left Coalsmoke and I took clothing and Bergie with me but some of his stuff was in my stuff and I. It smells like him."

If Hyejin was there she would have crawled into the bed with Chris, would have hugged him close. Tugged her fingers through his hair like she had done when they were kids. But instead she was in another country entirely, too many timezones away and so she just gave him a gentle hum in reply.

"You gotta talk to him, that's the only thing you can do Hobi," She says, knowing it's the reply Chris doesn't want to hear. He gives a pathetic noise in reply and she knows she's hit the nail on the head.

"I know that you're moping in bed, probably wearing whatever clothing of his you ended up taking with him-" Chris jerks, his free hand going up instinctively to smooth at the beanie on his head that is most definitely Thorne's "-and feeling like death, but all you can do is talk here."

"I said so many things to him though, I yelled. I made everything out worse than it was, if we had just. Not."

Hyejin gives a gentle laugh. "That's how fights go Hobi. You both say things you regret, but in the end if you want to keep each other, you have to talk it out. You have to sit down and apologize for what you said and you have to agree to fix what went wrong."

"What if he doesn't want to fix it Noona?" He asks in a tiny voice. "What if what I said was so much he doesn't want to deal with me anymore?"

She snorts, a dismissive sound. "He's not worth it then. If he doesn't want to put in the effort to fix it as much as you do, then it's not worth it. Sometimes things don't work out."

"But, I have a feeling that's not going to happen. When I talked to him, he sounded like he valued your.. friendship, as much as you do. He's going to want to try to fix it."

"Not to mention, knowing you Hobi, you've already talked about it to someone. Maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong, but the point is you have somewhere to start. You have a rational mind and you'll get through this. Just, find a way to apologize. Go from there Hobi."

"Are you sure?" He asks her, but he sounds better than he did before. He thinks back to talking with Jer, to on how he can start with something. Anything.

"Yes. You'll be okay. You didn't ******** this up as bad as you think you did."

There's simply a few minutes of silence between the two, both just breathing and thinking. Chris' hand idly thumbs the sheets as he thinks, Hyejin paging through a book she has nearby.

"Thank you Noona," He says after awhile.

"No problem. Now, go to sleep Hobi. You're going to need it if you want to fix this."

"Okay," He replies, "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," She says back. Hangs up the phone. Sits back in her chair and thinks, wonders if they'll be okay.

Wonders if they'll ever realize how connected they are.