It was late afternoon when Baekhyun entered the room.

Dying sunlight filtered in through the drawn-curtains, casting a dark shadow across the floor of the small room. Taemin sat behind his desk, which was clean for once, all papers and heavy-duty files swiped off and lying in a tall column surrounding it, a few escaped pages littering the floor of the dusty little study.

"You're still here?" the blond asked, not even looking up. His elbows were propped up against the table, his head in his hands, tufts of hair sticking out from between his fingers.

Baekhyun picked his way carefully among the fallen papers, noticing that they weren't all patent forms or reports as he'd thought earlier. Many of them were torn newspaper sheets, old and new. He glanced over one of them, eyes skipping over the bold letters of the headline—Diner Broken Into By Mutants?

"Of course," he murmured quietly. Taemin looked hungover, but he knew that it wasn't an effect of alcohol. "You stuck with me through everything, and I have enough faith in you to stand behind you through all of this."

Taemin didn't speak, but he finally let go of his head and sat up. His eyes stayed on the table, dry and tired, hands clasped together in his lap. "How many do we still have?"

Baekhyun's lips pursed. "Taemin—"

"How many?" Taemin demanded, and Baekhyun slowly clenched his jaw.

"Ten and Mark," he answered, feeling the guilt behind those words as if he'd been the reason behind. "Taeyong, Kai, and Lucas—left. I have a location on them, but I'm not going to do anything, Taemin."

"Well, don't," the man said softly. "It's my fault."

Baekhyun's eyes softened. "It's not," he said honestly. "You just think it is. Taeyong was angry because of Shao; he didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't mean it."

"He did," Taemin said frankly. "Every word. You know he did."

Baekhyun refrained from speaking.

"You want to know, too, don't you?" Taemin asked, finally looking up at him, and Baekhyun wished he hadn't. The man's eyes looked empty, his skin pale and rigid as porcelain, as if it had been bled dry and his features had been made out of paper. "Why I hid it. Knowing Irene, helping her with Sybil, all of it."

"You don't have to tell me."

"No." Taemin shook his head, shifting in his seat so he was sitting upright, eyes turned away from him to the desk again. "No. I owe it to you."

"You don't—"

"We were friends," Taemin said, interrupting him so cleanly it was as if he hadn't even heard him in the first place. "It was just a partnership at first, rich girl and street boy using each other's resources and knowledge to build something together, but it turned into more than that. I cared for her, Baekhyun, and as incriminating as it might sound, I still do. You don't know what she was like back then, before her parents' death, but I do. I remember the girl from ten years ago—smart, kind, helpful. She helped me, too."

Baekhyun suddenly felt like he had opened a door to a secret room, one he wasn't supposed to enter. Taemin's tone was calm, but the words—they way he looked when he spoke them, they sounded intimate. "Taemin, I don't—"

"We used to dream aloud to each other," Taemin continued, pressing on whenever Baekhyun tried to interrupt. "The way kids do—for years, all we had was each other. We wanted a better world, an equal world." He sounded miserable, almost broken. "A world where no one held power over another, in any form—wealth, background, superpower."

"Powers don't make us better," Baekhyun said, unable to help the words as they poured out of his mouth. "There are ways of equalizing it, making us the same as any other human. You know that."

"I do now." Taemin swallowed. In that moment, he looked frail despite his strong stature, like a stick puppet. Baekhyun recalled him saying that despite his speed, people could be too fast for him sometimes. "But Irene—she's different now. Her parents' death broke her, pushed her over the edge of insanity. She must have had no one to hang on to afterwards, so she held on to an idea instead, an idea that took root in her brain and turned into poison." His voice turned sharp. "Taeyong was right. I was the one who started this. If only I had been there for her then—"

"Taemin, you couldn't have done anything," Baekhyun said. "Even the official documents declared her dead, you couldn't have known."

Taemin's expression sobered, visible guilt shrinking into a hard look in his eyes. Baekhyun knew that look. It wasn't an expression of aloofness, but rather one of closing away emotion, hiding it away because he thought something bad was going to happen. Oh, Taemin, he thought sadly, what did you do?

"I knew," Taemin whispered, and Baekhyun's almost heart stopped.

"Knew what?" he asked, dreading the answer even before he asked the question. "Knew she was alive?"

"A few months ago, I got a letter," Taemin said gravely. "From Irene, asking me to join her. She didn't explain what she was doing, of course, but there were hints—the way she wrote, the things she said, I knew what had happened to her." His voice shook. "I didn't believe it at first, but there was—a code, a word we used to identify each other."

A cold realization settled over Baekhyun. "That's why you recruited the team."

Taemin nodded. "I could have helped her," he said. "Joined her side, even if it was to sabotage her plans, but I just—I didn't have the courage to. So I gathered a team instead, hiding behind a shield of people and cryptic words, hoping no one would catch on how little I knew what I was doing." His hands were trembling slightly when he interlaced his fingers, putting them on the table. "I tried to be brave, Baekhyun," he whispered. "But I've been so weak."

The entire conversation had left Baekhyun in a daze. Despite having known the man for years, only rarely had Baekhyun seen Taemin so undone, so open towards his feelings and failures. One side of him was still in shock, disbelieving everything that had come out of the man's mouth, but the better part of him knew it was true. All of it was true.

"I'm not mad," he whispered, surprising himself. Taemin glanced at him incredulously, his usually calm face a myriad of emotion. Baekhyun took a steadying step, feeling a strange sort of peace. "Everyone can be weak, Taemin. I'm not mad at you for that."

"I put their lives in danger," Taemin said. "Whatever I may pretend to feel, I've grown to care about them. I can't ask them to do this for me, not again."

"You cared about Irene, too," Baekhyun said softly. "You have to let go of the people you love sometimes, Taemin, but sometimes you have to keep them close." The blond still had his face turned away from him, but he didn't relent. "It's not just about you now. This is their battle, too, now, their war to fight and their fight to win. Pushing them away won't help them."

"They won't listen to me," Taemin said. "They won't come back. Not now."

"You have to trust them," Baekhyun said, despite his own uncertainties and doubts. "You have to have faith in them to know what'd best for not just themselves, but for the people they don't even know."

He saw the muscles in Taemin's jaw jump, but there was no response. At first, he was afraid he's said the wrong thing, made him feel even guiltier than before, but then Taemin looked up, and Baekhyun let go of the breath he'd been holding.

"Chin up," he said with a quirk of his lips. "The city needs you."

Taemin smiled then, a rare smile which bloomed slow but stayed long. Baekhyun knew he hadn't rid the man of all the guilt he was feeling, which was evident from the slightly fractured loo in his eyes, but it was a start.

"You're right about that," Taemin said dryly. "The city isn't going to save itself."

"You said it," Baekhyun said, then his face turned serious. "You'll save Irene, too," he said, and Taemin's smile flickered. "I know it. You'll save as many people as we can...but we still lost half of the team in one day, and frankly, I'm a little apprehensive about our chances." He laughed. "So unless you have a batch of superheroes fresh out of the oven lying around somewhere—" He raised his eyebrows.

"Actually..." Taemin started.

Baekhyun stared at him. "Seriously?" he asked after a moment of shocked silence. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Never felt the need for it." Taemin smiled and shrugged, getting up and moving towards the door. He passed by Baekhyun, who was still standing in the same position, and cocked his head with the same enigmatic smile the man had seen a thousand times before, rooted in confidence and rare excitement.

He stopped next to the door, and glanced back at Baekhyun, who stared at him. "Come on," Taemin said. "Let's get you introduced to our backup plan."