i'm criminally late in answering, but thank you so, so much for sending this in. i love hearing your thoughts, and they marry nicely with another reader's interpretation that honed in on the baekhyun/BAEKHYUN dichotomy as the root of his psychological issues. that wasn't quite what i had in mind for the ending, nor was baekhyun "trying to justify what he was about to do" himself as you detailed in your ask, but that doesn't matter! it's such a gift to invite such a divergence in readerly interpretation - even more because you both took the time and effort to share them with me here!

i deliberately wrote the ending to be ambiguous, which seems to have worked because the poll i made a month back was split EXACTLY down the middle between "hopeful" and "tragic". i think it reflects the ambivalent conditions "before the cock crows" was written in: for a horror fest, that invites darker endings; for baekchenists, who are extremely averse to unhappy ones; and the fact that i actually softened the ending from my original plan (which was gross, mean angel sex that would have taken a similar tone as the subaekchen scene that preceded it, but with WAY more body horror).

as i wrote in my author's note, this fic was meant to be many things, but among them was a reflection on how fucking awful the wait for jongdae was during chengate, as well as the state of baekchen (and their fandom) during the so-called "divorce". that's another reason for the ambiguity - at that stage, we had yet to receive what i thought was proper resolution for these things, which was granted a few months later at baekhyun's fanmeet (though lonsdaelite complicates this somewhat, but that's best saved for another time). and as a canon-compliant fic published in october 2023, i wanted the ending to reflect the current state of affairs? i believe a function of fanfic is to document shifts in meta/shipper sentiment like this!

though it should be noted that, even amongst all this pessimism (that i revelled in the chance to finally explore in fic LOL), i still chose to change the name of this work from "nothing but light" to "before the cock crows" at the last minute. and in doing so, allow the possibility of reconciliation by honing in on the metaphor of jongdae as jesus and baekhyun as peter (instead of judas and retribution, which was an idea that had enticed me for much longer, and still does. it's also a much more popular interpretation of baekchen nowadays. but i personally still think peter fits best for baekhyun - as jongdae’s first disciple, and the founder of his church, but who denied him thrice before his resurrection).

and here is where i blather even more: when writing "before the cock crows", i always thought of it in parallel to "take me to church". both are written from the perspective of idol!baekhyun, for one. but more importantly, their narrative trajectories both hinge on an idolisation of jongdae that lead baekhyun in completely different directions.

"take me to church" is far lighter in tone and reflects the joy i felt discovering exo and jongdae and baekchen for the very first time, through rose-tinted glasses. baekhyun's faith journey there is far more optimistic and marked by a "leap of faith" towards achieving selfhood. jongdae is also far more present. meanwhile, "before the cock crows" reflects how jaded i felt as a writer and shipper during chengate and the subsequent Divorce, in and because of fandom. baekhyun's "leap of faith" there - or how he answers the call to "follow me" - can instead be read as self-dissolution in the face of jongdae's absence; inflected with tragedy, futility and masochism.

yet, i left space for hope (which is the crux of baekchen - or how i like them best - that mean, contradictory tug between despair and hope LOL). it's very true that i wanted jongdae's existence as Guardian Angel to be ambiguous. but this is two-sided, and to support the view of him being "real" too, i wrote in subtextual traces of him "intervening". namely, the abrupt ways certain scenes end (phone ringing, door knocking, song playing, sasaeng murdered) that could be, and mostly are, viewed as signposts of baekhyun's declining mental state. they can be interpreted in two ways: delusion or faith, which are often conflated anyway. i left it up to the reader to decide.

i hope this doesn’t ruin the magic of the ending - again, i deliberately wanted it to be ambiguous, and for readers to construct their own meaning and interpretations. but i also wanted to self-indulgently offload all this somewhere. thank you for reading, if you somehow made it all the way to the end.