Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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In the near-silence of the darkened bookshop, the leaves of a pale-blue book fell open and, inside, the child found a God.

The God was dying, petals the colour of blood peeled from his lips, the roots of blackened trees clinging to the veins of his neck. The God whispered, “Can you save me, child of light?”

The child said, “Yes.”

“Won’t you be lonely, here, alone?” The child shook its head.

“There is no one waiting for me,” it replied. “No one will ever know I’ve left."

There was more to the tale, but the child had long forgotten it. A breath passed its lips, and time fell through a loosened breath as surely as the seasons withdrew and bloomed.

Still, the child remained, in the near-silent bookshop, alone. And then, the bookshop grew into a life of its own.

Then, the bookshop grew into a prison, and a home.

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There were tales, spun out in different worlds. But the people inside them were always the same.

Him, and six others, who slipped through the ribbons burned to his wrists as he slipped through their lives, every single time.

Cursed to forget him; cursed to remember them.

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The last time he saw them… 

He couldn’t remember.

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With eyes closed, the droplets of rainwater seemed to cling to each strand of his starlit-white hair. 

Cold, rainwater fingers dripped down each sun-tanned cheek, pooling onto his loose-fitting, pearl-white shirt. 

Still, he listened to the quiet hush of rain as it rippled over the rush of the river below. There was a low balcony sheltering his head; between each crack of the wooden overhang, a stray droplet trickled down, the sound a clink of glass against his opened mind. The house was humming with anticipation. For what, he wasn’t terribly sure, but his skin was abuzz with excitement, and it would not go away, no matter how much of the glimmering he used to calm his body down.

Sometimes, he had the same dream; others, the dream seemed… warped, somehow. His wrists were bound, there were thorns… Feathers, falling from the skies; it brings death; blades of grass and a boy’s questioning eyes, hands held out to reach for him…

And pain, so much pain.

The village that sat to the front of the sprawling house was quiet, the prospect of the forthcoming summer creating a feeling of longing, for laughter, for sounds that were not so quiet, so dim. Grey skies hovered over the village, reflected the river as it washed downstream, the sounds of rushing stones and shivering branches from the forest comforting him.

The glimmering inside of him, the rushes of gold and pale-blue, flickered to life at the sounds, and the worlds within, tied with ribbons as red as blood, trembled with the knowledge that something new was about to happen. 

“You will never be able to escape, not until your power grows dim, as mine has,” the God said. “Time will weaken you.”

“I know.”

“And the man who is searching for you, the man who calls you his Bride, will continue to search for you, for you both are tied…”

“I know,” the child said, voice mournful. Scared. He did not want to become a Bride, not to the man who stalked through every world for him. He would rather death.

Even now, his powers were growing dim and, with every breath he took, that man was finding his way closer, closer… The worlds that he created, fell through, tied together… all of them were tearing at their seams. He was becoming weak.

Time was running out.

“I won’t become your Bride,” those words, whispered years and years and years ago. The crash of glass. A torn cheek. Blood everywhere. The bitten-out promise that he would find him, and kill him…

Now, his eyes opened, slightly, narrowed at the rushing water as his feet dangled off of the edge of the open veranda. This place was cursed. He could not stray far from it. If he chose to fall into the rushing waters below, he’d disappear into nothingness. 

And then, he’d wake up here. Again. If he tried to walk more than a few kilometres from this place, he’d disintegrate, his powers drained and he’d wake up, weeks, months, maybe years, later. Here. Alone. Weaker again. Tired, always, always tired.

The house quivered at his swirling thoughts, wooden beams and stone bending under the weight of the darkness inside of him. As if wanting to protect him. 

It had taken years, as he’d grown into the body of a young man, for the house to finally come to love him, in its own weird fashion. He knew, more than anything else, that if the house could take away this suffering, it would.

He smiled all the same, a little heart beat falling between the cracks of what his life had become.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured. It’s not like I can run anyways. “You’ll always take me back.”

Just like the time with the thorns, and the fists against the shutter doors of a shop on a street long forgotten. The wooden walls as he raced through them, trying to find a way out. The carriage of the train, alone, his wrists tied to the chains on the wall.

But also like the times when a blanket wrapped around his shoulders; the kettle whistling on the stove, or his body, boneless with sleep, being carried through the air to a bed so warm it felt as though there was a person there, waiting for him.

And sometimes, he remembered those times, when he hit the ground running through wooden corridors, saw a boy sitting in a room full of fire, another boy standing alone in a room azure blue, glimpsed a pair of eyes that stared right back at him, arms gripping tight to a black cage that seemed so familiar…

He’d twisted the ribbons too tightly, then. Saddened, he let them go, and watched as the fates left the boys to their own will. They went back to their own worlds, as they often did, when the pain became too much. Then, they forgot about him.

Tilting his head against the wooden beam he leaned against, the boy listened harder, fingers playing with the front of his crisp-white shirt. The flower baskets squeaked and turned from the hush of the warm, balmy breeze. The birds sat, silent, between each shower of rain as the hours melted into the evening dusk. In the distance, an echo of thunder rumbled. The house swayed. He quirked a smile, and the glimmering inside him stilled the wooden structure with a mere breath of a thought. So in tune with the surrounding world, he listened harder, and felt it…

A ship he’d long forgotten-

“Will you be my damn Bride?” A voice, leering, drenched with sweat and smoke and-

A plea. To be saved.

“If you do not, you will die.”

Again, there was more to the tale, but as the years turned and his memories began to dissolve, he’d forgotten.

He would become a Bride to no one, no matter his power, and even after his dying breath, he refused to fall under. Refused to be tied to anything, or anyone, in order to survive.

There were people coming; he could feel their searching eyes deep in his chest, a pull that felt like a ribbon, or a chain. Opening his eyes, he felt warm again, no longer cold. A special, monsoon summer evening this day became. “Are we going to have visitors?” he murmured to the house. Behind him, anticipation rolled over the walls of stone and wood. The kettle on the open hob whistled. He wondered if this was the house’s way of preparing him for death. One last wish, maybe. Or his last breath. 

All of the doors to each room in the house opened. A third bathroom, then a fourth, grew on the first floor, and into the second floor grew another set of bedrooms, each growing out from the other, until the open veranda above his head was overshadowed with one new balcony, then two. He could feel the house breathing, up, three floors, four. The worlds inside each room expanded too. More to explore; he briefly imagined a greenhouse, a beach, a garden full of purple and blue and pale-pink. He could smell summer, heady and thick.

The trees overshadowing the river stretched to accommodate the house, as if to hold the new beams that stretched over his head, and still, the silence of the surrounding world echoed in his ears.

The glimmering faded once the new rooms were made. The boy’s head tilted again into the wooden beam. He closed his eyes, and dreamed, waiting for them to come, for the loneliness to ease, for there to be sound once more.

His last wish, he hoped. One more time.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, when one listened to the crash of waves upon the shore, the sound of stone and salt sounded like bleeding tears, sounded like a child, crying in a space of nothingness, and the sounds, washed together, broke Seokjin’s lonely heart.

Seokjin often reasoned that it never mattered how many times he turned back; something, maybe someone, slipped through his fingers, through time. Always. And the place that he’d found himself in, what he hoped was the present, not the past, or the future, was this sleepy place on the edge of nowhere.

There are no ghosts here, they told him, when he asked. Only stories.

But still, still, Seokjin heard the sounds of a child, crying, wailing against a glass wall, against a place of nothingness, in silence.

The waves continued to wash ashore, and with every tumble, the sea bled into Seokjin’s torn soul.

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It may have been when time began, when the pendulum began to turn. Or it may have been after. Either way, Seokjin was not sure; he had been turning time for longer than even he knew. Sometimes the time turned forward, sometimes it turned backward. 

But, in the compound, he remembered the child who came wandering in from the place beyond the Gates, clothes hanging from his too-thin frame and eyes hallowed with tiredness and fear. Black hair long and curling around small shoulders. His hands glowed a golden colour and, if he looked close enough, Seokjin could see red ribbons dance between his fingertips. If he moved his hands, the ribbons responded, pulled and twisted in his grip. Sometimes, good things happened; sometimes, bad things happened.

That was why they bound his wrists. To stop the magic within, the dark shadow that rose behind him when his fingers danced through thin-air. The child was afraid of the shadow; to Seokjin, that shadow meant bad things.

The boy always sat with his back against the dusty-white wall at the furthermost part of the compound, away from people, away from life. Day, and night; summer, then winter. The same clothes, the same hallowed eyes, slumped, then sitting, then curled in upon himself, as though he could not move any further, or push his body anymore.

“It’s that damn child again,” they’d said, spurred by an anger that Seokjin did not understand. Seokjin, his friends, watched from a distance. It was Seokjin who tried to get close to the child. The boy stumbled away. Closer, Seokjin could smell dirt, and sweat, and fear. Closer, he saw shaking hands and hunger.

Seokjin had been beaten by his father for getting close, the words, “Leave that bastard child to itself, or else,” guttered out between a black eye and split lip.

The child could not leave on his own; too weak with hunger, no matter how many times Jimin tried to feed him, too slow to move, no matter how many times Hoseok tried to carry him. It was hopeless; the child was going to die. Eventually, Seokjin remembers the thorns on the child’s wrists, the blood and the tears and, eventually, the child was sent running from the compound, out beyond the Gates, dogs barking and snapping at his ankles, as though he were a beast.

“He brings bad luck, with his magic and his sins,” the people spat, their hands full of torches lit with flame. 

Yoongi was the first one of the six of them to leave the compound after the nameless child. 

“I’m going to find that kid,” were his last words to them all.

Seokjin remembered watching his small, receding back. 

Seokjin remembers his parents shouting bitter curses at him as he left.

Of course, Seokjin would eventually forget this moment, because all of these moments were the same. Bleeding through realities as one blinked between two hands of time.

Eventually, though, Seokjin left the compound too, when his body grew into that of a man. Somewhere, maybe in another reality, a deck of cards was falling, a house torn asunder, fire burning through a shop window, glass puncturing skin and a boy wailing in the darkness, a lollipop landing on a handful of cash, a man with mint-green hair shoving a familiar face against a wall, then a couch…

He would never find the nameless child, though; the image, of the boy lying under shades of trees, surrounded by the scent of death, permeated Seokjin’s senses the moment he stepped out of the compound. A black bird, a dead dove, echoed his thoughts, the whistle of an arrow knocked through its breast. And blood, so much blood, curling through lifeless fingers.

And that shadow, that larger-than-life shadow, remained by the boy’s side, a curse to anyone who found him.

Seokjin was too late, and guilt curled in his gut.

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Sometime later, Seokjin caught a glimpse of him, again. Rough fists against cheeks too rounded to be grown fully into. A lone street light, a shadow crossing underneath it, then three. Run, run, run. But there was no escape. Blood and scratches, and a glance- help me help me but don’t come near me- settled over Seokjin’s shoulders, like a wave.

He was standing there, a full street away, the voices of two men shouting at the boy as they beat him senseless. Seokjin could hear a snap, a whimper, and he took off at a run, shouting, but-

There was nothingness then. A car, screeching to a halt, and death underneath Seokjin’s feet, and the question-

Why are you running from me?

-begged from parted lips as he tried to revive the child underneath his shaking, cold fingertips.

There was a winter chill, and snow, drifting around them. People crowding his line of vision, blue lights and paramedics. A body being carried away, the boy’s hand slipping down underneath the covers of the stretcher, blood stains spreading, and then, and then…

A shadow, rising up over the stretcher, as if to say, He’s all mine. You can’t have him.

Seokjin opened his eyes, heartbeat skittering, so torn up with loss and sadness and fear, that he wanted it all to stop- to stop-

Stop

He lived in a one-room apartment just outside of the inner city. The place wasn’t well kept, but he made do with what he had; a small bed, tiny kitchenette, a bathroom that barely fit his whole body. There were photos on the mildewed walls, once, but he’d long since tore them down. 

Seokjin didn’t want to hold onto the memories anymore, not when he knew that he couldn’t save any of them.

Over the years, he’d drifted away from the boys. Yoongi went first, claiming that he’d forgotten something important and that he needed to remember what it was: of course, Seokjin knew (he always did, Yoongi was always the first to leave whenever the nameless boy was gone). Hoseok jumped, and jumped, and eventually disappeared into silence; no one ever spoke of him anymore, even though Jimin would sometimes glance over his shoulder whenever the sounds of a carousel could be heard. They knew that he was still alive (if he’d left them, again, they’d know; their ties to one another were to strong, and it physically hurt them when they went missing), but unsure as to where he’d gone. Namjoon and Taehyung were the next to leave, something about their escapades with the vandalism, but when Taehyung broke away from them… Seokjin last heard that the boy was in prison, somewhere, but no one knew where.

Eventually, Seokjin just got ... tired. And the boy, sometimes with a blue book in hand, or a red ribbon around his wrist, his body beaten and bruised and broken... that boy just … disappeared, from all of their memories. 

“I’m not good enough.”

He wasn’t ever sure as to whether it was himself or the boy who’d said it; it may have been all of them, who agreed, at that one time, with Taehyung fit to jump over the observation board, but…

The boy didn’t know that Seokjin had powers, too, that he remembered what was often forgotten, by all of them. 

The boy didn’t know that, when they were altogether, in that compound, a pull of one of those red ribbons gave him a curse he no longer wanted.

He swallowed, stared down at his long, pale fingers. Then fisted them. 

Seokjin picked up his phone, dialled the first number among the group that came to mind. No answer. A band of red-hot anger speared through his head, his neck, his shoulders, weighing him down. Growling, he threw the phone at the wall, listened to the smash with a satisfied grin.

Forget them. Forget them all. 

The smiles, the laughter, the jokes.

And the promise of forever. 

There were six of them on a train. Cake was being thrown over their heads. Someone wore a party hat.

A washing machine; his face reflected in the glass. He was younger then.

Six of them. 

No.

Wait.

Seokjin tilted his head, confused. A house of cards was falling, in another world.

Not all six of them- wasn’t there a seventh?

A child, sitting alone in a carriage, as they trundled forward. His doe-shaped eyes, round, sorrowful- I can see you. His fringe ducking low. I can’t see you now; now, you can’t see me.

A child, knees bunched close to his chin, and between them, red ribbons, extending outward, pulling on his wrists, bleeding-

And chains attached to them- Seokjin’s mouth opened- the chains spiked to the walls, his ankles crowned with thorns, and blood, so much blood, dripping through the wooden floorboards of the carriage-

“We don’t go in there,” Yoongi said. But his eyes were sad. A shrug of a shoulder. “The kid won’t let us in, says there’s something wrong with him.”

Why? What’s wrong with him?

“He won’t tell us,” Jimin answered, hands holding his arms, as though to keep the pain in, or the pain out. Pink hair and near-blue eyes.

But he was our friend, once-

“And then a God took him away,” Namjoon said, voice angry, bitter. “And ever since then, he’s been tied by a shadow to his palace.”

The remnants of the dream faded.

Something was ringing in Seokjin’s ears.

The letter box.

Something was being pushed through the letter box. 

Seokjin opened his eyes. He sat up, the sun filtering through his unclosed blinds. He squinted, head pounding. He didn’t eat last night, forgot all about it as he fell into an uneasy slumber. The couch squeaked as he moved; he turned toward the door. The postman whistled, a lonely sound in the silence and, suddenly, the envelope was dancing through the air.

The letter was gold, and something in it called out to the frayed edges of Seokjin’s heart.

When he picked it up, the red scrawl was what he noticed, the delicate cursive. He glimpsed a feather, blood ink, in his mind. And the boy, fingers tapping against a glass window, as though there were someone on the other side.

Seokjin, the envelope read. He opened the letter, and found a paper key, a ribbon tied in a neat bow on its end.

Inside, a white letter fell out, and the single sentence-

You have one more chance to save the boy

-sat neatly curled in its very centre.

Time stilled around him. His breaths came short. Finally, his heart stopped.

No more time turning, after this. One more chance, to save them all. He looked to his front door, didn’t think. He flung the key into the lock, turned it once. The door fell away. 

He fell with it.

Hoseok and Jimin stood in front of him, dressed in white. The hospital only ever allowed one visitor at a time, and Seokjin was the first in the last three months. Jimin found himself reaching for Hoseok’s shirtsleeve, fingers tied to his own clothes, as if keeping himself grounded were more important than the child they all lost only three months ago.

“Jungkook?” Jimin murmured, tilting his head in confusion. The syllables that fell from his lips were soft, yet unsure. “Who is Jungkook?”

One year ago, Yoongi, face turning toward the darkness of the slums that Seokjin found him in. Eyes hardened by wherever he’d come from when Seokjin called out his name; his phone, when he answered, brought him to here, called by the cracking sound of a lonely baritone voice.

“Jungkook?”

Seokjin felt his expression fall. Eyes closing in defeat, until Yoongi breathed,

“Jungkook is gone, Seokjin. He disappears, every time. Remember?”

Seokjin couldn’t speak to Taehyung. 

The younger was held behind bars, as though a life of crime had brought him there, when it had been his father, or the absence of his mother, and a name falsely given to the wrong people at the wrong time. His sister, missing, her body presumed to be drinking the salt water at the bottom of the sea, somewhere.

Seokjin pressed a hand around the wire of the enclosure. Taehyung wouldn’t be able to see him, not from behind the concrete jungle he found himself in.

Still, Seokjin breathed Jungkook’s name, and hoped that it was carried with the stray, summer breeze.

Namjoon simply, could not be reached at this time; please, try again later-

Seokjin found himself standing on the edges of a beach, or the sea. Salt clung to the air, the faint drift of cicadas sizzling from afar. He turned, bare feet slinking through the white sand. Blue skies tainted his sight, and he squinted. There was no one but him on this beach; a faint breeze carried the sounds of whistling leaves, the heat rising along the hairs on the back of his neck. Meandering off the beach, or the sea, wherever he was, Seokjin grappled through the greenery until he found himself walking alongside the pace of a babbling stream that found its way out to the waters beyond. The green of the forest was lush, full and heady with scents that had Seokjin closing his eyes for moments at a time as he walked.

The calm that settled over his shoulders was completely foreign to him. The wash of waves behind him, the faint, salty breeze and sounds of the birds overhead…

It was so, so quiet, but the quiet was not ominous. Rather, there was a magic to it, a net of warmth that Seokjin found himself leaning into. Safety.

Home.

Had he been here before?

The forest surrounding him gave way to a cobbled street where no one walked. Stone cottages dotted his vision, and the glass of a window had him squinting against the bright light.

When he opened them, he saw it, the wood-and-stone building, stretched out toward him, its windows large, half-hazard, vines of ivy dancing into and out of the stones. Purple, wooden beams and green window sills set heavy into the stone, and a glass house, its windows glittering, sitting on the first floor of the cottage to his left, and yet…

Something… something pulled inside of him, made him pitch forward, and Seokjin was walking, walking faster, until he reached the door.

About to knock, the door opened to semi-darkness, the spaces that the faltering sun couldn’t reach shining on the drifting dust inside. When he stepped in, the hallway spread out, a sprawling staircase rose in circles over his head, and he followed his line of sight until the noticed the expansive floors that circled in and out of each other. The place went up higher than first appeared when one looked at it from the outside. While the cottage appeared to be nestled neatly within two floors, inside… Seokjin’s mouth opened in shock at the grandeur of the place. There must have been at least five floors, and counting. His neck creaked from craning up so high. The windows were high, a mixture of stained glass and clear, with chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings and curtains draped in random spaces surrounding the hall. 

A place of comfort, a home, he thought. This wasn’t a rich place, not by any means; it didn’t bespoke the modern homes he was used to seeing on the high rises of Seoul, but…

This was a home. It smelled like a home, felt warm like one too.

He stepped further down and the hall and, just as he was about to call out a tentative hello, he heard a quiet snuffle, a soft whisper of a breath, and he turned, half in fright, half in wonder, to the sprawling couch in what he presumed was the sitting room area. The open plan had a tall window whose sunlight beamed through, alighting on the long, white shirt that lay with its back to him, curled in on itself. A shock of starlight-white hair curled over a near-tan neck, and Seokjin stilled. 

The child was asleep, his body half covered by a deep-red blanket. A blue book sat, open, over his curled legs.

Seokjin knew the shape of that body anywhere.

Seokjin knew.

He stumbled down the single step into the sitting room, arms reaching, reaching down-

Should he hug him? Hold him?

His heart was pounding, but it felt so distant, so faraway-

“Jungkook,” he breathed, “Jungkook-“

He gathered the boy into his arms, the movement causing the body under him to tense, tense harder as Seokjin grappled with the slight weight of the boy, pulling him in closer, as though the child weren’t covering his skin enough. “Jungkook, Jungkook-“

Seokjin was breathing the boy’s name, heart breaking at the cleaving sound of his own voice. The tears on his cheeks. But, dear Gods above, it made no difference, because the boy in his arms was here, was here, and it didn’t matter if Seokjin was dead, near-dead, or dreaming, he’d take what he had, he’d take this moment and hold it, hold him.

The boy was breathing into his shoulder, soft breaths warm against his neck, fingers gripping the front of Seokjin’s shirt. Eyelashes were fluttering against the skin of his cheek, a drowsy, heady tilt to Jungkook’s head, and Seokjin felt the weight of him against his shoulder. His fingers slipped on the front of Seokjin’s shirt, tumbling down between them.

Seokjin felt it the moment Jungkook fell back into asleep. Felt the boy slip down into darker depths. Hand splayed out over a small chest, Seokjin cried with relief when he was reassured by the steady, if slow, thrum of the boy’s heartbeat.

Yoongi woke up in a bed that wasn’t his. Sitting up, he gazed, eyes bleary, around him. The room was dark, but the glare of the hotel lights filtered through the windows. Vacancy. Hairs rose on the back of his neck.

Fuck. 

He knew where he was.

He just couldn’t believe it. He swallowed down the lump of fear, wondering why his hands weren’t holding a lighter already. Gritting his teeth, he turned, and found the cheque shirt hanging in the exact same place as it had been left.

Jungkook would have been here, earlier.

Jungkook would have been with him, in this bed, earlier. Warm, safe, limbs tangled-

“Hyung- good, feels so-“

And Jungkook would have left him, because Yoongi was dangerous, a fire that spat and growled when provoked.

“You’re worth your weight in stars, hyung-“

Yoongi’s fingers curled into the white duvet, the lingering warmth reminding him of the boy that had shared his bed so many times before.

Slumping, he wondered, if he could somehow bring Jungkook back, somehow…

But he knew that he couldn’t; Jungkook would be long gone by now, walking right out in front of a damn car as he thought of it, and here he was, locked in a place where he couldn’t even reach the kid.

Useless. He was useless. Shouldn’t have taken advantage. Shouldn’t have even bothered.

Every single time he did, Jungkook was pulled further and further away.

The others wouldn’t know about it, about why Jungkook was slipping away from them; fuck, he didn’t even know, and he doubted that even Seokjin knew. There were less moments now, and he knew that this was a sign, that the kid may have been getting ready to say his final goodbyes.

Yoongi fell back against the bed, and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of orange blossoms and sea-salt. Even after all this time, he could still remember his scent.

The second time he opened his eyes, Yoongi found himself in a room different from the last. Jolting up into the darkness that greeted him, Yoongi stood, hands reaching out for a light, for-

“Get back here, you lousy shit!”

A whacking sound filled the air, the slap of skin against skin, something cracking, glass maybe, and Yoongi fumbled through the darkness, hands gliding along walls, walls-

A switch. He flicked it, bathing the room in white light, and flung open the door right next to the light-

The shadows of the corridor were more pronounced, moving when he moved. He squinted down the hall, and saw a body, two bodies, in a dull sepia colour. They moved slowly, as though trapped in time, but their voices carried faster, as though sight and sound weren’t in sync with one another. 

Yoongi knew what this was. He resigned himself to the obvious. He wasn’t actually here. Wherever he was, this was a memory, and he was simply watching it unfold. 

He’d seen this memory before, though, knew who the body on the ground was, knew what it was the man above him held in his hand, heard the slap of a belt against skin again, and winced.

Why he had to see this was beyond torture. Anger flared, a red-hot warning signal that changed the sepia colours to red. There were blood splatters on the wall behind the body, and if Yoongi listened closely, he heard whimpers, small pleas for help.

He knew this was a memory: Jungkook had whispered it into his ear when the others had fallen asleep, the campfire turned to dull embers and the full moon hanging high above his head. His brother hated him, he wasn’t ever sure why, and his parents… they just simply watched. Yoongi had pulled the boy’s shoulders a little closer to him, noting how the kid winced when he pulled a bit too hard on his shoulders, and he remembered his heart snapping into smaller fragments when he came to the realisation of what all of this meant. Underneath his shirt, he caught those shadows, bruises black and blue. A stain on otherwise pale skin.

Another slap of leather hitting skin; this time, Yoongi heard Jungkook’s whimper.

Yoongi swallowed, closed his eyes, ignoring the weight of the shadow that was dancing in mock-glee as Jungkook’s voice screeched in pain at the slap of the belt against bare skin. Yoongi wanted to fucking punch that shadow, wanted to wrench the fucking life out of whatever enjoyment that shadow was taking in his friend’s pain.

It stood in front of Yoongi. Go on. Try me. Hit me, see how much fun you’ll have with my body tonight.

Yoongi growled. Whatever he’d been drinking before he hit the sack tonight… he wasn’t going to be drinking it again.

The hoodie settled close over his skin as he stumbled through the semi-darkened streets of Seoul. Hoseok’s eyes were glazed, in search of something that was more real than the fake shit that thrummed through his veins. In the shadows, he glimpsed pale-blue eyes, almost turquoise in colour, and he swallowed down the nausea that was building. Those eyes were familiar, but he wasn’t sure who they belonged to.

Not Jimin’s.

Still in the hospital.

Alone. 

Hoseok remembered the day he was discharged, remembered Jimin grasping his wrist on the staircase as he left.

And now, he swivelled on one foot, his sneakers scuffing along the pavement as he moved, attempting to dispel a face he couldn’t place-

Hyung.

Hyung.

Show me that again.

That move.

Show me again, hyung.

You dance so beautifully, hyung-

Who are you, he longed to ask. Who are you?

Doe-shaped, teal-blue eyes. A small smile. Sadness in those crinkled eyes. A soft voice, afraid to raise above a whisper. Quiet limbs, soft skin. Brown, tousled hair. Clothes that seemed too big for such a small frame. Red sneakers. Scuffed to within an inch of its life. I’ve no home to go back to. I left. I ran away.

Show me again, hyu-

Hoseok was dancing with his eyes closed. Mind numb to the world beyond him. Mind numb to everything but that beautiful, soft, sing-song voice…

-Until he felt his feet tripping over a very, very hard surface, until-

A grunt. 

He was falling, hands stretched out to protect himself, when he felt arms reach for his shoulders, wrench him back. His knees hit the cobble lock, hands scrabbling against stone, and hot breath pierced through his shirt, searing the skin of his hip-

“Hoseok?” A familiar voice intoned, rough, gravel-skinned. “That you?”

Hoseok looked down, dazed, the lights over his head making him squint, and-

A head of dark-brown hair. Narrow, kitten-like eyes.

Yoongi.

It was Yoongi holding onto him. Holding him down.

“What are you doing down there?” Hoseok mumbled. God, his mouth was dry.

“Could ask you the same question,” Yoongi replied, grinning weakly.

Hoseok slumped forward, turning his body so that he could sit alongside the man who left their group… two, three years ago? He shuddered, and Yoongi inched closer to him, the heat from his leather jacket radiating outwards.

“Tell me,” Yoongi murmured in the quiet. “Have you been having dreams lately?”

Hyung-

A pair of arms curled around his shoulders. Sleeping.

The faraway sounds of laughter-

A body nestled on his back; Hoseok gripping a pair of too-skinny legs as he carried that underweight child through the rain…

“You’re dealing again, aren’t you?” Yoongi pulled him out of his dazed thoughts.

“Looks like it,” Hoseok murmured after one breath, two. Thoughts turned a little fuzzy; his fingers blurred underneath him. “Jimin’s still in hospital. Taehyung’s in prison. Stabbed his dad to death. Namjoon’s gone. Seokjin’s… gone.”

“And then there’s Jungkook,” Yoongi finished.

Hoseok blinked. It took him a few seconds to realise what Yoongi had said.

“Not that you’d remember,” Yoongi continued. “No one ever remembers him.”

Hoseok narrowed his eyes. Shivered when a cold, wintry breeze ruffled his sleeves. “Did this Jungkook ever call me hyung?”

Yoongi stopped, looked to Hoseok, but Hoseok was staring straight ahead. Listening for that voice inside his head. Between each blink of his eyes, something caught his mind’s eye, a room of toys, a carousel in the corner, and a child banging his fists against the locked door. Trying to get through to him.

To them all.

Hyung. Open the door. Open the door, hyung. It’s just a bad dream. I can get you out, please hyung I can get you out-

No one knew about the carousel. No one. He never told them about it. Never.

“Who is this Jungkook?” Hoseok murmured, “Was he a friend?”

Something clicked behind them both. A doorway, maybe.

Hoseok felt his body drop, stomach surging up to his mouth, but in slow motion. His body wasn’t catching up with his mind- things were fuzzy- falling- fuck, he was falling-

Yoongi screeched beside him, hand reaching out wildly and grasping, tight, to Hoseok’s wrist-

Hoseok looked, blindly, all around him- where- what-

A sudden stop; they were landing on a… bed?

Something soft. Hoseok sat up, feathers flying up around him. Darkness, pale-blue light. The shaft of the moon slivering through a glass window-

He turned, looked down, and saw Yoongi curled up on the bed next to him, hand still holding his wrist. 

Where was he-

Something was pushing down on his shoulders, something warm and heady, the scent of lavender filling his nose…

Tired.

Wait, was he tired-?

Was he really..

He was falling backward, vision blurring, until the softness of the bed, the feathers dancing around him, stilled, to darkness.

In Jimin’s white room, there were no windows. There was only a bed, a sink and a desk. Nothing furnished the desk; it was simply there.

They didn’t want any reason for a patient to hang themselves, of course.

Day after day, the same routine became an endless, sickening lurch of repetition. Pills, food, showers and TV time. Whatever day it was, whenever, there was a routine, and it bored Jimin out of his mind.

He was never allowed to dance. Not after the fall shattered his ankle. Even now, he still carried the limp, and the memory of his mother’s slowly shaking head, the disappointment on her face, had been enough to close the professional dancer off from the world altogether.

When Hoseok had joined him, here, he felt happier.

But there were other memories, somewhere lost in the clouds of his mind, of an even happier time, when he was reckless, wild and free. Grey colours, the sky a pale-white, and a belly full of laughter. Hands splayed wide in trolleys and a pale-blue cardigan. Crinkled blue eyes and a campfire. Taehyung dancing on a table in a restaurant. Namjoon sucking a lollypop while Seokjin travelled around in his black jeep. And the sea, the boundless, endless sea.

When he was afraid, when the pills and the patients and the constant wash of white made him sick with fear, he closed his eyes, and thought of the sea. The sounds of the seagulls, and the sound of salt and water washing against stone. The sand underneath his feet, and the silhouette that jumped off the observation tower…

God, he wanted to go back, just for one day, just to th-

Jimin.

The voice was tentative.

It was not his own.

Jimin-

And it came from the very, very back of his mind.

Jimin opened his eyes, opened his mouth, and held very, very still.

The voice wasn’t real. He knew that, of course.

But the voice was just as lonely as he was.

Jimin tilted his head down.

He didn’t hear the door behind him open, not until his name was called, again-

The chains on Taehyung’s wrists clinked as he manoeuvred himself into a sitting position. His neck hurt. A lot. The room was dark, and cold, he was sinking even further into the cement floor, the stench of darkness, decay and filth robbing him of everything but the pain. He swallowed, throat parched, and tilted his head further back against the cold, wet wall.

His hair had long since grown out over his shoulders, clothes turned from a disgusting orange to a mottled yellow. His feet were bare, unable to move anymore now that they’d done their walk around the camp.

He wasn’t aware of his body sliding until his sore skull hit the ground, and even then, he wasn’t aware of falling asleep.

He was only aware of the child sitting across from him in that darkness. The neck of his shirt was torn, and the child held himself as though trying to keep something inside, hands gripped to his elbows and a terrified look on his face. “I can’t keep you warm,” the child said, voice mournful. Taehyung scrunched his nose. 

“It doesn’t matter anyways.”

“It does,” the child replied, dark hair dipping into his eyes. Taehyung stiffened when he glimpsed his neck. No. No fucking way. His neck, Taehyung mourned, when he saw it, was covered in red veins. Reaching up toward his otherwise pale face. The child winced when he moved. The shadow behind him hovered closer, as if to pull both arms around him, to taunt- He’s mine- as Taehyung watched, helpless. He wanted to help him aish, Taehyung wanted to hold the child. Like a puppy, fur white as snow. While he sat in his damn cage. 

“There is someone coming for you,” the child said, his head perking back up, insistent. The pain forgotten, as though whatever he was telling Taehyung was more, much more, important. “There is someone on the other side, trying to get you out. Namjoon is going to get Jimin too, promise-“

“I said it doesn’t matter anyways,” Taehyung growled, his fingers reaching around his knees and tightening into his shoulders, slight and small as he’d become.

“You matter, Taehyung. Namjoon is coming, so please don’t give up.”

Like a spell, whenever the child said those very words, he’d wake up, and the pain would begin once more.

He wasn’t sure how long they’d decided on keeping him here; the sentence was never definite. His father worked in the force, before Taehyung stabbed the bastard with a broken bottle, so he was sure that they’d decided on a longer punishment time anyways. Not that anyone cared whether or not his sister was still alive from all the beatings, or if her body had sunk to the bottom of the sea. He shuddered, sickened, scared and so, so tired. Society always turned a blind eye to things like this. 

Reckless youth.

A wild, feral teenager.

Taehyung closed his eyes, curled his body closer, craving a bit of heat that his sore, cold muscles would never find.

His neck throbbed, a sharp rattling pain that tore the muscles at the back of his skull apart. He bit back a scream as the pain tore down his shoulder and into his left arm, fingers flexing against the rush of pain.

He knew he had little time left; whatever they’d pumped into his system was starting to drag him further and further away from this reality anyways.

A part of him hoped that Namjoon wasn’t coming.

A part of him hoped that no one ever came again.

He didn’t deserve them, or their forgiveness.

He didn’t deserve hope.

“-ake up, please, Taehyung. Wake up.”

There was someone standing over him. Branches wavered over his head, a soft breeze. The smell of spring in the air, and Taehyung felt his eyelashes flicker with the breeze.

Gods, how long had it been since he felt a breeze like this?

“Taehyung? Please wake up-“

Hands on his shoulder, soft, tentative. But Taehyung didn’t want to wake up.

Gods above, he just wanted to slee-

The breeze turned cold, and Taehyung groaned. He pulled himself up, and was suddenly looking at a bandaged hand. Blinking, he was suddenly weightless, underwater. Blinked again, and he was standing in front of his father, holding a broken glass bottle, blood spewing everywhere-

Fuck-

It felt like drowning. Like there was too much. In his lungs. Fuck. He could. Not. Breathe-

“Taehyung- open your eyes,” the voice whispered close to his ear, and Taehyung gasped, opening his eyes to darkness, so much darkness-

Heart pounding so violently that he swore it would tear out of his ribcage. Sweat beading down his bare, cold neck. Shoulders tight with tension, fingers gripping the stone underneath-

He wanted. Out. Now. Out-

A flicker of fire trembled just out of his line of sight. Taehyung glanced toward it, unable to move his sweat-drenched, exhausted body. The fire was bright, golden in hue. He swallowed, feeling a lick of flame as it curled over his cheek. When he neared his still body, the shape of the flame came suddenly into focus.

An envelope.

His name was scrawled across the back of it.

He huffed out a laugh when it landed neatly not two inches from his face.

There was no one close by, no one to drop the damn thing off. 

Might have fallen from the sky, Taehyung thought, briefly, before he huffed out a skeletal laugh. As if magic even existed here.

And yet…

It didn’t stop his suddenly eager, bloodied fingers from dragging across the sharp stone to the envelope, wrenching it open to find its contents-

“Taehyung-“

Taehyung stopped at the sound of the voice, and as he did, a black key dropped onto the stone floor, a single metallic sound ringing out in his prison cell.

The letter was blurry on the edges of his vision, but when he squinted hard enough, he could just about read the navy-blue letters—

Open the door. I’m waiting on the other side.

“Please, Taehyung- please stay awake-“

The child’s voice was pleading in his ears. Taehyung looked toward the door of his cell. It didn’t stand five feet away, but that even in and of itself was too far-

How long had he spaced out for? Would they know he was trying to break free-

Gods, was he just being delusional? Was this even real in the first place?

He shook his head, growled, but the letter remained and, in the palm of his hand, so too did the key.

Taehyung-

Licking dry lips, he pushed his body up, shaking with the weight, the energy. He slid, chin hitting the ground. Suppressing a groan at the red-hot lick of pain that shuddered down his skull, he pulled his body, pulled until the cold stone gave way under him. Huffing a breath, he listened for anyone who might have been on the other side. No sounds echoed down the hall.

No one was here.

It was cold, quiet and…

He was alone.

Grunting, he grabbed another stone on the ground and used it to lever himself over, the shirt tearing with the movement. The key warmed in his hand- he was just two feet away- just-

Groaning, he dragged his body up, grabbed the handle of the door. Sweat trickled down his face, his heart pounded against his skull, throbbing with the effort and fuck- how could he still feel so cold after moving that much-

Squinting at the keyhole, he tried to fit the key in once, twice-

Vision blurring from moving, chains rattling as his hands shook, he whimpered.

He wanted out of here. He wanted to get out-

The key went into the lock, clicking as it turned. Taehyung breathed a sigh of relief, and then-

Suddenly-

He

Was

Falling-

Into a pair of stone, strong arms. Heart stopping in his mouth, Taehyung muffled his cry, bones and muscles screaming from the pain. Wincing, he glanced up, hands reaching to grab onto something.

“Finally,” a familiar voice intoned, rumbled under Taehyung’s ear. Taehyung blinked. Mouth opened. Namjoon’s eyes, wide and glinting, caught him by surprise. Taehyung felt his voice rumble in his chest. “I didn’t think Jungkook would ever manage to make contact.”

Namjoon. That was Namjoon’s voice.

Slowly, as if coming down from a high, his eyes grew heavy. He leaned into the heat, the blistering heat, underneath his ear, and felt Namjoon’s voice, felt the voice of home, drone in and out of his ears. He shuddered, inhaled the scent of vanilla and rosewood.

“But if Jungkook managed to reach you, Godling,” Namjoon breathed, his voice growing deeper, slower, “Then that means he’s actually dying.”

In the faint drift of darkness, tears the colour of gold fell from the closed eyes of a God, and Seokjin watched, helpless, as Jungkook bled onto the couch, the starlight-white of his hair and the golden glow of his tears tracing streams along the dark, wooden floor.

If Seokjin squinted upon the floor, he imagined that the skies having fallen to earth, and he was standing on the moon.

Chapter Text

Yoongi’s eyes opened to the silhouette of tan skin and blue eyes looking down upon him. His cheek rested on something soft, something that smelled like…

“Orange blossoms,” he found himself murmuring. Those blue eyes blinked in wonder; a smile surfaced, white teeth blooming against Yoongi’s vision. 

Wait.

Yoongi sat up so fast he nearly tipped his head against-

“Jungkook,” he kneeled, placed both his hands on Jungkook’s cheeks. The warmth underneath his skin was comforting, real, almost. Jungkook smiled, the roundness of his cheeks squashed underneath Yoongi’s wide and bony palms, his bright blue eyes becoming glittering half-moons.

“I’m so, so glad,” the boy whispered, tilting his head into Yoongi’s hands. “So happy you’re here, hyung.” His eyes were growing heavy, and Yoongi’s heart filled with dread. 

“No- Jungkook, don’t close your eyes-“

“I’m so glad you found me, hyung- I’m so glad you all found me,” Jungkook murmured into the skin of Yoongi’s wrist as his weight became heavier, until Jungkook lay slumped in Yoongi’s shoulder, breathing slower, softer. “Smell like jasmine, hyung. Smell nice, like I’m still there, still on the moon.”

“… like I’m still on the moon.”

Opening his eyes again, Yoongi found himself on his back, cushioned by something soft, arms spread over his head. The ceiling above him was black and… he squinted. What, the fuck? 

Feathers were dancing through the air above him, glazing through the ceiling and falling from above. He reached out for one, and his fingers glanced against something soft, barely-there. One of them drifted past his cheek, it’s touch so light it tickled.

“Where the fuck am I?” 

He sat up, eyes still heavy with sleep and breathed deep. Those feathers were falling onto a bed covered in feathers. He was lying in a bed covered with feathers. Placing both his hands on the bed in between his bent knees, he leaned forward. The small mounds around him dispersed slightly from the movement. Casting a glance overhead, he noticed how the room had big, oak wooden floors and pale-grey walls. The door stood open to his left, a black wood, and it creaked, as though someone had already moved through it just as he moved.

Yoongi squinted again, trying to recall what happened. He didn’t feel fear, just… numbness. He was just numb. “Hoseok?” He called, a little louder, lips cracked as he breathed deep. 

Fingers curled around the door, and Hoseok appeared, hair curling downward as he tilted his head, eyes wide.

“You really need to see this place. It’s massive,” he said, voice gravel-toned, as though woken up. Yoongi pulled himself from the bed, bones creaking as he stretched. The feathers swirled as he moved. Feet bare on the floor, his trousers too baggy where it bunched at his feet. It was strange. He felt so well rested, for the first time in a long time.

“I’m so glad you found me,” Jungkook said in his dreams. He swallowed, looking around the room.

“Seriously, Yoongi, get out here.”

“I’m coming.”

When Yoongi stepped out, he found hallways, and spiral staircases, and floors above their heads.

“No, wait, now I’m fucking dizzy,” he growled, closing his eyes. “Okay, start that again-“

He opened his eyes, and found Hoseok standing in the middle of a long hallway that seemed to curve toward a staircase that led down, as well as up. The rafters above their heads made him think that there were floors, many more floors, above their heads, and as he looked over the banister, looked down, he could see the entryway, two, no, three, chandeliers hanging from… however far above…

It was as if this place was half-hazardly put together. The doors were all different colours, different shapes, but there was a warmth in this building. It was safe, or it made him feel safe; he knew the difference between the two.

“Down or up?” Hoseok murmured. 

Yoongi grunted. “Reminds me of that fucking endless train,” he grumbled, before pulling himself short. 

The slap of a belt echoed against his ears; Jungkook, begging for help, a quiet plea in the darkness as Yoongi stood in the shadows and just watched…

This had to be another one of those worlds, right? Another world for them to find Jungkook in, right?

“What endless train?” Hoseok asked, but Yoongi’s mind was whirring, was-

“Jungkook,” he heard himself say out loud. He blinked, swayed, dizzy, with the thought. “Jungkook-“

He whizzed passed Hoseok, who shouted out his name, grabbing the end of the bannister as he swivelled down. His feet bolted down the stairs, each step echoing harshly in the silence. He’d search this entire building, whatever the fuck it was- to find him-

“Jungkook!” He shouted, “Jungkook, where are you-“

The walls echoed. There was something shuffling behind him; a door opening, a soft outpouring of questions-

“Hey, is that Yoongi?”

Namjoon-

“Yoongi?!”

And Jimin.

He ignored them. Not important, not right now; after, when he found him, after-

“Hyung-“

“I’m so glad that you found me-“

He wouldn’t stop trying to find the damn kid. “Jungkook-“ he called, landing on the ground floor, eyes searching for something-

“In here,” a soft-toned voice murmured to his left as he ran toward the front door-

He stopped, feet skidding on the ground, turning-

Seokjin was there, eyes mournful. He was sitting on what looked to be a couch, his arms holding something-

No, someone, with a head of white hair, and…

He looked down at the floor underneath him. Gold. There was gold all over the floor. He stepped onto the floor, nearly slid. Fuck, it was wet.

But the body in Seokjin’s arms…

“Jungkook,” Yoongi murmured. He slid across the wooden floor, faltered. He was lying there, curled up in Seokjin’s arms- he was real, dear Gods above, he was fucking real-

“He’s asleep,” Seokjin murmured. “Sleeping all night through.”

Yoongi didn’t tear his eyes away from the scene in front of him. He stumbled forward, knees lurching through the gold-dripped floor until one shaking hand reached for that head of white hair, fingers carding through the warmth and life, and-

Knees seeping through with gold, fingers full of starlight, and he remembered something soft, barely there-

“… like I’m still on the moon.”

A quivering of something, those half-remembered words, but. But. He chose to ignore whatever it was that dream was saying.

A pair of dark brown eyes opening in the darkness, “I’m here, hyung. No more bad dreams. I’m here-“

“Jungkook,” Yoongi breathed, eyes filling with tears as he pulled his forehead down to that sleeping head, until his nose carded through the strands of his hair and he smelled oranges, blossoms and the salty tang of the sea. He had white hair now. Why, he wasn’t sure, but he determined that he’d wait until he knew what the hell was going on, why Seokjin was here, why they were all here. Who brought them here. For what purpose, because if they were together, then that meant that there was a chance that they’d all be torn apart, again.

That Jungkook may tear them apart, again. Again, and again.

He’d give it time before he’d ask; Godsdamnit, Jungkook was here, and how he longed to pull the kid into his arms, feel his weight nestled close to his own heart.

“Thank the Gods,” he murmured. “You’re still here, still-“

“Is that the Jungkook you mentioned?” Hoseok murmured from behind; Yoongi sat up, looked into Seokjin’s suddenly sharp gaze. Seokjin’s grasp tightened on the bundle in his arms, as if afraid to let go, longing to protect what was here, what was so close to his heart. 

Their hearts.

Yoongi was not one bit surprised; this was how Seokjin got to be around their youngest over the years. Every time. The sight of the both of them piled into the one space would have anyone suspicious, he knew.

“How did everyone get here?” Seokjin asked.

Yoongi looked toward Hoseok, then stopped when he saw who was standing right there behind his shoulder. He shook his head, wondering if he was seeing things, wondering-

In the wide doorway, there was Jimin, and Namjoon, holding onto a sleeping Taehyung, whose arms were wrapped tight around the eldest’s shoulders. Jimin’s body had grown slimmer, the white clothes he was wearing too big for his frame, his brown hair cropped short and eyes all-too wide; all Yoongi could see of Taehyung was a mop of midnight-black hair, and the taunt of black marks on his bare neck, the edge of his orange uniform slipping farther down along his bony, wide shoulders. Bruises lay around his wrists, scars and cut skin, newly bled, reminding him so much of chains, of the ones that had adorned their youngest’s wrists, in either a dream, or another reality.

And Namjoon standing in front of them all. Skin tan, healthy, yet eyes ringed with shadows. The slight bend of his body told Yoongi that there was exhaustion underneath their leader’s frame, an exhaustion that had probably been riddled with time.

“How are we all here?” Seokjin found himself murmuring, and Yoongi turned to catch Seokjin’s confused gaze. 

“This must be where Jungkook lives now,” Yoongi murmured, casting a glance up toward the ceilings. There were candles lit around them, the scent of lavender and honey filling the air. Something akin to Seokjin’s scent, he mused, unsurprised. He spotted another open doorway behind him, one that lead into what he thought of as an open-plan kitchen; he could just about see a multitude of pots hanging from above an island, a set of glass doors leading out toward a wide veranda…

“Is that Jungkook?” Hoseok asked again, and Yoongi cast a glance over his shoulder, pulled back toward the sleepy-eyed man before him. He nodded his head. 

“Yeah.”

Hoseok squinted at the small back, tilted his head. “I don’t think that I-“

Seokjin, careful as always, manoeuvred the boy, until his back was nestled safely into his legs, the boy’s nose resting against his neck. The white mop of hair covered his eyes, but the sharp line of his jaw was there, the deep V-line of his white shirt revealing a sliver of skin. Jungkook snuffled, pushed his body closer into Seokjin, and Yoongi smiled.

“He was freezing before I held him,” Seokjin murmured, cooing underneath his breath into Jungkook’s ear as his fingers grazed the shoulder’s of the kid’s shirt. “I don’t know how he was so cold. He was buried in these damn blankets.”

“I don’t know if I remember him?” Hoseok murmured quizzically, his mouth moving to say other words but unsure as to what, or how, to say them. He looked crestfallen, to Yoongi; he wanted to remember the kid. “But I remember a voice..”

“His hair’s changed. He’s gotten smaller, too,” Seokjin murmured. “Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’ve forgotten him, Hobi. Every time we meet again, nearly all of you forget him anyways.” Yoongi’s fingers reached up to hold Jungkook’s bare ankle. He winced when he felt how cold he was, and jolted when he felt how… thin the kid had got. He could fit his entire hand around his ankle, wrap each finger over one another. He swallowed, heart filled with so much dread. This needed to change. Aish, the child in front of them needed to get better.

“Why are we all here?” Jimin whispered, voice so quiet Namjoon barely heard him as their leader turned to look down at his fear-filled eyes. “I-I’m happy that were together again, but why.. why are we here?” Namjoon felt the tightening grip on his wrist, and winced. “I don’t understand- where is this place?”

“It’s okay, Jiminie,” Hoseok said, wrapping his arms around the boy. Jimin’s face burrowed into his neck, hands gripping fistfuls of his white shirt. “We’re together, though. That’s what’s most important, right?”

“It’s because of Jungkook,” Namjoon intoned. Hoseok looked over his shoulder at the elder, eyes wide. 

“Whoa, your voice got so much deeper since I saw you last.”

Namjoon gave a ghost of a smile, but continued to look directly at Seokjin, gaze serious. “The kid brought us back. I think that this is the last time. One more chance, to get it right.”

“What do you mean the last time?” Yoongi growled, voice cutting through the silence. Seokjin felt his arms tighten around the child, who groaned in his sleep. “What the hell-“

Something creaked behind them. Everyone jumped. The wooden wall behind the sofa was moving, morphing into stone. Out of nowhere, a fire lit itself in the fireplace. Just. Like. That.

Hoseok screamed. “I’m not that fucking high-“ 

Jimin winced at the sound his voice made; Taehyung, on Namjoon’s back, stirred, wheezed a soft breath. Namjoon glanced over his shoulder to see his face riddle with pain.

“It’s the house,” Namjoon finally said as he turned back to five pairs of quizzical eyes. Everyone looked up to him. “The house is enchanted. It follows its own whim. Things appear and disappear, based on whether or not you need it. At least, I think that’s what Jungkook told me, once.” His eyes narrowed at the floor. “Was he crying again?”

Seokjin tsked. “You’ve known?”

Namjoon looked up, his shoulder drawing up as Taehyung moved his head in his sleep. “I’ve been trying to find the kid for years, Jin,” he said, the nickname falling from his lips as easy as a drawn breath. 

“I don’t understand what’s happening-“ Jimin started and Hoseok grunted.

“Yeah, still confus-“

The fire crackled, and the bundle in Seokjin’s arms rustled, head turning closer into Seokjin’s chest. A hand, pale, too pale for Yoongi’s liking, pulled up to the neckline of Seokjin’s jumper, and a soft snuffle could be heard in the sudden, tense silence. Jungkook was pulling his body up, the red coverlet falling as he moved. He blinked, his white hair ruffled and glittering as it fell forward into sleepy eyes. When he blinked, he turned toward Yoongi, and Yoongi startled-

His eyes were a beautiful shade of blue, and those blue orbs moved, as though there were an ocean underneath them, inside them. Magic thrummed in Jungkook’s being, and the knowledge of it neither scared him, nor surprised him. He breathed out, before reaching up for Jungkook’s cheek, and Jungkook blinked again, as if still coming to. The dark circles underneath those jewelled orbs made Yoongi’s heart break, and when his skin felt the warmth and softness of the younger, it was then that Jungkook’s eyes widened, lips parted in shock.

Jungkook looked toward those standing in the doorway, blinked again.

Seokjin’s hand on his shoulder startled him and he looked toward the eldest. Yoongi could see the kid’s pulse through his neck. The blue of his veins stood out, a stark contrast to the paper that was his skin, and Yoongi’s heart lurched.

He’s sick, Yoongi thought. He’s not healthy. He’s sick-

“Jungkook?” Yoongi murmured. 

Jungkook looked back to him. His voice, soft, cracking, “Hyung? You’re… here. Hyung.”

Jungkook’s fingers were in Yoongi’s shirt before the older realised it. As if to confirm that he was here, that they were real, and Yoongi wasn’t sure whether his heart was breaking for the youngest, or if his heart had broken for those of them who couldn’t remember this precious child.

“Were here,” Yoongi said, smiling soft as he reached for the kid’s wrists, fingers circling the soft skin he found underneath the cuffs of his sleeves. The ice underneath his skin warmed, and Yoongi squeezed a little harder. “We’re home, Jungkook.”

A breath passed Jungkook’s open lips, and a tear slipped before Jungkook’s eyes closed and he was reaching out for him, wrapping his arms around him and holding him, tight. Quiet snuffles echoed in Yoongi’s ears, and Yoongi pulled his arms around the younger as he held him, tight.

“We’re home, Jungkook,” he murmured into the kid’s hair, Seokjin’s hand caressing his back as Namjoon came to kneel behind Yoongi and reach for one of the kid’s wrists. “You were trying to reach all of us in the end, weren’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Jungkook murmured into his skin. “This is so bad. Selfish.”

“Why would you say that, Jungkook-ah?” Seokjin murmured, voice gentle. Jungkook burrowed deeper into Yoongi’s shoulder, shoulders hunching tight, as though protecting his body. Namjoon’s hand soothed over the tense lines of his neck, calming him. 

“Jungkook, our lives weren’t really going anywhere before now. It’s okay,” Namjoon murmured. 

“What do you mean?” Jimin murmured, kneeling behind their leader. “What-“

Jungkook’s quiet snuffles became genuine cries as Jimin’s voice spoke. Sobs wracked his frame. “I didn’t want you to come here- wanted you all to find each other-“

“Well, we did-“ Hoseok started. He stood off from everyone, scratching the back of his head.

“Not meant to remember me-“ Jungkook added into Yoongi’s neck, breath hot and tear-stained.

“I think half of us remembered you anyway, Jungkook,” Yoongi softly added. “Hey, kid, what’s wrong? What’s causing all these tears-“

Jungkook pulled away from Yoongi, put both hands on his cheeks and held him there. Eyes, rimmed red and tired, stared back into his, so full of pain and misery. Mouth opening, then closing, before eventually finding his words. “The house won’t let you go, Yoongi-hyung,” he murmured, soft. “If you’re all here, then that means that you can’t go back. I didn’t want that- didn’t want that at all. You can’t go back.” Jungkook closed his eyes, crumpling in on himself as he pitched forward, sobs louder as the room stilled completely. Yoongi, horror-struck, stared at Seokjin’s pale face, before Yoongi reached around Jungkook and pulled him in close, trying to calm the fear that riddled the kid.

But Jungkook wouldn’t calm. His body shook harder, and Yoongi felt heat on his neck, liquid heat. He winced. Thick liquid that seemed to pull his shoulder down toward the floor. 

“Jungkook, stop-“ Namjoon was saying. Voice hoarse, begging, pleading-“Jungkook, you need to stop that, please-“

Yoongi winced when he felt how warm the kid’s chin was. He pulled a hand away from the kid’s shoulder and stared, in horror, at the gold liquid underneath his fingers. It dripped down between each separated finger, dropping down along his sleeve, a molten-gold colour.

“You don’t have a whole lot of magic left, kid, stop wasting it-“ Namjoon said, voice soft. “You can’t undo the magic- Jungkook, it’s okay. We’ll be okay, together, now.”

“That Jungkookie?” A deep voice growled from over Yoongi’s shoulder. There was a whine in that sound, as though someone were trying to keep something bottled up, locked down. Taehyung. That was Taehyung’s voice. Long fingers, bruised and torn, were suddenly working through Jungkook’s hair, from the corner of Yoongi’s eye. “’S okay, Jungkookie. No homes to go back to, anyways. Go t’sleep, just for now, m’kay?”

Slowly, slowly, Jungkook’s breaths became less hitched as Taehyung hummed underneath his voice. A little glimmer, a windchime-like sound, echoed in Yoongi’s ears, as Taehyung’s fingers moved into Jungkook’s hair. Something glittered, little beads of light, Yoongi thought, and then, suddenly, those hiccups softened, and Yoongi felt Jungkook’s weight plunge as he went down into a very, very deep sleep, Taehyung’s voice soothing him all the while.

“That’s better, Jungkookie. Go to sleep.”

When they looked toward Taehyung, everyone saw that the two boys were fast asleep, cheek resting on Namjoon’s shoulder, lips parted open, chin nestled into Yoongi’s, face pained, but bowled over, knocked out cold. Taehyung’s face was peaceful, as though soothed by his own lullabies, soothed by the feeling of Jungkook underneath his fingers.

And those little beads of… light, Yoongi thought, were working through Taehyung’s fingers. Coming from Taehyung’s fingers, and Namjoon and him both shared a look, emotionless, if only for the glimmer of something breathing in Namjoon’s eyes as he looked down at Taehyung’s hand.

Namjoon’s eyes said, Don’t say a thing. Don’t breathe a word. Not yet.

Yoongi’s eyes answered, I won’t.

Namjoon blinked and, in the silence, he quietly murmured, “If we’re here, that means we can’t go back to our homes. We’re stuck here, in this house, for the rest of our lives. To the world we came from, we don’t exist anymore. We are dead.”

Chapter Text

The cicadas were loud, but with their sounds gave peace to the rushing inside Jungkook’s mind. Whether it was a part of a memory, or something real, Jungkook could not be sure. Yet, the heat rose along his back; he breathed out a puff of air against something hot, sweat beading at the base of his neck, the ends of his hair stuck to his forehead, his neck. He murmured, something, moved a little, until his arm tugged.

The darkness surrounding him turned a flare of red; he pulled against whatever caged his arm. It pulled back.

Groaning, he murmured again- what the hell did he fall asleep against again? Couch, right? He face-planted on the couch- yes, that was- he was being pulled back into the couch, yes—

“Jungkookie, are you awake?”

He opened his eyes. 

That wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. What? 

Eyelashes fluttering against skin, bare skin. He pulled up short. 

What?

Slow, rising from the tendrils of the deep sleep he’d been under, he heard the cicadas again, the rushing sound pulsing against his temples, and he groaned, pulling himself back down under the band of heat he was lying next to. Sleep. He wanted to sleep-

“Jin, you are not going to believe what’s outside these damn, massive windows.”

“Hey, hush, Guk’s still sleeping,” returned the same voice that called him earlier.

“There’s a village- then, out there, the beach- we’re at the beach! Look at the waves, the blue skies- if we’re really dead, then this is freaking awesom-“

“Hoseok!” someone scolded from above. Slowly, as though coming up from the heat of the clouds he thought he floated on, Jungkook reached out with a free hand, grasped something soft, and the person above him stopped talking. Jungkook mumbled against something that felt sharp as his cheek moved, and something was beating against his ear-

He stopped, eyes fluttering open.

Heart beat. He could hear a heart beating against his ear.

He was still in the house, wasn’t he? He was still inside-

Jungkook lashed out of sleep, pulling his body up from wherever he’d been lying, and- and-

Something grasped his wrist, pulled him back-

“Come back here, ya damn bride-“

Jungkook flinched, squeezing his eyes shut, away from whatever was behind him-

“Jungkook,” someone whispered from behind, voice gentle. Jungkook stilled, heart pounding like a live-wire under his skin. That voice was so familiar, so-

He glanced over his shoulder to a pair of brown eyes that were grinning down at him. He stopped. Dreaming. He had to have been dreaming, that was it. “You’re finally awake.”

Awake? No, he couldn’t have been. No way, no-

“Jungkookie.” 

He turned, and Taehyung’s sleepy eyes were gazing up at his, a lazy smile on his features. His chin sat perched on the edge of the couch, folded under his arms, and Jungkook stared, blinked, then continued to stare, because what was this- what was-

This could not have been real. The God swore that he would not be able to bring anyone into the house, swore that as long as his powers remained, this… things like this, couldn’t happen.

Jungkook caught sight of the black veins on Taehyung’s neck. 

Those veins…

His heart wrenched at the sight. He remembered the… dreams. The bad people. Taehyung’s wrists being held down as he cried for help. Those veins, shaded black, like tattoos, weaving down further along Taehyung’s body, under his clothes, along his spine, like fissures upon the dry, cracked earth. 

Like something he’d seen before, but he couldn’t remember what that was. Blood, maybe, dripping from parted lips, and webs of tattoos inked over a body he’d been transfixed by.

Jungkook saw the way they pulled his shirt down, the way they… hurt him.

But right now, Taehyung looked… soft. As though the pain wasn’t there anymore. Underneath a mass of curls that looked glossy and clean, he smiled, lips no longer dry, cheeks a pale-pink. 

The light’s back. It’s there.

The orange garments he’d worn, once, were gone, favouring a skin-coloured pullover and white t-shirt. The faint scent of lemons drifted between them. Oh, Taehyung found the baths on the second floor, then. Or maybe… 

Maybe the light is his, again.

Maybe they would switch back, again. Maybe.

He shook his head, dispelling the weird turn his thoughts had taken. Thoughts that were not his, but a part of something else- the God, maybe, the God that was a part of him, he reasoned. The God, who refused to allow Jungkook to see its thoughts, or emotions.

He cast a glance toward a frazzled-looking Hoseok.

It could have been that Namjoon had shown them parts of the house, then.

Or, maybe his dreams were more creative than he thought. 

If that were so…

Taehyung watched him lazily when Jungkook looked back toward him. If that were so…

Slowly, he reached out with trembling fingers. He wanted to get rid of Taehyung’s pain. As easy as breathing, it would have been; oh, how long he’d wanted to do this…

Taehyung closed his eyes, smiling softly, until Jungkook’s fingertips grazed his forehead, breathing out as the sound of chimes filled the air between them. The air turned electric, taut, something he’d grown so used to all these years, alone. 

Something gold dripped from Jungkook’s still-warm cheek, but the blackness, the wrongness, on Taehyung’s neck, spasmed and- pulled- from his skin. A tiny wrench of pain made him wince; his whole body was coming-to. Awareness flooded his skin, the muscles in his neck pulling taut, tensing under the weight of something so dark, so fierce, it had no name. Jungkook knew he would feel this, after.

But, for now, he’d allow himself to feel anger.

As if waking, Taehyung’s eyes went wide. Pulled away from him, but by then, Jungkook’s intent was made clear.

Taehyung gasped, pulled down from the couch and landed on the floor, staring up on his elbows, horrified, at what had erupted from his own skin.

Jungkook pulled his sore body together as the black mass in his sitting room took shape, floating high above all of their heads.

It screamed at Jungkook, and Jungkook tilted his head, jaw clenched. “You’d do well to remember who you speak to, demon,” he said, voice calm. He felt Namjoon tense, close by, the guardian possibly gearing up to call out for Euphoria. As it were, Jungkook crossed his legs, tilted his head, his eyebrow arching; a challenge. 

This… this was worth it. Even if it was just a dream.

The demon spasmed, poised to attack. Jungkook reached up, squeezed his hand shut, and the thing screeched as it dissolved into dust, emptiness, nothingness.

A second passed in the room. Jungkook dropped his hand, rasped a wet breath, and looked down to Taehyung’s wide-awake eyes. He smiled, softly. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long, but couldn’t. I’m sorry, hyung.”

He was aware that there was more than Taehyung, or Seokjin, or Hoseok, or Namjoon, in the room. He was aware of his shoulders shaking, a little. Everything hurt. The old God had warned him, he dimly remembered, that the pain would grow worse. He knew it was coming, of course, but…

“- there may be a cure, but as for me, I have never found it, until you…”

Clenched fingers, and Jungkook remembered the gladness he’d felt, all that time before. He was helping someone, even if that help meant casting Namjoon out. Finally, he remembered thinking, he could be useful, he could bring some form of peace.

He could feel it in the house. The house was happy, alight at the prospect of so many people in one place, sharing their home. It felt… real. He smiled again at Taehyung, hoping that, somehow, the elder would find reassurance in the traces of his face. Taehyung leashed a breath, his shoulders rattling with the shock of what he’d just seen, before he grasped his neck, where the demon had lain. “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he whispered, dazed. “You-“ he looked back toward Jungkook, who smiled a little wider, even though the tense line of his shoulders suggested fear instead of the calm he was hoping to share.

“Jungkook,” Seokjin murmured from behind him, and Jungkook turned. Seokjin’s eyes were soft, the line of his mouth gentle, as he wrapped both his arms around him, pulled him back down into a hug. “You’ve been here all this time.”

Jungkook tensed, his shoulders raising a little as Seokjin squeezed him, his breaths warm against the crown of his head. This felt… real. This wasn’t…

“You’re finally awake,” Namjoon’s voice filled the air, and Jungkook’s eyes tore from the ceiling, finding a pair of chestnut-brown eyes watching him from the kitchen, Jimin’s hand gripping his elbow at his side. He stilled. “How’s our maknae doing?”

The guardian was speaking to him. Oh.

Wait.

It was then that the memories of what happened before he fell asleep awoke. Oh-

Oh.

Wait.

Wait.

Yoongi-

Jungkook sat up, head swivelling around the space of the sitting room. He found Hoseok gripping Yoongi’s shoulders right next to the window behind the couch, the embers of the fire in the newly-constructed fireplace dying down behind them. While Hoseok looked weary, terrified from what he’d just witnessed, Yoongi’s face seemed more rounded, his eyes softened, brown hair a little more tousled. They both seemed smaller, though; Hoseok carried himself as though drug-weary and Yoongi looked beaten-down. Dark circles lined their eyes. Jungkook cast a glance toward Taehyung, Namjoon, Jimin and Seokjin behind him, before he looked down at his cradled fingers.

They all carried shadows under their eyes. 

This was…

“Real?” He murmured, dazed, dazzled by something he could never remember doing. His skin crawled, but he felt… distant, from all of it. Was this… real?

Was this…

“It’s real, Jungkook,” Namjoon murmured. “This isn’t a dream.”

His dreams were vivid, terrifying monsters of darkness and running and fear. Death permeated the edges every time he closed his eyes in this world… and found himself in another. And somehow… somehow…

They were all here because Jungkook’s stupid-dying-magic brought them here. Forced them here.

His fingers shook, vision blurred, and he tasted blood as he bit down on dry lips.

“Jungkook?” Jimin hesitantly murmured. A flicker of dancer-like light echoed in his voice as he spoke- Jungkook caught the afterimage, the ghost of an arrow and bow against Jimin’s palms. Oh. Oh, no. “Jungkook, what’s wrong?”

They wouldn’t remember him, and yet they called him by name. They wouldn’t remember him, but the past, those hundreds of years of time turning, beckoned. Why could they remember him? Why-

The God promised him that this wasn’t possible. The God said that it was a part of the curse.

To remain alone. Forever.

“- there may be a cure, but as for me, I have never found it, until you…”

He gripped his shirt, tugged at it, cold air scratching his skin, making him shudder. He curled further into himself, trying to feel a space that couldn’t be filled by his own body. He rubbed his eyes instead, felt hands encircle his arms, pull them away from his face, and warm air replace the places where his skin were left feeling empty, cold. He opened his eyes; Taehyung’s warm brown eyes stared back.

“No more crying, Jungkookie, please.”

The timber of his voice made Jungkook shake; light, so much light, in those words, Jungkook was blinded by them. Like the stars. Gods, so much like the sun, moon and stars in that voice, a whole universe, remembered, and here he was, sitting in front of him. Sitting in front of all of them, and-

Gods, he missed his friends. He missed them so, so much. 

Their silhouettes as they sat on top of the bunker, legs dangling out toward the outskirts of Seoul. Promising to stay together before they all fell apart. Hazy, sunny days spent lazing around, blades of grass dancing over their heads. Counting clouds. Running against Seoul’s underground traffic. Drinking into the sunrise. Campfires and whispers and skin against skin-

He shouldn’t be allowed to have friends anymore. He was so, so selfish for making them come here, for gathering them here-

Jungkook didn’t realise his eyes were closed until he opened them again.

“Why did you go, Jungkook?” Seokjin breathed into his ear. His arms were around him again. Jungkook squeezed his eyes shut, whimpered. 

“I don’t think that he wants to be held, hyung,” Jimin whispered. His voice was closer. Everything was too close. Too close-

“Pretty soon, dearie, and you’ll be mine.”

The growl in his memories made everything too warm- too close- too too close-

He couldn’t hear anything. White noise. Just white-

Something pulled? Something was pulling- his wrists? Couldn’t. Tell-

Hurt. Everything was sore- everything-

Lungs. Couldn’t. Breathe-

Was he breathing? Did he. Open his mouth-

Cold. Something cold. On his neck-

“Breathe, Kookie-“

No-

Fists in his hair, pulling. Selfish. So selfish. But he wanted them. So bad. Wanted his friends. Wanted them here, but he pulled them away from their homes, their families, their everythings.

Sound filtered back through his ears, slow, like the drip of a tap, like-

He was wailing. There was a low keening sound coming from the pit of his lungs; something shattered. A siren’s wail, madness, at the bottom of a clear glass. Glass crashed. Air whoosed through the house, discomforted, angry. Hoseok’s shout. A ceiling, caving, underneath Jungkook’s pain. He should never have asked them to come here. He was so, so bad-

Distant. A chandelier. Glass. Falling. Smashing-

There were hands on his cheeks; they were cold, fingertips splayed, curling underneath his jaw, pulling him close by the back of his neck. 

“Jungkook, it’s okay,” he heard in his ears. “Jungkook, it’s alright. It’s okay.”

“My fault,” he was saying. Repeating. His lungs- fuck, he couldn’t breathe-

In. In. Out, Kookie. Just breathe, it’s okay.

Chest clenched, something giving way as he felt wetness on his cheeks, skin burning- his, was that him? 

Someone- Jimin, felt small, small hands and shoulders- was pulling him in, and he was turning into his neck, feeling a pulse underneath the bridge of his nose, feeling small, safe-

“That’s it, just breathe Kookie, just breathe.”

Jungkook’s eyes fluttered between spots of black, sparks of white. A sharp pain on his neck, fingers twitching. Might be him-

“-he whole room- the fuck-“

“Is that blood-“

He flinched. Mewled into Jimin’s shoulder. Hands were on his ears, blocking out the sound. 

Jungkook did bad things. He deserved bad things. Deserved everything bad. Deserved chains and thorns and death. Deserved all of the things that took him away from them.

Was the house giving him a last wish? Was this it? Was this what he was going to get, for the years, and years, and years, he spent alone, trawling through the house, scared?

He was tired. Limbs heavy, sinking into the warmth of Jimin’s neck. A headache, throbbing against his skull. Sick. He wanted to be sick. Everything hurt. But, but he needed to make sure that they were okay.

His fingers were on Jimin’s shirt, pulling, trying to open his eyes.

The blood was his, thank Gods. His fingernails were dotted with it; his neck, so, he’d pulled on the skin at his neck. Looked up, Taehyung. Taehyung’s hands in front of him, reaching out, and beyond that-

The room was a mess. As if everything had caved inward, glass shards all over the floor, curtains completely ripped from their beams. Hoseok, standing in a corner behind Namjoon, and Yoongi looking all around him, at the dust that filtered through the room. The sun beamed in, the sounds of the waves washing ashore in the distance.

Jimin’s eyes were wide, fearful, but his arms still held Jungkook, as though he were meant to be held. 

“Jungkook,” Seokjin murmured. 

“The house is enchanted,” Jungkook mumbled, voice cracking, barely a whisper against Jimin’s skin. “It reacts to whatever is inside of it. M’sorry. ‘S my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you here. You can’t even go home.” The last two words were what broke him; he couldn’t give them that. A home. A safe place. This place was their prison now, too.

“I think we’re more or less over that, kid,” Yoongi said. 

Taehyung’s warm hands enveloped his, but Jungkook pulled away, pulled out of Jimin’s grip, swayed as he sat up.

He wrenched his fingers into his shirt, smearing dots of blood into the clothing.

“‘M not,” he mumbled. He looked up to the ceiling. “Promised not to bring you here. Promised you’d be okay.” Closing his eyes, he imagined it, imagined the ways that the room may right itself, and slowly, the glass twinkled as it re-worked itself back into the windows, the curtains stitching themselves back together, the dust… disappearing into nothingness.

His heart ached as it done so. 

Fingers shook into his shirt. 

Heat crawled up his neck, sweat beading his forehead underneath his fringe. Head ducked down. He was so, so tired, a lump rising in his throat as he tried to swallow it back down. Sick. He was-

-too tired to be sick.

“You don’t look well, Kookie,” Seokjin breathed in the silence. 

Jungkook opened his eyes, couldn’t even look up to the eldest, lips parted as he rasped a breath.

“I promised that I’d never see you again. That’s what I told the God, and he said that he’d keep you all safe. He promised-“

He swayed, dizzy. Hands reached for his shoulders.

“He promised-“

There were hands underneath his legs, someone holding his shoulders up. Weightless. He knew the feeling of Namjoon’s broad chest. Something rumbled underneath his ear.

“Promised…”

“Sleep for now, Jungkook,” their leader whispered and…

“Safe. Promised…”

Jungkook felt himself fall under.

Chapter Text

“He’s sick,” Jimin rasped, eyes stained with tears and voice broken from crying into Hoseok’s shoulder. “He’s sick, isn’t he, hyung?”

Namjoon was standing in the doorway, breathing slowing after the house began to calm. Bitten lips, clenched fingers. Tense shoulders wide enough that he seemed like a monster standing in the doorway.

All so strange to Jimin; Namjoon got taller again, his shoulder span widened. Even Hoseok filled out a little, too. They had muscle now, were strong enough to carry them anywhere, if carrying Taehyung across Namjoon’s shoulders, or lifting Jungkook were any indication. People could hide behind Hoseok easily, and feel safe, comforted.

Seokjin was seeing to the cuts on Jungkok’s neck upstairs. Yoongi and Taehyung were with him. There was a fire in the nearest bedroom, wood cracking as Jungkook was laid carefully on the bed, fingers clutching at anything in his sleep- a shirt, a wrist, skin.

“He isn’t just sick. Jungkook’s-“ Namjoon stopped. 

“How do you know?” Hoseok suddenly found his voice. “How do you know about this house, this place, and that boy, Jungkook?”

They were sitting close to the veranda. The open-plan kitchen stretched in a semi-circle, enclosing a long island with a marble top, and various pots and pans dangled from their hanging place in the ceiling. The windows, wide as they were, were thrown open, and the scents of summer filled their noses in the cool, tiled kitchen. There was something baking in the oven; Hoseok didn’t want to look too close, but knew that a damn ladle was turning in a copper pot on the cooker. He could smell soup; vegetable, a hint of apple. Outside, a river trickled on the open veranda. There was no enclosure; if anyone wanted to, they could simply jump into the clear waters below. The whole place looked so idyllic, peaceful, and so faraway from human life. Birds were singing through the green of the trees, the roll of waves upon the shorelines in the distance. Hoseok clasped his fingers together, and Jimin sniffled into his shoulder, still wearing his white clothes.

“What is happening?” Hoseok looked into Namjoon’s eyes. “Tell me everything.”

“The house is magic. It’s fuelled by the same magic that Jungkook uses,” Namjoon started. “But it also has a… personality of its own. It does, literally, whatever it wants. It’s partial to Jungkook, will protect him no matter what happens, but…”

Here he stopped. His hands wringing. “I.. can’t say it,” he finished. He opened his mouth again, then pushed a hand through his hair. “Jungkook isn’t well. The house knows it; it’s confused. It’s tried to make him better, but… something is making him worse. His powers are going; things are happening in the worlds, and-“

“Lost. Fucking lost, Namjoon.” Hoseok threw his hands up in the air. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. No clue where this bullshit is coming from-“

“I was charged with protecting the kid, fucking eons ago,” Namjoon growled. Jimin winced, head ducking underneath the head of Namjoon’s anger. Hoseok stilled, eyebrow arched. “But then, he made a pact with a God, and cast me out. But, before he cast me out, we were together. Seven of us. When Jungkook became a God… every-time I tried to bring every single one of you together, something stopped me. A fucking barrier. Jungkook, in his sleep, would see you guys-“

“What? Lost again.”

“Jungkook is a God,” Namjoon started, after a moment. He slumped onto a high-stool at the island. Hoseok leaned back from his chair at the dining table. “Jungkook can weave magic. Alter fate. He can grant wishes, but with a price. He, this house, they’re tied. He can allow spirits to cross into other worlds with the ribbons attached to his hands. Sometimes, depending on the moon, he can sing worlds into existence. The moon can shield him. If the sun is there, he is offensive; the sun acts as his weapon. Like a star. Jungkook is like a star. And then, he met a dying God, and promised to help him. Jungkook freed the God from death, and undertook the burden in this…” he gestured with a finger to the floor, “… place.” 

“Burden?”

“Jungkook can’t leave here, Hoseok. He leaves the house, he dies. And re-appears. Here. The house withers a little when he leaves, and it takes years, fucking years, for it to grow back into itself.” He pointed at the floor again. “But, more than that, as Jungkook-“

Hoseok breathed out through his nose, licked his lips. “This literally feels like a dream.”

Jimin breathed in Hoseok’s scent, the ends of his hair tickling his cheek. He looked toward the open doors, then moved away from the two men. He reached out for the glass on the door, about to push through, when both doors swung wide open, and the sounds of the birds grew a little louder. Stilling, flinching from the unprepared movement, he watched, blinking, at the doors. Something was pushing him from behind, a breeze that rose the goosebumps on the back of his neck, but didn’t scare him, and he didn’t feel the laughter bubble out of him until he swore he heard the softness of a female voice in his ears, so unlike anything he’d ever heard in his life, before.

Come now, those fingers on the sleeves of his shirt were whispering, Come outside. Listen. You’re free. You’re home.

Hoseok had stopped talking, watching as Jimin stood on the veranda, curling his legs around his elbows and simply listening to the music of the world around him.

“Hobi,” he murmured, “We are free here, aren’t we?” The faint breeze ruffled his hair. It felt as though all of his worries were being carried downstream, the soft drift of the waters underneath carrying away all of his worries, fears, doubts. Dimly, he recalled the water, in a bath-tub so, so long ago, back when his mother found him-

He stopped, opening his eyes. A shudder rippled down his spine. That was when they left. That was when Namjoon disappeared, when… He blinked. Someone else might have disappeared back then.

Jungkook. It could have been Jungkook, then.

He simply disappeared. 

Heart pounding underneath his ribcage, something grazed the skull of his memory- a laugh, someone shouting ‘Hyung!’ even though it sounded so, so far away… so distant, as though they were an ocean away, and he was simply holding their shoes as he waited for them to come back to shore.

Something dropped onto his shoulders. He stilled, the weight reassuring, and warm, but when he looked over his shoulder, Hoseok and Namjoon were still in the kitchen, murmuring between themselves.

There was a red blanket on his shoulders, materialised from nowhere, and it was so warm, Jimin could’ve sworn he felt a pair of arms nestled somewhere underneath the folds of the material. The ends of the cloth pulled up around his arms, encasing his entire body in heat, and he ducked down, breathing in the scent of the sea, the orange blossoms so strong it made him smile.

The blanket from the couch, then.

“Thank you,” he murmured, knowing his words would reach the house. “I know that the others might feel differently, but I’m so, so happy to be here.”

The veranda shook in answer, and sunlight danced through the rustling of the branches. 

Somehow, Jimin thought that the house was laughing.

And the sun that shook through the branches, felt, to Jimin, just that bit warmer. Like the heat of a fire. Kindling.

Growing.

“It’s like Never-land,” Taehyung mumbled as he curled close to the prone body on the bed. The heat in the bedroom was stifling; the body underneath him rasped a breath, sweat trickling down his bare neck as he turned away from Taehyung, but still clutched his wrist, loose. Pulling, as though he thought that the older would let him go, pulling him along, as if Taehyung would ever, ever dream of letting go.

“Yeah, I know. There were freaking feathers falling from the ceiling in the room I woke up in,” Yoongi said. He brushed his fringe back, cleared his throat. “So where does that leave us?”

“With 'Guk, of course,” Seokjin said, curling his fingers into the sweat-damp hair of their maknae.

Surrounding them, the room groaned, curling inward, the wooden walls creaking, and Taehyung was reminded of a log cabin. The fireplace was small, made of stone, and the rugs underneath the bed were cosy. The bed, as it was, took up most of the room; there were three doors inside, and none of them mentioned where those damn rooms would lead them.

Jungkook turned again, and this time, Taehyung reached out his shoulders, drawing the kid up and pulling him into his arms completely so that he were lying on his chest, his whole body pressed to the maknae. Instantly, Jungkook stilled, loosed a breath into Taehyung’s shoulder, his nose pressed into the place where his neck met his shoulder.

Stilling, as though he’d been looking for somewhere comfortable to rest, and had finally found it, here.

A flicker, of warmth, something golden and soft, trickled through Taehyung’s blinking lids. Oh.

He felt like he’d come home, and oh, it felt so good. Safe. Good.

Taehyung closed his eyes, ignored Seokjin’s bickering as the elder told him to be careful.

Jungkook killed whatever it was they gave him, in the prison. Just took it away, as though it were nothing. He briefly recalled the searing pain while he lay strapped there to the bed, skin torn from the inside as he screamed. The shackles ripped into his wrist, his ankles, and yet they ignored his pain. Testing a new drug, they’d said, just administering it as if he were nothing but an animal.

Then, he’d tried to ignore the fact that all of them, in their white coats, had black-as-night teeth, red eyes, their skin stanched with death.

Jungkook took all of that away, as though he deserved forgiveness for what he had done.

The demon inside Taehyung was gone, and now…

He blew a cool breath against Jungkook’s neck, felt him shudder. Something.. silver gleamed underneath the maknae’s shoulder. Taehyung squinted at it, unsure as to what it was. They’d covered the kid with a blanket, kept his trousers where they were, but in the faint flickering light of the fire to his left, neither of them paid too much attention to his skin, how thin he looked, how… wasted away. As though a breath would knock him over.

No wonder Namjoon lifted him as though he weighed nothing. Even to Taehyung, he barely lost his breath from holding ‘Guk now.

The cuts were covered with an ointment that Seokjin found sitting next to the bed. But-

Choosing to keep it to himself- he was sure that the others had seen these silver scars- he kept his mouth shut. Another time, maybe, when Jungkook got rid of… whatever this was.

“This place is where all of us go, when there’s nowhere else to go, isn’t it?” Yoongi whispered from where he sat, slumped, against the wooden wall. He’d chosen to sit on the floor, close to the fire, at a distance, but still able to see everything. Seokjin stilled, fingers once caressing Jungkook’s wrist underneath the heavy blanket.

“I think so,” Seokjin replied, looking all around him.

The room shuddered, and Yoongi groaned. “I don’t speak house language,” he said, words clearly ennunciated. “You might have to translate a little easier for some of us.”

Something thumped next to the fireplace, and everyone jumped. Taehyung nearly sat up, and Jungkook moved in his sleep, curling close around his chest. His breaths became deeper, as though he were finally gone under, and Taehyung clasped his body a little tighter, feeling a little cooler as the maknae began to cool down from whatever it was his body was going through.

There was a book on the floor. Yoongi barked a laugh. “A house with a sense of humour,” he said.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie was written in neat scrawl on a green, hardback book.

Seokjin sniggered. “Right, same humour as Hoseok, maybe?”

Yoongi shrugged. “Does this mean that Jungkook is Peter Pan?” He asked.

The book opened of its own accord. Yoongi squinted, then grunted.

Taehyung turned his head toward Yoongi. “Well?”

Yoongi murmured, “‘Jungkook still has time. Save him. Before the King comes.’”

The room tensed as he murmured his words. “And how do we go about doing that?” Seokjin said.

Taehyung carded his fingers through the younger’s hair. Jungkook swallowed, leaned closer into Taehyung, eyelashes moving as he dreamed, neck pulsing, and Taehyung breathed into the crown of his head, whispering little nothings into his hair.

That flickering of warmth in his chest pulled. The wrongness of the word ‘King’ making his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth.

“More important, how many of us still remember Jungkook?” Taehyung said. “Truly?”

Breaths, photographs, of all their times, with a shadow, a silhouette, a peal of laughter, hands stretching out toward them. They remembered a part of him, or his name, or his eyes and smile. They remembered train carriages, or houses made of wood, a horrific car crash, fingers on a piano that played so badly out of tune. They remembered running through the streets of Seoul, a cage with a flower inside of it; the sea, all of them remembered the day at the sea.

Or was it a beach?

Bits, pieces. Arranged into a mess that they couldn’t fully pierce together.

Taehyung breathed out, looked at Seokjin, whose eyes stared into a distance he could not follow.

“I remember being told to bring us back together, but that…” he stuttered, “That was so, so long ago. Every time I tried to bring all of us together, one of us would eventually break apart.”

“Just one of us?” Yoongi murmured. “One of us didn’t just leave, Jin.”

“In the world we just came from, Jungkook died by walking out in front of a car,” Seokjin murmured. His voice, utterly quiet against the slap of the fire, cracked. Taehyung saw the tears fall down his cheeks as he watched Jungkook. “When he died, everyone… stopped talking. Like a switch. Everyone just became distant from one another. In another world, it was Jungkook who left the group, and Yoongi followed. We don’t know what happened to you, but I knew that Jungkook was dead. Found him, eventually, heart pierced by an arrow.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop. A waterfall of words cascaded from his lips and, not once did Yoongi or Taehyung stop him.

“There- there was a place, somewhere, like this room, with wood inside of it. Jungkook was on the other side of the window, and I… shut the curtains. He disappeared into a glass cage then…” he wasn’t sure how to continue, but the words wouldn’t stop coming, and he sniffled, closed his eyes, pulled his head into his hands. “He was running, I was trying to catch up to him- he gave the ring-leader something, and bargained for a key. He disappeared, and the house disappeared. We were safe, outside. But Jungkook was gone.”

He sniffled, pulled his sleeves across his eyes. “I can’t piece it together, because I don’t know what order it went. There’s a correlation between the two. I know that there is, I just-“

“Were there other times?” Taehyung murmured.

“The beach,” Yoongi murmured. Seokjin sniffed. 

“Yeah. The beach too. And a train, once. We were all in a carriage. Omelas.”

A soft huff escaped Yoongi. “Right. And what ties all of this together? I’m confused as fuck right now.”

“There were shadows, too,” Taehyung murmured, remembering his dreams. “Everytime I saw Jungkook in my dreams.” He closed his eyes, “There were shadows.” 

He’s all mine. Not yours. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Taehyung squeezed curled his body into Jungkook’s, wrapping one bare ankle against his, drawing his two arms over Taehyung’s shoulders and pressing Jungkook’s head into his lips. No, that possessive part of him, so long dormant, growled back. Not yours.

Mine.

Seokjin groaned. “I don’t fucking know where to start connecting the dots. I’m sorry, I don’t know why, what’s happening. I don’t.” Seokjin’s voice shattered then, and Taehyung breathed out, the body underneath him finally feeling a little cooler, Jungkook’s breaths a little softer in the crook of his neck.

“I don’t think that any of it matters, just now. We’ll figure it all out,” he said, breathing in Jungkook’s scent and relaxing further into the bed. “We have time, here in Never-land, don’t we?” He looked up to the ceiling, and the house shook in answer.

“For the last time,” Yoongi grumbled, “I don’t speak ho-“

“The house is saying yes,” Taehyung chuckled, eyes heavy as he closed them. “We have all the time in the world, here in Neverland. And the house is telling us that that’s okay.”

Jungkook murmured little nothings into the skin of Taehyung’s neck, and he smiled.

He could hear all the words that Jungkook breathed, and more.

Chapter Text

In Taehyung’s dream, he was standing in front of a bookshop. He wouldn’t have known the place was a bookshop, with exception to the books sitting in each of the sunken windows.

And the sign, of course; Omelas, written in neat, golden cursive.

He cast a glance behind him; the open clearing of the woods greeted him, their branches bent low, swaying in the gentle breeze. He couldn’t hear the waves of the beach, so he knew- he knew- that this wasn’t the same place as Jungkook’s house.

Licking his lips, he tested his courage. He stepped into the house.

And found someone who looked like him, inside, light pooling from his fingertips, and a smile so similar to his own.

“Welcome, Taehyung,” the boy said. “Welcome to Omelas.”

When Jungkook surfaced, he heard silence. The wooden room was quiet, the dying, dull embers of the fire casting the room in complete shadow. He sat up, hands cloying at the heavy quilt as he moved. The silence was hollow, and he swallowed the rising tears that blurred his vision. Heart aching, he pulled at the strands of hair. He fought not to cry.

That was a vivid dream. Too vivid. He swore that he saw them, again.

Remembered Taehyung’s demon. Remembered Yoongi’s hands on his cheeks. Seokjin’s arms. 

Licking his dry lips, he took a shattered, parched breath, and pulled his aching limbs off the bed, dragging a fresh shirt over his head from where it lay on the bedside locker. Swaying, dizzy, he reached out for the door, calming his shaking hands by pushing against the wood.

Tears were slipping past his cheeks again. His head throbbed from crying, so much. Gods, make the pain stop, he wished. Please-

The house rumbled, an attempt to calm him. He shook his head. “‘M’ sorry,” he murmured. “I’ll stop now, promise.”

Opening the door as he rubbed at his red-rimmed eyes, he stumbled out of the stuffy room and into the light of the house beyond-

“-min that’s not how you make cookies!” A voice shouted from down below. Jungkook stopped, coming to a complete standstill as he craned his neck down underneath the balcony-

Someone was murmuring in reply, voice too low to make out words. A pot made a clacking sound against something that sounded like marble. And then-

“Yah, Namjoon- even Yoongi can make them better than you-“

Seokjin’s voice.

Something completely shattered in the kitchen, followed by a muffled curse. “Told you,” Seokjin’s voice grumbled. “Now look, ya even made the house angry.”

Jungkook felt he would be sick. He was literally going crazy, wasn’t he? He imagined the whole thing. But. But he wanted to see, wanted to see this illusion, wanted to see the six of them in the kitchen, or just hear their voices, a little more. Once more, he reasoned, just once more-

He grabbed ahold of the railing and took the steps two at a time as he stumbled down, bare feet cold against the wood, coming up short against the sight he found framed in the kitchen door.

There was a boy, framed in the centre of the open doorway, head knocked back as he giggled, hands splayed over his face, short brown hair dishevelled as he turned away. Dressed in pale clothes that made his skin glow. He didn’t catch sight of Jungkook, who grabbed the bannister, clung to them as he watched Jimin move out of view. 

What?

Real?

Jungkook squinted. Moved closer when he heard Hoseok clapping, followed by Taehyung’s baritone shout as Seokjin voice carried over all of them. “How in Gods’s name does this house have so much food in it? There aren’t even any Best Before dates- what the fuck?”

A door clicked open and shut in the background, and Taehyung laughed some more, a belly-like laugh that made the house…

Hum. The house was humming with energy, and some of it, slivers of it, were feeding through his feet, up into his fingers. A little giggle escaped his lips. The warmth and energy made him… made the house happy.

When Jungkook peered in through the door, merely the tip of his forehead in view, he stilled at the sight of all of them gathered around the island, shoulders touching and bowed down over whatever they were doing. Namjoon had changed his clothes, favouring a chunky-knit sweater, while Taehyung’s clothes looked more like robes, gold and white. A breeze pushed through the open doors of the veranda, and Jungkook shuddered from the cold. But he wouldn’t take his eyes off what he saw before him; Seokjin’s wide shoulders stretching over Jimin’s head as he reached for a pan, and Taehyung and Yoongi bowing low over the island, pointing at something Jungkook couldn’t see-

He craned his neck further forward, at Namjoon and Hoseok picking up the shattered remains of a pair of white dishes on the floor further over to his left-

Wide-eyed, he stared at everyone, their easy banter, and swallowed. It was a lovely sight. The house humming, voices- so many voices- combing through the house, filling the rooms, filling the worlds with such peace. And it could not have been real. No way. He ducked back, away from them, away from the doorway, but not before a white blur stood in front of him, eyes open and kind and warm-brown and safe. Startled, he jumped, hands pulling up in front of him-

Jimin’s warm hands encased his, pulled him close and held him. 

“Jungkookie,” he said, voice honey-sweet. The room came to a complete standstill. Jungkook blinked, open-mouthed, arms encased in Jimin’s own, shocked, scared, horrified, because maybe he’d already passed, maybe all of this was death’s way of saying that he’d brought them all here too, that they really couldn’t- couldn’t-

“Aish, none of that,” Seokjin’s no-nonsense tone filled Jungkook’s ears when he saw the youngest’s eyes welling up again. “Gods, you’ve cried enough. We’re all dead, Jungkookie, we’ve gotten over it for Chrissakes. Also, we don’t care.” He pointed a wooden spoon at Jungkook’s face, face hardening when Jungkook flinched. The silence that followed made Taehyung, Yoongi, Namjoon and Hoseok stand a little closer to Seokjin. Taehyung’s arms wrapped around Yoongi’s shoulders, expression soft, a little shadowed, and Hoseok crossed his arms, considering Jungkook with an expressionless face.

Jungkook opened his mouth, trying to say something. Closed his mouth. Tried to speak. Closed his mouth again. It felt as though his lungs didn’t have enough air, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, his mind didn’t have enough words to speak. Jimin’s hands were on his cheeks, a wide grin on his face, eyes crinkled in half-moons. “Kookie, aish, start smiling, or else I’m going to think you’ve got a problem with your mouth.”

Too much. Just too much- touching- too much-

The sun. Blinding, hot, flashes of want and heat and the sun, filling the cracks in his skin-

Flushing, pulling himself out of Jimin’s grasp, Jungkook stumbled back, clutching at his shirt, pulling on the sleeves to try and protect himself. He shuddered at the coldness left behind. This was a dream. This was just a dream. A good-bad dream, just a-

“Kookie,” Yoongi murmured as his face suddenly appeared from behind Namjoon and Seokjin. “Want a cookie? Jimin’s making the best batch of the lot of ours.” His serious expression made Jungkook still, eyes calm, but still taking in Jungkook’s expression, the way he held himself, as though hanging by a thread, hanging inward. Jungkook breathed out, felt the storm in his mind… calm. And I’m standing on the moon, he thought, remembering, faintly, that dream. Those words. 

The God’s words… stilling his mind

He could not save himself; he needed Jungkook to do it, but…

Jungkook stopped pulling at his sleeves, let his shaking hands drop to his side. Seokjin stepped closer, and Jungkook flinched. 

Jungkook opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked down at his feet. 

A wind chime danced somewhere in the house, its song sweet, but lonely.

A way. Maybe, a way. But Jungkook could not save himself. It wasn’t possible. At all.

Instead, broken, afraid, he whispered, “Will you disappear again?” He continued to stare at the tiled floor. Everyone listened to his words, could hear them in the silence of the house. “I don’t want you to disappear again,” he added. "Please don’t. Please.”

There was a time, once, when the house went cold; the ice stretched over the windows and snow, flurries of snow, settled in the rooms in the house. Jungkook couldn’t warm; the fires the house put in all of the rooms, to keep him warm, were frozen with an ice that would not heat. Jungkook remembered curling close to one of the fires, wondering whether it would be better to burn, than freeze. His eyes dancing with the flames, before he fell asleep.

He remembered, during that cold, cold winter, wanting them, wanting that campfire back, Yoongi’s arms around his neck and Taehyung’s deep laugh and Namjoon chuckling at something Hoseok danced to.

Here, now, voice so quiet, even the sounds of the water outside seemed loud, he felt that ice creep back into his skin, breaths turning white in the cooling summer air.

“I missed you, so, so much,” he sniffled. “I wanted to be with you for so, so long. Please, please, please don’t disappear again. Please.” His hands were shaking, lips red from biting them. Eyes sore from crying and head pounding from- from everything. From the ice at his fingertips and the heat in his head. Too much, everything was too much, again. The guilt. The selfishness. “Please-“

I don’t want to be alone when I’m going.

His words were muffled by a familiar set of arms as Taehyung pulled him in close. Safe. These arms were safe, the safest- the-

“We’re all here, Kookie. Come now, no more crying. No more crying now,” Taehyung said as he cradled his cheeks in his hands, fingers cloying with the curls around his ears, “Or else, Jin-hyung will attack us with the shards of the plates Namjoon broke.” 

Jungkook didn’t reach for Taehyung, not until he felt the heat of his friend’s breath on his nose. Not until he felt Taehyung’s lips on his forehead, the touch meant to comfort. Something gold wrapped in heat. Something soft and fuzzy, a blanket, a balm, for peace, nestling close to what had once been his heart. 

And…

Something that had been broken felt a little… less broken, in his chest. “Will I tell you a story?” whispered from the edges of a past so far from here.

The ice, from that winter so, so long ago, warming. The fire in that fireplace, dancing with heat. Something made him feel a little lighter.

There were no shadows, behind his closed lids.

Because this was Taehyung, and Taehyung felt warm and homely and safe.

And Taehyung… Taehyung knew he was made for other things, made from similar things, like Jungkook. It seemed. 

Yet, Jungkook did not know. Not as he reached up and grabbed small fistfuls of Taehyung’s t-shirt, pulling until Taehyung’s breath was curling his ear, deep voice reverberating through Jungkook’s chest, and he felt so small, so safe, there.

There were other arms around him, everyone’s, he knew. 

The kettle whistled in the background- happy, so happy- and Jungkook felt a little lighter than before. House humming, his skin humming, a live-wire, full to the brim with electricity and warmth and goodness.

“Hoseok,” the breathy sigh danced into thin air, and Hoseok shot up from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, hands folded underneath his legs. He saw Jungkook standing there, right across from the table, as the others milled about the kitchen. Yoongi with his head on Jimin’s shoulder, the two of them giggling at something in the oven (the cookies, obviously); Namjoon and Seokjin grilling each other, one of them pointing a ladle at the other’s face when they danced too close. Taehyung, his head once sitting atop the crown of Jungkook’s head, had moved away, but their fingers were still interlinked, as though neither of them could go anywhere without the other.

Reminded Hoseok of a baby chick, mother hen situation, and it made a small part of his stomach curl, squeal, with delight. Something soft settled on his shoulders, watching them.

“Hoseok,” Jungkook breathed, again, his face turning, slowly, to watch the others, before he returned those round orbs back to him. “C-come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”

Hoseok blinked, leaning forward a little, before following the younger out the door that led into the hall. Already, Jungkook’s feet were pattering up the stairs; h smiled as he looked down at Hoseok, before beckoning him to follow. “Don’t worry, it’s something you’ll like, promise.” The end of the sentence sounded more like a question, but- aiish- he literally couldn’t help the easy chuckle that fell from his lips.

Kid, I don’t remember you. But…

Taking the stairs two at a time, Hoseok followed the younger, watched his excitement as it bumbled out of those wide eyes. His whole body, fizzling with excitement, even the floorboard were humming with it when they reached the first floor. Jungkook turned right, beckoned him to follow.

I don’t remember you, but by Gods, it hurts that I could’ve ever forgotten you.

Jungkook made this look easy. Made Hoseok’s heart twinge, just a little more. His happiness, so obvious it could not be contained, seemed to spark the air. Jumping from foot to foot, watching his elder’s reaction, as though he were a kid at Christmas. Reminded him of the times in the orphanage, watching the others as they left with their families, while he…

He was left alone.

Finding the door, waiting for Hoseok to join him, he couldn’t help it- dammnit, the kid made him feel so soft- as he reached forward and ruffled Jungkook’s hair. 

“Come on, Hobi-“ Jungkook started, before he stilled. “Oh, I’m sorry- I wasn’t-“

“What?” Hoseok said, watching as Jungkook flushed all the way up to the roots of his hair.

“Um- I’m… I’m sorry- I called you-“

Hoseok scratched the back of his head. He sniggered. “Yah, kid, stop stressing over the little shit. Forget about it, okay?”

Jungkook nodded, once. Then, flushed again. “I’m-“

Hoseok grabbed Jungkook’s head and pulled him straight into his chest. Squeezed him, made him squeal. Then laughed, Jungkook’s warm breaths pulling through the thin material of his shirt. He softened. “Call me Hobi all the time, kid. You’re too freaking cute to call me Hoseok.” Pulling back, he grabbed each side of Jungkook’s face and peppered- literally peppered- the kid’s cheeks and forehead with kisses, until Jungkook laughed so hard, there were tears were streaming down his face, more laughter bubbling up from his chest and his fingers clasping to Hoseok’s wrists.

“Aigoo, Kookie,” Hosoek crooned. “You’re too fucking cute. I’m gonna die from cuteness overload-“ he sang the end of his words, crooning harder when Jungkook knocked himself out of his reach and grabbed the handle of the door, pushing in and-

And-

Hoseok pitched forward, laughter stilling.

The room was a dance room.

The room was for dancing.

Full-to-ceiling mirrors, and a full glass ceiling, revealing bright blue skies overhead. Everything was bright, fresh air drawing through the corners of the room where the windows sat open, birdsong spilling through the mid-afternoon skies, and-

“What the hell?” Hoseok murmured, knowing that- maybe- Jungkook was talking, but unable to hear him.

He stepped forward, saw the sound system, a sleek black machine connected to three massive speakers in the right-hand corner. He watched his reflection in the mirror, stared at it, and remembered, a flicker, of his feet skating on the wooden floor, Jimin turning alongside him. A camera, recording, and a girl, with a cake.

But.

Before that.

Before all of that.

Hoseok swallowed. Remembering-

“Hyung, can you show me that move again?”

"Hyung- you’re so amazing! How do you do that?”

A pull, on his sleeve, the whispered words- “I don’t understand how to do that, what if I can’t do that?”

And another, smaller whisper- “Please don’t do that, hyung. Drugs are bad for you, so bad-“

He was hearing Jungkook’s voice. Heard his sneakers on the floor, the thrum of the bass in the speakers, but it was like looking at the world with his glasses off, only half-aware of everything. His heart, picking up speed, swallowing the saliva that gathered at the back of his mouth, he turned, faced Jungkook, who smiled, slowly, softly, at him. Pulled at his sleeves as he gauged his reaction.

“You love to dance, hyung. This room-“ he knocked on the wooden door, the golden handle, the black and silver etchings in the wood, “-this room is for you, and only you.”

His.

This room was his.

Hoseok wasn’t even sure of what to say. He scratched the back of his head, stared at his reflection in the mirror again, turned back to the kid. Heart still racing. Fingers shaking. Because there were memories there, words, but he couldn’t grasp them, couldn’t-

“I barley remember your voice, kid,” he whispered. “I can remember the orphanage, meeting the others, dancing- sort of. I remember my whole life. Good and bad. But I can’t remember you.”

Truth: it hurt.

But Jungkook smiled anyway, not giving anything away. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be, hyung. No one is supposed to remember me.”

Truth again: it still hurt.

Hoseok chewed his lips. Swallowed against the tightening band in his chest. “Jungkook-“

“Hyung. You’re normal, if you forget. That’s all normal. It’s if you remember,” Jungkook sighed, and there, Hoseok could see the tiredness in the slope of his shoulders, again, like this morning. “If you remember, then I didn’t work it right.”

Truth; hurt. But this. Made him feel a bit better. 

He reached for Jungkook, wrapped his arms around him. Held him. Held him. Held him.

“Okay, so I remember you,” Seokjin murmured. “I think that was obvious. If not, then hi, I remember you.”

Jungkook startled, hands clasping his cup of hot chocolate a little closer to his chest. Over the dance of the flames between them, with the faint summer breeze ruffling his hair and the water washing downstream, everyone sat in a circle, bodies hunched close together. The balcony overseeing the forest, with the river between them, made everything feel close, the scent of pine and oak soothing.

Someone- Jimin- brought a cluster of pillows and throws down from somewhere upstairs, but when the boys gathered out on the veranda, they’d noticed the little fire, the gathering of couches and pillows, and the endless cups of hot cocoa. Wind-chimes and little dreamcatchers hung over their heads, fairy lights twinkling as they hung from the beams of balcony above them, and all of it looked so magical to Hoseok’s eyes, he’d simply stared in wonder at the beauty of the cosy little environment.

“The house does things like this, when it knows what you want,” Jungkook explained to them, clinging to, semi-hiding behind the sleeve of Taehyung’s shirt as though he’d somehow walk away from the smaller, slighter figure the boy had become.

“Okay,” Jungkook murmured, voice soft as he ducked his head low. “I-I don’t know how you remember me, but okay.”

“We remember you too,” Yoongi said, and Taehyung nodded along, as the elder reached for Jungkook’s knees, rubbing his hand along the throw the younger pulled over his lap.

“I don’t,” Hoseok said, ruffling his hair and looking annoyed with himself. “You know that, and Jimin?”

Jimin shook his head, fumbling with his fingers. “B-But I think that there’s a part of me that remembers your voice- we… we used to dance, together, yes?” Jimin’s eyes were wide, imploring, as they looked at Jungkook. “The three of us, danced, together, right?”

“Uh, yes,” Jungkook replied, soft. “Yes. We did. And… there were other things, too. We were… really good friends. You used to teach dance with Hobi. To kids. There was a girl, too, and Hobi really liked her,” Jungkook froze, flushing red. “I-I mean.. H-Hoseok-“

“Say my nickname in the future, please,” Hoseok said, jumping ahead before Jungkook could flush any further. “It sounds better than my full name.” He grinned, easy, when Jungkook caught his soft expression. “Please.”

Namjoon’s hands cupped his coffee, breathing in the dark essence. “We know each other. No matter how many times Seokjin turned time, I always remembered Jungkook, but that’s no surprise anyway.” It was strange, to their leader, that the two oldest here were the ones to remember, vividly, time and again. No surprise, to Namjoon, yet he wasn’t sure where Seokjin was tied in all this. 

Yoongi and Taehyung… a part of him wasn’t surprised; he knew that Yoongi and Jungkook shared feelings at one point, but Taehyung…

Those golden orbs of light that fell from his fingertips when he soothed Jungkook to sleep earlier.

The demon, disintegrated into bits of shadow.

Namjoon squeezed his fingers into the cup. The King’s army.

But Taehyung.

That was surprising. That meant…

He cast a glance toward Taehyung, whose expression looked a little troubled as he considered his herbal tea. He wondered if, maybe, there was a chance card, here. 

The previous God controlled light. He recalled that much.

But.

But this was the problem, too.

The previous God, Namjoon winced, also carried a second heart. And Namjoon knew that therein lay the heart of the problem. He couldn’t take that heart back, and Jungkook…

He fisted his hand, the heat of the coffee seeping, burning, through his skin.

Yet, Seokjin smiled, lost in memories. “There was a compound, a City, I think. I don’t know how long ago, or if it was in a different world, but you done something, I think, and I was able to turn time since.”

Hoseok pulled to attention at that. He’d been leaning against Jimin, who had curled into the older man’s side as they listened to Seokjin. “Say… what?”

Seokjin pulled the spoon out of his hot chocolate, stirring the cup again. Steam rose up over the rim, and he closed his eyes. “I can turn time, but the direction it turns is out of my control. Whenever I did it before, everyone forgot everything, except you,” he added, pointing the end of his spoon at Jungkook, who blinked, but remained emotionless otherwise. “Somehow, you always remained the same. Got into the same situations. You died, got injured, disappeared, whatever it was, and it didn’t matter how many times I tried to help you, or the others, we always ended up apart from one another. Every single fucking time. Some of us forgot you, some of us didn’t; Yoongi apparently remembers you, Taehyung remembers you. I’ve no clue how you and Namjoon are tied together. Hoseok and Jimin, it seems, have forgotten.”

“That’s because it needs to be that way,” Jungkook replied. He looked in the direction of the river, the quiet breeze ruffling his fringe. Seokjin squinted.

“What? Why? Jeon Jungkook, I’ve been doing this for-“

“You would die, if I didn’t do what I was doing, and that’s,” Jungkook started, pursing his lips, clasping the cup a little tighter. Hands shaking again, and Seokjin stilled, listened to what was being said between the lines. “That’s… not right, or fair.”

“How is that not right?” Taehyung murmured. “If we knew-“

“When time is re-set, then so too are your timelines. Every time you go back, your memories are wiped. Sometimes, the re-set is imperfect, sometimes there are traces in the backs of your minds of something you experienced in another timeline, with someone you do not remember,” Jungkook whispered. Yoongi stiffened, and Taehyung rubbed an elbow, still troubled. The space between them seemed a little bigger than it had been mere seconds ago as Jungkook’s words sank in. “The compound… that was one of the early worlds. I… pulled too hard on a ribbon then, I think that it tore… I think that’s how you got that power, Seokjin-hyung. I’m sorry.”

The voice was mournful, near-silent. Aish, Seokjin felt his heart hammering out to the sound of such a sad voice. He looked down at his suddenly-full cup again.

“I can see your dreams,” Yoongi whispered. “Sometimes, I see your past, Jungkook.” Voice thoughtful, Jungkook stiffened, stared down into his cup.

“We both know why that might be, then,” Jungkook whispered. Jimin sat up, looking between them both, a tiny ‘O’ on his lips. Seokjin nodded, thoughtful.

“Not surprised. You two were gravitating toward each other when we were in that empty pool that day,” Seokjin murmured.

“I’m sorry, Yoongi-hyung. I shouldn’t have done that,” Jungkook said, and everyone turned toward him. “I shouldn’t have asked to keep going, when I knew where we’d end up, anyway-“

“Later that night, Hoseok rang me to say you were run over,” Yoongi said. “Died after the impact. The coroner said you had multiple stress wounds. Bruises that weren’t part of the impact- I’m sorry- that was-“

“That wasn’t you, and you know that. That was… someone else,” Jungkook murmured. Closed his eyes. As if remembering the bite of that leather belt was too much. His step-brother, his glass-eyed father. And Omelas, always returning to Omelas. “I-I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Silence, deadly silence, filled the spaces between the seven of them. Not even the house hummed. 

It was strange, to Namjoon. They knew what Yoongi and Jungkook spoke about, but none of them were shocked, embarrassed. Sex. They were talking about how two of their closest friends shared a bed, and none of them even batted a lid. He’d always known they all swung the opposite direction, together, but.. this was… their conversation, the way they spoke in this open space, not an inch of shame or bitterness toward each other…

It made him feel closer to them, somehow. As though they were making their way toward finally understanding themselves, and the relationships that they shared with each other.

“I… I don’t regret it,” Yoongi said, and Jungkook smiled, soft, catching the older’s fond look.

“Neither do I, hyung.”

Sadness filled Hoseok at that statement. Closure. This was closure, and it felt bittersweet.

“What the-“ Seokjin started, rousing everyone out of their thoughts. “Fuck’s sake, you trying to give me diabetes?” He looked up to the wind chimes, and the kettle whistled in the kitchen, a sharp tooting sound that had Namjoon snickering into his cup. Jungkook jumped, a little, frazzled at the sound of Seokjin’s indignant voice.

“What-“

“Your damn bewitched house is filling up my cup again,” Seokjin pointed at Jungkook, mock-horror in his tone of voice. “Honestly, I like cooking, but I don’t have that much of a damn sweet tooth,” he raised his voice again, making out that the damn house was deaf, “Just in case any particular non-living objects need to fucking know-“

A pan clattered to the floor, then dragged itself toward the door, and honestly, Seokjin would’ve been running from this damn haunted house if not for the fact that Jimin and Taehyung were in cahoots, a musical melody of laughter shared between the two. Jungkook, who shared his throw with Taehyung, felt the clothing pull and he was being tugged into the older’s embrace as Taehyung’s arms captured his shoulders just as the pan from the kitchen suddenly swung out onto the veranda.

“If you fucking think of hitting me then I swear I will burn the pantry that I found on the other side of the kitchen- don’t think I won’t!” Seokjin twirled his spoon at the pan, neck red from shouting, as though there were a ghost in front of him right now.

Jungkook raised his arms to the pan, looking at Seokjin, worried, when Yoongi reached out to ruffle his hair. 

“Calm down, they’re just messing- or, I think that the house is messing with him,” Yoongi murmured into his ear. 

Jungkook looked back toward the pan, and saw it, the minute shaking as it swayed back and forth between all of them.

Eyes widening in realisation, he murmured, “Oh.”

Oh.

The pan was laughing. The wind-chimes above his head were bouncing. Oh.

The house was happy. Dream catchers fluttering to and fro as they moved in time to the swing of the frying pan.

He breathed in, felt calmer. Oh.

The house was happy.

He opened his mouth, when something grazed his forehead. He looked up, felt Yoongi’s hand pull away as a small vine of purple flowers curled around Jungkook’s cheek, tickling him. He giggled.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he whispered. I get it, he thought. I see what you’re doing.

“Oh my Gods,” Taehyung looked up, breathless with the sight above them all.

There were flowers, purplish night flowers, glowing a pale-pink and blue from between the rafters in the ceiling, their scent heavy with lavender and lemon. Jungkook smiled, soft.

“The house likes Seokjin-hyung. It’s giving off Seokjin’s scent.”

Seokjin looked at Jungkook, capturing the dazed, yet gentle, look on his face. Hoseok watched them all, turning his head up toward the rafters, mouth wide open. Yet. Seokjin couldn’t form any words to that. He didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. Jungkook caught his look, smiled back, tentative, unsure as to whether he should have said it in the first place. He hunched his shoulders, a little. Lavender, and lemon, sweet scents that were calming, healthy, good for the soul. The house was drawn to Seokjin, because Seokjin was a balm for pain, and it knew that, and so it was drinking in Seokjin’s scent just as Jungkook warmed in their presence.

Seokjin sat back on the couch, sighing loudly.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” he said, “Jungkook, it’s Jin, remember?” he pointed at Jungkook, whose eyes went wide. “You always, always, call me Jin. Never Seokjin. Like Hobi Like Joonie-hyung. Remember?”

“Jin-hyung! Jin, look out at the sea! It’s so freaking big!”

Oh.

“Jin-hyung- let’s go find Namjoon-hyung…”

Remembered. Seokjin- no, Jin-hyung… remembered that?

“Jin-hyung, when’s dinner?”

“Jin-hyung, can we go out to Joonie’s today?”

Jungkook stilled. A breath, the entire group silencing for that one moment. Then, he nodded, vigorously. He couldn’t stop nodding, hands clutching the cup closer to his chest. Closer again. “Yes, yes, I promise. I won’t forgot, I promise, thank you. Thank you… J-Jin-hyung.” 

Flushed, the end of the purple flower tickling his neck, making him duck closer to the couch, he heard Hoseok’s yelp when the next vine extended down over his face, felt Taehyung suddenly launch himself on his shoulders again as the flowers began to grow closer to them, giggling, and he smiled, feeling giddy, lost under a wave of happiness so strong he was sure that the laughter locked in his ribcage would burst through his chest.

Happy.

He was happy, warm with it, drenched in it.

Their easiness filled his being, and the house drank it, as though filling up from a drought that lasted as long as Jungkook had known. The loneliness he had been feeling… eased. Softened. A little more.

“Careful, Yoongi! I think that flower really likes you!” Taehyung was giggling harder into Jungkook’s ear, just as Namjoon could be heard- felt- curling his palms against the petals of the gentle flower that swayed into his skin. Just as Jimin held onto the palmfuls of the flowers that suddenly burst into rainbows of raining petals over his face, his giggles soft, melodious in the night.

“Yah, I don’t even like flowers,” Yoongi was saying, but Jungkook could feel it in through the jasmine aura that the older man was giving off, the softness underneath his words. “But I suppose these ones are kinda cool,” he whispered, and Jungkook felt the fingers that grasped those flowers- Yoongi’s fingers- graze along his spine.

That’s me you’re holding, hyung.

He smiled into the wooden floor underneath him.

That’s me. That’s this house, he thought as he closed his eyes. Warm, so, so warm. Digging his face into Taehyung’s chest, feeling warm, and happy, and free.

When the campfire dulled a little more, and the stars were shining through the dark sky, Jungkook stared up, mouth open, the summer breeze deathly cold against his cheeks.

“Bassa,” he murmured, knowing that the others were asleep, curled up against one another on the couches. The name was an invitation, and she was wrapped around his side, pearl-white fur and black spots along her beautiful, deadly back.

To many, Bassa was a Siberian tiger; to Jungkook, Bassa was this house, its familiar incarnate.

She nuzzled Jungkook’s shoulder, her teal-green eyes staring deep into his when he finally turned to the tigress. He smiled softly at her, rubbed deep into her strong neck. Built as large as a car, as strong as an elephant, Bassa’s power grew deep into the veins of the world here, extended out toward each and every world he’d created over the years, even the ones the previous God, and the God before that, had created. 

“You’ve gotten stronger,” he said, nuzzling his head into her forehead as she leaned into his. While gentle with him, treating him as though he were a child, a plaything, he knew her claws were deadly, her tail, slow in its movements, could turn razor-sharp and lethal when the time came. And as it was…

“It’s almost time.”

Bassa stared deep into his eyes, knowing.

“When it comes, I need you to protect every single one of them, with everything that this house has,” he said. “They can’t follow me.” She yawned into his face, pushed her face into his chest, her strength knocking him, gently, to the couch below. Her warmth soothed the coldness of his cheeks as she came to sit on him and, underneath her, he felt her purring, the sound comforting.

“When it happens, I want all of them to keep this place. Not like me; no ties. No death awaits them. Let them be happy and, when I’m gone, leave no trace of me in their memories, okay?”

His voice, soft-spoken, stilled the beast above him. She looked down, tilted her head. A question.

“No,” he shook his head. “What the previous God said from before didn’t stick, and I don’t know why.” He turned thoughtful, narrowing his eyes at the seemingly-innocent beast above him. “It wasn’t you, was it?”

If Bassa could give an innocent expression, she would’ve done her best. Jungkook smiled, raised both his hands to her cheeks and squeezed. She yawned again, bored, and put her entire head down on his chest.

“I thought it may have been you,” he murmured. “Thank you. For bringing them back, one last time.”

You may not be dying anymore, Jungkook, her voice carried into his mind. He stilled, stared up toward the stars. Breathed.

“He’s coming, but I won’t go quietly,” he whispered. He’s getting closer, and I can feel every step that he takes. 

The house will protect you, Godling.

The house cannot stop something that was fated from before I became a God, he answered. His chest became heavy with dread. The shadows in my dreams are getting bigger. The shadows in my dreams keep finding my friends, and I can’t stop them.

“I’m so, so sorry that I ever fell,” he whispered to her. He closed his eyes. A stray tear escaped. “I’m so sorry that I caused so much pain.”

Would you not tell them the truth?

“Would that I could,” he murmured, “But if I did, he would find me faster. Please, keep them safe, even after the end.” He squeezed her fur, and she stretched over him, before burying her jaw into his neck. 

You smell like all of them together.

He smiled.

It pleases me, to see you this relaxed. But do not think, she added, her tongue tickling his cheek, breaths soft, wet, against his face, That I will let the King take you easily. Nor will any of your family. Most especially that boy.

“What boy?” Jungkook breathed, stilling under her neck. He breathed lavender and lemon, the same scent as Seokjin’s, and wondered if the familiar favoured him, too. Bassa curled around him, the end of her tail tickling his nose. He scrunched his face, but repeated, “Bassa, what boy?”

Bassa laid her head next to his, a paw on his chest, flexing her claws on the young male. Her eyes had drifted over the sleeping group, lingering on one particular face that was half-immersed in a pillow. Teeth pulling back, she grinned, the feline stretch of her lips across her teeth making her appear more vicious than she was, here, with him.

Wouldn’t you like to know, Godling?

Her voice chuckled with amusement in Jungkook’s ears, and he flushed, all the way up to his ears. Sleep. Sleep, Godling.

A few moments passed, and the heady scent of lavender overtook Jungkook’s senses, luring him down, down, into sleep. Face curling into the scruff of her neck, Jungkook breathed in, and fell deep, her body warm over his, the hush of the waters drifting down into peaceful, dark-as-night dreams.

The thing is, Jungkook may have been dreaming. More likely, however, he was probably wide awake.

Letting his body move to another’s whims was… something he’d grown accustomed to all these years. 

But this dream, not-dream, was familiar. What happened here, was familiar.

The dream, not-dream, went a little like this:

He stands in a room full of light. 

And a boy, the same age as him, with gold-spun hair that curls around his face, comes to stand in front of him, and smiles, as Jungkook stumbles toward him.

Jungkook always recalls being afraid before the boy speaks. Because he remembers something bad happening before, remembers the way the King tore at his clothes, growled at him to become his Bride…

But, here, Jungkook’s fears are assuaged when the boy, with beautiful eyes and a sad, sad smile, says words, magic words, and then says-

“Welcome, little star. Will I tell you a story?”

The boy was making the light, and Jungkook… Jungkook was always drawn, pulled, by light. That light, so much like him own.

Jungkook always smiled, in this dream, not-dream. And he always whispered, “Yes. Please. Yes.”

Chapter Text

There was a story. It went something like this.

There was a man. He bargained, and bartered, and sold, whatever came into his possession. Rich, beautiful, and deadly. The Pirate, they called him. Skin as golden as honey, eyes dripping ember. Hair as long as night, unkempt, sometimes; tied with ribbons as red as blood. A body draped in gold chains and earrings that twinkled in moonlight, clinked when he walked in boots made of leather.

Lovers whispered of a body carved from stone. Enemies swore that he stole from the poor, the rich, and gave only to himself. Those who swore they did not know of him, knew him, but their knowledge of him was his penchant for blood, for murder and rape and suffering so great his tally wandered into the hundreds of thousands. Wherever he walked, he carried with him the scent of greed, and carrion death.

Warrants went out for his arrest, for his head, for his body- burned- but they could not catch him. Some said he had power over people’s shadows, drew them to him as darkness to light; he controlled those shadows, made them do horrible, unspeakable things. To people. Controlled them, manipulated them to carry out his bidding. 

Namjoon, a soldier at that time, heard many, many awful things.

Things too sickening to mention.

Those shadows stitched themselves into his every nightmare as the stars watched over his sleeping head.

The Pirate became a King.

Whatever was beautiful, the King wanted, craved, thirsted for. If he could not attain by normal means, he would kill. Magic whispered in his veins, but it was a magic he had to kill for in order to use. The blood of innocents was what he bartered, a magic that rotted his veins, made the Devil curl its lips in disgust. Decaying from the inside out; a piece of horror that unfurled from the deepest, darkest cave, and deeper still. Years turned and slowly, his skin blackened with sin, death, with the horror of his crimes. 

When he grinned, his teeth showed black. When he laughed, the sound of death rattled his ribcage.

The last lover he took to his bed, he tore her body to shreds, and drank from her dying breaths the life that he so gladly took. And when she begged as he tore her skin from her body, he heard her wish, her dying wish, to be spared from a life that was worse than death.

Somewhere, out in the world, where magic was potent but words, spoken, written or thought, were stronger, a star heard her words, and began to fall.

There was a story; it went something like that.

At least, that was the story that Namjoon knew, for sure, back when the star that had fallen was a boy with skin as white as a new moon and eyes the colour of summer skies.

Taehyung’s dreams are full of little circles of light. 

Heat, balmy heat, fills the cracks between the cobble lock as he walks toward the cottage- the cottage that is not a cottage, but a bookshop.

There’s a boy, sitting, alone, in that cottage. A shop full of things- sparkly things, hard things, things that glittered or swam made him breathe in wonder at its magic. A cottage, a bookshop, full of little curiosities and wonders.

The boy’s hair was long, made from gold, it seemed, and when he smiles, Taehyung almost, almost, glimpses bright-blue eyes. It is strange; Taehyung cannot speak, here, and the water-like image in front of him, the dazzling lights surrounding him, make him feel as though he were underwater, watching the sun from the darker depths below. As though waiting to sprout into consciousness.

Still.

Here.

And still. Feeling loneliness as he beholds the boy.

And sadness, so much sadness.

In his hands, Taehyung glimpses the book.

Printed in gold ink, he sees the title, ’The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.’

Strangely, Taehyung knows this boy.

Knows this boy, because this boy is his mirror-image, from a time long, long passed.

Namjoon’s eyes opened, the sun dappling through the overhead beams. 

He knew, almost the second his eyes opened, that Jungkook was gone from the house.

Pursing his lips, he sat up, fast. Hair streamed through his line of vision, but he could tell, even before he looked at each of them, that his friends were still deep in the waves of sleep.

Casting a quick glance over Taehyung to his left, he took in the furrowed brow, the bead of sweat trickling down his neck, right down along the skin of where that demon lay close before Jungkook wrenched it from his body. Pursed his lips, because he knew what that tattoo meant. 

Not just a form of punishment, in their old world. 

The King, of course. Trying to hide Taehyung from him, from them all.

Hair drawing down over his face, Namjoon drew a deep breath.

The King found the incarnation of the previous God, and Jungkook’s reaction, the way that he calmed, every time Taehyung held him, stood close to him…

Jungkook didn’t know. He was simply drawn to that light that lay in Taehyung’s body.

That… yet…

Jungkook’s curse still stood true. Jungkook’s heart was still taken. When the King took his Bride, forced Jungkook to serve out the rest of his star-span life inside the King’s body… Jungkook’s heart was forfeit. Jungkook’s death would be more painful.

The child of Omelas, that star, would never have any form of reprieve. In the form of endless, dark death and nothingness, they, the children that remained behind, would forget him. Forget why they were ever here. In the first place.

Namjoon sighed, flexed his muscles as he stood. He stretched, fingers splayed. It was time to get to work.

The house took Jungkook during the night, then, as it so often did when the bindings between the worlds grew thin. He sighed, deep. As guardian, he really was useless. Jungkook used to rely so much on him, clung to him as he learned the ways of the human world, and now…

Namjoon looked down at his hands, the callouses and dry skin that made him who he was, and feeling himself fall, broken, in between the cracks of each parted finger.

Now, it was Jungkook who was shoving him out of harm’s way.

When did that damn kid get so…

He pursed his lips.

Hallowed eyes, and Jungkook’s hands pushing him away, “Namjoon-hyung. I think that it’s time for you to go.” The rain, Namjoon remembered, fell very heavy on the night that Jungkook cast him from this very house, the cottage reconfiguring itself into a house so big, fitting itself to Jungkook’s being, growing outward, its worlds more endless than that of the previous God…

No, he wasn’t going to go there. Sighing, he came to a stand. “Where did he go now?” 

The purple flowers- smeraldos, the legendary stolen flower of this house- wavered in the breeze, drifting downward, and another sigh escaped Namjoon’s lips. Their scent, that lavender scent, flowed through the open doors, carried their way to him. Jungkook created those flowers, watched them bloom, and told Namjoon when they sat in a field full of them, in a timeline that escaped the house, that allowed Jungkook to meet with Namjoon once more, that he dreamt of a man with wide shoulders, soft eyes and a wicked sense of humour.

“Those flowers remind me of him. I wanted to create them in his memory.”

And a girl, the girl he sent to Seokjin, to alleviate him of the pain of loss. 

Namjoon smiled, soft, when he recalled how Jungkook had phrased it-

“I wanted her to be like you, Namjoon-hyung. Because you love Seokjin, but won’t allow yourself to be with him.”

Of course, even then, hundreds of years before that very moment when Seokjin would meet her, Namjoon knew who he was speaking of. Jungkook’s dreams were vivid, predictions of a future so far ahead that Namjoon could only guess how much Jungkook had seen, all the way back then. Seokjin, who’d fumbled into all their lives in the compound. Years before Jungkook, who always seemed to follow last. Just before Jungkook pulled too hard on all the ribbons that were their lives, Seokjin, who tied them close so that they were always guaranteed to come back together. 

Seokjin, who…

Namjoon growled as he continued walking through the kitchen. Right. Seokjin, who was special, as Jungkook so clearly pointed out with a cheeky little grin.

“Not like her, Jungkook,” he growled to himself. “She was much more beautiful anyways.”

As if he’d ever make a cute girl. Dimples or no.

Right-

“Right. Omelas then,” he sighed, breathing deep.

He padded his way into the kitchen, noting the aggressive amounts of cooking the kitchen barrelled through. He stilled. The house, it was rumoured, was inhabited by the essence of a woman. Her soul, maybe, cursed to remain here until something or another gave in. Knowing Jungkook, he was smitten with her, relied on her as much as she relied on him. Knowing she wanted to protect Jungkook at all costs, he found himself smiling good-naturedly as he said, “You do realise there are only seven of us total?” 

A pile of pancakes and mountain of sausages suddenly magicked itself next to one another on the island. He swallowed. “Fuck, we aren’t an army.”

The kettle whistled in reply and he rolled his eyes. “I do not eat enough for three men, and neither would Seokjin. Gods, you really do like our eldest don’t you?” The kettle wheezed, coughed, but Namjoon knew he had the damn house figured out. “You know, in Seoul, he was known as Worldwide Handsome, yes?”

The kettle quietened. Then squeaked, a little rebuke that had Namjoon flushing red, growling deeply-

“Watch it. Don’t fucking tell him, or else.”

He walked on through into the hallway. Took the steps three at a time. “When did Jungkook leave?” The first door he saw on the landing slammed three times. “Three hours? Was it a patch-up?” Another door slammed; once was usually the affirmative. “Then he should be back by now.” He turned on one foot on the first landing, heading left, and as he stepped forward, his gear- all-black leather, the clink of metal as the buckles on his belt strapped themselves in- materialised. “Can you take me to his exact location, let the others know?”

It was reassuring, the tightening of leather against his skin. He still fit into these clothes, the protection that they offered settling like a balm over his skin.

The fifth door to his right opened right up, and he stepped through, but not before the door at the very end of the long hallway opened, and Euphoria, his longsword, flew straight into his palm, hilt glowing gold, the spasm of purple jewels against the hilt reminding him, once again, of those Smeraldos, of Seokjin. He grinned. Throwing his sword over his shoulder and strapping the blade into its holder on his back, Namjoon stepped into the train carriage that was Omelas.

The door shut behind him.

Sometimes, when he disappeared, when the worlds took him on their own whim, he went inside himself, remembered smaller things.

Like this.

The girl had long, chestnut-brown hair tied back with a scrunchie, and she was kneeling, wailing, in a pool of blood. Hands shaking, clutching the boy with long dark curls, and wide-open eyes, as he stabbed his own body, thinking it was the body on the other side of the mirror.

Jungkook simply remembered her beautiful eyes, so like her older brother’s. He remembered reaching out, trying to stop him.

Before she stepped in front of him. Before she screamed his name, and his name- so vivid, so real-

Ah. His name, returned to him.

Jungkook remembered this now. Taehyung stabbed himself, stabbed his sister to death. 

Jungkook closed his eyes. This after Seokjin found him in the dark street, the three bodies that surrounded him. After he was run over by that car, chased by those shadows. He opened his palms. Looked down at his own, pale-white skin.

He wasn’t really here, but…

But Taehyung… and his sister… were.

And she was screaming. And the image in that shattered mirror, was grinning at them, eyes watching their suffering, and he couldn’t take that. Couldn’t allow it to go any further than-

“Stop,” he commanded. The image in front of him stilled, but the fragments of that leering face in the shattered mirror turned, and looked, at him.

The shadow of the King staring right at him, and Jungkook, resolved, stared right back.

“Stop meddling in the lives of my friends,” he growled, the first little bit of anger he’d ever felt. 

Cutting his wrist, allowing it to fall upon the ground, until the moving pictures- Taehyung, the broken bottle, his sister, her hands out to stop him- reversed in front of his eyes. The shadow, frowning, annoyed, angered, disappeared from the mirror. And the shot, the moving bodies, stopped, stilled, at the moment when Taehyung’s life would have completely changed.

The exact moment when the broken neck of that glass bottle would have stabbed his sister, right through her stomach. Their faces, frozen in time, breaths quietened. For just. A second.

Jungkook closed his eyes. Breathed out, and stepped in front of Taehyung, removed the bottle. For just. A second.

And his sister…

He dropped the bottle, let it shatter out upon the floor. Its sound so loud, it startled him.

And he turned, toward her, hands on her cheeks, where that skin was still warm. Kissed her forehead, and she… 

Disappeared. 

The problem with the story that Namjoon had been told was that it was old. Older than his memories of Jungkook. Older than any of the Gods that may have created a way of combatting the growing powers of that hateful, destructive King.

Memories of Jungkook’s time, of his time, became faded with time. The house may have known the story, or maybe it chose to forget it too, as it adopted them into its rooms, but that all changed from before Jungkook became a God. After, Namjoon tried to help, tried to protect his charge, but Jungkook shoved him out, banished him from the house once he undertook the previous God’s burden.

Jungkook chose to be alone. Forced Namjoon out into the world beyond that cottage, forced him to adapt to it. Forced him to adapt to all of their worlds, as he created, re-created, and joined them together.

Jungkook decided that his loneliness was more important than his own welfare. 

Jungkook needed a guardian. Had needed one the second he fell from the skies.

Namjoon had known him from before he ever became a God; once he undertook his duties, once the previous God of this house took him away, Namjoon… unknew him. Lost him.

Except for the brief lapses in time when he finally got to see him, in his normal form. Without the brown hair or brown eyes. Without the bruises or the cuts. Just Jungkook, with the starlit hair and those huge blue eyes and that deep, deep sense of understanding of, and sympathy and sadness for, the worlds.

Namjoon knew of the intricacies of this house, but only because he had to learn about it, understand its language, its attitude, in a very, very short space of time. He had help, from Jungkook, during their little meetings, and it seemed that the house never forgot him. Even when he disappeared in order to find Jimin and Taehyung, it still allowed him back in when he turned the key he’d found in Taehyung’s shaking hands.

Explaining all of this to Hoseok yesterday… it was near impossible.

How to explain something so utterly encompassing, in the space of a few words?

Namjoon never had the full story; there were too many of their stories, intertwined, that there was no story to begin with. The problem with the story that Namjoon had been told was that the only truth in it was that Jungkook’s inevitable death was really all his own fault.

He squeezed his hands to fists as he manoeuvred down through the quiet carriages. 

If Namjoon had not made Jungkook go into that world, the one with the bookshop, with the God sitting inside his wire-cage, then none of this would have happened. The God, with those beautiful orbs of light, that lonely smile upon his face…

If Namjoon never flung the star’s body into this house, that damn world… their damn King would be dead.

Taehyung, still dreaming, still breathing into the breath that loosed from the God’s parted lips. “You’re me,” Taehyung whispered, forehead tilting, touching, the forehead of the God. The God, mournfully, smiled, in return. Their hands, intertwined, the book long forgotten on the ground, and-

“Yes. And if you’re here, then that means that my work here is almost done.”

Taehyung’s brows pulled together. “Save him,” the God murmured, pulling his cheeks close by clasping his skin tight.

Closing his eyes, the God breathed into Taehyung’s forehead.

“Save him, Godling,” he said, “For my blood runs in your veins, as the little star’s blood runs in all of your veins.”

And there, the dream collapsed into a fit of images. And memories. The skin of the God’s once-calm, sweet face dissolving into a sea of starlight and moonlight and sunlight and the sickening, sickening sensation that there were two heartbeats underneath Taehyung’s skin and it was his fault his fault all his fault-