Chapter Text
There’s too much blood.
Blood on Jimin’s white clothes, seeping into the dirt. On Jeongguk’s hands. It’s warm and sticky, its sharp smell suffocating and making Jeongguk’s eyes sting. Jimin’s blinking up at him in confusion, his breath shallow, and too fast. Jeongguk can see the pulse in his neck, thready and fast.
“Jeongguk,” he says, his voice too low; weak. Jeongguk is frozen, can’t feel anything besides incapacitating fear. “It’s alright, Jeongguk.”
It’s not alright, Jimin is bleeding. He’s bleeding and where’s everyone? Why isn’t anyone helping.
He looks up and catches the world, unrecognizably dark and malicious, demons fighting his friends who are trapped. Taehyung has no arrows left, surrounded inside the circle of protection with Seokjin barely standing at his back, he’s clutching Seokjin’s sword and he’s shaking. Hoseok and Namjoon are back to back, caged by the enemy. He can’t find Yoongi.
“Help…” he rasps anyway, he wants someone to help. He doesn't know what to do. Jimin looks dazed, his eyes are glassy and his breath is coming faster. Jeongguk cradles him into his body, touches his hand that has gone cold, his cheeks have lost all colour. “Help him, please.”
“Jeongguk, you have to fight. The spell...they need you.” Jimin lets out, hisses in pain as he tries to move. His side is torn badly, he’s going to…
“No, no. Jimin, no.”
“Jeongguk, the veil. Jeongu…” It gets stuck in his throat. The breath seems to swoop into him and then he’s limp.
“Jimin? Jimin!” He shakes him and screams but to no avail, Jimin isn’t moving, isn’t breathing.
Dead.
Jeongguk’s mind refuses the idea. Because Jimin can’t be dead, Jimin is bright and good and necessary. The world needs him... Jeongguk, Jeongguk needs him, he can’t die.
“Jimin, wake up! Please? Please. Jimin, Jimin!”
It hurts. Not his body, but something deeper in him, stinging like it was set on fire; slow, malicious fire. He wonders how much his soul can hurt before his body dies. The edges of his vision dim, black taking over, he can see nothing but Jimin’s closed eyes, the sweep of dark lashes against the swell of his cheeks.
He lets the cold seep into him, his consciousness bleeding through, draining. He’s being emptied, his very soul leaving him and that’s good, he should leave, go to Jimin.
The memory of inky swirls tugs at his mind and he opens his eyes.
No, he can’t give in now, can’t let Jimin down. Can’t let the others down. He has to fight. He pulls Jimin’s body into his arms, and sits straighter. Inside of him dwells something that he flirts with but never fully touches, never sets free and he reaches down, deep into his very core and pulls.
The power courses through him, sinister and ruinous but he grips hard and forces it to follow his will. The black oozes from him, forming pillars high as the sky, then they move, engraving the rock and dirt. Circles and sigils, big around him, more lines and streaks, more magic more, more more.
He seals it over, then allows his power to burst. The world lights up, inscriptions shining gold and he can see it. The worlds colliding, the shreds of what once was separating them. The threads of reality, breaking farther away, but he’s here now. He infuses more energy into the spell, orders the remains, the pieces of brilliance scattered throughout and they bend and move, follow his will and bread together. Ribbons, entwining, turning thicker, knitting together until they cover what’s beyond them. They suck everything back, atmospheres and creatures. Jeongguk sees it, stands witness to how the world’s particles fall into the right places. Demons forced back into their world, the reality closing the tears that brought them.
It all stops in a second. And the sigil he’s standing inside evaporates like it never was.
He hears them then, voices around him. It’s Namjoon, he’s talking, getting closer. He sounds sad, endlessly tired. Jeongguk can’t feel anything. He’s still holding on to Jimin.
Taehyung is frantically searching over Jimin’s body, settling his fingers on Jimin’s neck. Jeongguk pulls him closer, grits his teeth against the pained wail Taehyung lets out.
He reaches down, and brushes the hair back from the gentle, upward curve of Jimin’s cheek, the skin is still warm but it’s so unnaturally pale that there’s no way for Jeongguk to delude himself that Jimin is merely resting. Jimin’s eyes are never going to open again, no gorgeous, twinkling gray irises, no mischievous glint. Jimin’s lips are no longer pink and full, they’re dill and ashen. His pretty complexion appears waxy, unreal.
Dead.
He’s dead.
Jeongguk feels it like a stab, like a rattling in his bones, and it boils over and floods and he can’t breath. He’s sobbing, weeping out, his tears invites rain and ruin. His anguish sending the earth into a frenzy. It falls down, breaking. Everything around him turning into something else, shaping anew. With every scream he lets out, things die and live. Trees decay where they stand, and trees grow from around them, coiling and twisting. Lightning hits, burning the forest, the fire spreading despite the pouring rain.
Perhaps it was always meant for it to end like this. Jeongguk destroying the world he’s just saved. It’s too much an echo of that night twelve years ago, veil put in place only for Jeongguk to break.
They’re talking around him, shouting, begging him to stop. But he can’t seem to care, what’s the world for if Jimin isn’t in it?
He’s soaked through, he’s raging fire and he’s shaking like the earth underneath him, he’s aching and furious and he’s eight years old and lost. He tightens his hold on the body in his arms, and then he feels it; the gentle flicker of a soul, a flutter of a heartbeat.
“Jeongguk,” Jimin whines. “I can’t breathe.”
He’s dreaming. No, he ended the world, he died and this is heaven. He buries his face into Jimin’s neck, smells the flowery scent that’s always ghosting around Jimin. Jimin’s warming up in his arms, struggling. Moving. Alive.
He lifts his head, the first thing he sees is Taehyung’s stunned, teary eyes as he stares and stares at Jeongguk. No, not Jeongguk.
Jimin.
“Jeongguk, you’re holding too strong.” His feeble hand pushes at Jeongguk’s shoulder, and Jeongguk lets his hold go lax. Just looks at Jimin.
“What happened?” Jimin rasps. Jeongguk trails his eyes over him, the blood is still there, flaking off, dried and brown. The clothes are torn, but under them, Jimin’s skin is flawless, smooth and healthy.
“I don’t know,” Jeongguk answers him then he attaches their lips together and kisses him. Jimin lets out a surprised noise but he kisses back just as enthusiastically, wrapping his arms around Jeongguk’s neck as Jeongguk clutches at his sides.
They pull apart, smiling at each other, and then they’re toppled over as Taehyung throws himself at them, hugging them both while crying like a child.
“Oh thank God, thank God,”
Jeongguk doesn’t get the chance to right their position, everyone else joins the embrace, and they end up as a crying, laughing pile with Jimin in Jeongguk’s lap and everybody else clinging to them.
The sun shines over them, a welcome light after a darkness that seemed to last forever, the warm breeze of summer rattles the leaves, brings a fresh smell of recent rain. They stand up and look at each other, bewildered but happy. Relieved.
“My shoulder is healed,” Seokjin says casually as they walk forward.
“Really?” Taehyung asks, turning over and removing the cloth over Seokjin’s wound. True to his word, there’s no trace of the cut, only unblemished skin.
Yoongi hums “I have a theory.”
“I think it’s Jeongguk’s power,” Namjoon says.
“Yah! That’s my theory!”
Namjoon shrugs, Yoongi huffs “No respect,” he complains, “Anyway. I think he has the power to fix things as much as ruin them. He’s always managed to grow trees and bring rain. That’s not bad, yes? So when he was focused on Jimin’s death-”
“I died?” Jimin shrieks.
“His powers were directed towards giving life more so than destroying, even without him knowing.” Yoongi says as though Jimin hasn’t interrupted.
“I do remember getting hit with a claw!” Jimin says in wonder, touching at his side. The cloth is threaded over his flank and Jimin’s eyes widen as he turns to look at Jeongguk. Jeongguk places an arm around his waist and pulls him closer.
“I don’t care how it happened. I’m just glad it’s all over.”
“Holy shit!” Hoseok shouts, pointing at Taehyung. Jeongguk turns and he feels his eyebrows climbing up.
Taehyung’s hair is shiny blue, like the surface of a clear lake and his eyes are ocean deep. He looks confused as everyone stares at him.
“What?”
Seokjin smiles and ruffles his hair, “It’s blue,” he says as an explanation.
“Oh,”
It seems like amidst the fight and chaos, Taehyung had finished the pills he had and with Seokjin being away, no one made more of them. Jimin chatters, endlessly fascinated by Taehyung’s real appearance. Seokjin is more relaxed about it than Jeongguk had expected him to be, not freaking out but walking closer, with his arm around Taehyung’s shoulders.
“That’s it, I’ve decided to tell you guys, since all the truths are being revealed.” Yoongi says, then walks to Hoseok and puts his hand over Hoseok’s hip, pulling him close. “Hoseok is my fairy,”
Hoseok rolls his eyes and tries to push Yoongi away; Yoongi, it seems, is more persistent than Hoseok thought.
“Yoongi-hyung, leave him be,” Namjoon says.
“You’re just jealous you’re the only one without a fairy.”
Seokjin’s laugh fills the air, and they all follow, laughing at the weird sound of it more than at Yoongi’s joke. They are all battered up, their clothes in shreds and soiled beyond fixing but Jeongguk’s heart is light, perhaps for the first time in his entire life.
Epilogue
Jeongguk is welcomed like a hero when they arrive, the knights run to meet him and they carry him up and throw him in the air and cheer. Jeongguk’s smile is so bright Jimin can’t help but mirror it.
The chores and training are canceled in celebration, and the knights leave and indulge in -what Hoseok claims to be- the biggest festival in the history of their area. Candles are lit everywhere, lanterns get hung up in lines over the roads, and the night turns so bright it’s hard to believe the sun has set. Food and drink fly around, songs and dancing and music. The whole land is merry. The joyous melodies inspire everyone to join the dancing pairs in the yards, and Jimin watches with amusement as Seokjn and Taehyung dance together.
Taehyung’s identity is no longer a secret, and despite the gaping that had happened initially, everyone was over it by the time Choi Bang had appeared to rage about it. Seokjin had smiled, rather coldly, and said that it’s all over. The temple is no more, and as such Choi Bang should just back down least he said something he regretted. Choi Bang, ever the problem lover, asked where he’d gotten him from and Seokjin had answered, proudly -and threateningly if Jimin knew anything- with:
“I killed his master.”
The temples’ fate is yet to be decided, but Jimin thinks they will keep them, maybe not as intensely as they are but in some shape of being prepared. Namjoon had mentioned that the spell can be used by a number of people if it was modified enough and there was talking about training people to repeat it every while, to strengthen the veil and prevent future wars.
He hears laughter and he turns, only to see Hoseok trying to dance with Namjoon. The difference between the endless grace that is Hoseok and the absolute inelegance of Namjoon’s movements makes for a ludicrous contrast. Jimin laughs.
“Join me?” Jeongguk asks, his hand offered palm up.
It’s never been easier for Jimin to take an invitation.
-End.