Chapter Text
Quiet.
Jeongguk could never get used to the quiet.
Once upon a time, birdsong and the cries of animals rang out over the area he made his home, but now even that was gone. One by one, species he had admired, then hunted, then desperately searched for disappeared.
Jeongguk was alone.
Jeongguk stood in front of a rotted-out husk that had once been a cherry tree. Tears slid down his face, a handful of other fruits crushed in his hands. At the base of the tree lay a fawn, the last fawn he’d seen born in his little paradise. He’d rejoiced over it, hoped it was a sign nature was healing, and left the tree alone so he wouldn’t disturb the baby and its mother.
Now the mother was gone, the fawn was dead, and the tree had rotted out, taken by the same human-made disease that stole everything else from him.
He didn’t have long. The disease would enter him the moment he touched the fawn with his fruit-soaked hands, heedless of all barriers, and he would get a day, two days at most, before he died, rotting from the inside out without so much as a warning. Jeongguk didn’t know that he cared. Everything else, everyone else around him had been stolen from him by this disease, the greed for knowledge that had destroyed first his country and, for all he knew, the world.
Maybe he was the last human. Maybe, when he let the disease inside him, it would all be over. Maybe he could— was there even a heaven anymore, if the human race was gone? Perhaps that last sorting his mother threatened him with as a child was already over and he was left behind, forgotten.
Jeongguk reached for the fawn.
Something screeched overhead, loud and metallic. Jeongguk stumbled back, fingers just short of the fawn’s hide, and retreated under the cover of the trees as something large and fast sped over the clearing and disappeared. Jeongguk’s chest heaved, and he fumbled with the trunk of the tree behind him as he stood and looked toward the tree again.
The fawn had begun to rot.
Bile rose in Jeongguk’s throat, and he turned away.
Not today. He didn’t have the bravery to do it today.
As Jeongguk ran into the forest, he cursed his cowardice. Despite two years of practice, he still tripped over roots and slammed through bushes with all the grace of a frightened house-cat, which is to say none . By the time he approached the clearing with the entrance to his home, his nose had begun to bleed, he’d skinned his knees and knuckles, and he didn’t know when he would be able to breathe properly again.
What if he’d touched a rotting plant in his frantic bid for safety and cursed himself anyway? What was the use of hiding from new creatures when he might die in the morning from a contaminant so fast and invisible it might decide to kill him in his sleep and leave his rotting corpse for whatever poor being might come across it next?
Jeongguk was so wrapped up in his thoughts, so busy with his scramble for the door, that he didn’t notice the amorphous shape hovering overhead until he got the door open and checked to make sure nothing was approaching.
He dropped the door on his foot in shock. What followed was a long line of expletives as he struggled to open the door again, saw something drop out of the thing, and fell backwards down the flight of stairs into what he’d termed his living room.
The only thing that saved his head from splitting on the worn concrete were the mattresses he kept on the floor, pressed end to end from one side of the room to the other. Jeongguk slammed into them hard nonetheless and let out a whimper that was a mix of pain and humiliation. Pre-apocalypse Jeongguk would have laughed his ass off if he saw him now, running from a potential threat instead of facing it head on, but Jeongguk had no one to protect but himself, and in that moment, dazed and unsure whether the throbbing in his wrist was from the stairs or some other stupid maneuver, he stayed flat on his back on the mattress and hoped the thing would go away.
The thing did not go away.
Jeongguk scrambled up as the door opened and shot into the next room, a storage area with precious little left to store. Once upon a time he’d filled it with half-expired foods he scavenged from grocery stores and foods he gathered on his own, but without the appetite or the means to scavenge as far as he had before, it wasn’t much but a glorified fridge. He scrambled into a worn wooden crate, wincing as splinters dug into his hands, and pulled the lid of the crate over himself. When he curled into a ball on his side, the blood from his nose dripped between the slats onto the concrete, and he found himself praying the thing wasn’t something that moved by smell.
Oh hell, what if he’d left a trail? Stupid goddamn nose—
“Hello?”
Jeongguk pinched his nose and tried to breathe through his mouth as quietly as he could. Another human? Something that could mimic a human? He wasn’t stupid, he’d read enough alien invasion books to know how these things go, he wouldn’t reveal himself.
“Hello?”
It was coming closer. God he wanted to die. Everything hurt. Would the alien prolong it? Would it torture him? Would it possess him? He didn’t want to be possessed, but he’d long run out of bullets for every single one of his stolen guns and the bow he’d attempted to make hadn’t done as well for itself as he’d hoped. He was defenseless and didn’t know how to fight this thing. He couldn’t fight this thing.
Go away, go away, go away, he chanted silently, twitching when the door to the storage creaked open.
“Hello?”
Did this thing know no other words?
As if realizing this, the creature let out a garbled string of noises that sounded just close enough to English to bring tears to Jeongguk’s eyes. God, of course the aliens would speak English. They never learned any of the other languages before they took what they wanted and enslaved the humans they found. It was always fucking America.
“Hello?” the creature repeated, and this time it sounded less like a human and more like the cat videos Jeongguk used to watch before everything went to shit. “Haw-woh?”
Jeongguk squeezed his eyes shut and hoped it would go away.
Another set of garbled noises— then the crate he was in jolted forward. Jeongguk stifled a gasp with both hands and thanked whatever deity was watching that the nosebleed had stopped. The noises continued— definitely English. Jeongguk didn’t know English. He’d tried, but after the world went to shit it didn’t seem worth it. He was so fucked. What if it was threatening him? How was he supposed to know?
The crate turned on its side, the lid fell off, and Jeongguk tipped out. He tumbled gracelessly to the floor and was saved from a nasty smack to the head by what felt like a normal human hand.
Okay. Okay. Maybe he was lucky and it would just suck his soul out of his mouth or something. Jeongguk squeezed his eyes shut and waited, braced for disaster.
Instead, another, warmer hand settled on his brow.
There were two?
The aliens exchanged a series of garbled noises, clicks, and trills, and the hand on Jeongguk’s head warmed to an uncomfortable temperature. Oh, so they were going to melt him. Okay. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to—
“Can you understand me now, human?”
Jeongguk gasped and opened his eyes.
He didn’t get a very good look at the alien overhead— mint-green skin and large sparkling eyes flashed before him, and then the alien picked him up like a ragdoll and carried him back into his living room, where it set him down on the mattresses before it leaned over him again.
“No need for fear,” the alien said, smiling. “I am Namjoon. Where are you hurt? Jimin will heal you.”
Jeongguk blinked, mouth hanging open as he tried to take Namjoon in. Namjoon’s eyes lacked any definition between the white, the iris, and the pupil— it was all black as the night sky, shimmering with something like stars. His skin seemed to sprout… plants? Was Jeongguk hallucinating?
Jimin, the other alien, had pink skin and long, crooked horns. When he tried for a smile, Jeongguk saw twin fangs, and he swore a tail flicked in and out of sight. Yep. Definitely hallucinating.
Was this the part where Jeongguk died?
Jeongguk opened and closed his mouth and came to the embarrassing realization that while, yes, he could still understand Korean, he’d completely lost his ability to talk like a normal human being.
Which meant he couldn’t communicate.
Which meant he was going to die.
Jimin rested a hand on his chest with a frown. “Your heartbeat is irregular. Why are you holding your breath?”
Jeongguk would later blame exhaustion, two years of isolation, and increasing anxiety for what he did next. In a split second he slapped Jimin’s hand away, stumbled to his feet, and tried to run, only to trip over a stray blanket and topple face-down into the mattresses, where he promptly burst into tears as he tried to crawl away instead.
“That didn’t work,” Namjoon muttered.
“No kidding,” Jimin shot back. “You’re sure there aren’t more manuals? Should we have brought the others?”
“Humans don’t always get along with other humans,” Namjoon said. “Too risky.” As he spoke, his hand curled around Jeongguk’s ankle, keeping him from squirming too far away. “I don’t know that there’s any way to keep him from panicking.”
Jimin huffed. “Knock him out, then. Stop frightening him more.”
Silence. Jeongguk leaned too hard on his aching wrist and let out a pained whimper.
“Fine,” Namjoon grumbled. “I’ll knock him out.”
Jeongguk had gone under anesthetic for a surgery, once. Being ‘knocked out’ felt similar— one moment he was awake, clinging to whatever he could hold to keep himself from being pulled back, and the next the world melted around him and he drifted, struggling to stay conscious.
Voices drifted overhead, and as Jeongguk started to come to, he felt hands carefully adjust him, perhaps keeping him in a proper position the way the nurses had that other time. The world was still smears of color and light, but he thought he heard Jimin speaking to him, quiet and soothing, coaxing him awake like he was a toddler who didn’t want to get out of bed.
As he pulled further out of the induced sleep, he realized he wasn’t in his living room anymore, but instead in some sort of… bedroom? He lay with his head on Jimin’s chest, wrapped in a thick blanket and surrounded by some kind of soft, cushion-y material. Jimin held his head in both hands, keeping his chin tipped up. Breathing assistance? Jeongguk wasn’t sure. He was still groggy, and it was hard to keep his head up. His body wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do.
“You’re doing good,” Jimin crooned, and Jeongguk watched in stunned wonder as his skin shifted from pink to green to blue and back to pink again. “So good. Keep your eyes open for me, little one. You’re safe now.”
Jeongguk opened his mouth and tried to speak, the dead fawn suddenly on his mind, but the words all slurred together and he started to cry instead, prompting a concerned noise from the alien holding him.
“What’s wrong? Are you cold? Did I miss an injury? Are you scared?”
Jeongguk tried again and could only manage another string of garbled gibberish.
“Maybe we should bring another human in.” Jimin fretted. “I don’t understand him.”
“I’ll bring one,” a new voice said. “He seems sad. Maybe they’ll know why.”
“Quickly, Seokjin,” Jimin huffed, without looking up. “Ai, little star, why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
As more of the grogginess faded and Jeongguk realized where he was, the thought of the dead fawn began to mix with thoughts of all he had left behind, and he only cried harder, shaking his head until Jimin lifted him into his lap and brought their foreheads together.
“You’re going to dehydrate yourself if you keep this up. You don’t want that, do you?”
“You found another— holy shit. What did you do to him?”
“He tried to run away,” Jimin said. He sounded as miserable as Jeongguk felt. “We had to put him under so we could purge the rotting disease and heal his other wounds. I think he’s scared.”
The rotting disease? Jeongguk had caught the rotting disease? No, wait, they had purged it? Did that mean they had a cure? Did that mean—
“Ahhh! Breathe, little star!” Jimin thumped him on the back, and Jeongguk gasped and coughed, startling as someone knelt beside them.
“Did you find any other humans near him?” the newcomer asked, their voice urgent.
“No,” Jimin said. “He was alone.”
“He might have— it’s been two years,” the stranger said. “I had Yoongi-hyung with me, so we talked to each other, but he had no one. He might have…”
“Forgotten?” Jimin asked, and he sounded so sad that only the struggle to breathe properly kept Jeongguk from bursting into tears again. “Oh…”
The stranger huffed. “It’s too late now, at any rate. You didn’t find any other signals, right?”
Jimin shook his head.
“Then it looks like we’re stuck together,” the stranger said. He leaned over Jeongguk, all fluffy brown hair and wide, boxy smile. “Hello! I’m Taehyung.”
Name. Jeongguk could say his name. “Jeon- Jeongguk,” he managed.
“Jeongguk?” Taehyung checked, and beamed when Jeongguk nodded. “What a nice name! Jimin and Namjoon must have scared you pretty bad.”
Jeongguk hesitated, then nodded.
Jimin let out a sad noise, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry, Jeongguk. We didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I’m going to watch the tapes later,” Taehyung huffed, poking him and laughing when Jimin recoiled with a sullen whine. “I bet you forgot you were still in the same region, didn’t you?”
“I’m a professional,” Jimin sniffed, but it was… unconvincing, with the pout on his face.
“Seokjin had to remind you to bring his items,” Taehyung said.
Jimin’s pout deepened.
Jeongguk sniffled and tried to move, but the blankets were too heavy. He groaned, and Taehyung laughed.
“Yeah, that’s an anti-mobility blanket. You can’t come out until Namjoon’s sap stops making you woozy.”
Jeongguk frowned.
Taehyung smiled. “Explanations later,” he said. “The most important thing is, we’re not on earth anymore— we’re in space, though you probably guessed that. We’re en-route to another planet a few galaxies away, or something, and apparently we’re the last three humans in existence? So there’s that. Uh. Sorry.”
Jeongguk blinked at him, wondering what the apology was for— then the tears spilled over again, and he gave up on trying to make sense of anything else.
**