Chapter Text
Jimin bit the inside of his cheek as the knife drove into his leg again and carved the sixth line. One cut for every day. Yesterday, the fifth, which had been dragged through the four other cuts because of the old Earthly way of grouping five together, had been bad.
“So, you Lumarae, how do you like that? Hm? Don’t you feel emotions more strongly than we humans do?” asked the soldier who was torturing him. “How do you feel?"
They had taken Jimin’s deoxyribonucleic acid to see whether he was in any system somewhere. He was in no system. Instead, they had found out that he was a Lumarae. They probably could not have dreamed of better news.
Jimin knew better and answered. “Good.” He could answer banal things like that; no one cared whether he was lying. Those were only questions meant to torture him further. The other questions he was asked, about the rebellion and his escape from Lumarisentia, he did not answer, no matter how they tortured him. Whether it was some kind of poison, pure violence, or psychological strain.
Jimin did not break his silence. For them to get something out of him, they would have to recreate the pain of losing his entire home planet. That was Jimin’s limit. If that were crossed, he would probably talk.
But of course humans could not reach that pain. How could they?
Actually, he already knew the answer. But in order to figure out that they would have to threaten Yoongi’s life to get answers out of him, they would need access to his brain, which they simply did not have. Sure, they had already questioned him about what he had to do with Yoongi, why he had been with him. But they would never come up with the idea that Jimin was in love with him and would do anything to make sure Yoongi was okay.
“Good, then?” The man laughed. “Let’s see how tomorrow goes. It’s your anniversary- one week here! We’ll treat you extra lovingly.” The man laughed and finally, after a good fifteen hours, had Jimin led back to his cell.
Jimin lay down on the floor the moment the heavy door fell shut. He had to draw his legs up, that was how small the cell was, its walls made of metal plates. Apart from a hole in the corner for relieving himself and a fist-sized hole in the ceiling for air, there was nothing.
He fell asleep, but every ten minutes an alarm went off, there for no reason other than to keep the prisoners from sleeping. That was probably the kind of torture most people gave in to. Not being allowed to sleep was terrible.
Jimin thought of Yoongi again and wanted to cry.
He hoped he was okay, even if maybe he could no longer sleep so well now…
Hoseok sat beside Yoongi and had an arm around him. “You know, everything will be okay again.”
Yoongi kept crying quietly. “I want to die.”
“Come on, I’ll give you medicine. To sleep, and for the depressive thoughts.” Yoongi had given in and now accepted Hoseok’s help with sleeping.
At those words, he only cried harder, which made Hoseok stroke over his arm. “But if I- if I don’t anymore… If I don’t feel this so strongly anymore, then- I have to feel this way. Jimin is being tortured.” Besides, it is my fault. He should have run before me. I should have protected him.
“Just because he is being tortured doesn’t mean you have to torture yourself too.” Hoseok took the cup he had already placed beside him. “Please take these. It’s for the best. Once you’re doing better again, you can actively help save Jimin again. How does that sound?”
Yoongi took the cup and looked skeptically at the four pills. “Four?”
“One sleeping pill, one for your thoughts, and two to supplement your nutrition a little. You really need to start eating properly again.”
Yoongi wiped at his face and brought the cup to his mouth. He swallowed all the pills at once, and then Hoseok gave him another cup of water, from which he took a few sips. After that, Hoseok stood and led Yoongi to his bed. “Good night,” he wished him.
Yoongi allowed himself to fall asleep.
Yoongi cuddled up to Jimin and stroked through his hair. His forehead was pressed against Jimin’s. Jimin’s eyes were closed.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” Yoongi said and smiled widely, feeling warm all over. “I missed you so much.” He pressed many soft kisses to Jimin’s cheeks. “My heart aches for you.” Yoongi kept kissing Jimin’s face.
But at some point, he stopped.
Jimin wasn’t saying anything at all…
“Jimin?” Yoongi asked worriedly and sat up. He placed his hands on Jimin’s cheeks. “What is it? Was that too much? I’m sorry, I just missed you so much.”
Something warm touched Yoongi’s legs, so he pulled the blanket away to see what it was.
It was blood touching him.
In shock, Yoongi followed the red liquid to its source and then realized that Jimin was full of bullet holes. “Jimin…” Yoongi stammered, his mouth dry. “Jimin!” He wanted to put his hands back on Jimin’s cheeks, but suddenly, in his right hand, he was holding the murder weapon. He stared at it with wide eyes.
“Why?” Jimin coughed. He opened his lifeless eyes and looked at Yoongi. “I only wanted to help you. Why did you do this to me?”
Yoongi stayed frozen in shock for a few moments, until he jumped off the bed and tried to run out of his room, terrified of himself.
“Ahhh!”
Yoongi quickly sat up in his bed. His sleep clothes were drenched in sweat and he was breathing in and out rapidly.
Then he started crying.
The door to his room opened.
“Yoongi? Is everything okay?”
Yoongi looked up and nodded. “Everything’s fine, Jimin. Go back to sleep.”
Jimin hesitated at the door, then came over to Yoongi’s bed and sat down beside him.
“You know I love sleeping next to you. Come on, move over, okay?”
Immediately, Yoongi felt calmer. He shifted to the side and then covered Jimin with the blanket.
“Come here, everything will be okay.”
Jimin wrapped his arms around Yoongi and hugged him. Yoongi put his arms around Jimin, his face against Jimin’s neck.
“Thank you for being with me.”
Eventually, Jimin loosened the hug, so Yoongi wanted to pull his hands away too.
But he couldn’t.
Confused, he leaned forward a few centimeters to look at his hands on Jimin’s back.
His eyes widened when he saw that both of his hands had stabbed deep knives into Jimin’s back.
“Maybe not everything will be okay after all,” Jimin said, and then his upper body fell against Yoongi, suddenly ice-cold.
That coldness spread over to Yoongi.
He wanted to finally let go of Jimin, but it was as if his hands were glued to the knives, and the knives to Jimin.
Thankfully, he woke up then.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
Jimin stroked through his hair. Yoongi couldn’t see anything because of the darkness, but then he nodded and enjoyed how Jimin calmed him down.
Until Jimin stopped doing it.
“You damn baby. You wake up screaming, crying, and can’t sleep. Are you sure you’re not mentally impaired, you absolute nothing? You piece of shit!”
“Jimin—”
“Jimin,” Jimin mocked him. “What? Am I your mother? Oh, your mother would hate you. You killed her! You killed all of them!”
He slapped Yoongi hard across the face.
“I hate you, you incompetent baby! Huh, couldn’t take care of yourself?! Why did I have to get captured for that!?”
“I’m sorry,” Yoongi cried, until he woke up.
Jimin was lying asleep beside him.
Ah, just a dream.
Yoongi wanted to cuddle up to Jimin, but only touched a skeleton.
He woke up.
Jimin came to check on him, but for some reason Yoongi suddenly had a weapon in his hand and had killed Jimin in one moment.
He woke up.
His head was lying in Jimin’s lap. Jimin comforted him, until Jimin became angrier and angrier, eventually even screaming and wanting to do to Yoongi what was currently being done to him.
He woke up.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
“You slept through the night.”
Hoseok had sat down beside Yoongi at lunch. Yoongi had not come to breakfast. Mentally, he had not been ready for that. He had spent the morning in bed and, to be completely transparent, crying.
That night had been really… difficult.
“But your stress levels were very high, so you’re probably not rested.”
“You can’t give me that sleep medicine anymore,” Yoongi said. “It traps me in a cycle of nightmares.”
Jungkook sat down beside Yoongi and looked at Hoseok a little shyly.
“Hello,” he mumbled.
“Good afternoon, Jungkook.”
Hoseok briefly returned the smile, but then looked seriously at Yoongi again.
“Are they really so bad that you don’t want to sleep at all?”
Yoongi looked at Jungkook.
“Jungkook, could I show you my dream from tonight? Or rather, a few of my dreams.”
It is not as extreme a dream as the one Jimin saw. So it should be okay.
“Sure.”
Jungkook held out his hand to Yoongi, puzzled. Yoongi took his hand, and after just one second Jungkook was already staring into nothing.
“You’re showing him your dream?”
“Yes,” Yoongi said and focused on remembering. “He can be the second opinion.”
Hoseok nodded and continued eating.
After a good two minutes, Yoongi pulled his hand away, and Jungkook blinked a few times before focusing his sight on something again.
Before Jungkook could say anything, Yoongi spoke.
“No sleep, or a night full of dreams like that?”
“What?”
Jungkook shook his head slightly.
“Um, no sleep or that? Oh, rather not sleep, right? Is that the right answer? I don’t want to see that many dead Jimins, that hurts… Oh, Yoongi, that must be horrible for you!”
Jungkook looked at Yoongi with concern.
Yoongi, however, looked at Hoseok with raised eyebrows.
“Okay, okay, I understand,” Hoseok gave in. “But at least let Jungkook help you so you don’t have to lie in bed for hours before falling asleep, okay?”
“Deal.”
Two weeks.
That was how long it took until Jimin was found.
Yoongi, who had only been staying on the rebels’ ship without energy and without really being able to function, had been told immediately.
Finally, after those two weeks in which Yoongi had not shown even a glimpse of happiness, his eyes seemed to shine again.
“Where exactly is he?” he asked Seokjin, who had come to Yoongi.
“Does the prison on C70-D mean anything to you?”
Yoongi stood frozen for a few seconds, then collapsed in on himself.
“Yes,” he murmured. “It’s… only the worst criminals are kept there. Five cells, more than seventy humans, all armed beyond anything normal… It’s impossible. Jimin is…”
Yoongi lowered his gaze and felt tears coming.
“…lost.”
“Don’t say something like that!”
Seokjin placed his hand on Yoongi’s shoulder.
“We’ve managed much worse before. And… with your help, we might be able to do it.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“We have hackers here. It’s just that none of them are as good as Jimin, and you learned at his side. If you could help them hack into the cameras or something…”
Yoongi wiped away his tears.
“Okay,” he murmured.
Deep inside, his gut feeling told him this would not work.
C70-D… it was a terrible planet. No life forms, because there was no real atmosphere. Only cold and ice volcanoes that spat out chunks of ice larger than houses and were therefore damn dangerous.
Besides, how were they supposed to free one of the five prisoners?
It simply was not possible.
The Commander Min thing would not work anymore, so it wasn’t as if they could just walk through the front door—
Yoongi’s tears stopped instantly.
…unless Jimin was in the one cell that had a secret passage for emergencies.
But how high was the chance of that?
That would not—
One in five.
The probability was twenty percent.
Hope began to spread through Yoongi again.
Over the course of the day, he managed, together with seven others, to hack into two cameras.
One camera showed the corridor of two cells, the other apparently the humans’ kitchen.
03 was written on the door visible on the right side of the corridor wall.
Yoongi was relieved to see that door.
It was the one with the secret passage.
Now the only question was whether Jimin was being held in that cell.
If not…
Yoongi did not want to think about it.
While Yoongi was wondering that, he was in the room with BTS, as well as other rebels, watching the camera footage, which was live, of course.
They saw figures come into the frame.
A woman in the prisoners’ uniform, holding her hands behind her back. Probably tied.
Please into cell 4, please into cell 4, please into cell 4, please—
She was brought into cell 3.
Yoongi immediately stood up and wanted to leave, but then more figures appeared on the screen.
He recognized Jimin instantly.
He was limping. Like the woman, he was tied up.
When Yoongi saw that, his nervous system shut down for a moment.
Jimin was brought into cell 4.
He was beside the cell with the secret passage.
He was in the cell beside the secret passage!
That was possible.
Yes, that should work.
Somehow.
With weapons. And bombs. And—
Whatever.
It was possible.
They could save Jimin like this.
“Namjoon!”
Yoongi walked toward Namjoon and ignored everyone else in the room.
“I—I have a plan! We can bring him back!”
For the first time in two weeks, Yoongi smiled slightly.
Namjoon looked surprised.
“Good. Let’s sit down with BTS and listen to you, okay?”
Yoongi nodded and could hardly wait to finally have Jimin with him again.
Jimin, with his way of taking care of Yoongi.
Jimin, in Yoongi’s arms.
Jimin, who smelled like home.
Jimin, who… who was Yoongi’s home.
The ten minutes it took for the six of them to get into a meeting room felt far too long to Yoongi.
Far too long, when they could already be flying off now to get Jimin!
“You still don’t want to tell us anything?” Jimin was asked.
Where in the beginning Jimin had still made some sarcastic comment, he now left it alone.
He did not even have enough energy anymore to hold his head upright.
It was his seventeenth hour in the torture room.
“Today is your fourteenth day here. I’ll give you that, not many last here without saying anything. But believe me when I say that after two weeks, they all start talking. Tomorrow you’ll realize that we’ve still been nice until now.”
He took his knife and carved the fourteenth line into Jimin’s leg.
Jimin stayed silent and tried not to cry.
“Get him out of my sight.”
The man spat on Jimin’s freshly made wound and then disappeared.
When Jimin was free, he had to bend down himself, with his heavy body, to pull his pants up.
The humans shoved him as he did it, causing him to land face-first on the floor.
They kicked him three times, then pulled him up and forced him to walk.
He limped to his cell.
Cell four.
Namjoon tried to say it carefully.
But he wanted to make it clear right away.
“It’s too risky, Yoongi.”
“But it’s actually—”
“Yoongi,” Namjoon interrupted him. “Please don’t convince yourself of something that isn’t true. I know you miss him terribly, we all do. But this is not a plan. You want to break into one of probably the most secure prisons there is, just because there’s a secret passage beside the cell Jimin is in. It isn’t worth the risk, we—”
“But sending me into a military base was!” Yoongi shouted, upset. “My plan can work!”
“Can,” Namjoon repeated.
The rest stayed silent, not knowing whose side they were on.
They could understand both.
Yoongi, who desperately wanted to save Jimin, and Namjoon, who was thinking rationally.
“It can also happen that the woman in cell 3 doesn’t simply kill you immediately. It can also happen that it ends with more deaths than necessary. It can also happen that this plan doesn’t work.”
Yoongi stared darkly at Namjoon.
Namjoon sighed.
“I want to bring Jimin back just as much as you do. We all miss him terribly. But I will not have any more losses, okay? We’ll come up with another plan—”
“When?”
“As soon as possible—”
“I’ll do it. Alone. None of you or anyone else has to risk their life. I’m doing it voluntarily.”
Yoongi looked at him with determination.
“No.”
“It’s my decision.”
Yoongi was angry.
Angrier than anyone here had ever seen him.
“I would not help a suicidal friend commit suicide. And I’m also not sending you on a mission that really, with probably a hundred percent certainty, will not work.”
Yoongi realized Namjoon could not be reasoned with.
Angrily, he stomped out of the room and did not know where to put the rage and frustration inside him.
For a moment, it looked as if he was going to cry, but then he straightened himself.
He had made a decision.
Namjoon could not tell him what he did and did not get to do.
If Yoongi wanted to take a ship, fly it to the planet of a prison, break in there, save his friend, and then come back, no one could stop him.