Chapter Text
Because it was.
The room is gray. His shirt is gray. Everything seems to be gray.
Jade continues to tell the group about her first day out trying to reconnect with someone. Her attempt to feel again. Taehyung doesn’t hear a word, mind numb and it’s been like this for five years already. Nothing helped him. Not sleeping, not distractions, not the pills, and certainly not this stupid group therapy. But he still goes to it anyway. Still tries to clutch onto the sliver of hope that’s keeping him from fully succumbing.
“That’s good. These little baby steps that we take. It’s a push closer towards finding our purpose. To feeling whole and complete again. Things will never be the same and we have to accept that. Our old routine that we got used to is just not the same when a big part of it is missing. All that we could do now is move on.”
He could hear the faint, muffled, cries of some of the people in the room with him.
“The world is left in our hands. It’s up to us to find something to do with it. Otherwise, Thanos should have just killed all of us.”
Steve looks at them meaningly.
But Taehyung couldn’t bring himself to listen to him. To believe him. He says they’ll be able to move forward, in time, he says Taehyung would be able to fix his broken pieces back, in time, but it’s been five years. So why, pray tell, is he still as ruined as he was the day it happened?
“How did it go?” Namjoon asks, slamming the car door shut. Taehyung remains still beside him, only offering a quick grunt before the boy turns to look out the window. Wistful eyes gaze over rebuilt structures. It took a while before humanity got back up on its feet. Taehyung wonders when he’ll be able to do the same.
The drive is quiet save from the occasional hums Namjoon lets out. He spares the younger boy glances, eyes glazed over with worry. Ever since the snap, Taehyung hasn’t been the same. Well, who was he kidding? No one was ever the same. But out of all the important people he knew, this boy was the most broken down. He wanted to reach out, maybe help him through every step, but Taheyung’s closed himself off. He’s left to stand by and watch as Taehyung drowns in the storm of his own mind.
Namjoon needs to think of some way he could save him before Taehyung loses this internal fight. After all, he promised Jimin to make him happy in his place.
“Thanks, Hyung. Say hey to Tony for me.”
He starts dragging himself up the steps to his— their— apartment. Today was a long day at work, pretending to be okay and that two hour-long therapy. There’s nothing else he wants to do than to just curl up in his bed and never leave. But then he hears the hazy memory of a voice nagging him “you shouldn’t let yourself starve, idiot.”, and so he tosses the leftover from yesterday into the microwave and eats.
When he’s done, he doesn’t bother to take a shower. Instead, he lets his body shut down and fall onto soft cushions.
Taehyung still sleeps on one side of the bed.
Maybe Jimin would somehow come out of the bathroom door any second, smelling of his strawberry body wash and lie down next to him. Maybe he’ll wake up to the view of Jimin watching him in fond awe, tease him that he has morning breath but still kisses him into the mattress. Maybe he’d smell burnt bacon and hear Jimin’s string of curses from the kitchen. They’d end up ordering breakfast burritos instead and watch movies on the couch like two lazy bums on a Sunday. Maybe he’d feel Jimin’s heavy hands pressing into his skin, letting the moon witness their love in its rawest form.
Maybe not.
Taehyung knows he’ll forever remain a shell of what he used to be. The shredded pieces of his heart had already turned into dust, blown away by the wind of tomorrow.
How would he be whole again when half of him was gone?
Why didn’t he just disappear, too? Why should he be left here to suffer through each day?
Strings of pent up feelings untangle, finally coming undone in the dark of this bedroom for two. He lets it out. Lets his sobs cut through the deafening silence. He remembers Jimin telling him that it was always okay to cry.
“Even the clouds cry, Taehyung-ah.”
The moon is up, her watery glow seeping in through the window. She lets it dance over Taehyung’s skin and offers him light. A solace in this cruel world. And Taehyung basks in it as he lays his heart and sorrows bare. Tomorrow would be a new day, and he’d have to live once again, but for now, it’s just him and the moonlight. And maybe Jimin too, in the form of a star, twinkling prettily wherever he was.