Work Text:
- lifetimes
Jungkook dies nine times -- but he only remembers the last.
The Timekeeper's home appears like it does to everyone (after nine whole lives and nine whole deaths, that is), like a great cavernous library, sprawling out from the film-room in an array of corridors that stretch outwards towards endlessness, a neverending spider web of tunnels and shelves and reams of film pack tight next to one another, their covers coated in dust and silver.
"Come, come in," the Timekeeper says, waving long fingers like tendrils of smoke or silk or serene sorrow.
Jungkook steps forward, his head still spinning from falling down (down, down) into the chest of death, embracing it, only to open his eyes and find himself here, filled to the brim on emptiness, yet unready for thought.
"Are you afraid?" the Timekeeper asks, his eyes silver too, his hair first short, then growing longer, longer still, till it seeps across the marbled floors in ocean waves, ebbing and cresting and flowing.
Jungkook takes a breath, while he still remembers how, and asks, "Should I be?"
Namjoon grins a grin that knows all secrets, as the Timekeeper does, and beckons him forward again, "You've been here nine whole times -- you tell me, am I someone to be afraid of?"
Jungkook glances passed Namjoon towards the blank stretch of wall, the flickering projector, the nine dust-silver rolls of film that sit beneath Namjoon's open palm.
It takes him a moment to say, no... no you are not someone to be afraid of.
Namjoon smiles, wide as moonrise and high tide, and blinks silver lashes, hair growing shorter and shorter till it is carved along his scalp into shapes Jungkook can't quite place. And then, he clicks his fingers and the lights go out, the projector whirs to life, the film clicks and flickers and clicks till images run smooth as shivers, crawling up Jungkook's skin.
There he is, painted along the walls in all the familiar lines, his shape so true to himself and yet so foreign when seen like this, through the lens of time -- he is laughing at something, someone. And then there they are, the two of them, hand in hand, jumping into a river when the world was as simple as sunrise and moss and seasons changing. When there was no school or wars or diplomacy.
Jimin is beautiful, as he always is, splashed across the forefronts of Jungkook's memories like spilled perfume, lingering in every page, every frame.
They couldn't have been more than 17 here, Jungkook thinks, watching himself and Jimin dancing through an open field with their fingers laced. The sun filters through the strands of Jimin's hair and Jungkook cups his cheeks, kisses him right on the mouth. Jimin's fingers go slack, for a second, he is breathless in the same way that infants are at the moment of birth, with no preconception of air, with no idea how his lungs might fill with bits of the sky. Then, Jimin kisses back and Jungkook, sitting in this darkened room with the Timekeeper by his side, forgets the meaning of air as well.
The film flitters through that lifetime, dinners on picnic blankets with only candles and each other for warmth, the fights with shattered china and slamming doors, the finding of each other with broken hearts offered up on bleeding lips.
His second lifetime is a flash of regrets and inconsequential moments -- Jimin's eyes are blue and Jungkook's aren't. The sky is the color of a fading bruise when Jimin catches Jungkook's hand and refuses to let go -- Jungkook begs him not to.
In the end, it is Jungkook who let’s go first, with a war strapped to his back, and explosives in the base of his stomach. He promises he'll come back, and doesn't.
The third is meeting in line for the morning market. There is dirt under Jungkook's nails, and cuts on Jimin's hands. Neither of them care to notice.
"It's always him, isn't it?" Namjoon asks.
Jungkook doesn't need to answer for him to know -- oh, of course, of course it's always him. There will never be anyone else.
His fourth lifetime is short. He is a myriad of hospital wires and cures that haven't yet been discovered and Jimin bottles up his own tears of keep Jungkook's room light at night. There are not nearly enough stars in the sky but who’s counting, anyway? Jungkook watches as Jimin brushes the hair out of his eyes, runs a thumb along his cheek, and tells him that hush, now, it's okay -- it's okay to go.
Jungkook goes. But he always comes back.
For Jimin, he'll always come back. Not always in the same body, perhaps, not always with the same eyes, but always, always with the same forgotten breaths, the same hands, the same lips that already know the shape of Jimin's mouth, whatever shape they might have taken in this lifetime, and the next one over, because their bodies are born to find each other.
The fifth lifetime is his favorite, long and tender, and hard-earned. The world is at war again, but they find solace in each other's arms. They find peace with the quiet in each other's throats, and they find worlds too good to be true hidden behind each other’s eyes. They move from London to France, but there is no escaping the war of worlds. They watch the sky tear itself open, bleeding in bombshells and shrapnel bits, and they do their parts, Jimin studying anatomy till the lamps burned out, Jungkook quizzing him on organs and diseases and the ways the war might end.
"Maybe not in our lifetime..." Jimin sighs one night.
Jungkook puts down the notecards and brushes his fingers along Jimin's cheeks.
"Then we'll try again in the next one," he says, and Jimin nods.
They kiss in the darkness, and pretend not to hear the sound of airplanes overhead.
The sixth lifetime lasts for only a few stolen moments, in a museum, where Jungkook is working, Jimin visits and asks him a question about a World War II canteen. Jungkook smiles and tells him a story of star-crossed lovers.
The seventh lifetime rolls across oceans, and spreads across seas. Jungkook waits by the shore till Jimin finds him, all mist-eyes and foam smiles and Jungkook lets himself drown in the salt of Jimin's skin. They buy a boat together, build a house on the beach, paint their lives into the sand, collect shells like memories. They fill their walls with the shells, and on the back of each, they write one thing they love about each other -- the way you drink soup, the way you laugh, the way you can't write in anything but clichés, how the wind kisses your cheeks like i wish i could, how your skin tastes on my lips.
They fall asleep together, together, together.
Namjoon reaches for the eighth roll of film.
"Why are you showing me these?" Jungkook asks, the question too obvious not to pose.
Namjoon pauses, fingers poised over the penultimate roll. He taps his nails along the silver casings, lips pressing into a thin, knowing smile.
"Because you might need to remember," he says.
Jungkook frowns, "But I do -- all of them."
"Even while you're living them?"
Jungkook doesn't have the answer.
The eighth film plays in colors he doesn't remember till now, the pink of Jimin's lips, the red of his cheeks, the shine on his lashes when he looks away, nervous. But, it's Jimin who teaches Jungkook how to kiss, when they are too young to wonder about the meaning of kissing. The people at school are ruthless, and Jungkook screams that it's all Jimin's fault for making him fall in love. Jimin doesn't deny a thing, only scuffs his shoes along the ground with his hands behind his back, eyes downcast. Until Jungkook stops screaming, until Jungkook allows himself to feel again.
Jimin turns to walk away, and for a second, Jungkook almost lets him.
Almost.
They spend this lifetime tucked into all the corners of each other that don't fit anyone or anything else. They spend it in whispers, behind hands, with their backs against a wall, but they kiss all the same. There is laughter, all the same, and flowers, too. Jungkook buys too many, gives them to Jimin every single time they fight, till they don't anymore.
They are not yet allowed in the world, not entirely, though no one is sure of why.
Still, they hold hands in public, kiss when they want to, defiant and beautiful.
The last lifetime is the freshest, the clearest, the brightest; Jungkook's just lived it after all. They meet backstage, where the cameras aren't watching, where the lighting can't steal the light from their eyes and shift it elsewhere. Jungkook only knew what it was like to be in front of a camera, but Jimin makes him wonder what it's like behind one. So, he asks Jimin to teach him, and somewhere between one shutter click and the next, their lips find each other, like they always do, across nine whole lifetimes.
Magazines herald their relationship as The Dream Team -- model and photographer becoming indispensable to each other. No amount of words or pictures (no matter how many words they're worth) could quite capture how exactly they were molded for each other, how one life is tailored for the other, and how their bodies don't remember how to be alive unless they're together.
"Now," Namjoon says, just as the final film ends, "you have to choose," he continues, pulling out a pair of golden scissors, pointing at each roll of film, "one moment from each."
Jungkook looks at the film rolls, curled neatly into their casings, nine whole lifetimes all laid out before him.
"What are they for?" he asks.
Namjoon shakes his head, "Choose first."
And so, Jungkook chooses -- a drop of sunlight, an eyelash on Jimin's cheek, the way he bites his lip when concentrating, a tear, the first word of a story told under his breath about a time when the world wasn't at war, "Thank you", a new-found shell, the flash of a smile.
"No kiss?" Namjoon asks, as he carefully snips each frame from their respective films, placing the singular moments aside, stitching the films back together, before putting them back into their cases, waving them back towards their shelves.
Jungkook laughs, "No kisses -- I don't need a memory to remember those." He presses his fingers to his lips, the smile still there, a familiar warmth spreading through his body.
Namjoon takes the clipped-out moments, places them into a tiny album, and holds it out to Jungkook, who accepts it with a silent thanks, never once asking what it might be for. Namjoon offers no explanation.
And then, Jungkook closes his eyes, and forgets.
- Monsoon Season
There are storms, and then there are those wild, chaotic dances of the wind, the sea, and the sky, those hours of luminous ecstasy that dreg up the deepest, darkest secrets of the earth and lays them bare across its surface.
Jimin digs through a pile of rubble, teeth hard over his bottom lip, his protective goggles hung around his neck, a camera dangling a bit further down.
"Find anything?" his partner calls.
"Not yet!" Jimin calls back.
"Well, don't give up looking -- there might be survivors still!"
Jimin yells an affirmative before diving back into the wreck. Here and there, he finds pieces of shattered lifetimes strewn among the mess -- a sock here, a cracked flower vase there, a table leg, a pair of chopsticks, a CD with smeared handwriting across its surface. He digs and digs, casting his voice about till he loses it completely.
The sun watches, dewy-eyed and remorseful, from the edge of the horizon before ducking down below it, unable to bear the desolation any more. Jimin keeps on searching.
It will be three more days till he stumbles across a tiny photo album with nine pictures, all of them almost washed out, but for some reason, he keeps it, tucks it into his suit pocket and zips it up safe. That evening, they report that no other survivors have been found.
- resurrection
"We looked for so long, I'd forgotten what the world looked like outside of disaster," Jimin says.
Jungkook nods, frowning down at his notepad as he scribbles down shorthand, the camera next to him flashing its tiny red eye at them both. Jimin glances at it briefly before continuing.
"In the end, we didn't find anyone... but I kept a little something I found in the ruins," he shifts, points towards the little photobook sitting on his mantle. Jungkook glances back at it, eyes bright.
"Go on," Jimin says, leaning back in his chair. He lets out a breath, mulled and heavy.
Jungkook picks up the album with ginger fingers. Something twists in his stomach, something thuds inside his chest, something locks inside his throat, and for a moment, he cannot remember which lifetime he is in -- is this Paris or London or that neverspace between war and peacetime? Is it the morning market or the hospital room? Is it here, or there, or is it somewhere outside time and space?
He flips open the little album, and sees only shadows.
"Never could figure out what those pictures were, but I knew I had to keep them. Somehow, I just couldn't let it go," Jimin says, reaching for the album. Jungkook hands it over with a wry smile.
"I wonder who it belonged to," he says, voice soft.
"Someone important," Jimin says.
"How do you know?" Jungkook ask.
Jimin sighs and runs his hands over the cover of the album, smooth and unassuming and perfectly unmarred, even through the passage of years.
"Because the storms don't leave behind things that aren't important."
Jungkook frowns, "But all those people -- "
Jimin cuts him off, "Won't remember a thing."
Jungkook is silent, but only for a moment. And then he says, "You'll remember though."
Jimin nods, tracing the edges of the washed-out photos, faint outlines of somethings and somewheres barely visible now, "I always do."
Jungkook turns the camera off, "I wish I could too."
Jimin regards him with a steely stare, a quirk of the lips. "Don't you?"
Jungkook stares. "I... didn't..." He looks down at the album again. His throat locks, his heart thuds, his belly twists and suddenly, the library cracks open his mind like the sky.
"You're here, aren't you?" Jimin asks, with the same knowing smile as the Timekeeper, and suddenly, Jungkook understands. He lets out a breath he hadn't remembered holding in, and the world rushes through him like a punch to the gut.
"It was you... all along -- the one I keep coming back to." Jungkook reaches forward, and Jimin lets him.
"One of the perks of being the Timekeeper's apprentice," Jimin says, "is that you get to choose your lifetimes, and the people in it."
Jungkook gulps down air like he's never tasted something so sweet; Jimin's eyes glimmer like gemstones.
"Why me? Why me, every single time?" Jungkook asks.
Jimin leans in till their foreheads are almost touching, till their lips are a word and a half apart.
"Because," he says, "no one else remembers me like you do. And," he lets the word rest between them, filling up the negative space, "you make every lifetime feel brand new, and I will always, always choose you."
Jungkook laughs, "Well, if I had a choice --I'd choose you too."
Jimin's eyes sparkle as he finally presses their lips together, "Oh, you do -- don't you see? For this to work, you have to choose me too -- and every single time, you do."
Jungkook doesn't need to answer out loud for Jimin to know, for both of them to taste it, for their lips to remember the shape of their vows -- I do, I do, I do.