Work Text:
Jumin is sitting in one of the white leather lounge chairs in his penthouse apartment. He is dressed in all black; his hair slicked loosely back, with some strands of hair having fallen down in front of his eyes. He is staring at a large photograph hanging on the wall opposite him, absentmindedly chewing at the insides of his cheeks. V gave him that photograph. It’s of an old winding path disappearing into the horizon with large cherry blossom trees on both sides in their last stages of blooming. The soft colours and the warm light are captured with such delicate care, and there’s a fragility to it which Jumin has never properly been able to put into words. Whenever he looks at it he finds himself thinking how strange it is that something so close to death can be so beautiful.
Jumin tilts his head down and looks at his wristwatch: it’s six minutes past seven in the evening, which means it’s exactly four hours and thirty-four minutes since V’s funeral ended. Jumin was the one who arranged everything. V didn’t have any family left, so that responsibility fell to him. It was a responsibility he took very seriously, and he made every effort to make sure his funeral was as memorable as possible for those attending, especially for the other members of the RFA.
V deserved nothing less.
V deserved so much more.
“He was a good friend, a good teacher, and a mirror of truth.”
The words Jumin spoke at the funeral sounds like an echo in his mind. He shakes his head at his own words. Not because what he said wasn’t true, but because it was such an understatement. But he couldn’t say what was actually in his heart. Even in front of his friends, he couldn’t tell the truth. The only one he owed the truth, was V, and even he never knew. And now, well, now it is too late.
Something is stroking against Jumin’s legs. He leans forward and sees Elizabeth 3rd at his feet, seeking his attention. Her bright blue eyes are staring up at him, and his mouth can’t help but curl into a little smile when he looks at her. He brings his hand down and scratches her under her chin, and Elizabeth 3rd lets out a satisfied chirp. Then he lets her jump into his lap and settle there. He rests his hand on her, watching it move up and down as her tiny body breathes in and out.
Jumin’s memory flashes back to five days before:
A message came in on the RFA messenger with coordinates to where V, Luciel - no, not Luciel anymore, Saeyoung - and MC were being held captured. He left the second he saw it, bringing with him a handful of security guards. Sitting in the helicopter, his jaws clenched, wishing the helicopter could go faster, he tried not to think about all the things that could have happened. All the things that could be the reason why those coordinates were sent. Because all those things meant that he was already too late, and he could never forgive himself if that was the case.
Jumin jumped out of the helicopter when it landed in front of the large mansion in the mountains that belonged to the Mint Eye organization, then ran to the front doors, his security guards on his heels. He watched them break the doors open, before he stepped inside and time froze.
The scene that was laid out in front of him, was one from a Shakespearean tragedy. Everything was set up as if on a stage, and the people were placed out like actors upon it. All the way at the back of the stage to his right he saw the girl he now knows to be MC, standing together with a young man with long hair. He was trying to protect her, pushing her behind him with one of his arms. In front of them was Saeyoung, passed out on the ground, bleeding heavily from his right arm. Next to him was a man who strangely enough looked like the mirror image of Saeyoung, but with bleached hair, and in his hand he held a gun. His face was painted with a mixed expression of rage and terror. Not too far away from him, in the middle of the room, a woman with long blonde hair was sitting on her knees with her hands on her head, her mouth open in a scream. Rika?! And finally, lying on his side in a still growing pool of blood in front of her, was V. His back was against Jumin, but he knew it was him. After all these years, he knew every inch of V’s body.
Jumin presses his thumb and index finger over the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. He can feel the tears pressing behind his eyelids. He doesn’t want to cry. There is no point. Crying has never made him feel better, so he takes three deep breaths before he opens his eyes again. He notices how quiet his apartment is. He used to appreciate that, but now it feels solitary. Before V’s death, he would go home to relax, but now home feels like a prison where he can’t escape his own memories.
As if in slow motion, Jumin approached V. He sank to his knees and rolled V over on his back. His clothes were tattered and dirty, torn in several places, and covered in his own blood. The bullet had hit him straight in the chest. Jumin shakingly reached his hands out and put them on top of the bullet wound. The logical part of him knew that V had already bled out, but there was a stronger voice inside him telling him that if he could only cover up the hole in V’s body, V would be okay. So Jumin pressed his hands down on the wound while he looked into V’s clouded eyes and smiled reassuringly.
Jumin didn’t know how long he sat like that with V, while time stood still around them. At some point the world must have started moving again without him noticing, because the next time he was aware of anything at all, was when one of his security guards gently tapped him on the shoulder and said in a hushed voice: “Sir, they’re here to take the body.”
Jumin looked up. There were no one else in the room anymore. It was only him and V and the security guard. And someone who was there to take the body.
The body...
“His name is V,” Jumin stated in that clear and cold voice he used when he made executive decisions that were not to be questioned. “And no one is taking him anywhere. I’m bringing him back to the city.”
“But sir-” the security guard tried to protest, but quickly stopped when Jumin turned his face towards him. Then he nodded. “We’ll let them know.”
V was carried out from the mansion on a stretcher and onboard the helicopter, where Jumin held him the entire ride back.
Jumin gently lifts Elizabeth 3rd up from his lap. She protests a little, but when he puts her back in the chair she curls into a bun and goes back to sleep. He walks into his bedroom and opens the door to his walk-in closet. He keeps all his suits on the right side. At the very end of the suit rack hangs a garment bag that he pulls out and takes with him over to his bed. He sits down and carefully pulls down the zipper in the garment bag. Inside is the suit he wore when he found V. It still has V’s blood on it. Jumin pulls the pinstriped shirt out of the bag and lightly lets his fingers run over the dried blood on the sleeves. Then he lifts the shirt up to his face and breathes in. It smells like copper.
He can’t keep it in any longer then. Alone in the silent apartment with all the memories, with a small part of V right there in his hands, Jumin breaks. He doesn’t want to cry, but it’s impossible to hold the tears back. There is a huge lump in his chest that’s been pushing and pushing to get out, and now finally, it’s breaking free. Jumin slides down from the edge of the bed, gripping the bloodstained shirt in his hands, while his whole body shakes and loud wails escape his mouth. He has never been in this much pain before and he doesn’t know what to do. How does he handle this amount of grief? How does anyone? What do you do when it feels like your heart is literally breaking apart in your chest and you can’t move or talk or even breathe?
What do you do when you can no longer live?
For a moment, Jumin lets himself be completely engulfed by the despair he’s feeling because there is nothing else he can do. He curls into a fetal position on the floor and sobs violently into the carpet.
“Why? Why did you have to leave?” he asks in between the sobs. “I-I loved you...”
Then he slams his fists down on the floor and screams as loud as his body will allow him.
Eventually, tears stop coming and he gets up from the floor. He looks at the bloodied shirt he’s been clinging to this whole time and thinks to himself that he should iron it before he puts it back in the garment bag. After all, he can’t stand even the thought of having a creased shirt in his closet. But then he realises that ironing it might remove some of the blood stains, so he carefully flattens the shirt out with the palms of his hands before neatly tucking it into the garment bag and hanging it back in his closet.
Jumin walks into the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. His eyes are red and puffy, and his hair a complete mess. His suit doesn’t look too good either. He takes the suit jacket off and puts it on a hanger, leaving him only in a black shirt with a black tie and black trousers. He turns the sink on, fills his hands up with cold water and splashes it on his face. It will reduce the redness and puffiness eventually. Then he finds a clothes roller and rolls it over his trousers and the jacket he took off. He looks back into the mirror. His hair is still a sorry mess. He runs his fingers through it a few times and it ends up looking intentionally messy instead of just messy. He leaves it at that and walks to the kitchen.
“Elizabeth 3rd!” he calls while taking out a porcelain food bowl from one cupboard and a small box of expensive wet cat food from another. She comes running from the living room and meows up at him. He puts the food down in front of her and pets her while she eats.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her, as if she can understand him, “but I don’t have any other choice.”
There have been many times where Jumin has felt that Elizabeth 3rd has indeed understood him, but this time he hopes she doesn’t. And he hopes that perhaps she isn’t as attached to him as he believes she is.
The doorbell rings. Jumin looks up at the clock on the kitchen wall: eight o’clock sharp. Exactly on time. He stands up, stretches his neck, then goes to answer the door.
Standing outside is one of his security guards and Rika.
“I’ll take it from here,” Jumin tells the security guard and offers Rika his arm. She takes it and follows him into the apartment. He leads her over to the white leather chair he was sitting in earlier and she sits down in it. She doesn’t speak.
The doctors say that Rika has trauma induced aphasia - that she’s struggling to comprehend and formulate words. Apparently what happened to V hit her so hard that her brain decided to shut parts of itself off. The brain does that sometimes to protect itself.
Jumin takes a wine bottle out of the wine cooler in the kitchen and brings it and two glasses with him into the living room. He sits down opposite Rika, puts a glass in front of her and a glass in front of himself. Then he skilfully uncorks the bottle and pours wine into both glasses. He brings his own glass up to his lips and takes a sip. When he sees that Rika isn’t drinking, but just sitting there staring at the glass, as if she needs permission to drink, he nods at her. Only then does she too lift her glass.
“I thought the two us should spend some time together after what happened,” Jumin tells Rika. “After all, we were both very close to V. We both loved him very much. There was nothing neither of us cared more about than his well-being.” He tries to meet her eyes, but her gaze shifts all the time, as if she can’t focus on him.
Or won’t.
It was the day after the ordeal in the mountains, and Jumin was sitting on a park bench next to MC. Their first meeting had been anything but ideal, and this one was only a little better. She was a beautiful girl and she was just as kind in real life as she had come across in the messenger. Saeyoung was a lucky man. She was strong too, having gone through the nightmare of the last few days and still smiling as confidently as she did.
She had just told him everything that had happened at the Mint Eye mansion: about the unknown hacker, who was really Saeyoung’s twin brother Saeran, and about Rika, who was Mint Eye’s leader. With the help of V, she had faked her own suicide and ran into the mountains where she had started the Mint Eye cult. Because V had been protecting Rika, it had looked like he was to blame for everything, while all he had wanted was to keep her from harming anyone. And in the process he had gotten himself killed.
Damn it, V.
Jumin studies Rika. She is truly the picture of innocence: long, wavy blonde hair and large green eyes set in a heart-shaped face. She gives off a trusting energy, inviting those around her to come closer and open up. She seems just like an angel, offering protection to those who need it.
But Jumin knows better now. She is no angel. She is a lurking spider who carefully weaves her web to attract the weak and vulnerable, and then prey upon them.
MC explained to Jumin how Rika had brainwashed Saeran into a dangerous weapon - someone who blindly followed her every command. And with his help she had planned to get all the RFA members to join her cult - willingly or unwillingly.
Right before Jumin had entered the mansion, V had pleaded with Rika to stop what she was doing, but she hadn’t listened to him. And that is when everything had gone so wrong. Saeran, confused and angered by Rika suddenly throwing him away in favour for Saeyoung, whom she had taught him to hate, pulled out a gun. In a delirious state, screaming and ranting, he had fired the gun and killed V.
Rika is looking at the cherry blossom photograph above Jumin’s head. He deliberately placed her in that chair so she could see the photo.
“Do you like it?” he asks her. “It’s the last photo V took before he hurt his eyes. His expression changed completely after that. It got darker. Just like V got darker.”
Jumin is paying close attention to Rika when he is talking, and when he mentions V’s eyes, he can see her flinch just a little. He has to restrain himself from smirking and not give himself away.
He is sure now. Rika doesn’t have aphasia. Her trauma is a convenient lie to escape the blame and to avoid being judged for what she has done. She might have fooled the doctors, but she isn’t fooling Jumin. Not anymore. He may have let himself get caught in her web before, but this time he is the one in control.
He isn’t going to let her get away with what she did. She has brought misery and suffering to a lot of people. She indoctrinated Saeran. He is in the hospital now and there is no guarantee that he will ever recover from the paranoia that Rika induced upon him. Saeyoung is a complete wreck because of it, and if he didn’t have MC, Jumin is afraid of what he could do. She threatened MC, and could have killed her if Saeyoung didn’t come to her rescue. She also threatened everyone else in the RFA, not to mention the emotional turmoil she put everyone through with her fake suicide. Did she ever stop to think about Yoosung? He idolized her, and her “death” broke him.
Then there’s V.
All of a sudden, Jumin gets so angry and sad thinking about what she did to him that he has to turn away from her. He walks into the kitchen again, pretending to look for something so she can’t see how his eyes are getting wet. He clenches his fists so hard his fingernails digs into his palms.
Rika killed V. Saeran may have pulled the trigger of that gun, but Rika was the one who guided his hand.
Jumin is finally able to calm down. He walks confidently back into the living room, smiles at Rika and says: “The sun is about to set. Let’s watch it together.”
Jumin has to give her credit for playing her role so well, because she looks around her with a confused expression, pretending not to understand what he is saying. So he holds his hand out for her to take, and when she does, he gently leads her out onto the large balcony and over to the glass railing. The view is breathtaking, and for a moment Jumin is able to not think about anything but the sunset. For a moment he is reminded of how beautiful the world can in fact be. For just a single moment he forgets that V is dead.
Then he is violently ripped back into reality and the present, where V is really gone, and the pain hits him so hard, he has to hold onto the glass railing and gasp for air to avoid his legs collapsing under him.
He feels a hand on top of his: Rika’s. Jumin looks up at her and she meets his eyes for the first time since he found out she was still alive. She should look sad, devastated, bereaved - at least one of those things. But she doesn’t. When he looks into her eyes, all he sees is emptiness.
Jumin reaches his arms out for Rika and she lets him. He wraps them tightly around her and presses his cheek against hers. Then he whispers into her ear: “I know you’re faking it.”
Rika’s body tenses up in his arms at his words. He can feel her begin to struggle, trying to push away from him, but he only tightens his grip around her further. She can struggle as much as she likes, but she isn’t going to escape Jumin’s arms.
Jumin doesn’t have to do much. It is remarkably easy. He simply leans over the glass railing, until gravity takes a hold of them and they both fall from the balcony.