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Yoongi was 20 years old when he was promoted to first lieutenant; an impossible feat never before achieved in the history of the Union’s military.
People whispered about pulling strings and favouritism, going even as far as accusing his father of nepotism, but Yoongi retook every test, beat every simulation score three times over, and dared every wagging tongue in the Academy to flatten him onto his back on the training mats.
He volunteered for every recon mission, every off-station operation, every bounty hunt that was pinned on the Announcements Board, and he came back from every single one of them with a new notch on his belt each time.
Yoongi proved himself capable, deserving of the title of first lieutenant; not because he was, but because he could.
In all actuality, he hated military life.
He hated the rigid structure, the detailed planning of every single moment of his days, the stupid orders that he had to take or risk a court-martial - or even worse; risk his father’s disappointment - but Yoong was ultimately good at it all, and that made it just a little easier to bear.
Sometimes, however, he wanted to gouge his own eyes out and pull every single strand of hair from his scalp. He wanted to get into his Navigator’s chair in his ship and run it right through the Academy’s Entrance Hall, blow the place up to Nebulon and dance in the heat of the flames that would burn it to the ground.
He wanted to shove his father’s proud smile right up his ass and scream that he didn’t want this, didn’t want any of the praise or the nods from the higher-ups, he didn’t want his own fleet, he didn’t want to be a dog of the military.
He didn’t want this life that had been chosen for him.
But then Yoongi would take a deep breath and let it out, and he would remember that none of that mattered. None of his feelings ever did.
What did matter was that he was a first lieutenant in the Union’s Auxiliary Fleet and captain of his own Union Star Ship, and he was responsible for his own crew. What mattered was that Yoongi’s behaviour reflected directly on his crew, on his direct superiors, on his father; and what kind of General would people think his father was, if his own son couldn’t live up to the great and noble Min name?
Yoongi hated military life.
Mostly, however, he hated his own life.
Yoongi is 21 years old when he’s promoted to Lieutenant and receives news of his father’s death.
Raiders. Ambush. Total and utter devastation.
None of these words mean anything to Yoongi; nothing but an abstract sense of loss and indignation.
How dare the old bastard die. How dare he leave behind his last surviving family, alone in the universe.
How dare he leave every fucking thing he owns to Yoongi.
Yoongi doesn’t want his house, his estates or his stupid ship. Yoongi doesn’t want his computers, his gods damned uniform and badge.
He wants his father, but according to the Fleet’s reports, they hadn’t even been able to find a body.
Yoongi gets himself blackout drunk the night of the traditional Union funeral and wakes up the next morning naked, curled tight in a male Astral’s arms. Yoongi doesn’t recognize him, doesn’t care; his head feels like it’s getting slammed repeatedly into the hard side of a Mandaran lion and he can’t remember anything past leaving the Union cemetery.
He leaves faster than he’s ever moved in his whole life, and calls in sick.
His superiors understand. They tell him to take his time.
Yoongi reports for duty the day after, and he gets his crew signed onto a long-term diplomatic expedition to Elysia. He warns them that they’re not coming back, not for a long time, and doesn’t begrudge them when some opt to transfer out before they’re set to depart - the ones with families, with roots on Helios that they actually care about.
Suran finds him sequestered in the captain’s quarters hours before they’re about to leave, and Yoongi’s drowning his grief and regrets in a bottle of Dorfen whiskey at his desk when she sits down across from him and crosses her arms over her chest, her clear amber eyes boring into him disapprovingly.
“It’s not like you to run away, sir,” she says in a stiff tone, and Yoongi stares at the glass of whiskey he’s holding loosely between his index finger and thumb.
He swirls the liquid inside slowly, and looks over at his subordinate. “It’s not like you to question my orders either, Shin,” he says.
She purses her lips, and then her expression softens with sympathy. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says softly. “But we both know leaving Helios won’t make the pain any easier to bear.”
“Won’t it?” Yoongi says rhetorically, bringing his glass to his lips and downing it before slamming it onto his desk and giving Suran a sharp, sardonic smile. “How many fathers have you lost, Shin?” he asks bitterly.
Suran takes the question in stride, retorting, “Not as many as you,” before shaking her head. “I’m not questioning your abilities or your orders, sir. But with all due respect, there was never any love lost between the two of you. I don’t want to see you do anything you’ll regret because of a man you hated.”
Yoongi stares at her, flat and impassive, and musters enough anger in the ocean of apathy that’s been threatening to drown him since he’d left his father’s funeral to snarl out, “With all due respect, Ensign, but I’m pretty sure he was my father, not yours.” Then he stands up, the feet of his chair screeching as they scrape against the floors, and adds, “And I’ll damned well make as many fucking mistakes as I want in his fucking name.”
Suran flinches from his tone, but she isn’t discouraged, bless her loyal soul. She stands, too, and salutes him.
“Then the crew and I will be right there making them with you,” she says, her posture perfect and her eyes set determinedly on him. “Sir.”
She leaves before Yoongi can snap a reply, and Yoongi curses quietly to himself before dropping back into his chair and refilling his glass.
His father had always been a shrewd man.
For all his flaws and terrible parenting, Yoongi could give him that, at least. He was clever and cunning, a proper balance of the best education money could buy and enough common sense to put it to good use. That was what had garnered him respect from his crew, his subordinates and his peers. That, and his tendency to buy drinks for everyone in a bar after every successful mission.
Yoongi had never thought his intelligence would be the man’s downfall.
It was 3 years after his death, and Yoongi was 25 years old.
He and his crew had long since completed their expedition in Elysia, but they’d continued on another recon one in Axel. It was only six months into their journey when Yoongi received a post-dated recording on his private line.
That had set alarm bells off immediately; Yoongi never got messages on his private line. He didn’t have friends - friends were a weakness, not unless they were in the military, according to his father - and his only relative had been his father, who, last Yoongi had checked, was still metaphorically-buried in the Union’s fleet cemetery on Helios.
He’d played the recording, and had immediately wished he hadn’t.
The final minutes of the recording had left Yoongi in tears that were 3 years too late, and the grief that he’d felt when he’d heard the news of his father’s demise couldn’t compare to the one he experienced then, alone in his quarters with nothing but his father’s voice and glitching hologram staring at nothing.
Lieutenant Min Yoongi became a deserter on a dreary Monday, two weeks before his 25th birthday, and then he died a month later, attacked by Raiders; just like his father.
“What the fuck were you thinking, you little shit!”
Admiral Heechul’s voice is a firehawk’s talon scraping against porcelain tiles, high and shrill as it resounds throughout the bridge of the Agust. His crew collectively flinches at it, cowering from the burning glare of Heechul’s projection, but Yoongi’s seen the man in his underwear, clinging onto a toilet bowl as he cried his eyes out over his ex-fiancee, dried vomit flaking off from his scraggly hair.
It’s hard to feel any sort of fear for him with that image in mind, and Yoongi stands his ground as he glares right back at him.
“Do you know how pissed the Council is?” Heechul continues, gesturing wildly at the air. “Even I can’t fucking protect you from this, dipshit!”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” Yoongi hisses, interrupting him. “My father is dead, Heechul. So the Council can shove it where the suns don’t shine and stay the fuck out of my way.”
Heechul’s fury abates immediately at the mention of Yoongi’s father, but it comes back quickly enough. “The punishment for treason is death,” he snarls. “I never pegged you as the kind of asshole that would fuck over his whole crew for fucking nothi-”
“It’s not nothing!” Yoongi roared, surprising even himself with the fervency of his words. Heechul’s lips snap shut and he stares at him angrily, eyes narrowing.
They’re friends, the two of them. An unlikely pair, the most unexpected of friendships. Heechul has one of the most notorious reputations on Helios, his image of being a demanding, unforgiving Admiral often preceding him wherever he goes.
But out here, in deep space, a day since learning the truth behind his father’s death- Yoongi can’t help but wonder if he can even trust this man. Wonder if their friendship has been a lie, if everything he’s lived for - his father had lived for - is nothing more than another tool the Council would use to twist and manipulate to their benefit.
“You want answers, why don’t you ask the fucking Council,” Yoongi says, flat and sombre. “There’s only five of us left on this ship, the others are reporting back to Helios from Axel. They’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“And what, exactly, is this?” Heechul asks incredulously, looking more confused now than angry.
“This is my life,” Yoongi answers. “And the Council can stay right out of it. Goodbye, Heechul.”
“No, Yoongi, wai-!”
Yoongi had been adrift in his pod, cradling the dead body of his Ensign for the past gods knew how many days - maybe even weeks - when the pod had jerked to a sudden stop, an ominous click of a docking arm grabbing ahold of them ringing throughout the tiny craft like a thunderous clap.
Yoongi had been starving, his mind already playing tricks on him from the lack of food and water, and he’d half-expected it to be another hallucination. Even if it hadn’t been, however, he hadn’t had the energy to spare a reaction to it. So what, if they were being salvaged anyway? So what if it could’ve been Pirates, or passing merchants, or even more fucking Raiders?
Yoongi was dying; he knew this for a fact, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
And to be honest, he wanted to die. He deserved to die.
What kind of a captain was he, to live on while the rest of his crew - people who’d depended on him, who’d looked up to him, who’d trusted him not to get them all killed - were scattered throughout space, drifting lifelessly like trash?
He hadn’t been able to save them. He hadn’t been able to save Suran.
He shouldn’t be saving himself, even if he could.
Yoongi would’ve jumped in shock when there was a knock on the door - a series of metallic clinks and clanks that was in tune to an old song Yoongi could’ve sworn he knew - but his body wouldn’t move, even when his mind and his heart weakly raced with anticipation. He stared at the door with half-lidded eyes from the steel floors, Suran’s cold body draped across his lap stiffly, and he licked his dry, cracked lips as the door unlocked and hissed as it was pushed open from the other side.
The first thing Yoongi saw was orange; a bright, almost blinding splash of the unreasonably cheerful colour spilling out from the gap between the door and the wall of the pod, and then he cursed his shit luck, because the orange was attached to the familiar face of an infamous pirate.
“Jung,” he croaked out, proud that he could even manage a disdainful sneer.
Space Pirate Jung Hoseok, the bane of his fucking existence. Of course he would be the one to find Yoongi in the throes of death.
“Sweet Nebulon, Min, the fuck did you do to yourselves?” Jung said, whistling long and low as he stalked towards Yoongi and took in the state of him, his eyes lingering on Suran’s corpse before rising to meet Yoongi’s.
Yoongi grunted a reply, although he really wanted to tell the pirate to go fuck himself. But even that was too much for him, because his vision started spotting and Yoongi blinked rapidly to clear it, except that didn’t help at all. It only served to make his head pound painfully, and Yoongi breathed heavily through his nose as he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Go ‘way,” he managed to breathe out. “L’mme die.”
He heard Jung click his tongue disapprovingly, and then Suran’s dead weight was no longer on him. Yoongi panicked, wanting to stop it, stop him, from whatever it was Jung was doing, but he found that his eyes wouldn’t open again, no matter how much his mind raged, and then there were hands hooking under his armpits and Yoongi’s brain exploded with pain as he was jostled and brought up to his feet.
“I’d say don’t fight, but you really ain’t in any condition at all, are ya?” he heard Jung’s voice, closer than before, and Yoongi wasn’t tired enough to not hear the pity in it, and it made him angry.
The anger, however, just made his headache worse, and Yoongi lost all tenuous hold on his consciousness as he was dragged out of the last remnant of his star ship by a Space Pirate he’d sworn repeatedly to kill in the past.
---
When Yoongi woke up, he was leaning upright in a medical pellet, his right thigh throbbing with burning pain.
He tried to move, gripping the pellet’s sides and pushing himself up and out of it, but when he tried to take a step, he’d forgotten, and he lost his balance before toppling over onto hard floors in a painful heap.
He groaned loudly, pushing himself up onto his hands and elbows, and rolled over onto his back. His uniform was gone; he was wearing a grey t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants and Yoongi swallowed thickly at the obvious lack of shape under the pant leg just below his right thigh.
He’d forgotten; how could he forget that?
He heard heavy footsteps coming from behind him, and Yoongi scrambled to get to his feet- his foot, reaching up to grab at the medical capsule and using it as support as he pulled himself up. He looked around for any weapons, but the room was bare besides some machinery and a short, metal trolley with gauze and tweezers on it, and Yoongi didn’t have any more time to find a hiding place before a man walked in.
He didn’t look anything like a Space Pirate; round and young, a warm, beaming smile on his face that made Yoongi instinctively want to smile back. The man didn’t look a day over 35, but he reminded Yoongi of a friendly, loving grandfather - never mind that Yoongi’s own grandfather had been a cold, emotionless Astral when he’d been alive - with well-meaning intentions, and that immediately put him on edge all over again.
“My engineers are working on a prosthetic that can last you at least a couple decades,” the man said without preamble, stopping to stand a few feet away from where Yoongi was now standing, haunched into himself. “It’ll take a while to get used to, but Hoseokkie’s managed. I’m sure you’ll fare much better, Lieutenant Min.”
Yoongi glared at him, wary, and tensed up when he saw Jung slipping into the room behind the unfamiliar man.
“What’d I tell ya, Cap’n,” Jung said, smirking with amusement at Yoongi. “Bastard’s too stubborn to stay down.”
“Where the fuck is Suran?” Yoongi bit out, glaring between the two of them. Agitation crept under his skin when Jung and the older man exchanged looks at his question and Yoongi clenched his hands into tight fists. “Where is Suran?!” he shouted, slamming a fist into the frame of the pellet he’d been using for support.
He was starting to feel lightheaded, his vision blurring as his head pounded, and the loud, erratic pumping of his blood rushing through his veins was a rising cacophony of sound in his mind that wasn’t helping at all. Yoongi could see Jung’s mouth moving, and he knew he was talking, but Yoongi couldn’t make out any words over the deafening ‘THUMP’, ‘THUMP’, ‘THUMPing’ in his ears.
He couldn’t breathe, he realized belatedly as he collapsed onto his knees- his knee - his leg was gone, gods, his fucking leg was missing - and Yoongi gasped, desperate to calm down the thundering beats of his heart. He needed air, he needed Suran, he needed- he needed his leg back, his crew back, his fucking ship-
“-ot helpin’ anyone like this, idiot,” he could barely make out Jung’s voice saying, and then-
Nothing.
---
When Yoongi woke up again, he was in a normal bed, and the room was bathed in darkness.
He felt-
He felt empty.
There was a numbness under his skin that crawled like a living thing, creeping between his bones and spreading as it settled in like a disease. He remembered clearly how he’d gotten there, what had happened when he’d woken up earlier, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Just as suddenly as his anger had erupted, it was simply- gone.
In fact, everything was gone. He didn’t feel anything at all, and as he stared blindly up at the dark slope of the ceiling overhead, Yoongi wondered if he’d lost more than just his leg when the Raiders had attacked.
Well, that was a stupid question.
Of course he’d lost more than that. He’d lost his crew - the closest things he’d had to friends; they were the only ones that had stayed, that had been stupid enough to trust their lives in Yoongi’s selfish hands - and his ship and his- his life.
Yoongi knew exactly why the Raiders had attacked them and-
His Apple.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the door to the room slid open silently, allowing a sliver of light from outside to shine in. Yoongi sat up, vaguely noting the absence of the pain from before, and watched as Jung slunk in. Even in the dark, his shit-eating grin was visible on his face, the whites of his teeth were almost as bright as the light from the hallway outside.
His teeth weren’t the only things that were shining; a dim, golden glow filtered between the clenched fingers of his right hand, and Yoongi’s eyes drifted over to it, transfixed.
“Your dad knew Bang,” Jung said, leaning against the wall next to the door as it slid back closed. “Asked him to look out for you. Saw what the Council had comin’ for him, didn’t he?”
“Where are we?” Yoongi asked when Jung stopped talking. He looked like he was waiting for a response, but Yoongi didn’t want to- Yoongi couldn’t be bothered to play any more games.
He didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew he didn’t want anything to do with the Council anymore.
Jung’s grin diminished, sharpening around the edges instead before he tossed the Apple over to Yoongi. Yoongi caught it out of reflex, and it was as beautiful as he remembered it the first time he saw the damned thing.
It looked like its namesake; an apple. But instead of red, it was golden, a deep, chromatic orb in its centre that was surrounded by three layers of thin, translucent skin made of a material Yoongi couldn’t identify. It was just big enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and as always, there was a faint, barely-there sense of heat emanating from it - as if the thing were alive.
Before, in the first few days of finding the Apple, Yoongi had tried to crack it with all the weapons at the Agust’s disposal, and nothing had come even close to leaving so much as a scratch on it.
Even with his father’s explanation, Yoongi still didn’t know - didn’t understand - what the thing was. Just that it was rare, and it was valuable. Which meant the Council was willing to do anything to get their hands on it.
On all 47 of it scattered throughout the universe.
“Your dad died keepin’ that shit safe,” Jung said, and Yoongi tore his eyes from the Apple to look up at him. His eyes were dark, dangerous slits on his face, made all the more threatening by the sharp twist of his lips. “We’re in Asura’s orbit. You wanna get off, just say the word.”
Jung strode over to the pellet, and Yoongi curled his hands around the Apple protectively, although he wasn’t sure exactly what made him do that. Whatever it was, Jung hadn’t missed the action, and he smirked down at Yoongi smugly.
“But if you stay, you get to keep that,” he said, voice low and rough. “Council’s after it. You stay, and it’s yours. Along with revenge for your father. For your crew.”
The look in Jung’s eyes was almost manic, a crazed, righteous anger that might have unnerved Yoongi if he weren’t feeling so numb. He’d always known that Jung hated the Union, but he’d never considered, exactly, to what extent did that hate run. He’d never questioned it, either.
As a member of the Fleet, Yoongi had always thought that was how things worked. Citizens in the GU either hated or respected them, there were no in-betweens, no grey areas to explore. It was just how it was.
But after the message his father had left behind for him; after the ambush that had destroyed the Agust and his crew- his friends, their own people-
Yoongi wondered what the Union had taken from Jung, what awful ‘accidents’ had befallen him, to have wrought such resentment from the pirate. Yoongi wondered how many fathers Jung had lost, how many friends had died in his arms. Because of the Council.
“What do you think, Min?” Jung prodded when Yoongi stayed silent for too long.
What did he think.
Yoongi wasn’t thinking anything. He wasn’t thinking anything and that was exactly what the Council had moulded him into all his life, wasn’t it? What his father had moulded him into at their behest. Take orders, nod assent, enforce the GU’s policies in every corner of its territories.
And where had that gotten him? Stranded, alone, in the middle of the Mandara System, at the mercy of people he’d once tried his hardest to kill just because the Union had wanted him to.
Aimless, friendless, fatherless. There was just less and less of Min Yoongi, with every breath he took; and what was the point of all that?
Yoongi hated military life.
He hated his life.
When his father had pointed him in the direction of the Apple, Yoongi had finally found the courage - the desire - to finally make a decision of his own. To do something on his own terms.
It hadn’t ended well, but-
“My name’s Yoongi,” Yoongi told Jung, clutching the Apple tight and looking up to meet the other man’s eyes. “You got a bathroom on this shitstain?”