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“Why look at that,” Jungkook snarls, “it’s Kim fucking Taehyung.”
The world around them is burning, rumbling with things untold and trembling with the destruction yet to come. It’s terrifying, but there’s no escaping it now. Jungkook knows this.
Fate seems to be what brings them to the battlefield now, a wand gripped tight in Taehyung’s fist and sword unsheathed from Jungkook’s scabbard. He’s achingly tired, sweating with the heat of the burning sun above them. But he will not falter. Not until his very last breath, which may be sooner than he thinks.
What are they even fighting for?
This is no last stand.
The spells have been cast. Their home, their world, their planet is shattering beneath them - the cities have crumbled and the seas have risen - and all they can do is fight and fight and fight against those that worked toward its destruction.
It’s all Jungkook can do.
“Jungkook, I…” Taehyung trails off. They’re about a yard away from one another, and the sky has gone dark with omens of the end, but Jungkook can see him clearly enough. The man is bloody and battered, wears torn clothes and a ripped cloak, billowing behind him in the wind. His eyes are as luminescent as ever, shining with the power that coats his skin. Blood is dried on the corner of his lip. A bruise rests over his right cheekbone.
All Jungkook can think is, Good. He deserves it.
Around them, the battle continues. Sword against sword, wand against wand, magic against strength, life against life. The world is on fire, and Jungkook and Taehyung are the only ones standing still.
Beneath his feet, the ground thrums, and Jungkook can feel its anguish, can feel its despair at the eruption of mortality within its existence. He doesn’t exactly know what the Yinthae Segment - the Darkness Bringers - did. He knows they forged spells specifically for mass destruction, which was forbidden in the realm: forging new spells. But it’s not like anyone could stop them. They grew too powerful.
The Segment Taehyung had left him for… They grew too powerful.
Taehyung takes a step forward, and in return, Jungkook takes a step back.
“Jungkook…” another step toward him.
There’s a scream to the right of them, and Jungkook tenses, raising his sword in warning. Taehyung’s face falls farther, and he lets his wand drop from his hand.
“Jungkook, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Oh, really?” Jungkook scoffs, anger pulsing in his chest, curling wildly in the tips of his fingers, “That’s why you left, right? Why you joined the Yinthae? Why you abandoned the light?”
The sound that leaves Taehyung then sounds too much like a sob, and Jungkook fights the ache in his gut that builds in reaction. Finding his voice, Taehyung fists his hands in his cloak, gaze dropped to the ground, “I never intended to. I didn’t want to abandon the light.”
A bitter laugh rises from Jungkook’s throat, swallowed by the noise of battle and clang of metal around them, “But you did.”
“I thought - I thought we were building a new world. Not destroying this one. I thought - “
“You thought? You thought what?” Jungkook tries to tell himself that the burn behind his eyes and the waver of his tone don’t show through, don’t threaten tears to slip down his cheeks, “You thought that if you left, you’d save us all? You thought it was a good idea to join the Segment that killed our families and raided our villages? You thought it was a good idea to join the evils that blanket the land in carnage? You thought even after all of that, the Yinthae were truly trying to create a better world?”
“I was told - “
Jungkook interrupts, “That they were creating a new world? A better one? Where people won’t starve because there will be less of them? Where our forests won’t burn because of the bonfire ashes that carry on the wind? Where our seas won’t flood the coasts because the moon is drawing too close to the planet?” He laughs again, lowering his sword to his side, “You thought that they could fix all that? Taehyung, they brought our destruction closer. And you helped them.” He’s screaming now, throat hoarse and scraped raw.
When Taehyung steps forward timidly, Jungkook doesn’t move away, only straightening and watching him slowly approach.
Cloak in the wind, contused skin glistening under the reddening sun, Taehyung lets the hood of the fabric fall from around his head. He looks older, more tired. It’s been two years since they’ve last seen each other, and Taehyung… Taehyung looks broken.
“You left in the middle of the night,” Jungkook says, voice quieter now, more like a whisper, “When the moon was high and I was asleep, you left. I woke up an hour later, I think. The bed was still warm. And you were gone… ” He is crying now, tears streaming heavily down his face, because the end of all time is near, and of course Fate has handed him his final moment in conjoinment with seeing his last love, his only love, his first love.
The air is getting hotter. It feels skin-searing.
“I loved you and you left me.”
Taehyung is only steps away from him now, “I left you because I loved you. I knew you wouldn’t agree and that you had your suspicions,” he sniffles, “so I thought… I thought you’d suffer less if I left without telling you. I thought that… it’d be a mercy to keep you in the dark. I was trying to keep you safe, trying to keep you from coming after me and getting hurt.”
“I did go after you. And the Yinthae almost killed me when I reached their gates.”
“I - “
Blood boiling in his ears, Jungkook swallows hard and sheaths his sword, “What do you want , Taehyung?! We barely have moments.”
“I’m sorry. I wanted to say, I’m sorry. And I didn’t do this.” He points toward the sun, motions to the chaos around them, the cracking of the ground: the roaring screeches of the Yinthae spells at work, “I realized it too late: what the spells we were forging were going to do. When the time came to enact them, I refused.”
“And?”
Grimacing, Taehyung closes his eyes, encircles an arm around his abdomen, “And they beat me, cursed me, sent me away… Jungkook, I know this won’t redeem me, but - “
“What curse did they put on you?”
It’s now that a shudder rolls through the man, and he sinks to his knees, leaning forward and pressing his forehead to the dirt, hands flat on the earth and stretched towards Jungkook. It’s a vulnerable position, a bow of the utmost regret, apology, sincereness. Jungkook knows that Taehyung has never bowed like this for anyone, knows that during all the years he’d lived and loved with them, Taehyung had always stuck to half bows, the simplest show of respect.
He’d never been put in a position to fold over against the ground and bare himself as defenseless like this. In fact, in times that called for it, he’d refused, because Taehyung was always a man of less conventional approaches and ways of living.
Jungkook realizes that it’s probably why he was so susceptible to the Yinthae’s lies. And at this, he regrets he hadn’t done anything to protect Taehyung from these rumors, the ones that floated from village to village, despite the Segment’s atrocities.
“Rekai li fouran.”
Face your pain.
“Me?” Jungkook whisper-asks.
Taehyung nods and lifts himself from the ground, groaning at the effort, “Leaving you… Leaving you was the most painful thing I’ve ever done. They cursed me to face you, confront the thing I now regret most.” He stops, eyes red from crying, face twisted with emotion, “I’m sorry, Jungkook… Gguk, I’m so, so sorry. If I could go back - God, if I could go back, I’d stay,” and in the midst of mayhem and turmoil of the world, he cries, still on his knees.
Ache. Jungkook aches. Taehyung has hurt him so, but Jungkook aches for him, misses him, loves him still.
The feelings of betrayal he’s pushed down all these years swell with everything else he’s locked away in favor of ignorance and apathy and trying to forget.
“I hate you,” gritting his teeth, Jungkook attempts to neglect the blistering pain of the sun against his skin. He sinks to his knees, teetering to the side with a particular heave of the ground beneath him, “Kim Taehyung, I fucking hate you,” he wails, and it occurs to him that Taehyung is his enemy, or was, that showing this weakness to the man he loved, the man that left him, is an injury to his honor and every good thing he stands for.
Gently, he takes Taehyung’s face into his hands, and sobs, repeating it weaker, “I hate you.”
Under his fingertips, Taehyung’s skin is soft, coated in dirt and grime and sweat, but soft: honey-colored. This closeness, breaths away from one another now, is almost unbearable.
Jungkook hates him. He hates him. He hates him, right?
He should, right?
“I hate you.”
I miss you.
I love you.
You left me.
I lived without you.
I hated it.
Fuck, I love you.
“Then why are you about to kiss me?” Taehyung warbles, and his lips taste like dirt and ash when Jungkook presses forward, smashing their mouths together.
He pushes Taehyung back, hands slipping from the man’s cheeks. With his right palm, he cups the nape of Taehyung’s neck, and slides his left arm around his back. Jungkook nudges him until he falls back against the ground, and Jungkook is over him, crying endlessly into his mouth, tasting his own tears on Taehyung’s lips.
The kiss is hungry and desperate and it’s been a long time since Jungkook’s ever felt this overcome with emotion. Taehyung is warm beneath him, the cut on his lip metallic and coppery to taste, and Jungkook presses against him as close as he can, feeling the heave of Taehyung’s chest beneath his own, the despair woven deeply through him.
“I wanted to marry you.”
And this brings a cry to Taehyung’s tongue as he finally kisses back, winding his arms around Jungkook like he’s ached to do for the past two years. The softness of Jungkook’s lips is lovingly fierce as they press against his own, slotting against his perfectly. The way Jungkook lies atop him, body fitting snug against the curves and molds of Taehyung’s body is enough to incite a fresh wave of tears, of longing for the years he’ll never again have.
Jungkook is warm, too warm, the heat of the air stifling, the incessant tremble beneath them perilous. But Taehyung refuses to let him go, nonetheless, letting Jungkook kiss him ungracefully, mumbles of marriage and hate and missing still floating on the hoarseness of his voice, worn from wails.
The curse still pulses within him, but with less ferocity, with less insistence.
Taehyung left the light long ago, but it sparks within him still, more alive now that he feels it within Jungkook: duller and less luminous, yes, but living everso.
With a jarring sound that echoes around them, a resounding crack of earth, their lips part, and Jungkook squeezes his eyes tightly shut, pressing his cheek to Taehyung’s shoulder. No longer are they resting upon solid ground. It quakes with further vehemence than before, and Taehyung can feel the darkness of the Yinthae spells, barbed and striking, disrupting any resilience their planet had left.
“I’m sorry,” whispers Taehyung, burying his face in Jungkook’s hair, “I love you. I’m sorry, Gguk.”
“Fuck you.”
Taehyung can’t help but laugh tearily, “I deserve that.” He squeezes Jungkook’s waist, blocking out the sound of the death of their world, “But I mean it.”
Lifting, Jungkook levels his gaze, eyes red and puffy and swollen, jaw set with sorrow, “I believe you…” The words seem to pain him, “And I love you, still. Even though I hate you.”
Raising a hand to swipe a tear from under Jungkook’s eye, Taehyung gently urges him down again, kissing him tenderly, chastely. This moment is more than he ever could have asked for, no matter how it hurts, how it afflicts his already torn will.
Before he has a chance to say anything more, the world around them erupts, the sun burns hotter, and all Taehyung can do is hold Jungkook tighter, wrap his every limb around the man he loves as everything they know crumbles beneath them, and together they fall into oblivion.
Dirt swallows them. Heat consumes them.
Their screams join the others as their existence implodes and the dark wisps of forbidden spells bring an end to breaths, words, and heartbeats.
Until nothing remains.