Work Text:
Sometimes He was alone, in these cool endless halls, and sometimes shapes drifted by with voices like memories. They never responded when He answered, just stared with vacant eyes and words that poured out, sometimes reminiscing, sometimes just speaking of inconsequential things like the weather.
There was no weather here. The ghosts spoke of snow storms and rainstorms, of sun scorched days, and rain-less weeks, of bitter cold and nights so thick with fog you couldn’t see across the street; but ever the sun shone like laser lights, bright and yellow, through the high windows of these long liminal halls.
He would dance through these halls, pretending the wispy figures who moved about were His audience. Twirls and sharp movements like fighting, smooth and graceful extensions, energetic leaps and quiet slow steps. His feet were always bare on the smooth stones; they should have been cold in the dark, and hot in the sun, but only their texture ever registered, as if He could only half experience what it was to be in these halls.
Time seemed to not exist here. Of course the present was always now, but He felt as if He’d been here forever and all the same, as if He’d only just arrived. He tried wandering the halls until He knew them front and back, but no matter how He went, they never arranged themselves the same way twice.
For a while He contemplated His existence. Was this life? He felt hunger and thirst but never to the point of weakness. He was tired, but never sleepy. As it was, there was nothing here to sate these needs. In all the halls he’d wandered, never once had there been a room with purpose.
He knew life was more, He was sure He knew what it was to sate hunger, for how could He know what it was and what was needed to feed it, if He’d never done so? But He had no memory of such.
One of his ghosts would talk of food, of how they’d made this or that for their friends, how they preferred their noodles-
“-first time I tried for Al dente, Hobi said it felt like eating fingers. How he knows what that’s like I don’t want to –“
Their adventures in cooking steak-
“- Just can’t seem to get it right, I check and it’s still too rare, and I check again minutes later and it’s too well done-“
How their friends had requested a certain dish, and how the grocery store was out of their favorite spice.
He hadn’t learned their name. They spoke to someone named Minnie though, and ever since He first heard it He swears He grew smaller, or the halls grew taller.
He calls them ‘Foodie’ to himself. It doesn’t matter though, they can’t hear Him.
None of them can.
When He first noticed that they seemed to be talking to him, rather than just at him, He tried responding, tried answering them, tried asking them his own questions.
Never once did they respond as if they had heard Him. Some would pause for a moment after their own questions, and His heart would dance a measure of music in His chest, and then they would continue as if they had never expected an answer at all.
If they faced away from Him, they always faced away from Him, no matter how He walked to see around them. Forever the same distance and same angle away.
So very often they pointed their shapeless faces right at Him, as if they could see Him, but as He could never see their eyes, He was never sure if they were looking at him, or just in His direction. Often they would follow Him as He walked about his halls, as if He were the sun, and they the heavenly bodies orbiting Him like He was the center of their existence.
Foodie always appeared as if they were sitting nearby, but He can never see what they sit on. Their face feels like happiness, like joy and comfort, but the features never settle, like the ghost can’t decide what they look like, or like He can’t quite see them, almost like a dream.
The lack of facial features on His ghosts never bothered Him until He meets ones who have faces. Faces that are etched perfectly like photographs or high definition sculptures, each feature ageless and precise.
The first of the faced ones comes to Him the most often.
They often stood quietly, facing away as like someone gazing out a window, or at a piece of art in a museum. Sometimes their hands were behind their back, like someone restraining their emotions, and sometimes with palms pressed to their eyes as they wept quiet, painful sobs that shook their shoulders and wrenched at His heart.
He doesn’t know why, but seeing their sorrow feels more painful than anything He can think of to make himself sad about.
Sometimes, but rarely, the faced one spoke. At first when they spoke, the words were dark and sad, full of a sense of inadequacy. Then, as their visits grew innumerable, slowly their words turned to memories. They spoke to him of memories with friends, of things that made them laugh.
The first time the faced one laughs, Foodie suddenly appears, half invisible, as if leaning around a doorway or pillar.
“Yoongi?” Yoongi, that is the faced-one’s name. He knows it instantly to be right… Foodie sounds so shocked, not at Yoongi being there, but at the sound he had made. For too long only Yoongi’s sobs had been loud enough to travel beyond a few feet.
“H-hyung, I was just-“ There are tears in Yoongi’s perfectly rendered eyes, but his face shines with a bitter sweet smile. “-remembering our ski trip the year Kookie decided to teach Joon to snowboard, a-and how Joon managed to break the damned chair-lift seat just try-“
“Just trying to sit down, yeah.” Foodie speaks over Yoongi, his own laugh high and rhythmic, like the sound of skin on wet glass.
After the laughter quiets down, they’re silent as they both stare down at their feet, Foodie now leaning against what they’d been half hidden behind, arms crossed comfortably over their own chest, and Yoongi with his hands folded, elbows on his knees, hunched over comfortably.
“What made you think of that?” Foodie asks softly.
Yoongi lifts his head and looks right at Him, and for once, He doesn’t believe He’s a silent invisible spectator to all this. He wants to smile at Yoongi, to acknowledge his stare, but when He does, Yoongi’s expression shows no recognition.
“I wanted to remind him of how fun and good things could be. We al-…well, I always talk about how hard this is.” Yoongi still stares, blinking slowly, his eyes roaming somewhat, as if Yoongi can see Him, as if he knows He’s there.
And then Yoongi reaches forward, and for the first time, one of his ghosts touches Him.
Yoongi’s hand is cold; not like death, but like fingers chilled from a room too cool, or a body that had been sat for hours too long. His fingers are long and a little bony, his nails bitten short and his skin a little rough in places, like callouses from repetitive work.
He is lost in the wonder of it all. Wants to run His own fingers between Yoongi’s, to reach higher, to touch his arms. He wants to touch his soft sweater, wants to reach and wipe the dried tears of laughter from the corners of Yoongi’s eyes.
His fingers, though, do not obey His command. They lay limp and still in Yoongi’s grip.
“They said he might be able to hear us.”
Foodie makes a broken sound from where they stand.
“And I just thought….I just thought, if… i-if it was me instead.” Yoongi’s thumb brushes over the back of His hand, like memorizing the texture and sensation of the movement. “I wouldn’t want him to be sad all the time.”
Yoongi purses his lips like a grimace, as his eyes fill with tears. Foodie makes another broken sound from where they stand and walks to be beside Yoongi. They place their hand on his shoulder.
“Because, I’d be right here-“ and Yoongi breaks down sobbing again, leaning over so far in his seat that Yoongi’s tears fell on His hand.
The tears are wet and warm and so shocking a sensation in this place where everything only half exists. They sting a bit, salt on the chapped skin of His knuckles and He jerks His hand back.
His ghosts fade away.
Sometimes His head hurts more than He can bear it. Sometimes He floats, like He knows there should be pain, but something has disconnected and what should be is only half there, like Him, like the ghosts.
One of His ghosts was better described as light in human shape. They have no features, no discernible form, they shine too bright to see anything, but their light does not hurt His eyes.
When He first saw them He thought, “Perhaps I am dead, perhaps this is what angels look like.”
The Angel was warm too, like sunlight should be, not like the cool bright shafts of light that cut the darkness of the smooth endless stone halls. The Angel touched Him often. Their gentle hand would caress His cheeks, pet His hair, brush it away from His brow and behind His ear.
The Angel would rest their head on His shoulder and wrap their brilliant self around all they could reach of His smaller frame. Arms around His chest, a leg thrown over His lap.
The Angel liked to dance, too. Their brilliant form would cast prisms of happiness around the endless halls of smooth stone and high windows. Sometimes He danced along, and when He did it felt like He could breathe again.
Some of His ghosts sang. Not to Him, mostly. Often He could hear their voices as if from far away, some of them ethereal and some broken and unskilled but full of passion and performance. Some of them sang like it was a joke, like nothing delighted them more than putting notes together that clashed like pots and pans falling from the cupboard. Some of them sang like it was work, practiced and precise and specific.
One of them sang like healing. Soft and warm, deep and wholesome. Like a warm comforting bath at the end of an exhausting day, or like hot tea and honey that soothes a throat sore from overuse.
This ghost sang to Him often. They sang under their breath, melodies that changed on each pass, or repeated endlessly, a loop of comfort and home and healing.
When they spoke their voice was the same; deep and wide, but soft and rich.
“I miss you Chim, but it's okay if you need to take your time, okay?”
The first time He was no longer surrounded by endless halls of stone and high windows, He was sitting on a couch. He wasn’t aware of much else. There were figures around him, half there and half not. Watercolour impressions of people. Ghosts. The shapes of them were familiar, but He didn’t know why.
Some were sitting, but most were milling about, some passed by quickly. One stood still in front of those closest to Him. This one was dressed in pale blue and white, and the others seemed to be paying them every bit of attention they had.
One of them started to cry, a woman perhaps? She was older, maybe, but He couldn’t really see her. The sound of her sobs tore Him to shreds inside and He didn’t know why. He had always been an empathetic sort of person….probably.
This memory wasn’t very long, and it was very broken, spotted and faded, like He shouldn’t, or couldn’t have been there at all.
He thought the ghosts should have been frightening, perhaps should have made Him want to run, should have made Him close His eyes and cover His ears, pretend to be somewhere safe, somewhere with warmth and comfort, with someone other than just Himself.
At first the ghosts were just...there. He cared little for them, they were just shapes and wisps of colour, maybe sounds and words. It was only after they started coming back, the same ones, that He realized they were probably people. At least once.
Some of them followed the same patterns each day. He wondered if they were stuck doing the same things forever. He wondered if He, like them, was only half here, too.
When Joon visited he would read to him.
“Hey Jiminnie, it’s Joon again. it’s Wednesday.”
When Joon visited he would come through a doorway that only existed as long as Joon did.
“Hyung recommended this book, it’s not too long so we can probably finish it in a few weeks.” When Joon read, he took Him by the hand- a touch he couldn’t feel- and lead Him through the door to experience the magical worlds he read about.
Sometimes it was a world with tall buildings and smooth stone-like ground in greys and blacks, with monotonous hard lives broken by spots of excitement and romance.
Sometimes the worlds were forests of trees in endless stands. Mythical creatures with wings and adventures to end curses. Sometimes the stories were simple, like for a child; a duck looking for their mother, a rabbit trying to steal vegetables from an old man’s garden.
One story stuck out to Him. The character died, and met many that they used to know as they walked through the afterlife, until they found a room that reminded them of childhood memories, and their beloved one who had passed on before met them again. Together they drank the tea of forgetfulness and walked through the gate to their next life.
“Please don’t drink your tea, Jiminnie. We still need you here.”
He is in bed. He’s been wandering these endless halls for so long, and they have always been featureless stone walls and floors with windows cut so high, they only let the light in, but never let Him see out.
But now He’s in a bed, in a room with white walls. He can feel the warm coverings, the soft pillow-top beneath His body. The too awkward placement of the pillows under His head, His neck, His back.
There are mechanical sounds, a rhythmic whooshing. Beeping. A fan pushing air, He thinks. The soft hum of a humidifier and cool mist on His face. He only just realizes He can't move when He’s back in the halls.
Their featureless expanse sooth His sudden sense of panic.
He lets the blandness of the space He’s known for so long calm His racing heart and lets the safety of nothingness restore His peace.
He is safe here. He is unhurt here. He is not confused here.
He will stay here, where the smooth stones under His feet are neither hot in the sun, nor cool in the dark. He will dance, and He will ignore the bed He is laying in until He doesn’t have to think about it at all.
He is in the practice room. Not the one they have now, but their first one in the deepest basement of the old office building. The one with no windows and noisy pipes above their heads that were always a risk of injury if one wasn’t careful and jumped too high, or flung a hand too quick, like Joon had done on too many occasions to count.
He is with Jungkook, who doesn't have a face but He knows who he is so clearly and instinctively He doesn't have to think about it. Just as He knows this room, just as He knows that the sky is blue sometimes and grey other times. Just as He knows that night comes and then day, and then night again, in a cycle; and that the ever-day of His endless halls is not the way it should be.
He and Jungkook are both pouring sweat. Their hair sticks to their foreheads, wet strands clumping together. Their shirts are dark and damp in a ‘v’ under their necks, wet fabric sticking to too hot skin.
They must have been dancing for hours, He feels exhausted. He hasn't felt exhausted in so long, but it had been such a staple state of His youth that He could never mistake it.
“Hyung, we’re out of sync right here.” Jungkook does an eight count of moves and repeats the last two. “We’ve got to sort this out.” Jungkook threads his fingers through his bangs and sweeps his hair back over his brow.
“You’re like half a beat behind, and you need to catch up.”
He is not annoyed or upset that Jungkook has pointed this out, He’s aware of the problem Himself but His legs just don’t want to move that quick right now. “I think I need a break, Kook.” He slumps to the floor, suddenly exhausted beyond anything He’s ever felt before. “I think maybe I need to sleep.”
“But Jimin hyung,” Jungkook says, and suddenly, with His name uttered like a curse-breaking spell, the practice room is no more.
They are in a bright white room, Jimin is in his bed again, a whooshing sound, and cool mist on his face.
“You’ve been sleeping for so long.”
Jungkook leans over the bed, brushes Jimin’s hair off his forehead and plants a dry kiss there instead. “Hyung, you need to wake up soon, okay?”
“We’re all waiting for you.”
There is a ghost Jimin has never seen before. It’s not that uncommon now; he has his regulars. Foodie, Yoongi, Joon, the singer, The Angel and Jungkook. A few others he hasn’t named, or learned the names of yet. But so much more common than his regulars are the strangers who come and go, sometimes here for hours, sometimes a few days.
This new ghost is frail, but very solid, he cannot see through her. She reminds him of his grandmother in an unfamiliar way, more like an emotion than a visceral likeness.
She is sad. She stands by another less solid ghost who is weeping loudly, but seems to ignore her. Her hand rests softly on the weeping ghost’s head, trying to offer comfort that can’t be received.
Jimin thinks they are husband and wife.
The most shocking thing about this new ghost, is that she speaks to him like she can see him.
“You can’t stay here much longer, dear.” She says, her voice echoes like his own, but is near and real. “This place is meant to give you a choice; But you can only stay so long before you become lost.”
Jimin’s ‘Angel’ is Foodie’s ‘Hobi’.
The Angel is cuddled up to Jimin on the bed (it has not disappeared since Jungkook told him to wake up). Foodie bursts through what must be a door, with a giant bowl of something that sloshes as they come to a sudden, awkward, and hilarious halt. Jimin wants to laugh.
“Hobi, I thought you were going to take a nap?” Foodie says, his face set in comical shock. Hobi -and oh how that name feels like home, Hobi, Hoseok, J-Hope, his hope, his angel- settles in closer to Jimin, his warm skin now tangible and the press of him is so comforting that Jimin wants to cry.
“I am napping Jinnie-Hyung, shhhh”
Jimin’s mind snaps like a rubber band and now he does not know how he couldn’t see Foodie’s face before, because it’s so perfectly absolutely precisely Jin’s face. “Hyung,” he wants to cry out, “Jinnie-hyung!” but now, more than ever before, he cannot say anything.
Jimin is in Yoongi’s studio. It’s been happening more often, Jimin being places that aren’t the endless stone halls. Jimin is sitting beside Yoongi on the too small piano bench.
Yoongi is playing mindlessly, as he often does when his thoughts are going far too fast and reckless. He plays when he needs to quiet his mind for a while. Sometimes, like now, the melody changes, ebbs and flows, trickles from one ditty to another, all of them unique. Some of the melodies are known to Jimin, many of them are not.
Hobi is sitting on the couch beside the studio door. He has a notebook in his hands and he’s studying it like it holds the secret to divine ascension, or possibly, a killer rap verse.
Jimin just watches them both for a while, until Yoongi’s playing turns practiced and precise. The melody he plays is lovely, and Jimin’s head is already filling with harmonies to ad-lib along with it.
“I wrote this for him, you know?” Yoongi says out of nowhere. Hobi startles like Yoongi had yelled, not spoken just above a whisper. “His voice is just…” he breaks off and Jimin knows it's just for him to find the right word.
“I can’t do it justice. He was always worried that he wasn’t good enough; but I always hear his voice first when I’m composing for us.” Yoongi continues to play the sweet melody but Jimin can see that his mind has gone off thinking about music, and just maybe Jimin’s voice as his inspiration.
“You should give him lyrics,” Hobi says softly. He hasn’t been paying attention to his notebook in a while, it's sitting on the coffee table now, face down and abandoned.
Yoongi’s playing becomes forceful and chaotic, the lovely melody disrupted by the force of his playing, the cadence off. “So someone else can sing it at his funeral?” He punctuates his last word with angry heavy hands on the keyboard.
Hobi rolls up from the couch quickly and is at Yoongi’s side in a moment, his hands gently lifting Yoongi’s from the keyboard. “So he can sing it when he wakes up, Hyung.”
They both turn to look right at him, and they’re back in the white room with the bed and the window. In tandem they say-
“Don’t you think it’s time you woke up Jimin?”
In the glare of the spotlight, the rest of the arena seemed to disappear. The lights of the fan’s light sticks were too dim to be seen against the blazing bright light that shone down on him. He panted with exertion.
The euphoria of a performance done to perfection coursed through him like fire in his veins. He lived for moments like that, moments when his hard work and passion combined with his body’s skill to perform like he was the music itself.
In that moment, as the fan’s chants and screams rang in his ears, when his name was like a prayer on the tongues of tens of thousands of worshipers, when he lived and breathed his performance, he felt as if he were immortal, able to take on the world without fear, without consequence.
The lights dimmed to prep the stage for Yoongi’s solo, and over the sound of his blood pounding in his ears, he heard sudden sharp feedback and an exclamation of shock as he stepped off the stage. His eyes flickered to the centre stage where Yoongi sat ready at his white grand piano.
In the moment Yoongi’s spotlight powered on, Jimin was struck with instant, shocking, overwhelming pain at the crown of his head and the world was no more.
“Faulty screws in the yoke for the spotlight, and a frayed safety cable. Bang PD-nim has been pursuing every avenue to sue, but the venue’s booking contract has clauses for that.” The Singer takes a shaky breath, but continues on smoothly. “So he’s been looking into the spotlight manufacturing company, not much luck yet.”
The Singer has been talking about things Jimin does not want to listen to.
Jimin sits as far away as his ghost allows, any further and the apparition just follows him, like Jimin is dragging the other world with him as he moves, like Saturn drags its rings with it on its journey around the sun.
Jimin has his knees to his chest and his hands to his ears, but they do nothing to stop or even muffle The Singer’s words.
“Taehyung, I don’t think Jimin wants to hear about this. I don’t think I want to hear about this.” Yoongi says.
Yoongi is standing with his arms folded at his chest, he is facing a window.
The window showed up after Jungkook and has never left. It's just a rectangle with blinds. The glass, if it can be called that, is incorporeal and gives only a vague impression of sky on the other side, but it still illuminates Yoongi’s face like the world on the other side is bright mid-day.
“Hyung.” The Singer-Taehyung says. His warm voice is sad. “If we don’t talk about it, we can’t heal from it.” Taehyung pulls his knees to his chest, an unconscious mirror of Jimin’s own position. “It hurts a lot Hyung, but ignoring it won’t make it go away.”
Taehyung, he remembers now, has always been an old soul. Young and free yes, childish yes, but something about him had always felt like speaking to Jimin’s grandfather. Like speaking to someone who enjoyed life and had fun because they knew better than to let the bad overwhelm the good in your life, because joy is what makes life worth living.
Yoongi remains silent.
“Okay.” Teahyung says after a while. “We don't have to talk about the accident, Hyung, but we can’t ignore that it happened.” Taehyung stands and walks over to Yoongi, but instead of looking out the window, he faces Yoongi and holds out his hand. “Can we hold hands, Hyung?”
Jimin remembers their trip to Hawaii. He remembers that Yoongi and Taehyung had been partnered together because they fought the most. He remembers that they had chosen to hold hands whenever they wanted to bicker, because it reminded them that the other was a person too, and that holding their tongues and keeping their friendship was the most important thing.
His heart hurts with the rush of love and longing he feels for his friends. They’re right here, but he misses them.
There’s a movement to his left and he turns his head to look. The Stranger-Grandmother is there.
There is a door-way behind her, and through it he sees a dining room like his own Grandmother’s. Patterned wallpapered walls, warm looking wooden floors. There are photographs in frames on the walls, but the people in them are shapeless and only give an impression of family.
There is a large window with lace curtains obscuring the view, except for in slivers that are revealed as the curtains blow in a breeze that makes Jimin think of warm spring days.
In the center of the room is a low-lying table made of rich wood with soft floor cushions in multiple colours and patterns, mismatched in a way that can only be on purpose.
He doesn't have to think, he doesn't have to move. He is sitting at that table, legs crossed, each ankle under the opposite knee, and an empty tea cup on the table in front of him.
“As delighted as I am to have a guest,” the Stranger-Grandmother says, her smile soft, “this tea is not for you, dear.” She places an old clay teapot back on its stand over a little fire, like the ancient teapots used for tea ceremonies. “The owner of this tea has had his cup and is gone now.”
“But since you are here, perhaps you are ready to make a choice.” She reaches across the table and envelopes his hands in her own warm soft ones. Her eyes remain down, focused on where they touch. “You can wake up, Jimin. You can confront what happened to you. You can go back there, to them, to those who are waiting for you.”
Jimin tries to understand.
He has been here, in these endless halls for so very long. He has spent eternity dancing on the smooth stones that are neither hot in the sun, nor cool in the dark. He is comfortable here, he feels protected here. The pain is less here, the fear is less here.
He misses his friends. His friends miss him. His family, his friends, his brothers, are waiting for him.
“Or...” The Stranger-Grandmother lifts her gaze and pins him in place with the intensity of what feels like death and peace and a final, serious, infallible end. “You can drink your tea, you can forget all this, forget them, and you can move on.”
The words make him sick, he wants to purge them from his memory. The absolute horrid wrongness of them bubbles up in his throat like acid. Pain like iron nails scrapes at his throat; and he knows without having to question why, that he absolutely cannot drink his tea.
He coughs with the force of the revolt in his stomach and lungs, and the warmth of the Stranger-Grandmother’s dining room bursts apart like a water balloon rupturing on impact with its target.
As violently abrupt as the end of his dreams had been, his journey to wakefulness is gentle and slow.
He feels bogged down and lethargic, more like he is dreaming than when he had been, but he is not in pain, really, some aches, some stiffness. His throat is dry.
The gentle morning sunlight that comes through his single, average, window is kind on his tired eyes, and it lights the room softly. The sound of the machines that had been harsh in his sparse moments of consciousness before, are no longer so jarring, but quiet, gentle. A slow steady beeping, the hum of the humidifier. The whooshing sound is gone, and so is the metallic pain that had been in his head for so long now.
He blinks his crusty eyelids, getting used to seeing with his eyes, and not his consciousness, once again. The room is his own, a little less lived in, tidy and perfect. He is in His bed and there are many flowers in vases on the few free surfaces, they are decorated with cards and balloons, some look older than others, but they are relatively fresh.
He manages to turn his head to the left, and there, in the chair he usually sits in when he talks to Jimin, is Jin.
He is sleeping. The position must not be kind to his back and neck, but the chair is large and soft, Jimin is not too worried, instead he feels only the heavy insistent need to reach out, to wake Jin, to let him know he’s awake now.
Jimin doesn't have to do much, barely move really, his outstretched hand is already in Jin’s own, resting on the elder’s lap, held like something precious. He twitched his fingers. He’d meant to squeeze, but that is beyond him right now.
Jin flinches and starts to slowly wake.
“Hyung.” Jimin manages, and it is barely a whisper, his throat so dry, his vocal cords so unused they are flimsy and weak.
Jin is awake instantly, he surges forward from his slumped position, and the hand not holding Jimin’s reaches for Jimin’s face, to hold him, to be sure what he sees is true.
“Jiminnie?!” There are tears in Jin’s eyes and his voice.
Jimin manages to smile and it feels like it splits his face, it closes his eyes and pinches at his cheeks and he can’t stop.
The world is warm, and gently bright. The air in his lungs is moist and soothing. The hands that hold him are safe and gentle, though they shake with emotion.
It is not long before the others are called, not long till they arrive and flood his room with tears and liquid happiness. They orbit around him like planets caught in the gravity of him, and he shines for them again.