Chapter Text
Taehyung was used to loneliness. Going home to an empty house with nothing but the echoing silence for company. He’d resigned himself to that life. Growing up with only his grandmother, who had died when he had just turned eighteen, Taehyung couldn’t help but feel lonely when he saw other kids at the playground with their parents and siblings.
This was not to say that he didn’t appreciate and love his grandma, if anything she was the most important person in his life. She had single handedly raised him when his parents died. She gave him the world and she was his world. She liked to refer to him as her “little winter bear”. She’d even composed a lullaby for him named “Winter Bear”. It had been his greatest comfort as a child and even now as an adult he still sang the song to himself whenever the loneliness got particularly unbearable. The reminder of his grandmother’s warm embrace and melodious voice always made him feel better. It was not the same as barging into her room and crawling into her arms but when you’re constantly surrounded by silence and a cold emptiness, any source of warmth was like a blazing inferno clearing away the numbness. He'd gone through a period of depression when she died.
When someone you love and whom had always been by your side suddenly no longer exists in this realm, an unbearable weight of loss and grief was bound to crush you. The loneliness that had been alleviated by his grandma’s presence suddenly seemed like an insurmountable pressure that was chocking the life out him. He hadn’t had any friends, his shy introverted nature making it hard for him to approach people. For more than 10 years his grandmother had been the only person in his life. She was his pillar. His constant. And then one day the pillar crumbled and all that was left was a pile of ashes.
Their weekends spent out in the front yard gardening, making a mess of the living room as they built a fort for movie night, painting, more like splashing paint since neither of them had the artistic flair for creating masterpieces, having competitions to see who the best baker was, she always won, game nights that ended in pillow fights because the two of them were too competitive. But that didn’t matter to them because they had fun. All of that was now gone. The memories seeming like a mirage that was visible in the distance but that was always out of reach. No matter how far or fast you ran, you will never be able to catch it.
Her absence was magnified by all the little things he’d taken for granted. The house previously filled with warmth and the smell of home-cooked meals was now echoing with silences. Every slight sound seemed to be blaring in his ears. The house felt too big but somehow it still felt as if he was suffocating, the walls constricting on him. The creaking floorboards, the dripping tap, the rustling trees outside. It was all too loud. There was no one to hum random tunes while they did the chores, there was no one to chase away bees and protect him because he was deathly afraid of them, there was no one to nag him for being too thin and putting food on his plate, no game night shenanigans, no one to hold him when a scene in a movie was particularly heart-wrenching. Nothing but the echoes of silence and memories to torture himself with.
His grandmother had been an incredible storyteller. She was able to weave such intricate, vivid stories that left him feeling like he had been transported into another universe. After her death he’d taken to sleeping on her bed with her favorite shawl, that still held her scent, thrown over his head. He would retell the stories she’d told him and pretend it was her voice and the shawl wrapped tightly around him were her arms. It had gotten to the point he was barely hanging on. He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t shower. He stayed in her room desperately holding on to the last traces of her lingering presence. If he couldn’t get close to her, he would settle for the ghost of her.
It was when he was starting to wonder whether it was worth going on when he had a dream or was it a hallucination of his grandmother. She appeared before him looking just as bright and as warm as she was in his memories. She had looked at him with sadness gleaming in her eyes. “My little winter bear,” she called out her soft voice washing over all the scraped torn edges of his heart. A sob had caught in his throat chocking him up as he lunged at her. When his arms wrapped around her instead of going through her he immediately broke into inconsolable sobs that sounded like they had been pulled from the deepest part of his soul.
“Oh, my baby, you’ve been suffering a lot. Grandma is sorry. I didn’t want to leave you but there are things we can’t control”. Tears were streaming down his face as if expelling the overwhelming emotions that had plagued his heart ever since her death. “Grandma I don’t think I can do this anymore. It hurts so much like someone is putting my entire being through a meat grinder over and over again. I wake up from nightmares every day and now I’m afraid to sleep. I’m just so tired. I want it to just stop hurting,” the words were wrenched out through the continuous sobs. His grandmother’s arms tightened around him. She patted his back while humming Winter Bear softly just like she used to when comforting him. Once he calmed down and only silent tears remained, she began talking.
“I know it’s hard to lose the only person whose been by your side your whole life. People will tell you that time will heal all wounds but in the moment that feels like empty words from someone who can only sympathize but not empathize with what you’re going through. Time doesn’t heal all wounds it numbs the pain so that you’re able to keep living. You’re allowed to grieve for as long as you want. One day you’ll wake up and it won’t hurt as much. You’ll be able to remember the beautiful memories and your heart will feel full instead of focusing on the emptiness of their missing presence. It’s not going to be easy but each day you hold on, the subsequent days won’t be as hard. So, my little winter bear, don’t snuff out your light. You deserve to shine brightest despite feeling like there’s no hope. Seeing you like this breaks my heart. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. The world is cruel, but it also holds unimaginable beauty. You just have to step out and find it. Don’t let the grief and sorrow shackle you to a life of nothing but darkness. I love you and I will always be watching over you. Be strong my little winter bear. Promise you’ll hold on until we meet again”. Taehyung nodded his head desperately as he clung to her tighter and cried.
He didn’t know how long he spent in this state of limbo, but when he woke up, he was finally able to breathe after an eternity of drowning in a bottomless ocean. It wasn’t easy at all. There were nights he woke up in a cold sweat, days he couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed, but he held on. If only because he’d promised his grandmother. He knew he wasn’t in the right frame of mind and after a lot of thought he decided to seek help. And that’s how he made his first friend.