Chapter Text
His arms lift, bent at the elbows to block his face from the incoming storms. That's the thing about storms, they're hard and fast- blinding even. More often than not, you don’t realise one's brewing until the final moments and then it slaps the wind out of you and leaves a path of destruction in it’s wake. He thinks that maybe this isn’t just a storm full of rain and lightning, perhaps this storm's something else- it's like a hurricane, devouring and spitting while targeting places aimlessly.
The storm doesn’t land where he assumes it to, instead it’s a spark against his stomach- a good hard shove against soft tissue that he can feel, and it terrifies him because in his head he can only imagine organs rupturing and disassembling- so he cries out for mercy, for strength. He cries for anything out there in the universe to help him.
He cries for everything to end quickly.
Jeon Jungkook knows he's not strong. He’s never been the type to hold in pain without making a face or fight back without hesitating or spit at someone coming at him viciously without being trapped in the clutches of intense guilt. He's always been the boy that endures, who closes his eyes and tells himself that it's going to be okay just as there's an eruption of white-hot agony somewhere along his tattered body.
You'll survive.
He doesn’t think he can, but he focuses on the world around him, at the vicious barking and searches for a softer, more shattered piece of music. He hears the quiet hum of a broken sob and he knows he has to endure. He can’t fight, he'll lose anyway, so all he can do is absorb the blows and hopefully everything would be alright.
Jungkook pushes himself off the ground, twisting as quickly as he can, but he’s not in the best of shape (all torn skin and bruised parts) so by the time his suffering body can complete half a turn, his wrist is caught in the clutches of cruelty. His eyes widen with terror, because cruelty’s fingers are not kind.
They're calloused, thick and grips his smaller wrist with enough force to crush bones into powder. His mouth opens, a plea stuck between his teeth. His eyes are desperate, searching for hope and salvation- searching for someone.
His wrist is yanked downwards and there’s a sharp crack that fills the static air of the room and he lets out a bloodcurdling scream that's so loud the walls shake and it echoes back into his ears. His vision blurs with the affliction, burns with the tears filling his eyes and his head spins like an uncontrollable child's top. It's so bad, the pain is so blinding and loud just like the shouting, it's so unbearable that his knees buckle and he collapses, screaming and clutching at his shoulder. He’s screaming and screaming and screaming because there's nothing he can do to try and release the pain. They say venting out eases it, but it's doing very little. He screams and screams, tasting blood on his tongue but doesn’t stop.
He can’t stop because his body's convulsing in pain and he can’t see through the tears.
He tries to listen again, tries to hear for his mother but he can’t. He can’t hear over the ringing in his ears.
And then comes another foot, right at the broken spot. He laughs this time, a manic hysterical bubble of laughter that erupts from his throat because what’s not broken anymore?
Everyone in this goddamn family is broken in places you can’t fix.
Jeon Jungkook is all sorts of broken and yet he pushes on. Pushes when his lips are parted and he's half-yelling for help, half-laughing at his helplessness. No one's going to come at this time of the night, no one's going to peek into their household and call for help. Hell, if he was hearing some fucker get the shit beaten out of him he wouldn’t try and help either. Humans are selfish creatures and they look out for their own. That's completely understandable.
Jungkook understands why it’s alright that no one's helping them, but with empathising with others it just digs a deeper hole of despair for him. No one's going to help so he's going to have to endure this for longer.
Glass shatters against his head and he feels the ripping of his skin and the warmth of blood dripping down his neck. At least something's warm.
"You're so weak!" comes the roar of the man he loves with all his heart, Jungkook's face contorts with a different kind of agony.
His broken heart trembles in his chest.
"You're so weak! You're so weak! You're so weak!" he thunders, over and over and over again until it's like a nail being hammered into Jungkook's head. He nearly opens his mouth to say, "Yes I am."
But he's being crushed, a foot against soft tissue. It hurts all over but the worst kind of pain is the one you can’t see, the type that's caught between your heartstrings and with every beat of the heart it feels like a slice of a knife.
It's a storm, Jungkook thinks when he's being dragged up and a fist slams against his eyes, his cheeks, his jaw, his teeth. He understands why storms are named after people now.
But just as a storm comes it has to go.
He doesn’t know why he can’t stop laughing. He can’t stop when his eyes are so swollen they’re nearly shut and he can’t stop when his mouth fills with blood. He can’t stop because he’s so fucking pathetic.
What kind of person allows himself to get beaten up over and over again and still doesn’t do anything?
His laughing just angers his father and so the hits get harder, sharper, more blinding. He just curls his good hand into a fist, feeling the sting of his nails against his palms and breathes out raggedly through his mouth.
Endure it.
He’s wheezing, feeling the impact of his drunken father's fists and words against him. He feels himself break more and more. Jungkook can hear his mother helplessly calling out for her husband to stop, can hear her scream, "Run! Jungkook, run!"
But he can’t. He can’t fight back because he loves his father so much. It only hurts because he loves him with all his heart and he can’t find it in himself to push at the man.
Not when Jungkook closes his eyes and sees the smiling image of his father, sees him reflect the exact same smile he has on his lips. Jeon Jungkook can’t do this, he can’t.
He can’t when his father's just controlled by alcohol.
He's not a bad person, Jungkook tells himself, he's seriously not a bad person.
It's between these thoughts and the thunder of his own heartbeat in his ears that he hears a violent shriek, hears his mother shoot out from where she'd been laying. Her leg's busted and weak, and she's so frail and small between the two men.
She’s weak but she grabs at her husbands collar, yanking it back with eyes so wide and marked with an animalistic gleam that Jungkook can only stare. He's heard what torture can do to a person, has heard of the marvellous effects of adrenaline in a person's system.
But he's never seen it with his own two eyes.
His mother drags her flailing father back, throws him against the ground and then does the one thing that stops Jungkook from breathing entirely.
She picks up his beer bottle and then slams it against his head. There's a shout and a tinkle of broken glass before everything goes statically silent. It's so quiet Jungkook can hear ragged breathing, the beats alternating between his mother's and his.
His father's motionless on the ground and for one moment his heart stutters with the possibility that his mother might have killed him. He brings his horrified gaze to his mother whose raven hair’s falling all around her face, her eyes rimmed with red and bagged heavily. Her body moves with each hard pant and there's blood dripping from cuts on her face and from her nose. Yet she stands there, her feet apart and her shaking fingers curled strongly against the glass bottle of alcohol and he thinks she’s the most beautiful and the most majestic thing he’s ever seen.
He starts to cry, starts to cry because the hitting may have stopped today but it’s going to start again tomorrow and it's going to carry on until one of them dies.
Endure it.
"Eomma," he calls out, flinching when his mother's shoulders stiffen and she turns to him with panic on her beautiful face, "Eomma, eomma, eomma." he doesn’t know what to say through the tears, he doesn’t know what to do.
Tonight's been one of the badder nights and he just wants to crawl into bed and sleep it off but he knows that sleeping it off won’t change anything. Tomorrow he'll wake up to his mother screaming from nightmares and he’ll have to hold her until she's asleep in his arms again. Tomorrow he'll have to face the repercussions.
"Run." is all she says, her voice just a feather of a whisper and then her eyes meet his- big and dark and filled with all the certainty in the universe. Their lives have always been filled with what ifs and I don’t knows but tonight's the first time he's seen his mother look at him with purpose.
And then she screams like a thousand diamonds reflected, screams with such clarity it rings through him.
"RUN!" and he's off, his bare feet slapping against the floor and he stumbles out of the house and into the cold night. He's going on, not stopping.
Endure it.
His busted arm’s flinging limply and it’s burning with agony so he has to hold it down with his hand but he’s also screaming into the night, calling out “Help us! Help us!" but there's no one, just a long stretch of road and grass on his left. He wants to throw himself into the field, to run to the riverbank and cry. But he can’t, he can’t because he's just running and it feels so good to run. There's fire in his chest and his throat. Parts of his body feels like chunks of flesh had been ripped out but he carries on, his feet tearing against the hard gravel of the road.
And then there's a sudden flash of light, an incoming car. He's too disoriented, and the lights are sudden. He thinks of an angel, thinks of salvation the exact moment he comes in contact with the hood.
He thinks of angels as he's flung over the roof of the car, thinks of his mother as he lands, shattered and exhausted behind the car. The night's cold and quiet, the night's beautiful.
He can hear frogs and insects, he thinks back to when he was younger, when he used to go into the tall grass and pick up frogs before comparing them with Jimin. He thinks of Jimin and of his sweet smile.
He's seen Jimin cry enough times over the abuse, so he pulls him out of his thoughts and pictures his mother's face. Pictures the kind slant of her eyes, her lips coloured pink on his graduation day. He pictures her pulling her raven hair back into a bun every morning before starting the day.
He allows himself to drift, his mind and body teasing it's way in and out of consciousness. His body goes lax against the gravel and soon he can’t lift himself even if he wanted to try. His lid's come down then go back up, each time getting slower and heavier than the first. He smiles against the night, tries to curse at whatever god's up there doing such a shit job but can’t find it in himself. He can hear shouting, someone talking furiously over the phone saying something about an accident.
There are footsteps, furious and panicky ones and someone- a woman- calling out, "Excuse me? Excuse me?"
He's still smiling- smiling is all he knows to do other than enduring- into the sky, into the fading image of his mother's face.
Just as his lids are about to close for good, he catches a face. Wide and dark eyes, full of panic and brown hair parted a little to the side but still hanging over his forehead. He catches a small beauty mark on the tip of his nose and another on the top of his lip.
He thinks they're pretty.
The boy clutches on to his shoulders shouting, "Wake up! Please wake up!"
It's the last thing Jeon Jungkook hears before he lets go.
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