Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's a slightly cloudy day, one where the sun barely manages to poke through the clouds and bring scant spills of gold against the leafs glossy from the morning rain. It's pleasant though, a sense of easy, the whole pace of the world just slowed down enough to wait between each breath, caught in the space between as traffic rushes past, unaware of the stillness.

The room is older, one of the last remaining before The Rise. The floor is made of wooden floorboards, the chairs carved and irregular, a hewn wooden table in the center of the room, a few feet away from an open kitchen that looks well used. The man who had opened the door is tall, a soft and almost delicate face, pink soft looking lips as he smiles distantly, putting together a tray of drinks and food.

"You don't have to give me anything," he says, still setting up his cameras and materials for the appointment. There isn't much he had to bring, only what was requested through a curt request in his transmitter a week ago. Just a camera, a recording device, and time. A lot of time. "I'm good with just water."

It's not common that Hoseok gets requests like this, used to instead filming things like specific events or ceremonies, documentaries in a casting crew and developing short cinematic pieces for the annual competitions. It's not common that he gets a request that requires so little, just a camera, a voice recorder, and himself. The lack of equipment had left him feeling oddly naked as he'd walked to the scheduled location for the appointment.

"I'm happy to share," the man, his client, says, looking up with a gentle smile on his soft face. He looks young, sweet and almost vibrant, which adds all the more confusion Hoseok has stored at the back of his mind as to the nature of the request. "Do you prefer coffee or tea? I have both."

"Coffee, please." Shrugging his coat closer around him, Hoseok waits for the man, his client, Kim Seokjin, to settle himself. The room is quite pleasant once he gets to look around it a bit, not quite his tastes but still nice. The ceiling is high, the windows along the longer wall with curtains pulled back and brightening up the space. It's clean, but not in an obsessive way, just the sort of aged mess Hoseok might see in the old photos of cafes and homes from before The Rise.

Tray clasped in his hands, Kim Seokjin shuffles over to the small table, placing it down as the bulky sleeves of his cardigan fall past his wrists, almost swallowing up his hands. "Please, sit," he says, nodding to the chair closest to Hoseok as he pours coffee into a teacup. "And make yourself comfortable."

"Thank you," Hoseok says as he accepts the coffee, watching as Kim Seokjin carefully pours himself what looks like light amber tea into his own teacup. "So, what am I filming today, exactly? You weren't really specific in your email."

Settling down in the chair opposite him, Kim Seokjin takes a slow sip of his tea, eyes on the rim of the cup as he appears to try to figure out his next words carefully. Hoseok waits, hands in his lap. "I'm not very good at telling stories," Kim Seokjin says slowly. "I'm better at answering questions, it helps me get all of the information out. I needed to know I had a good person to talk to, just in case I started to get lost." A slow smile begins to spread over his face, fingers carefully cradling his teacup as he looks across the scrub wooden table at Hoseok. "A friend of mine recommended you."

"I always say the best advertising is word of mouth," Hoseok says, smiling and tucking away the small feeling of flattery for a moment when he needs the positivity. In his lap, he presses his thumb over the red button on the remote, catching the red flash from the camera set up beside him. "So, what do you want to talk about?"

The soft clink of a tea cup being set down shines in the light of Kim Seokjin's eyes, their dark brown swimming warm and looking much deeper than Hoseok had noticed on first glance. "My life."

The Spanish had begun the search. At first, it was just a murmur, a bug in the ear of those who had the gall to step out and look towards a future that felt too impossible to be true.

A defeat of the Gods, a defeat of everything they had believed, everything that meant that they were limited to only one chance.

The Spanish had acted first, whispers through travelers that other countries had begun a race around the world, drifting up from Singapore, from Manila, from Guangzhou, up through Singapore, and finally skittering along through Busan and up into the traveled roads. The Dutch, the English, the Chinese, and others were hunting for it as well.

It was only a matter of time before a rag tag group ended up being slung together under only those 'crazy' enough to go on a fool’s errand to find the cheat against divine rule itself.

"No turning back now," Seokjin said aloud, jittery on the dock, a sack of his personal affects slung against his back and feeling the sea salt stick to his skin.

"Not getting cold feet, are you?" asked the other young man, just a few steps up the gangway ahead of him. "If you're not-"

"I'm coming," Seokjin said firmly, rushing up the rickety wooden planks onto the ship that he was almost entirely sure Heechul, their captain, had stolen. He wouldn't expect much else though, especially with Heechul's reputation as a disputed pirate that didn't care for laws of property unless he was applying them.

"Once we cast off," the first mate says, looking up from where he'd been loading food into the galley with the cook. "That's it. The only way out is overboard."

"I came all the way here, I'm not giving up now," Seokjin says, glad he sounds more confident than he feels. A pistol drops into his hands, heavy and cold iron against his palm. Seokjin, his hands still soft from a life of cooking in kitchens and washing linens for those 'better' than him, swallows.

"Do you know how to use one of those?" the first mate asks, arms crossing over his chest. The boy who had boarded ahead of him is watching them closely from the corner of his eye as he coils ropes. Seokjin doesn't know how to answer, if being honest will get him in as much trouble as lying. Staying silent earns him a barked laugh as a hand claps him jovially on the shoulder. "Not to worry, Junmyeon will have you trailed up before we hit our first port. Or Minseok, if he's to be bothered."

It had been months training in the fields behind his small home, the family hut set in the tiny village of many. Seokjin had practiced in the dark of night with sticks and anything he could find, mimicking the stance and skill of wielding a lethal blade.

Firearms were new, were different, were scarier in their lack of honor.

But then, a pirate had no honor, and soon, if this quest went according to plan, none of them would have to fear guns or blade or death.

"Would you like more coffee?" Kim Seokjin asks, pulling Hoseok from his twining thoughts as she tries to put images to the words spilling from Seokjin's mouth. "Or water?"

"Water," Hoseok decides, and Kim Seokjin smiles. "How long were you at sea?" he asks, figuring it better to play along, to keep asking questions. He's heard stranger stories, stranger spun tales in his life, and knows better than to try to make them transparent in their fabrication. It's interesting at least.

"A few months," Kim Seokjin says, standing to fetch two glasses and a pitcher for water. "It was so long ago, I can't remember exactly how long, and the days all bleeding together after a while. Between Heechul and Jaejoong running the crew to Junmyeon and Minseok taking care of everything, it's hard to remember where things began and ended. I just remember the long nights on watch with Yoongi though. Before we finally found it."

"What?" Hoseok asks, gratefully accepting the glass of water Kim Seokjin hands him.

"The beginning."

"Does this have a happy ending?"

Kim Seokjin smiles, and takes another sip of tea as the camera light blinks softly in the peripheral.

Caves. The maze of intricacies in rock spanning all around them, formed from lava and water, set into the steep and dangerous crags of an ocean island, small and hard to find unless they knew where to look. Somewhere between Sri Lanka and Bali, they'd found Mrs. Martin, or 'Couer' as she would correct them in any port city they stumbled upon.

Deep, deep within the caves, the surfaces slick with water and algae, they'd found the least impressive looking metal goblet Seokjin had ever seen.

"That's it?" Yoongi had asked, leaning against the wall for support, his skin flushed from fever and eyes dulled. "That's what we came all the way out here for?"

"Looks can be deceiving," Jaejoong says, stepping forward and taking the cup from it's mossy plinth, barnacles and small insects fleeing his hands. "You, of all of us, should know that better than most." Heechul lets out a laugh, Couer giving a slanted grin, her dark-lined eyes glinting in the dim light as she watches, waiting for Jaejoong to move. "I feel like it should be harder than just finding it."

"Maybe we're missing something," Junmyeon suggest, looking around the small cavern area they'd stumbled into after trudging through winding tunnels by torch light. "Like-" he turns, torch raised high as he looks around the cave, and behind him Seokjin can hear Yoongi's labored breaths "-there!"

On the wall is an inscription, carved into smoothed stone in a language Seokjin can't recognize. Coeur steps up, barking at Heechul in her native language and he steps closer, grabbing Junmyeon's torch from him. "It's a threat," Heechul translates as Couer reads the inscription.

"A warning," Couer amends, turning to them with a skeptical look on her face. "Asking if this is really what we want."

"We wouldn't be here if it wasn't," Minseok scoffs, standing with the other torch, closer to Jaejoong, eyes flickering to Yoongi.

"I just want to live long enough to get back home," Yoongi says quietly, so quiet Seokjin almost doesn't hear it from behind him.

"We'll live much longer than that," Jaejoong says, laughter lacing his voice as he turns, dipping the goblet into the pools of water beside the small mossy plinth it had rested on. "To life," he calls out to the cavern, before raising the goblet to his lips, and drinking.

A large gust of wind, howling through the caves and taking the light of the torches with them throws against Seokjin's back, pressing it's scream of air over his ears to drown out the one that shatters through the cavern from one of his brethren.

"No one died," Kim Seokjin says, a small quirk of amusement on his lips as he looks across the table at Hoseok. "You can stop worrying. We all lived."

"What was the scream from?" Hoseok asks, not sure when he'd become involved in the story Seokjin wove, feeling the cold of age old stale water against his skin, the wind of the cave, the itch of foreboding along his spine.

Kim Seokjin's smile fades slightly, and his eyes drop to the tea cup long since emptied, his finger gently drawing along the gold leaf on the lip. "Our immortal souls," he says, and Hoseok catches himself before laughing off the nervousness his answer gives him. "You asked me earlier if this is a happy story," he continues, looking up from his tea cup. "I am not sure if it's happy or sad, so you'll have to figure that out as we continue our sessions."

With a soft curl of surprise, Hoseok realizes it's been well over an hour, the camera rolling as Seokjin talked in a soft sweet voice, his faded yellow sweater cardigan falling about his shoulders as his fingers traced patterns on delicate china. It has been over an hour, and Hoseok wants to hear more, but his time is up.

"It's alright," Kim Seokjin tells him, not moving from his chair as Hoseok stands to pack up his things. "I have plenty of time to tell you the rest."

There's no record of him beyond the last twenty-two years. All of the data banks coming up with a generic history that looks too clean, too sterile, too empty and normal to be accurate. It leaves a dull ache behind Hoseok's eyes as he sits in his office, waiting for his boss to get back and set him on his next assignment. There is an hour and a half of footage on the tape from this afternoon, and Hoseok resists the urge to watch it, wondering if it had even been real.

It hadn't felt real after the long session of just listening to Kim Seokjin talk in rising notes of mezzo piano and three-four time.

It had only been a hour and a half, but Hoseok's mind is buzzing with the stories that flowed from Kim Seokjin and wove themselves under his skin. He wants to go back, to stay and listen, even if it's all too fantastic to be real.

For a little while, Hoseok would like to believe in stories.

They had all stood when they torches were relit, staring in the dim light of the dark and damp cave, the goblet resting on the ground, bleeding the water of life back into the rocks beneath their feet.

"Did it work?" finally filters through the silence, Minseok's eyes flickering to them all.

"Only one way to find out," Heechul says, and before any of them can move, his pistol is drawn, aimed, and fired. Tensing, terror flooding through him, Seokjin stares in wide eyed horror at their captain, his breath caught in his throat as he looks at the barrel of the smoking gun directed towards him.

A soft moan beside him has Seokjin turning, jerking to the side, and his chest constricts, pressure building as his legs give out with Yoongi's both of them crumpling to the ground. "No." They'd come so far. "No, no, no, no, no, No!" Hands smoothing desperately over soiled clothing, searching for the wound, the blood soaking through fabric, for-

"Stop rubbing me," Yoongi grumbles, his voice raw and scratching as he speaks into Seokjin's chest. "I'm not a magic lamp."

The pressure stills, restricting, and finally releases when Yoongi pulls back, looking slightly dazed but the flush of fever has lessened. "You were shot," Seokjin's voice comes out in a croak.

Yoongi breathes, the air shaking in his chest as his eyes close, one hand rising to press against his ribs and he hisses gently. "It worked," he says, and opens his eye to meet Seokjin's, a slow smile spreading over his face.

Yet even as Yoongi's smile spreads over his face, the others cheering and letting out their own shouts of triumph, Seokjin's own smile at their victory feels misplaced, slipping off his face as the scream from before still echoes against the back of his mind.

The room is more familiar this time, the table hosting a small plate of fruits and crackers, waiting patiently as his client, sitting on the counter of his kitchen and sipping from his tea cup.

"I'm late," Hoseok apologizes.

"I have time to wait," Kim Seokjin tells him, slipping from the counter and padding over to him, feet bare and steps quiet. "Coffee?"

"Tea," Hoseok asks, setting up his camera again swiftly. It's a soft thrum beneath his skin that he can't ignore, can't shake despite the hours reminding himself to focus on reality. But that interest is there, and the hours reviewing footage and cutting it perfectly, editing out his own voice asking questions and matching up pauses just right to capture Kim Seokjin's expression as he spoke have worn themselves into Hoseok's wearied bones.

It's leisurely, no rush and almost like he's visiting a friend for the afternoon rather than fulfilling a client order as Kim Seokjin shuffles to the table, his tray of tea cups and steaming water held carefully in his hands. The tea is sweet, though from the flowers, the smell sweeter than the taste as it bursts upon Hoseok's tongue.

It fits the image of the man before him, a light sweater on today, the softest pink that pulls just a bit too long over his broad shoulders.

"So," Hoseok begins, setting down his teacup carefully as Kim Seokjin rests his against his lip, staring at the table in and out of focus. "What do you want to talk about today?"

Outside, the sun shines in, bathing the room in golden specks of light as dust floats into the beaming rays and ignites into fire, sparkling in the mid-day sun.

"Have you ever lost something?" Kim Seokjin asks him, eyes still unfocused on the table, his thumb running gently along the side of his cup.

"That depends," Hoseok answers. "I thought this was a story about your life."

"Life is about losing things," Kim Seokjin says, looking up at Hoseok with a faded smile at the corner of his mouth. "It's about losing things and learning how to live on after that. About finding new things to love and hold onto before those too are lost."

"You're really a glass half full kind of person, I can tell," Hoseok remarks, and Kim Seokjin lets out a small laugh.

"Sometimes it's hard to see the glass," he says.

They had set out to return home as heroes, great conquerors of the greatest legend of the world, the prize of eternal youth and glory in their grasp. After the caves, where they'd rejoiced for hours, the reality began to sink in, and they'd left, silent as they had come, the thrum under their skin possessive.

Leave it for others to find, but do not share this gift. It is theirs and theirs alone.

They had set out to return home as heroes, Coeur separating in Phuket with her own bounty in the dead of night. It had been quiet, lacking in sentiment, and Seokjin had lain awake long after wondering if he would ever see her again. The world was a big place, yes, but with an eternity to cross it, they chances weren't impossible.

It wasn't until Taipei that they heard news of their home, what had been happening as they sailed the oceans in search of legends to be made real.

War was something Seokjin had heard of, but never believed he'd be a part of. War was death, destruction, and those higher in power than people like he himself used to be walking with troops underfoot towards the means of their own ends.

War is gruesome and Seokjin's heart stills in his chest when he hears of the invasion of his home by the Shogunate of one of their closest neighbors, broken out of isolation.

"Hideyoshi," becomes the name on all the tongues, spoken in slurs and whispers and screamed in warning the closer they get to home.

"We could run," Heechul suggests one night, standing watch as Jaejoong mans the helm. "It's not our war."

"It's not any of our war," Junmyeon says, frowning over the bow into the darkness. "But it is our country."

"We all left for a reason," Yoongi reminds in a low voice.

"If you want to go, then get off at the next port," Jaejoong says, voice hard as he guides them over the waves.

"It's my ship," Heechul reminds.

"That you stole," Minseok points out.

"Still my ship," Heechul half growls.

At the next port, Seokjin wakes to only himself, Yoongi, Junmyeon, and Jaejoong aboard their small ship. Half of the food is gone, and he's left with a heavy heart full of foreboding.

"Did they forget they can't die?" Yoongi asks, looking into the port city with a frown.

"I think they remembered others can," Junmyeon sighs and the heavy weight sinks deeper.

"You're braver than I am," Hoseok tells Kim Seokjin, interrupting him but not caring. Real, unreal, it all flows together. It's the story that has him drawn in, and he'll stay there until Kim Seokjin tells him to leave.

A soft almost sad smile spreads over Kim Seokjin's lips. "My story is far from over."

War is a terrifying thing.

I had been a long time since the night wasn't broken with cries of pain, since food was easier to come by, and since Seokjin didn't remind himself that months ago, he would have died off the coast of Busan with hundreds of others.

It's been a long time since Seokjin had stopped looking for Yoongi and Junmyeon and the others, since he'd stopped looking for his family. It had been an effort at first, but Seokjin was young, barely old enough to hold the gun Heechul had placed in his hands all those months ago with a menacing glint in his eye.

Seokjin was the iconic figure for a tragic loss of youth, the irony being that he could never lose it. Instead, he watched it lost around him, families broken apart by soldiers storming into homes and ripping lives from innocents with blank faces and hollow hearts. Instead, Seokjin lay among the dead and dying afterwards and prayed to join them, to stop this horror from happening, to let these memories fade with him as he wept for all those lost to this mindless greed.

War is about power, about controlling others and forcing them to obey and punishing them when they don't. It's power, and Seokjin hates it.

It's been months since he washed up on the shores of Busan among the bodies of the dead and realized the cruel disposition of reality, of life.

Eternal life no longer has the ring of glory when he sees it for what it truly is.

Waking up from hiding, stomach aching in crippling pain, starving from weeks of not eating that should have killed him long ago, Seokjin's resolve breaks and he runs.

Before Busan, he had looked upon Heechul and Minseok with distain, disrespect, and shame. Now, he understands.

There is no one here left for him, only the cries of those he can't save, a cup, a devil's cup, settled deep in caves filled of warning and whispers. There is only pain, and Seokjin flees, his shame tearing through his stomach in stabs of misery.

It's at the border of snow covered mountains and dodging Chinese camps flooding into the country to provide aid that Seokjin stumbles upon another young man.

"Are you running too?" he asks, soft cheeks red with cold and frost clinging to his eyelashes.

"I'm- I'm going home," Seokjin says instead. The boy - young man - is wearing a uniform Seojin recognizes as higher class, garments from the wealthy and those he used to work for, to bow to, ever their inferior.

"I see," says the young man, a withered smile on his face. "I wish my home weren't so broken that I could stay."

Unable to fathom a reply, Seokjin remains silent, instead only silently offering the young man some of the food he'd stolen off of some soldier's camps. They had extra, and he had been hungry. Slowly, he'd developed the habits of piracy he'd tried to avoid when he'd joined Heechul. They had been on a quest, and it had been different.

Now, huddled in the snow with a young elite, crouched under jackets and sharing a meager meal, Seokjin realizes he's no better than a common thief, reduced to this from power and greed ripping his home apart.

"What's your name?" the young man asks, curling up into his jacket under the shelter he'd offered to share with Seokjin that night.

"Jin," Seokjin answers after a brief pause, looking out at the snowy landscape. "I'm Jin."

"Jin," the young man tries, tongue poking out as if trying to chase the sound. "I'm Jimin."

"Jimin," Seokjin repeats. It isn't until they've drifted to sleep he realizes formalities had been dropped, and he had started it, Jimin, despite his status depicted in his garments, had left it alone.

Here, in this lonesome world, they had no status anymore, running from their problems and leaving them in the darkness of the past.

"I remember," Hoseok muses, accepting his tea cup, filled again with tea. "The books we studied said there used to be status - or age - specific language."

"That was before The Rise," Kim Seokjin muses, sitting back in his chair, eyes softening. "You're too young to remember a time when everyone was asked their age before their name was used freely. Before we all became equal." He chuckles lightly. "Namjoon would have loved to have been around for that development."

"Who?" The warmth from the teacup slowly seeps into Hoseok's hands as he watches Seokjin's smile soften just a little, his eyes warming gently. It makes him look older, but also softer, just enough that Hoseok is struck with the urge to reach out and touch, just to see if it's real.

"That's a story for another day," Kim Seokjin says, and carefully puts down his tea cup.

It was easier to travel, to explore through Northern China, to pick up jobs and food and settle into a different lifestyle. It was easier when Seokjin started explaining that Jimin was his younger brother, earning them trust and compassion, two lost young men looking for work.

It was easier for a while, and the years passed gently as war broke out again. Slowly though, even the beard that had grown on Seokjin's face couldn't hide the different in himself and Jimin. Lines began to spider from the corner of Jimin's eyes, his movements slower as Seokjin stayed the same, smooth skin and fresh bright eyes.

In Lhasa, as the sun rose high and stuck their shirts to their backs, Jimin paused and turned to him. "I think," said he, "that from now on, you're not my brother." Seokjin had stopped, staring, waiting. "You're my son."

Seokjin had laughed, one of the few true loud and full laughs that he'd had in a long time, Jimin joining in with him after a moment.

A few years later, as Seokjin and Jimin stopped through Changsha, the news that Toyotomi Hideyoshi had died broke upon their table like water from a damn. "It's time to go home, Jin," Jimin said, turning to Seokjin with the assertion Seokjin always knew lay under his gentle and sweet demeanor. The command that he'd been born and raised with, true to his class.

"Yes, father," Seokjin had said automatically, accustomed after years of explaining their connection in lies that pushed them past borders and under suspicion. Jimin's eyes are lined now, his body weaker and back slightly bowed, but the light in his eyes remained.

Jimin had smiled, reached forward, and wrapped Seokjin into a hug Seokjin knew Jimin needed more than he, and wept the years they had lived with bated breath.

"He never asked?" Hoseok sits, frowning as Kim Seokjin takes a long sip of tea long ago cooled.

"He did," Kim Seokjin replies with a slow nod. "But it was only in passing. He didn't need to be told, and didn't want to be. He understood in his own way, and I think that was enough for him."

"Did you go back?" Hoseok asks, fingers extending to run along the rim of his teacup as well, mimicry of Seokjin's.

The family was still intact, though just barely, only the youth who had remained and now old themselves waiting to receive their 'lost brothers'.

"This is my grandson," Jimin explained, voice cracked with age as he gestured to Seokjin as he had done countless times before. "Please welcome him."

They had, Seokjin earning a new family of open arms and returned hierarchy, rebuilding a country ripped with war and fighting. "We are survivors," one of the other men, one of Jimin's cousins, explained. "We are attacked and taken over, but still we linger on. We don't give up. That is what makes us great. We live on."

"Yes, grandfather," Seokjin says, bowing carefully to the man who may be decades younger than he. It doesn't matter, age no longer on his mind as he slips back into life around him, working on things that took a lifetime to master and showing immediate skill.

"The boy has promise," Seokjin overheard one conversation. "We must make sure it does not go to waste. Jimin won't let him go, even if it's what he needs."

For days, Seokjin lingered on questions of what they'd been discussing, what he needed that he didn't know about. For days, Seokjin wondered, until he woke in the night to rushed voices and the light of fire to guide in the darkness.

There was no goodbye, no final farewell between Seokjin and his long time friend, only standing with the slow hollow building in his chest feeling worse than with the loss of his own family. There was no time to grieve, as he learned the plans for him had been succession.

"This is Sojin," one of the other cousins explained, introducing Seokjin to a pretty woman who looked so young and uncertain. All the wisdom of his first lifetime came up short when Seokjin tried to explain why he couldn't marry this girl, couldn't, because she would grow and become the woman of the household, and Seokjin would remain.

Just Seokjin.

"Did you run?" Hoseok asks, watching and feeling his own discomfort at the situation. "You couldn't explain, and faking your own death wouldn't work very well, considering you, well-"

"I married her," Kim Seokjin says, and it sounds hollow, filled with regret. "It wasn't what either of us wanted, but we kept up precedents for those around us. They needed a strong happy couple, so we- we tried."

"But?"

"I had to explain," Kim Seokjin says slowly. "Eventually, I had to tell her."

"How did she take it?"

Shockingly, Kim Seokjin laughs, head falling back and just laughing, the sound filling up the sparse room and startling a smile out of Hoseok.

The night Seokjin tried to explain was the night he found Sojin in his room, crying with her face in her hands. Worried, he had rushed over, carefully pulled her hands from her tear soaked face, and asked what had happened to her, where she had been hurt.

"I'm not hurt," she had said before stopping. "No, I am, but it's not a wound you can fix."

"I'm sorry," Seokjin had said, and the dam had broken. “I know you don’t want this, and I know that me not being entirely -”

“You don’t want this either,” Sojin laughs bitterly, sitting back and looking up at him. “Neither of us want to be in this situation, where we can’t be with the people we love. Who we choose to love.” Seokjin had faltered, staring at her, and watched as she instead of catching his confusion, had wiped her face clean, reached up, and hugged him. “I see how you look at others, how you hold yourself, and I understand. I am not what you want, just as you-” she coughs, and pulls back, and the sudden smile on her face is offsetting. “You are beautiful, Seokjin-ssi, but it’s not-”

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin tells her again, taking hold of her hands to calm her, to try to reign in the emotions he can see flowing through her and shaking her foundations. This is because of him, her fate changed because he stayed alive, his one change of his own fate, stretching it beyond the infinite, had taken from her. “I know I can’t change it, but if you had married another man-”

Sojin laughs, and the sound is so full, so real and genuine, Seokjin pauses. “Don’t you mean you?”

Blinking, Seokjin pauses, taking in the woman, his wife, before him, and finally processing some of the missing pieces. What Sojin had been explaining and what she, apparently, assumed was the reason for his withdrawal from her, unrelated to the truth.

And so he says, “yes,” to stay away from the topic. Sojin looks relieved, settling back down.

“I am grateful,” she says quietly, eyes on the floor. “That you haven’t cast me out.”

Bending down, Seokjin takes her hands carefully, holding on like he should have done for Jimin, telling him he cared, he was thankful for his friendship, his company, and his kindness in his life. “I will never cast you out,” he says firmly. “You are the woman of this household, and you have my permission to do as you will under that title.”

It’s the first promise Seokjin makes in many years that he vows to keep, whatever the cost.

One year later, after being approached and pressured by many, Sojin conceives a child. Glowing with the life of motherhood, Seokjin takes one final look at his wife, smiling in pure joy at her swelling belly, her hand maiden leaning in close to embrace her, and turns away.

Unlike the days spent lying among rotting corpses as war ravaged the country around him, leaving his country kin to bleed into the soil, this time his death is easy to fabricate. It’s not running, as this was in his plans long before the first lines of age had begun to creep into Sojin’s face, before he’d begun to notice the looks thrown his direction in confusion. It’s necessary, for the better of a family not his own that he leave them in powerful kind hands, his last will and testament ensuring Sojin’s sovereignty and his child his successor.

It’s when Seokjin arrives in Pyeongyang that he sees an old familiar friend, and finds a smile breaking unbidden over his face as Jaejoong’s eyes flicker in recognition.

“It’s been a while,” Jaejoong grins, pulling him into a fond hug, strong and full of memory.

“It has,” Seokjin agrees, sitting beside him at the food stall. “What news?”

In the war that had pushed Seokjin away, driven him to flee, the others had stayed, and some returned. Heechul had died, something that sets Seokjin’s blood cold, not believing it to be true until Jaejoong explains the circumstances. It had been an accident, though a very stupid one, involving a theft of Chinese pyrotechnics and ammunitions in which Heechul had literally blown himself up.

“You don’t live through that,” Jaejoong had said with a grimace. “Even if you’re immortal.”

“And Junmyeon?” Seokjin asks, voice quieter as he watches Jaejoong’s face for a reaction.

The grimace fades, turning distant, removed, melancholic. “Junmyeon wasn’t an accident,” he says softly, and Seokjin lowers his eyes to his hands.

Years ago, in the simulation fields and physical endurance and flexibility programs, Hoseok remembers sitting with other children his age, crouched in a corner, and debating over what magical power they would have from the old restricted books found on their virtual libraries. Hoseok would listen, grinning around at all the suggestions, each with supported and constructed evidence as to why they chose the power. Someone, every time, would choose immortality, and Hoseok would laugh and wonder what it would be like to live forever.

It would be conquering death, living on and on and on until the end of time, watching it all end and begin and repeat. It would be seeing the people around him live and pass on and his children’s children’s children growing up around him in accelerated stop motion frames.

It would be having the time to travel the entire world without needing to stop, no timeline to work on to get back to the real world before it’s too late. There would be no restriction, no bucket list. It was endless time, endless opportunity.

It is loss again and again, being alone in world as those he loved passed around him with the fading seasons, growing up and withering before sorrowful eyes.

Yet now it rings something different, another capacity he’d never considered. There had been years of contemplating why he would pass over the power for telekinesis every time he answered, but it’s not until now he thinks about how to solve the power.

A fail safe - a loophole - for a body that can never die. Destroy the body.

Suddenly, watching through the clips from the filming session, Hoseok is sick, watching Seokjin’s soft expressions and smiles, the gentle tilts to his eyes that speak louder than his words, explaining his story and the emotion behind it. If it’s real or not, Hoseok doesn’t know or care, but the image of Seokjin searching for a way out of the capsule of eternity burns through him.

It’s horrible, the knowledge that a concept like this would wind itself to such a degree that he’s unable to focus, his own personal reactions interfering with his work, but after two sessions with Seokjin, Hoseok has begun to care.

It’s nearing the end of the day when Hoseok’s boss stops by, his blond hair tucked up under his snapback and a hoodie hanging too big as he carries two cameras with him. “You okay?” he asks, pausing by Hoseok’s desk, setting one of the cameras down.

Letting out a sigh and sitting back, trying to push aside the stream of thoughts that swell and surge under his skin, Hoseok nods once. “Just thinking,” he admits. “About that client. The one who requested interviews.” It takes his boss a moment to pull up the information, his lower lip tugged between his teeth before he nods, dark eyes lighting in understanding. “He’s, well, they’re interesting sessions.”

“Anything you need to report?” his boss asks, eyes sharpening as he watches Hoseok, his low voice casual, but Hoseok knows the edge in it well enough.

“Nothing bad,” Hoseok explains quickly. “It’s just not what I expected.”

“Life is full of the unexpected,” his boss shrugs, tugging the camera off of Hoseok’s desk. “Deal.”

After one lifetime, they all began to bleed together. Time, rather than speeding up, begins to flux, moving between accelerating and slowing to a crawl. On one hand, the journey from Pyeongyang to Berlin took months, but it felt like days. The month spent in in France before the war between them and Britain felt like years. It had been hard at first, navigating through the countries step by step with language and knowledge slowly building up within him, collecting into the spaces in his head until it felt he couldn’t fit anymore.

There was somehow always room though, the slow acquisition of knowledge putting a calming effect on him, wisdom growing broader and stronger until very little bothered him.

War, though, always did.

The outbreak between France and Britain drove him back, wandering through the south, along mountain paths and peaks, settling among the Tibetan monastics for a year before turning towards home.

The landscape changed, politicians rising and falling from power like young flowers for one season, buried in the earth soon after their time was spent. It became a soft disconnect, where Seokjin learned smiles, learned control, learned everything and knew when to use it or not. One hundred years became a trinket in time when he’d live through two rounds of it, and leading up to the end of one age and the start of another.

It had been a time of peace, and Seokjin should have known better as he walked into the old places he used to live and couldn’t recognize them. The villages were gone, instead building up and developing more and more, some of them simply rubble and others grown, expanded, until he could hardly believe it was the same.

It had been easy to slip into the flow of things, learned long ago what to say and how to say it, the days off trying to talk with Jimin or Sojin long forgotten in the extravagance of the rest of the world. It was easy to explore new ideas, new concepts of intimacy, of love, of expression in places that demanded it.

Home though, home was safe, familiar, somehow inherently nostalgic even if Seokjin saw the flaws and wished to remedy them.

There was no time though, for while Seokjin had all the time in the world, his country did not.

Another war broke like a wave against both sides of the country, the two forces of China and Japan crawling over into the heart of Korea and Seokjin watched the recurring nightmare of death and useless killing. This time, Seokjin had had enough, and he fought.

It was hard to keep the cover, to keep from giving away who he was, what he was, when he couldn’t be killed in battle. Mind lingering forever on the end of Heechul and Junmyeon, Seokjin was careful, but didn’t hold back.

At least, not at first.

This time, there is no answer at the door when Hoseok knocks. Letting himself in with the spare key he’d been given by the attendant to the complex, he finds Kim Seokjin laid out on the couch in the living area, a few yards from the table and chairs. He’s wearing the bulky cardigan again, the one Hoseok had first met him in, and his hair falls gently around his face.

By looks, Kim Seokjin appears young, perhaps the same age or younger than Hoseok himself. If going by looks alone, it would be easy to assume that Kim Seokjin was a young, healthy, slightly inexperienced young man. After talking with him for the last few weeks, Hoseok isn’t sure what to make of him. While he looks young, body showing no signs of age aside from maturity, the way he speaks, talks about his past and the way he weaves stories for Hoseok of things long ago - they’re spoken with emotion, with longing, the feeling in Kim Seokjin’s voice that of vivid memory, not fabrication.

Perhaps it’s the work of an amazing story teller, but not all of the stories are nice, and Kim Seokjin clearly struggles with them, pushing through though until the words are rid of him.

Carefully, quietly, Hoseok pulls himself away from the sleeping man. The kitchen is well ordered, easy to find things in, and Hoseok may not make perfect tea, but he does make tea. A small pot of coffee for himself and tea for Seokjin, and Hoseok settles down on the chair beside the couch, his camera set up and waiting, watching as Kim Seokjin sleeps on in a world of memories Hoseok can only dream of knowing.

After a while, he stirs, rising up. “Thank you,” he says, a soft hazy smile on his face as he sees the tea.

“Did you ever find out?” Hoseok asks him, thumb pressing over the red button on the remote in his lap.

“Find out what?” Kim Seokjin asks, delicately pouring himself a cup of tea.

“About your child,” Hoseok clarifies, settling back in his chair, waiting for the stories to flow and for his mind to paint tapestries against the backs of his eyes.

“I did,” Kim Seokjin says, his voice quieting gently as a faint and distant smile eases onto his face. “Sojin had a son.” His eyes soften, and he looks almost wistful. “They named him Jimin.”

When the first shell went off, it had startled Seokjin. When the second exploded, it froze him, rooted to the spot as his comrades all ran, trying to tug him after them as he stood rooted to the spot, the fear, panic, his instinctive emotions suddenly breaking free from their logical confines and bursting through him.

“Jin!” screamed one of the soldiers, and it had broken something, the sudden terror at war, at this massacre, surging through him. Seokjin turned and he ran.

Pulse pounding, breathing burning, and almost blinded white with fear, Seokjin ran and ran and ran until his body couldn’t and then he ran more. There was no escape the screams of bombs, the bangs and crashes, the loud rat-a-tat of gunfire and Seokjin broke, falling down after tripping over bodies lost to the war.

For decades, Seokjin had slowly worked out how to bury his feelings, hide those things away until they didn’t exist. It was easy over time, usually not overly emotional anyway, but the sudden collection of information made emotions less of a priority. They weren’t as acute, almost nonexistent when his mind was caught up in other things.

Now though, there is no lying to the carnal urge to run that flooded through him, the overwhelming panic he’d not felt since being flung into the sea off the shores of Busan. Now, Seokjin feels his heart pounding, the tears pouring down his face, and the choke in his chest and lungs and throat.

Seokjin is scared, for the first time in many, many years, of dying.

It had begun a while back, where he’d begun to think of death as an abstract concept, an accepted and necessary part of life that was a natural cycle. People live and they die, in a balanced transition through life and existence, accomplishing what they needed to before vanishing.

Seokjin is out of that system, and over the years, the memory of Jaejoong reiterating what had happened to Heechul and Junmyeon crawled into him. It wasn’t a bad thing, really. Dying. Seokjin wouldn’t mind it, finding things exhausting even as he learns and learns, there are things he’d rather not have.

The memories of the loss, watching those he cared about fade, leaving his child and hearing about Jimin, his son only when he’d run into Yoongi by chance in Moscow. He had promised to not look back after leaving Sojin, but hearing how he had miss his entire son’s life still sent an ache into his chest, soon to be buried in Russian history, culture, and political ideals.

Yet now, those buried feelings return, overwhelming him, and while Seokjin had numbed himself over the years, thought of death as an abstract concept that he would have to solve, now, it was very, very real.

It is sobering yet also terrifying that Seokjin realizes, lying on the ground and shaking traumatically as another shell goes off, he doesn’t want to die.

Seokjin is still afraid to die.

It’s paralyzing, having that fear that is all consuming, the terror that grips him by the throat and holds him still as it lays into him. It’s horrible, and he is forgotten by his comrades, hearing them get cut down around him, lambs of the slaughter. Hours, days, legions of time pass through Seokjin as he lies there, waiting for the terror to subside.

A soft sound has him rising, looking about him, breaths shaking and peering through the early morning dawn that whispers vague definition over the fallen.

Another soft sound, so similar to his own near silent sobs, rings out through the forest. A shape moves, and Seokjin tenses.

It’s a boy, curled up on the leaves and holding what looks like a small dog to him. Both are filthy, and Seokjin’s terror momentarily halts as he watches this boy pick his way through the scattered bodies, holding onto the dog, and looking helpless.

He lets out a soft cry as Seokjin moves, tumbling backwards and releasing the dog, which bounds away from him. “Don’t kill me!” Seokjin hears in a panicked whispered cry, and can see in the gray of dawn the clear tracks his tears have carved down his grimy face.

“I’m not going to,” Seokjin tells him, and the boy shivers. Carefully, Seokjin moves towards him, tucking his rifle away and giving the child some space. “I’m scared too.” It takes a bit of time before the boy lowers his hands, before he looks at Seokjin with wide brown eyes and a trembling lower lip. It takes only one offered hand, Seokjin pushing his own fears aside for the sake of someone less able to cope with them in this created Hell. Just one hand and then the boy is surging up, falling into him with a soft cry and burrowing his face into Seokjin’s chest, clinging to him and shaking as he cries.

It’s the middle of a war between two countries trying to own something that isn’t theirs, people that aren’t theirs, and it’s a mess of greed and power and politics. Yet, Seokjin finds himself slowly wrapping the boy into his arms, rocking him gently, and whispering to him as he cries, “it’s going to be okay. You’re safe,” until the first rays of dawn spread through the canopy above them.

“I’m scared,” the boy had whispered, worn and face blotchy with red as he’d settled against Seokjin, the dog wandering up to sniff worriedly at his ankles.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Seokjin tells him, feeling his own breathing shake as he holds the child. “Everyone feels afraid, that’s part of life.”

“I don’t like it,” the boy murmurs, pressing his face into Seokjin’s chest again.

“I know,” Seokjin answers, looking around them and feeling an overwhelming sense of loss, of pain and suffering that isn’t his own but which he has begun to carry regardless. “I don’t like it either.”

The sun tilts, lowering in the sky and Kim Seokjin gets up to lower the blinds, eliminating the glare from outside as it had begun to fall upon his face.

“You make life sound so sad,” Hoseok says, watching as Kim Seokjin returns to his seat on the couch. “It sounds like your life was just full of sadness.”

“It was,” Kim Seokjin says slowly, a soft look of bemusement on his face. “And it wasn’t. With every hardship there were happinesses, and with every happiness there was pain. It always balanced itself out, and after years of living through the swing, I began to realize it’s all based on perspective.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well,” Kim Seokjin says, sighing and sitting up. “Seeing the boy - Taehyung - was my happiness amid my sorrow. Even if we kid from war and ran from things that would mean death for either or both of us, he was my happiness. We both suffered, and eventually, later, we separated, but knowing him and having my time with him was happiness.”

“What happened to him?” Hoseok asks. Letting out a long sigh, Kim Seokjin looks out the window, straight into the sun, and smiles.

It was after that war that Seokjin decided he had enough. He had traveled the world once, and he would do it again. There was too much pain and regret and memories buried under the ground of his home, his world. The world was his, and he’d only seen half of it.

“Don’t miss me too much,” Taehyung laughs, his smile sunny once more as he holds onto Seokjin’s hand, eyes crinkled up. “And you can always come visit if you get bored.”

Laughing, Seokjin ruffles Taehyung’s hair before pulling him in for a hug. “I will,” he says, holding him close. It’s been years since Taehyung had crawled into his lap, cried, clinging to him and whispered finally in the late morning “I’m lost” and clung to his fingers. Years have passed in the blink of an eye, the war ended and Korea beginning to rebuild and Taehyung is a grown young man, almost as tall as Seokjin, the terror from the war still there in the dead of night during dreams but otherwise forgotten.

A memory.

“I’m going to miss you,” Taehyung tells him, patting him on the back a few times before pulling away.

“I’ll miss you too,” Seokjin says. Taehyung is leaving the small village they’d taken shelter in for years to travel to the city, to apprentice and work, finally receiving call from his family they’d found him. What Taehyung doesn’t know is Seokjin is leaving too.

Taehyung doesn’t know that Seokjin isn’t promising anything, because Soekjin knows he can’t keep any of those promises. The promises to grow old and share memories over soju and explaining their latest worlds will never be.

Taehyung will grow old, and Seokjin will stay, traveling around the world, finding answers and moving with the turn of the earth as time slowly drags him along with it’s slow even steps. Taehyung will grow old, and Seokjin has to let him go.

It’s strange how when he lets go of Taehyung, bidding his last farewell, it’s harder to say goodbye to him than it was to leave his wife and unborn child two hundred years ago.

“Have you ever been in love?” Hoseok asks, turning in his media chair to look up at Boa. She pauses, her hair clipped back as she looks at him, glasses on her nose.

“Love?” she asks, shifting the weight of cameras in her arms.

“Like -” Hoseok sighs, pushing his fingers into his eyes as he tries to massage the tired out of them that had grown there over the last few hours. “Not- okay. Scratch the first question. How would you define love?”

Boa frowns at him, like she’s still not sure what he’s asking. “It’s a noun.”

“But what does it mean?” Hoseok asks, letting out a heavy sigh. He needs his boss here for this. His boss always knows what to say, kind of like how Kim Seokjin always seems to know what to say even if he’d asked Hoseok to speak with him rather than just talk.

“I think it’s more about what it means to you,” Boa says, and shrugs at him when Hoseok opens one eye to glare at her.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Hoseok sighs.

“That’s all I got,” Boa says, and bundles up her papers, walking away from him and his churning thoughts.

Lifetimes ago, on the ports of Phuket, Seokjin had wondered if he’d ever see a woman with dark intense eyes and a petit curved nose above pink soft lips again if he lived through the ages. On a street in Constantinople, he gets his answer, looking up from a meal he’d paid for with the last of his money to see the same woman he’d stood side by side with on an island near impossible to find unless you knew where to look.

“Bonjour,” Coeur says, her sunglasses shielding half of her face, but it’s her. Seokjin recognizes her instantly, the blurring of names and faces from the millions of people he’s known over time paling in comparison. She looks the same, exactly the same.

“Ca fait longtemps depuis la derniere fois qu'on s'est vu,” Seokjin says, and Coeur’s mouth tugs in a vague smile. “What brings you here?”

“You,” Coeur says simply, extending elegantly over the table top and tugging down her sunglasses to look at him. “We have to go back.”

“Back,” Seokjin repeats, and carefully breathes. “Why?”

“Yoongi can explain,” Coeur says, standing in a fluid motion and gesturing him to follow her.

Three streets away, Yoongi is waiting at a local cafe, newspaper in his hand and frowning. “I can’t read any of this shit,” he grumbles, looking up at Seokjin and Coeur as they approach. “Seokjin, can you read any of this?”

“Yes,” Seokjin answers simply. He’d spent five years here. It had stuck. “What’s going on?”

On the bustling side street in Constantinople, Yoongi’s expression darkens as he stands, tucks his newspaper under his arm and pulls Seokjin along with him on their way down the street. “Assholes are taking over the world,” he says, and Seokjin almost rolls his eyes if not for catching Coeur doing it for him.

It takes them a month to get back to the island, Yoongi and Coeur bickering a lot of the time as Seokjin easily handles the business portions, ignoring Yoongi’s grumbles of ‘we were pirates once, we can be pirates again.’

Times are changing, people in power looking to stay in power and Seokjin’s chest and filled with cold as Yoongi began to list names of those interested in the cup.

Standing in the island’s caves once more, Seokjin is struck with a feeling of dread. “How will we know this will stop people?” Seokjin asks, looking at his two companions.

“Remove the cup, then remove the threat,” Yoongi shrugs, eyes on the goblet. “Ready?”

“Any last words?” Coeur asks, looking between them both. At the looks they direct at her, she shrugs. “I just thought that since we live from the cup, when it is gone, so will we be. Poof.”

Seokjin waits for the sudden terror, the crippling fear to grip him like it had back during the wars in Korea, with Taehyung clutched to his chest screaming cries of terror at the blasts of bombshells.

Nothing. He is filled with nothing.

“Do it,” he says, eyes on the goblet.

His life has been long enough. It can end now.

With a final glance around, Yoongi closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and presses down on the detonation trigger in his hand.

Loopholes, or perfectly crafted explanations, only make sense in stories. The destruction of the Cup of Life so that there is no proof, there is no evidence or history of a person who has lived for centuries.

But then-

Slowly, carefully, in the late hours of the night, Hoseok opens up his console and begins to sift through the files online, scanning through the wars, through the histories of the world, through the history Kim Seokjin had told him about.

It strikes Hoseok as odd, that someone like this could exist for years and years and no one would notice. They would have to notice, caught on cameras or picked up from years of working. Identification numbers, passports, all issued to people based on date of birth and their citizenship to a country.

It has to be a lie, a great made up story from a man who spent years crafting it just for the purpose of filming it in this way, to make the audience wonder.

Then images catch Hoseok’s eyes, and in the early hours of the morning, he swallows down a dry throat, watching as he begins to sift through images, through reports, through records, of a person who looks the same in every image. There are too many obituaries, and Hoseok wonders how many empty graves there are for a man named Kim Seokjin.

It doesn’t prove anything, but then, there are some things in life that cannot be explained or proven. They’re better that way.

They’ve never left the room before, the table and chairs set exactly where they’re supposed to be, a few crumbs on the table and a few odds and ends scattered about the room. The sun glints through the windows, and the old fashioned kettle on the stove whistles as the water heats, billowing steam into the air impatiently.

Today, the table is stacked with boxes, scattered with old photographs, the kind that Hoseok had thought were all lost after The Rise. They look so faded, so tired and frail and he almost stops and looks at them before a touch at his wrist pulls his attention away.

“It’s a lovely day,” Kim Seokjin tells him, a smile on his face, and Hoseok can only nod in agreement.

Unlike the quiet stillness of the room, the outside garden is lush and green, some of the bed overrun and forgotten, but the simplistic nature of wildflowers among the verge is fitting. There is a wrought iron table, two chairs with cushions, and a plate of biscuits with the tea. The soft sounds of insects and the open air fills up the silence between the two men as Hoseok sits, waiting with his camera set up, facing his client and watching as Kim Seokjin sits, eyes closed, and breathes.

“What were the photographs for?” Hoseok finally asks, the red indicator light flashing on the camera beside him, slightly offset to avoid the sun’s glare.

“I felt lonely,” Kim Seokjin explains easily, his voice flowing out of him even as his eyes remain closed, motionless bathed in sunlight. He’s wearing a different cardigan today, the sweater gray and wrapped around him warm even in the pleasant temperatures of the garden. “Sometimes, there are times that even my memories cannot keep me company, and I need to help them along with times where I wasn’t alone.”

“You’re not alone now,” Hoseok points out.

Opening his eyes, Kim Seokjin looks amused, a smile tugging at his mouth as if Hoseok has said something funny rather than consoling. “That’s the thing about this story,” he begins. “There comes a time when you realize that you’re always alone, that everyone in their own life is alone in their own way, and some choose to embrace that and others hide from it.” He lets out a long breath before sitting up and taking his tea, raising the teacup to his lips. “For a while, I let it frighten me. Then I learned to enjoy it, to embrace it, and accept it.”

“It sounds very lonely,” Hoseok comments, watching Kim Seokjin as he carefully sips his tea and looks out over the garden.

“It can be,” is the muted reply before his smile softens, fades, and his eyes turn distant. “But there are those that won’t let me be alone.” He coughs, and Hoseok watches, stunned, as he coughs again, and again, his shoulders shaking as he covers his mouth with a hand and his eyes squeeze shut. As they fade, Kim Seokjin’s eyes remain closed as he sits back into his chair, a wince lingering on his face. “Were,” he corrects himself weakly.

The brave new world.

Just as the first time Seokjin had left to travel the world, he leaves without a destination. There had been talk for over a century of the new world, a place of golden opportunity, of new beginnings, of blank slates.

It takes time to get there, and by the time Seokjin steps off the steamship into the bustling city of the New World, he knows Taehyung is grown and aged, himself only a memory of youth. It’s a rush of life, of new ideas and politics, of new people, new beginnings, and Seokjin settles himself in easily as one of the many wanting to start a new life.

Starting a life from scratch isn’t as hard after it’s been done time and time again, where Seokjin knows the tricks, knows how to get money under him and food. Somehow, despite knowing for centuries that he didn’t need to eat to live, Seokjin still does, the joy of food still one of the few things that have not changed in life, even if the food has.

The food of the New World, however, is nothing if not amateur, only those from vibrant parts of the world bringing life it it. It’s sitting in a small tavern outside one of the first colleges of this new world that Seokjin finds himself giving up on a bowl of ‘famous clam chowder’ with a sigh.

It seems so petty, knowing that to quabble over taste is petty, but Seokjin has lived long to know he can abandon a crappy bowl of chowder and not feel remorse.

“Are you going to finish that?” asks a voice from beside him, and Seokjin looks up to see a young man seated down the counter from him. He’s spoken in Korean, which had surprised Seokjin slightly, used to hearing primarily English even from those who had no origin in the bastardized language. He’s dressed well, though the shirt and jacket are a bit worn, and he looks thin, like he’s went a few too many days without food and proper rest.

“It’s yours if you want it,” Seokjin says easily, pushing the bowl towards the other man, offering him a small smile. “I’m not in the mood.”

“It must be nice,” the man says, taking to Seokjin’s abandoned chowder. “To be able to push away food.”

“If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be eating right now,” Seokjin says calmly. To his credit, the man pauses, looking up at him with his eyes a bit wider, as if he hadn’t expected any sort of reply to his grumblings. Seokjin lets some of the irritation at his earlier comment melt. “That doesn’t mean stop,” he adds, watching as the man simply stares at him, as if unsure how to proceed.

“What are you here for?” the man asks, digging back into the chowder.

Watching him, Seokjin takes a moment to breath, to settle from the fast pace that somehow drives this country, everyone rushing to their future and a better life. “The same thing as everyone,” he says, watching the chowder disappear rapidly. “A new beginning.”

“Not success?” the man asks, the spoon clattering gently in the bowl. “Not the dream that pulled you here?”

“Was it the dream that pulled you?” Seokjin asks, leaning against the counter as the man carefully dabs at his mouth with a napkin, almost delicately even as he’d eaten with all the grace of a heathen. Seokjin had known pirates with more table manners.

“Maybe,” the man says, and carefully, as if not sure it will be welcome, he smiles. “Thank you for the food.”

“I’m glad to see it didn’t go to waste,” Seokjin smiles back. “I hope you can find whatever it is you came here to find.”

The smile falters, then spreads a bit wider as the man sits up a little, his poor posture improving and Seokjin notices he looks better this way, more open, grounded. “And you,” he says. There is a moment of hesitation before a hand is extended, fingers held together in unfamiliar formality. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Namjoon Kim, study of law at Harvard.”

“I’m Jin Kim,” Seokjin answers, taking the offered hand with a smile, shaking it easily, familiar with the culture and custom after living it for so long. “A pleasure.”

The man, Namjoon, grins wider, his hand warm and his grip firm. “I hope I can reply you for the meal sometime.”

“That’s not necessary,” Seokjin says. In a few days, he’s scheduled for a train, traveling somewhere new and different, the money he’d earned enough here to last him.

“I’d like to,” Namjoon answers, and Seokjin pauses, finally looking at him and the sincere look in his eye that hadn’t been there when they’d first locked gazes. It’s odd, and Seokjin doesn’t entirely know if he should leave or stay, the years of wisdom and experience faltering.

The sun has risen higher, playing over the garden area and warming the day. In his chair, Kim Seokjin sits, his teacup in his hands and gazing out towards the flowers in his garden, wild and beautiful.

“The thing is,” he says after a long silence. “After a while, all the years don’t mean much, they just become dates, and it’s the things that happen in them that have meaning. Age is nothing more than a concept, some people old souls and some free and wild youths.”

“How can you tell the difference if we’re all infants to you?” Hoseok asks, not sure if he’s playing along or serious, if he believes what he’s saying entirely. He only knows it makes him slightly uncomfortable, not sure where to move, what to say, what to think.

Hoseok is young, in the grand spectrum, and has only know one life, this life, the one after The Rise when time was pressured down into compact sections and it was decided that no one would contribute to the pain and suffering from their past. That past that Kim Seokjin speaks of, the one filled with horror and sorrow and pain, is the past that they sought to eliminate.

Hoseok hadn’t know there was happiness through it all until he heard Kim Seokjin talk of it, of watching Taehyung play, listening to stories of Jimin trying to ride a horse for the first time. The happiness that Hoseok can’t entirely comprehend, the simplistic nature of it that somehow resonates even if he’s not sure he grasps what it means.

“There is a difference between age as a construct and age as a concept,” Kim Seokjin says carefully. “On one hand, living beyond time’s grasp means excluding age itself, on the other, it’s becoming a victim to it, where nothing changes, and your own age stops.”

“But what does that mean?” Hoseok asks, frowning in confusion at Kim Seokjin’s answer.

“It means I don’t have a perfect answer,” is the almost laughed reply. “And that I may never have one. Some questions are better left unanswered.”

That afternoon, Seokjin was supposed to board a train from Boston to travel down to New York. From there, he had contemplated getting on a steam ship and traveling to France, or perhaps boarding one of the schooners down to South America to see parts of the world he hadn’t yet covered completely.

That afternoon, Seokjin found himself in a smoky tavern listening to academics discuss theories of the universe, of politics, the future of the country and innovations in medicine. The air was thick with the smoke from cigars and the talk of innovation, and Seokjin had listened more than anything, knowing better than to correct their flawed recollection of times past and spending the hours pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

A young person in the time of change.

The music was loud, the people happy, a small party in the other room filled with women and men dancing and laughing together. Men had returned from a war a few years ago, the memory lost on Seokjin as he had blinked and time had passed. It hadn’t been his war, lying far away on the other side of the earth as thousands died away from his knowledge and attention.

The music was loud, and the drinks strong as Namjoon pushed another into his hands, a wide smile on his face before launching into discussion over new medicines.

“The war wasn’t all for nothing,” one of the men had said, and Seokjin’s smile soured over his glass. “From the ashes of death rises the cure to disease, and now we can save thousands more lives than we had been able to before.”

“I believe Johnson’s glass is more than half full,” laughed one of the men, pulling a decanter towards himself. “Someone help him with that.”

“Is there ever really a time when war is right?” Seokjin asks to no one, his hands still around his own glass even as he feels a tremor run through him.

Beside him, Namjoon’s face had faltered. An hour later, he’d pulled Seokjin out into the cool air of the night for a walk, to cool down after the night of jazz music and philosophy.

“I needed a break,” Namjoon explains, smiling as he steps in time with Seokjin, walking along the sidewalks of Cambridge. “I can only take so much of their talk before even I grow tired of it, and there’s not suitable break in those parlors. At least none that I would enjoy.”

“I’m still not quite accustomed to the new music,” Seokjin admits, hands tucked into his jacket pockets as they walk under lit streetlamps. “Or the dancing.”

“The music, I like,” Namjoon chuckles. “The dancing- I’d rather not risk.” He lets out a sigh, stopping before they tread too far, the moonlight glinting off of the river Charles ahead of them through the trees. “I much prefer this,” he muses.

“Walking?” Seokjin asks, glancing to him.

A soft glance to the side and Namjoon’s expression flickers in the moonlight, his mouth lilting and his eyes softening. “Yes,” he answers after a drawn pause. “Something like that.”

Early on in the sessions, Hoseok had found himself itching to ask the question that crawls under his skin even now. It had been at the tip of his tongue, waiting to jump into life and pull an answer from Kim Seokjin, the man with the stories that felt more real than Hoseok’s hands before him.

Earlier, Hoseok had spent hours contemplating until his boss kicked him out with a few choice swears and some choice kicks to his ass so he could close up the studio sections before going home. “I’m tired,” he would say, squinting at Hoseok with a sort of skeptical impatience as Hoseok tried to scrape a few more hours with the editor and his footage.

Earlier, Hoseok had been curious, wanting to know how a man who lived forever went through his life, found the balance among the regular, fulfilled expectations, fell in and out of love.

Hoseok had been expecting stories of many loves, falling over and over again in the soft ache of hearts. As much as Hoseok sits calmly and works deep into the late hours, there is a part of him that thrives on the subtle romance, the joy of love in all it’s forms, and happy endings.

Instead of a life story that was rich with the expected, Hoseok’s ears were filled with the unexpected, a loveless arranged marriage, a man who lived forever and saw war and pain and people drifted in and out of his world in patches of color and memories. Instead, Hoseok began to remember that not all stories play out how he wants them to, how expectations are always changed into the unexpected, and now, sitting and watching as Kim Seokjin grows quiet, his eyes on the teacup in his hands, Hoseok doesn’t want to know if Kim Seokjin fell in love.

He knows the story won’t be a happy one, and it aches in his chest, wishing for a happy ending anyway.

“What was he like?” Hoseok pushes himself to ask, even as he tries to conjure an image of Kim Namjoon and struggles under the weight of his own heart.

Kim Seokjin’s smile looks old, older than he, as he looks up and into Hoseok’s gaze. “He was wonderful.”

The hardest part was how Namjoon turned twenty, and Seokjin didn’t.

Namjoon turned twenty-two, and Seokjin didn’t.

Namjoon got a job and received letters from his family, beginning a career in New York where he pulled Seokjin along as his partner in business, finding his talents in most anything useful and getting him a job. Namjoon turned twenty-five and Seokjin stayed twenty, just as he had the moment the rim of a goblet touched his lips.

The hardest part was that Seokjin didn’t want to be left behind, and Namjoon knew. Even if he never said anything, only lingering looks between their growing companionship, not a word was said.

The hardest part was understanding what was happening, putting together the pieces of a puzzle Seokjin was trying not to look at. The hardest part was watching and lingering back even if he wanted to move forward, stuck where he was, always the same.

The hardest part was the letter that arrived in the mail one morning, and which left Namjoon’s hands shaking before he left the office, gone until the later evening when he arrived at Seokjin’s apartment looking exhausted and flushed.

“What happened?” Seokjin asks, sitting Namjoon down in his apartment. It’s not much, but none of them have much, putting it all into business just as the rest struggle to succeed.

“I received a letter from my family,” Namjoon says, his voice rougher as he accepts the glass of whiskey from Seokjin, cradling it in his hands. Waiting, Seokjin sits and watches him, the fan in the corner spinning faintly to disperse some of the summer heat that lay heavy all day. “They want me to get married.”

The hardest part is the silence, is watching Kim Namjoon raise the glass of whiskey to his lips and see it shake, his hands trembling.

“I see,” Seokjin begins, watching him and feeling too full, watching Namjoon and seeing himself, seeing Sojin’s crying face. Seeing Sojin’s pure happiness in the comfort of her handmaiden and knowing why. “That’s-”

“Tell me not to,” is so quiet, almost a whisper but it’s loud, resonating in the small room as the fan hums gently in the corner. Namjoon takes in a shaking breath, and looks up at Seokjin. “Jin-”

“I can’t.” The images of Sojin, the lines about her eyes darkening, lengthening, her body showing age as his stated the same before he left. The memory of Jimin as he laughed, calling Seokjin first ‘brother’, then ‘son’ and finally ‘grandson’ as time took it’s toll on him and left Seokjin out of it’s natural embrace. He knows the look in Namjoon’s eyes, the pleading warm desperation, and he knows the twist in his own chest. It’s not simple, it has never been simple, and though this is the land of new beginnings, some things this world is not yet ready for.

“Please,” Namjoon’s voice cracks, and his hands shake.

“Not because of me,” Seokjin says, holding back the dam again, the years and years of suffocated emotion, the fear, the pain, the happiness, the loneliness, all barreling to push through. One bad decision that caused endless life times of suffering coming back to rear it’s ugly head as Namjoon watches him with a plea in his eyes. “We- it wouldn’t work.”

“Why?” The question is hard, and in everything that is Kim Namjoon, Seokjin knows he would figure out a way, find a solution, plan around any obstacles to achieve his goals. Seokjin has seen him do it, and it is both exhilarating and terrifying to realize he’s the goal.

It hurts as the through brings the strongest happiness Seokjin has felt in years just as he knows it is not forever.

“Because of me,” breaks through, and even if Namjoon may know, may suspect, this is the first time Seokjin has ever spoken of it. It hurts, a knife dug under his skin and pulling it away, showing him for what he really is. “Because I’ll watch you grow old and I won’t. because I want you have a future, a life, and happiness, to keep moving on and have the freedom to do so, and I only stay in one place.”

“Nothing is forever,” Namjoon tells him, looking bitterly amused somehow, though his hands still shake enough to place the glass of whiskey on the table before him. It takes a moment before Seokjin realizes his hands are also shaking, clenched in his lap.

“I am.”

“But we won’t be,” Namjoon finishes, and nothing hurts as much as this. Yet the prospect, the promise…

Sometimes, it’s not about holding on, but about enjoying the things as they are, as they happen.

“Why can’t we just pretend that we can make those promises of forever to each other?” Namjoon asks, and takes a deep shaking breath. “Nothing is perfect, and we don’t always choose our fate, but if I get to choose something, I’d choose you. Can’t we have that? Can’t you let yourself have what you want?”

It’s hard to admit that Seokjin wants something as ephemeral as a person, as another who being who will slip through his fingers, whose thoughts and actions will be affected by him. “Because I know better.”

Namjoon’s hand is warm as it wraps around Seokjin’s, careful though the shake remains. Despite his better judgement, Seokjin lets him, lets Namjoon pry his hand open from a fist to carefully press their palms together. “Can you forget?” he asks, voice soft and close. “Just once, and let yourself be happy?”

As his eyes open, looking up into Namjoon’s eyes, young and unsure but determined, his own voice from years ago whispers to him it’s not the loss, but the happening that makes the memory, and that happiness or love is eternal.

“Okay.”

“Were you happy?”

The soft look on Kim Seokjin’s face is as warm as the sun above, lighting up his face and making him look years younger, less tired, and more whole, complete. Happy. “Yes,” Kim Seokjin says, eyes closing in a soft flutter of lashes. “I was.”

“And then?” Hoseok holds his teacup in his hands, careful and almost not wanting to speak to disturb the moment, the atmospheric beauty that wraps around the small outdoor wrong iron table and their quiet conversation. The camera flashes beside him in a steady light, keeping time and curbing Hoseok’s tongue of wanting to ask what it was that made Kim Seokjin love Kim Namjoon.

“And then I was still happy,” is the quiet answer. “We don’t lose our happiness, we just forget where we put it sometimes. But it’s always there, waiting for us to find it again and remember what it feels like to be loved.”

The happy years flew, where youth poured through their veins and energy had no bounds. Every day was another smile, and between the moments hidden from others, no one suspected and no one paid them mind. Slowly, through agreements and long discussions, titles were changed, where Seokjin was the apprentice or intern associate for the company as it grew out of a depression that Namjoon and he had struggled to keep afloat.

Slowly, through years of change, turmoil reformation, war, and mornings woken in the same bed to pillow lines on cheeks and dark news on the radio despite sunshine outside of windows, Seokjin watched Namjoon begin to fade just as Jimin did.

This time, it hurt, and Seokjin spent long hours trying to hold onto time as it raced away from him, taking with it Namjoon’s strength, his energy, and showing it’s effects against skin and in the bending of bones.

Once, Seokjin had realized that all of mankind were a circle, beginning the cycle helpless and weak, screaming and entirely dependent on others to help them to the end. They end the cycle in much the same way, and Seokjin begins to struggle with pretending, with holding onto his happiness as he watches Namjoon’s slow steps towards fading into memory.

It’s harder to stay close, the life of two men together rising suspicion among many even as they travel between settings. People pay attention now, following records and interaction and documenting every step of life. Seokjin becomes ‘Jin’ the nephew, ‘Seokjin’ the cousin, and at all points Seokjin waits and wonders if Namjoon doubts, his eyes drifting as he catches Namjoon watching him during their long hours together.

“What?”

“You’re beautiful,” Namjoon would say, reaching out with a smile.

“The young are beautiful,” Seokjin reminded every time, catching Namjoon’s hand with a soft sigh.

“No,” Namjoon would reply, curling their fingers together, each time a little shakier, the grip less strong. “Not like you. Where it’s all of you, your beauty radiating from within and shining out.”

“Is that how it works?”

“Just say thank you,” Namjoon would chuckle, settling back with his eyes creased in amusement, in happiness, in love. “It’s a compliment, Jin.”

“Isn’t that kind of hollow?” Hoseok asks, watching as the sun begins to set, blazing gold against the windows of the upper floors of the complex. “To just compliment and leave it there?”

“Am I supposed to refuse when someone calls me something?” Kim Seokjin asks him, a hint of amusement at his mouth.

“If I were to call you ugly-” Hoseok begins, and winces as Seokjin’s mouth twitches in humor. “-which you’re not. You are beautiful-”

“Thank you,” Kim Seokjin says, and his eyes dance at Hoseok’s soft sigh at not being able to finish.

“It sounds almost like you’re calling yourself beautiful by accepting it so quickly,” Hoseok teases a bit, watching Kim Seokjin’s smile brighten up his face.

“No, it sounds like I’m accepting your compliment.” Pouring another cup of tea, Kim Seokjin sits back with a small sigh, a wide smile on his face. “I haven’t said anything except expressed gratitude. I’ve not said I think myself beautiful, you did that. I thanked you for your kind words.”

“And if I were to call you ugly,” Hoseok begins.

“I’d tell you to get your eyes checked,” Kim Seokjin says, and Hoseok startles into a laugh, followed by Seokjin, the sound light and high on the air, ringing loud and long. When Hoseok tries to calm himself, his eyes rise to meet with wise dark brown and it starts over again, happiness of laughter ringing through him without knowing the source, yet it feels wonderful. Looking at Seokjin, sitting and laughing, radiant as the sun, it feels wonderful.

The ending is quiet. It’s only to the sound of soft mechanized beeps from computers that were only the dreams of men only one hundred years before. The ending is soft, and it has the faded skin and dulled eyes of farewell as hands too frail to grip wrap around Seokjin’s and hold him close.

“Thank you,” is the soft voice, ragged with age. “For this lifetime.” There is no one in the room, the nurses cleared out of the room for a final moment, for last words between a grand-nephew and his last remaining kin. Namjoon’s eyes glisten in tears, not of sadness, but of happiness. Of relief, and promises fulfilled. “I know it may have been one of many for you, but to me, it’s the most meaningful thing I have known.”

“You haven’t known a lot,” Seokjin reminds him, voice tight as he looks upon a man who has completed the cycle, frail and delicate.

“But what I have known has been wonderful,” Namjoon tells him, and smiles, his eyes closing for the last time.

The camera film begins to bleed together in Hoseok’s mind, the angle wrong, the sound distorted. It’s harder to differentiate between what he heard and felt sitting in the sunlight talking with Seokjin and the recording that doesn’t capture it. It doesn’t capture Kim Seokjin.

There is an element of him that is missing, that Hoseok knows will never show up on camera, will never appear in the way he watches it now, seeing Seokjin quiet after his story, eyes solemn and tea cup empty.

“I’m sorry,” Hoseok tells him, knowing to keep his voice soft.

“I’m not,” Kim Seokjin says, eyes rising to meet his. “To regret him would be cruel to him, and what we had.”

“I mean,” Hoseok lets out a soft breath of a suppressed laugh. “I’m sorry that you lost him, Kim Seokjin.”

“Losing things is part of life,” he says, eyes dropping to gaze into his empty tea cup. “To be mad at life for taking things from you is to never learn what life is really about.”

“Which is?”

Kim Seokjin smiles. “Letting go.”

This time, when Seokjin returns to Seoul, it’s to a different world. Gone are the villages, the remnants of a world built from the ashes of recovery, and in it’s place is a torn country, one he had watched with a heavy heart from afar.

Gone are the woods he used to walk in, the snowy peaks he had crossed with Jimin, instead dark memories of a life he’d just missed.

Instead, there are polars of ages, the old with hard and bitter memories, struggling out of the ashes of war and conflict, of division of kin and friend. The youth with their new ideas, reformation, and blissful ignorance of the struggles from before, caught in a fast developing world that is flashes of information with every swipe of fingers over a touch screen.

The rush and haste of the new world has spread, a virus through networked pathways, and infected the world, and Seokjin has to catch his breath between the new arisen districts of Sinsa and Jamsil, high towers and exhaust from cars through streets that rarely sleep.

It’s here that Seokjin finds him, curled up under an awning for a small juk shop, jacket tucked up to his ears and looking for all the world in need of a good meal.

“Are you alright?” Seokjin asks, forgetting the staggered bubble of personal space. But the boy looks tired, and cold, and slightly fearful as he looks around the area, as if unsure of where to go. With widened eyes, the boy presses his lips closed and shakes his head. “Are you hungry?” Seokjin tries instead, watching as the boy’s cheeks flush slightly. He’s too tall to be a child, but his face hold too much innocence to be anything but a boy.

A slow nod answers him and Seokjin smiles, pulling open the door of the juk shop and stepping into the warmth, out of the rain. “Join me for lunch,” he says.

The boy is less a boy and more of caught between, leaving home to find a future in the large city and lost his way somewhere between dream searching and homesickness. He smiles, cheeks rosy with warmth as he thanks Seokjin for the food, and answers his questions carefully, finally revealing his name as Jeongguk with a tiny laugh when Seokjin teases him.

“Do you have a place to stay?” Seokjin asks, and Jeongguk pauses, his eyes wary. “I want to make sure you can get home.”

“I-” Jeongguk pauses, hands slipping into his lap as a soft embarrassed rouge spreads over his face. “I forgot where I live here,” he admits in a quiet voice.

”I’m lost” echoes Taehyung’s soft tear clogged voice and Seokjin’s heart swells in his chest.

“Do you want help finding your way home?” Seokjin asks and the hesitant smile blooms faster now, Jeongguk falling easily into step with Seokjin, childishly humored but sensitive and thoughtful where it matters, his eyes lingering and Seokjin laughs as he ruffles his hair affectionately.

It’s not sun sets and sun rises that track the passage of time, but watching as Seokjin doesn’t have to reach as far to ruffle Jeongguk’s hair, earning a smile every time, a soft laugh as the softness of youth fades away into the early years of manhood.

Even long after Jeongguk begins calling Seoul his home, long after Seokjin would meet up with him for midnight meals to listen to his stories about his life trying to make something of himself, endlessly working and practicing for a dream, Seokjin watches on.

It’s not until Jeongguk is gone, picked up into a career that hits the ground running, taking him with it in a tide of activity and energy, that Seokjin realizes how much he misses him. It’s then he realizes how much he misses everyone, though the missing is less of a sorrowful ache and more of a pleasant comforting hum.

It’s knowing how much he cared, does care, and still cares. It may be centuries since he’s seen Jimin, or since Jimin breathed his last, but Seokjin still cares for him. Seokjin had learned along the way of caring for others and how that never stops, even if it is interrupted at times, people rising in and out of his life but leaving a mark on his heart until it’s not only his.

It’s theirs too.

When he gets the call at close to three in the morning, Seokjin doesn’t hesitate to leave his apartment, wearing a jacket over his sleeping shirt, and meet up with Jeongguk at one of the cafes in Sinsa. It’s open all night, and Jeongguk orders a strawberry bingsu before laughing as Seokjin talks him down from paying.

“You’re younger than I am,” Seokjin tells him firmly, turning to the cashier.

“Yeah, but I’m the one dragging you out of bed in the middle of the night,” Jeongguk says with a yawn.

“If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be,” Seokjin tells him, and bundles him up to the second floor of the cafe to wait for their order.

Jeongguk’s life is vibrant, exciting and Seokjin’s mouth thins only when he recognizes a familiar face among the photos Jeongguk shows him on his phone. “He’s my producer,” Jeongguk explains, pointing to the smaller man with a slanted smile in the photos. “He’s been in the business forever. They call him Peter Pan because he never looks like he gets older.” Jeongguk laughs once before plunging on, missing Seokjin’s delayed reaction as he’d instead stared at the photo on the phone screen in subdued shock.

“You should come by and visit me,” Jeongguk says, curled up in one of the corner booths, head resting on Seokjin’s shoulder and the bowl of bingsu empty on the table before them. Jeongguk looks so much younger like this, so different from when Seokjin had glimpsed him on the news, on stage.

Here, Seokjin can almost imagine that this is what it might have felt like if he hadn’t left Sojin, if he’d stayed to be there for Jimin, his son. If he would have been like Jeongguk, if Seokjin would have felt this same love for him that he does for the young man beside him.

“I think I will,” Seokjin says, smiling as he watches Jeongguk’s eyes flutter closed. He lets out a soft sigh, a smile pulling at his mouth as he snuggles closer to Seokjin, almost like the boy Seokjin had found nearly seven years before.

“I missed you,” Jeongguk murmurs. “This. I miss this.”

“Napping on me?”

Jeongguk snuffles a laugh, and settles with a soft sigh. “No, I forgot what it meant to have someone care about me,” he says, and a shard of Seokjin’s heart breaks. “I know people care, it’s just- you’re different.”

“How so?”

“It feels like,” Jeongguk lets out another sigh, slipping to sleep. “Like it doesn’t matter who or what I am, you will always care, and I can always find home with you.”

The feelings that had taken so long to find a balance within him, struggling against the weight of time, the world, and stay healthy and intact, swell and sway within Seokjin, making his heart beat softer, faster, fonder. “Jeongguk,” he says, leaning into the slowly sleeping young man. “Can I tell you a secret about myself?”

“Anything, hyung,” Jeongguk murmurs, and Seokjin smiles.

That day, they are inside. Rain, cold and unforgiving lashing at the windows as a small fire burned in the grate. It was old, primal, but Hoseok almost found it fitting, more natural in the context, like it just belonged with Kim Seokjin, the firelight flickering in the corner as he spoke softly of memories, his story tapering and moving faster and faster, the memories fresher.

These memories left Hoseok feeling unsettled, cautious as he listened. He knew the names this time, recalling a man named Jeongguk who had been before his time, a huge name among media, one of the forerunners for their business. In fact, after his session with Kim Seokjin, Hoseok checks, looking up the other man.

Jeon Jeongguk, founder of their company after The Rise, had initially been a singer, an idol in the old world. He had moved to Seoul young to follow his dream of music, and found it. When The Rise followed at the peak of his career, he, unlike many of his fellows, had followed it, carrying his group over into the newly developed SCRIBES program, which Hoseok works for.

Reading through his notes, there are pages upon pages of articles written by him, speeches transcribed into databanks and immortalized in their information systems. In many of them, Jeongguk mentions a man who had been his mentor, a second father and mother, more than an older brother.

A man that he names only as ‘Jin’ but who slides perfectly to fit into Kim Seokjin’s stories. It fills in some of the gaps as well, the absence of Jeongguk at points in his career correlating to Kim Seokjin’s recollection of when things had been hard, when Jeongguk had come to him for solace. It’s the same man Jeongguk wished well and to be at peace before he retired, leaving his company to their current leader, Hoseok’s boss.

Jeongguk had then faded from the histories, no obituary posted and Hoseok wonders if he’s still alive, if he can ask him about the man Hoseok has been all but consumed by in his free thought.

“What are you doing?” asks a familiar low voice and Hoseok turns, pausing at his console. It’s been hours since he got back from the older home, the wooden floorboards and the subtle taste of rose mixed with green tea against his tongue.

Opening his mouth to answer, Hoseok’s mind pauses, clicks, and he asks instead, “did you know Jeongguk?”

“Jeongguk?” his boss repeats, his eyes widening in surprise as he watched Hoseok. Leaning against the desk, he crosses his arms, letting out a small sigh. “Yeah, I knew him. He trained me for the job, was my mentor. Nice guy. Funny once you got to know him, and much more of a softie than people thought he was.” A small fond smile spreads over his face, and Hoseok isn’t entirely sure if he should believe him. “Why?”

“I was just looking something up and stumbled on him,” Hoseok says, turning back to the console. Reaching out, he pats at his boss, catching his arm instead of his hand to reassure him. “I’ll be done soon, I promise.”

“Whatever,” his boss sighs. Hoseok smiles slightly, knowing that Suga won’t get pissed at him even if he does run late, even if the other man likes to pretend to get irritated by things like Hoseok petting at his arm absently as he scrolls through Jeon Jeongguk’s achievements. “Stop rubbing me, I’m not a magic lamp,” Suga grunts, and Hoseok chuckles as his hand is pushed off, turning to watch his boss step from the room and leave him in peace.

The air feels different as the door opens. Unlike the days before, the scent of brewing tea is absent, instead the stronger aroma of coffee heavy on the air as Hoseok walks into the room, camera and equipment in hand as he looks for Kim Seokjin.

Somehow, though he still looks barely a day over twenty-one, Kim Seokjin looks tired, worn out, spread just a little too thin. He’s wearing a large cardigan, one of the sweatered knit ones, this time a soft dark gray over a simple white shirt. He looks even more tired, and Hoseok almost takes the tray from him as he brings it to the table.

“I’m fine,” Kim Seokjin tells him, that familiar smile teasing about his pretty mouth. “Just sit, I’ll bring over food and we can begin soon.”

“You’re not too tired?” Hoseok asks, not sitting down yet, instead lingering by his usual chair, watching Kim Seokjin shuffle about his home.

“No,” is the slightly amused reply. “I don’t mind it today. I’m ready to take a rest after our session.” Unlike many other days, the door remains unlocked, Kim Seokjin even going through the pains of making sure it was unlocked before they’d begun filming. “I’m expecting someone,” he explains when Hoseok gives him an inquisitive look. “He won’t be long, just dropping off something for me.”

“Who?”

“An old friend,” Kim Seokjin smiles, and closes his eyes, taking in a long deep breath.

It was only a matter of time before the world changed again. Seokjin could feel it, sense it in the changing consciousness, the turmoil, the resistance of the old against the new, a culture blossoming of the aware and proactive struggling against the rigid foundations of old ideals and beliefs. The tension was there, bubbling under the surface, just waiting to break in a world full of people tired of war.

Tired of hate.

Tired of watching it over and over again, bombarded with it on digital screens and Seokjin stood by, wondering if they knew this is how he had felt for ages long past.

It was quiet at first, then a roar, a rising rebellion globally where the old systems were abolished and the the young pushed forward, rising up out of the ashes of an old generation driven itself into destruction. For those in the middle, unsure if they would outlast this, if they would survive the youth and their internalized immortality that came from ignorance and sheer willpower. For them, it was scary.

For Jeongguk, it was one of the last days he came to Seokjin, scared and panicking, asking for help before stopping, staring at him. “I don’t understand,” thirty year old Jeongguk had said, frowning at Seokjin, barely a day over twenty-one and sitting at his apartment table.

“Genetics,” Seokjin had joked, before pushing the matter aside, to be ‘talked about another day’, and swiftly moving to calm Jeongguk down. It had been Seokjin to recommend the change, knowing how those who clung to the past were dealt with in rebellions, and knowing Jeongguk was safer changing with them.

It wasn’t a terrible future, this new Rise that the inexperienced and foolish seemed to idealize as their new future. It was realistic, if not impractical, but in and of that was the beauty.

There wasn’t perfection, or absolute happiness, but it was a compromise, a respect, and understanding that mistakes would be made, and they would be learned from. They would try to change, and it would be a process, and everyone, everyone, would be involved in saving this place for their children’s children’s children.

While Seokjin himself couldn’t lead into it, his own knowledge and history too long and his disconnect from the real world, his timeless nature, didn’t fit here to make that change. Jeongguk did.

It was two days before Jeongguk’s ‘producer’ was at Seokjin’s door. With a changed hairstyle, different clothing, and dark make-up around his eyes, a few more holes in his ears than when Coeur had first given him one, Yoongi still looks the same. “It’s been a while,” Seokjin had greeted, stepping back with a wan smile to let Yoongi into his apartment. “I thought you were busy, carolling young singers into a political movement to save the world?”

“No one needs to know who Gloss really is,” Yoongi muttered, letting out a sigh Seokjin knew so well as he sunk down onto Seokjin’s couch. “Do you have any idea how weird it is to use these new age names? It’s like the 60’s all over again, except with more drugs and the added bonus of social media giants on our side.”

“You chose the name,” Seokjin shrugs, sitting back at his table. “I just suggested it.”

“Why do I listen to you?” Yoongi sigh, and though Seokjin knows it’s not really a question, he answers it anyway.

“Because I’m the only one who understands.”

Silence falls between them, the soft ticking of the clock on the wall Seokjin had been given by Jeongguk years ago settling in the air in a mocking reminder of who, and what, they are. “They know about us,” Yoongi finally says, breaking the silence.

A soft flux of fear floods Seokjin before he realizes it’s not for himself, but for Yoongi. For Coeur. For Minseok, who is still out there somewhere, off the radar. “How?”

“They found Minseok,” Yoongi explains. “Some person dug up records and was able to trace him back. A military op dragged him in for testing and figured it out. He’s-”

“I see,” Seokjin answers before Yoongi can finish. “Coeur?”

“She’s alive,” Yoongi says, sitting up and resting his elbows on his knees, looking at his hands as they weave together. “She’s the one who tried to get him out, actually. She’s also the one heading the medicine division to see how it worked, with what- what they have left. No one knows about her, only us.”

“I see,” Seokjin says quietly, unsure where Yoongi is going, and not sure if he should follow. He’s tired, his existence stretched too thin, spread too wide and far, scraped over the rough surface of life too many times, leaving him dry.

“She says,” Yoongi pauses, wetting his lips as he looks up at Seokjin. “She’s made a few breakthroughs. In a couple of years, we can sleep.”

Letting out a soft laugh, Seokjin stands up, walking to his kitchen to put on a kettle for hot water, digging through his cupboard for mugs, the makings of tea and coffee. “I sleep every night.”

“But this time,” Yoongi says, and his voice is closer, more urgent, heavier with the weight of his words. “We won’t wake up.”

The kettle whistles as the tin of coffee in Seokjin’s hands slips, clattering to the floor in the sharp intake of breath.

A soft knock has Hoseok jumping, turning as Kim Seokjin calmly looks towards the door. A slow, eased and grateful smile spreads over his face as a man steps into the apartment, and Hoseok pauses to stare at him.

“Thank you for stopping by,” Kim Seokjin says, his eyes crinkling up in fondness as Suga toes off his shoes, walking into the room, hands shoved into his pockets. “I know you have a lot going on these days.”

“I promised, didn’t I?” Hoseok’s boss says, shrugging and shaking his blond hair out of his face. He flashes Kim Seokjin a smile, one that Hoseok rarely sees, looking full and genuine, open and -

Old.

“You did,” says Kim Seokjin, reaching up with one hand to clasp Suga’s arm, squeezing slightly. Where Suga usually leans away from touch, he almost settles against Kim Seokjin, letting him pull him closer. It’s odd, after weeks of Suga acting so distant around the talk of clients, to see him act so casual with Kim Seokjin.

It makes Hoseok realize he doesn’t know Kim Seokjin, only knows stories of him, his life story, his past, his history, and his background. Yet he does, he knows Kim Seokjin prefers tea over coffee, the soft feeling of cozy sweaters and the sound of birds. He knows Kim Seokjin likes the sound of a kettle boiling over the instant hum of the purifier, and he knows Kim Seokjin likes pink, little cakes that he keeps on his counter covered in delicate pink frosting and slowly disappearing every time Hoseok visits.

Hoseok knows Kim Seokjin, but not like Suga knows Kim Seokjin. Hoseok isn’t sure which part he’d prefer, or if he even wants to know how or why they know each other. It feels safer not to pry, for his heart and for the suspicion neither of them want to reveal that secret.

“Take care,” Kim Seokjin tells Suga, giving his arm one final squeeze before he releases it. Something passes and, Hoseok watches as Suga, his usually composed and collected boss, hesitates, his eyes flickering before it passes and he shrugs, stepping back.

“I’ll look after them,” he says, giving a slow nod in Kim Seokjin’s direction before he turns, and walks out.

“What is that?” Hoseok asks, nodding to the small vial Suga had left on the table beside Kim Seokjin’s coffee cup.

“Let me finish my story first,” Kim Seokjin says, smiling with a tired light in his eyes as he fingers the glass vial. Inside, it looks to be filled with water, clear water, almost like the sugar syrup they use at the cafes in the Cortex, back near SCRIBES that Hoseok visits on long nights when he needs a boost. It pours exactly the same as well, mixing into Kim Seokjin’s coffee with a gold leaf spoon before he raises the cup to his lips. “We’re almost done.”

“So soon?” Hoseok teases.

Smiling, Kim Seokjin closes his eyes, and takes a long sip.

The Rise ends smoothly, transferring into a beautiful new world, where the pieces of the past Seokjin wants to hold onto can linger at his fingertips. The warmth of memories, the small comforts of the homes he’d had, the memories of the people he’d cherished just within reach.

Under it all, he’d ended up collaborating with Yoongi, working on the sidelines behind SCRIBE as Gloss vanished and others rose to took his place. Some maintained that Gloss had never existed at all, instead an alias made by the rebels to create The Rise. No one complained though, and it took pressure off of Yoongi as he worked with Jeongguk and the removed connection with Seokjin to build the new world from the side lines.

Somehow, unlike many of those who had discovered them over time, Jeongguk never named it. Unlike Jimin who had adapted and Namjoon who had lied, covering up who they were to the public, Jeongguk never was shy to look at who they were. Jeongguk was the fifty year old CEO who would laugh at Yoongi’s disapproving scowl, calling him ‘grandpa’ in the middle of staff meetings and earning a roll of eyes from Yoongi, his ‘apprentice’.

Most of all, Jeongguk listened to them. “You know more than I do,” Jeongguk would explain with a shrug. “I’d rather take the wisdom of centuries over the cracked up ideas I get.”

“Seriously, Namjoon would have loved you,” Yoongi sighed, shaking his head with a fond smile. “You’re like his protege of humility and conceit all at the same time.”

“Unlike you,” Seokjin would laugh, leaning back on his couch in the safe recluse of his own home, this sanctuary away from the rush that Yoongi still ran in. It was his style, using his immortality to achieve all the things he’d spend his first 400 years messing up. “Who is just conceited.”

“Confident,” Yoongi would correct, leaning back. “I am just confident in who I am. Just like you can let people call you pretty, I can tell people I’m better than them.”

“I would have liked to have known him,” Jeongguk muses, watching the two of them banter.

“He would have liked to have known you,” Seokjin reassures, feeling that fond feeling in his chest, the resurfacing of happy memories the hope in the world, rising up within him.

Soon, The Rise stabilized, and no longer did Seokjin need to work behind the scenes, only contributing here and there. Yoongi settled in as Jeongguk’s successor, no one the wiser, and Seokjin waited through the days for news from Coeur.

Once, many years ago, he had feared death, the terror gripping him impossibly tight. Now, it feels warmer, his skin too tight around the archive of memories within him, and he is tired. Seokjin is ready to let go, to consider himself finished, and to be released from the mistake he made nearly 600 years before.

The day had come when the door to Seokjin’s apartment was open before he returned home. Yoongi had been sitting in his kitchen, staring at the stove top with a soft frown and spinning coins collected through the years in his hands. Seokjin had watched him gather them, slowly gathered through the centuries as Yoongi went from place to place, carrying nothing with him but the small coinage of societies great and small. Today, he was curving Yen through his thin fingers as he watched the flames under the tea kettle burn steadily.

“Coeur is done,” Yoongi had said as Seokjin stepped into the kitchen. It hadn’t been a surprised, and Seokjin simply hummed, knowing already. “I can’t take it with you,” Yoongi had said, and Seokjin hummed, stepping around him to take down mugs and makings for tea and coffee. “Do you still want to record?” Seokjin breathed in the smell of coffee, of memory, and felt Yoongi’s eyes on his back.

Turning around as the kettle boils, Seokjin made the coffee and tea before facing Yoongi. “I expect you want to be left out,” he muses.

“If you can manage it,” Yoongi says. “I trust you to only talk about the necessary things, the parts that-”

“I promise to only tell my story,” Seokjin reassures him, reaching forward to close his hand over Yoongi’s fidgeting fingers. “You will get your own chance when you decide to sleep.” Yoongi’s eyes soften, looking almost sad before he nods, a small smiling spreading towards him. “I’m sorry I can’t wait for you.”

“I never asked you to,” Seokjin reminds him.

“It feels weird,” Yoongi admits. “Not even I know all of your story.”

Seokjin smiles, raising rose infused green tea to his lips. “Perhaps it’s best that way.”

“Perhaps,” Yoongi agrees, and turns to him with a gentle familiarity that Seokjin realized he’d neglected all of those years, time spent running away from each other, from the reflection of who they were, that could have been spent in support. In companionship through the long hours and years of suffering.

With age comes experience, and experience wisdom, but even the wise are only that because they can see their mistakes without judgment, only honesty.

“Rest well,” Yoongi tells him, and Seokjin doesn’t move as he reaches over and lays his hand over Seokjin’s holding tight.

“I will.”

Outside, the clouds have begun to roll in. It’s a gentle rain, the soft warm patter against the windows and roof that create a sort of subtle sleepy atmosphere. It casts the lights into a warm glow, the gentle sound from outside instilling a quiet lull in the room, wrapping around the legs of the table and chairs, drifting to tug at Kim Seokjin’s eyelashes as they flutter.

“And then?” Hoseok asks.

“And then,” Kim Seokjin sighs, a slow sleepy smile spreading over his lips, “I had a friend of mine recommend a company to me, and one afternoon a young man in a leather jacket that didn’t match his soft expression came in and shook my hand. He brought with him a camera and a smile and sat with me as I told him about myself. Then I didn’t care if I was drinking tea or coffee, and I finally looked at the old pictures I’d had taken from when cameras were still new and exciting and physical, not digital. I remembered how much I loved the people in my life, and I stopped holding it all in.

“I had a young man come in, who had no idea why he was here, who listened and laughed and asked me about my life without judgment.” Kim Seokjin lets out a long sigh, his words trailing off as he nods forward, only to jerk back, eyes fluttering open to look at the center of the table. “His name was Hoseok.”

“I never knew I would become a part of your story, Kim Seokjin,” Hoseok says, and feels his heart swell, ache, and burn all at once, suddenly feeling so much bigger than himself. The world, all of it, was never as big as this, not before.

“No story is complete without an ending,” Kim Seokjin says, a light laugh in his tired voice. “And please, call me Seokjin. I’ve never told anyone my life before, and I’d like to think, even for a little while, that at the end, I’m still a person to you.”

“You’re more than a person, Seokjin,” Hoseok says, watching as those eyes flicker. It makes Hoseok’s heart ache slightly, watching as he fades before him. Just like all those people had faded from Seokjin’s world, Hoseok watches as Seokjin begins to drift. Reaching out, feeling the overwhelming sense of intimacy that can only come from learning about the core of a person, about who they are, Hoseok’s hand finds Seokjin’s. “Thank you for telling me your story.”

“You’re welcome,” Seokjin murmurs, his face with in a smile, and his fingers curl around Hoseok’s, holding him tight.

“Can I ask one more thing?”

“Before I go,” Seokjin adds, and nods once, eyes flickering open. “There is still time.”

“Was Yoongi- is he - that man?” Hoseok asks, not sure if he wants to address how familiar they had seemed, how Suga may be the next mystery Hoseok finds himself falling down. Though Yoongi isn’t Seokjin, and Seokjin is what filled him up inside with wonder and emotion he’d forgotten he had, or never known. “How did he know-”

“You heard my story,” Seokjin tells him, giving a gentle squeeze to his hand. “Not his. If one day, he wants to tell you, he can. But it is not my story to tell.” Seokjin’s eyes flicker. “So many conflicts have happened from people telling stories that weren’t theirs to tell. I wanted to tell my own, and nothing more.”

“I see,” Hoseok says quietly. “If you could go back, if you could change the past, if you could walk away from the cup back at the beginning,” Seokjin’s eyes flicker, amusement swimming in them as they dim slowly. “Would you?”

“If I did,” Seokjin muses, closing his eyes and breathing in deep. “Then I wouldn’t have had much of a story, would I?” He smiles, leaning back into his chair. “And I would never have been able to meet you, and tell you everything.” He lets out a long, smooth exhale. “Is that really better?”

Hoseok watches, unsure if he should answer, if he has an answer, and watches as Seokjin’s head falls back, his body relaxing, hand going limp in his gentle grip. Hoseok watches as sleep washes over him, as it spiders through him and drags him under into peace and silence.

With Seokjin’s hand still held carefully in his own, Hoseok remembers that sometimes, there doesn’t have to be a perfect answer.

Some questions are better left unanswered.