Chapter Text
Oh you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you,
(You can run, but you can’t escape.)
I.
When Jeongguk was a boy, his mother had once told him the tale of the man who cheated death.
It was winter, yet still not cold enough upon the island for anything harsher than the finest of frosts to coat the ground in the mornings. Jeongguk lay in bed. He watched the shadows of the fire flicker on the wall and she sang of how the man, having awoken from his sleep to find his chest still and a strange specter standing before him, had spoken with the stranger until the sun had risen, and with it, cast Death out.
The man, she’d continued, had lived out the rest of his days in peace and prosperity, but when his end had come, though later than intended, he’d faced that same furious specter as before.
“Is it scary, Mama?” Jeongguk asked, and her song trailed off into hushing words as she soothed his childhood fears.
“No, Jeongguk,” she assured him. “Death is not scary.” Her long fingered hands combed through his hair. “No, they say Death is the most beautiful man you’ve ever laid eyes on.”
For a time after that, Jeongguk had found himself taken by the thought of Death, and how He might appear. But as all childhood fascinations do, this one too eventually faded into distant and nostalgic memories.
He remembers it now, oddly enough.
How strange it is that the littlest pieces of the past can twist themselves into such vital instruments of the present.
You see, the first time Jeongguk died, it was snowing.
He’d taken an arrow to the shoulder, a piercing bolt which had splintered through the panels of his armor and lodged itself against the bone. The force of it sent him reeling, the shock of it threatened his grip on his own blade.
Across from him, the Keshig soldier he’d been crossing blades with let out a faint grunt of surprise. It didn’t stop the blade of his sabre, nor the flashing with which it cut through the air and into Jeongguk’s chest.
A voice had called Jeongguk’s name over the clashing made carnage and Jeongguk’s head had turned towards the sound, the inevitability of it. He found his captain slashing towards him through the writhing mass, face horrified, but in the next instant the man was swept away as a new tide of Keshig cavalry hit the Southern flank.
We will lose, Jeongguk realized.
Then he fell.
He found the ground softer than he’d expected. Colder too. Churned brown by the mashing of booted feet, the snow was wet and slushy, melting through the thin material of his uniform.
The sounds of the battle moved on, past and over him, and Jeongguk idly pondered the irony of dying here– alone and bloodless on a high plain so far from his home.
He’d never even seen snow before, in all nineteen short years of his life. Nineteen short years and here he is, bleeding out in the muddy echo of a battlefield.
He flops awkwardly onto his back, the motion sapping the very last of his energy, and stares up into the sky. The motion had snapped the shaft of the arrow lodged in his shoulder in half, and twisted it unpleasantly in the flesh of his arm, but Jeongguk manages to ignore the sensation.
It won’t be long now, he knows.
Instead of dwelling on it, he watches the snow.
It drifts silently, adding an impossible depth to the sky above. What should be flat and eerie white becomes full and shivering, made legible by thick flurries of white. It nestled itself in his lashes and melts against the heat of his cheeks and forehead.
When he closes his eyes, he can still feel it coming down. Pinpricks of icy clarity in the midst of all the pain and heat.
Perhaps, it could be worse than this. It could be cruel. It could be slow. It could be vicious and spiteful. Vengeful. like in the tales from his youth.
But in the end, Death is just cold, white, snow…
It is clear, from the moment that Jimin arrives upon the field, that this has been an unprecedented slaughter. His feet, if they were to actually touch the ground beneath, would be painted in red from ankle to knee. The corpses lie in mounds, steaming and reddened, and crows hop amongst them, picking irreverently at their remains. Jimin passes each one with a stony visage, floating through the field on silent feet. His fingers come the air, snagging on fresh harvest spirits with each sweep, and their brief burst of light and soul melt and vanish.
It’s an old habit to him, mechanical and practiced.
Jimin sweeps through the field, passes over heaps of smoking flesh and desiccated bone and one by one, he collects his due.
Oh, but this one…
This one is still warm.
Jimin tilts his head, eager as always for that faint hint of head that radiates from the bodies that souls have only just fled. He reaches a hand out, wrist slipping from the folds of his robes, and brushes his fingers across the corpse's cheek.
His eyes widen slightly.
Not only is this one still warm, this one is still here.
At his touch the spirit's own eyes blink open. For that is what it is. A spirit, a remembrance. A soul lingering within its body, shocked from oblivion's edges by the hands of Death.
But those eyes…
Jimin almost sighs.
Those eyes are captivating. Wide like a does, black and glossy and confused, blinking up at Jimin with the sort of innocence that heats the blood in his frozen veins.
A pity, he finds himself thinking that he should smother this flame so soon. A pity– and a necessity. Jimin reaches his hand out once more as he prepares to go about his duty, but then, the spirit housed in the corpse opens its mouth and speaks.
Jeongguk is not quite sure what it is that has awoken him at first. Neither the whisper of the wind against his cheek nor the mild aching of his chest and shoulder are enough to have roused him from what had felt as if it must be the deepest, sweetest dream of his life.
Above him, the sky is black and riddled with gleaming silver pinpricks. The snow has stopped falling but the air is cold, biting at his face. He wonders why it does not bite at his throat as well, at his lungs, and as he does, a slow, terrible realization takes seed in his still chest.
There is a figure before him.
He blinks slowly, tilting his head back to get a better view of it.
It’s a man. A man in white robes, looming above him.
He’s beautiful, Jeongguk notes, distantly, with a chill sinking down his spine.
The most beautiful man that Jeongguk has ever laid eyes on.
His hair is long, falling unbound over its shoulders and disappearing into the fluttering folds of pale robes, inky black and glistening in the starlight. His eyes glisten too– watching Jeongguk back with an indeterminable sort of intensity from within a delicate porcelain face so pale that Jeongguk expects to see the thin webbing of blue veins through it.
He finds no such signs of life.
All the more confirmation, Jeongguk muses, of his earlier and horrible realization, to match the too-still set of his chest.
When the man begins to reach for him, hands small and clean, like the white doves that had been kept back at camp to send messages from command tent to battlefield, Jeongguk gets the sinking suspicion that if those hands ever touch him, it really will be the end.
“I know what you are,” Jeongguk says, before those hands can touch him.
Then his throat closes in terror, and he wonders how he’d mustered the courage to speak at all.
Still, it’s enough for the man to pause, looking from his own outstretched hands back to Jeongguk’s face.
“I have many names,” he says.
His voice is soft but empty.
Jeongguk’s throat bobs painfully.
“Death,” he clarifies.
The man inclines his head.
“That is one of them.”
Jeongguk blinks. He digs his elbows into the snow behind him and manages to prop himself somewhat upright, ignoring the worsening ache of the snapped arrow shaft in his arm.
“What else could there be?” He asks.
“Jimin,” Death says, unmoved in both tone and visage.
Jeongguk is taken aback by how… normal it sounds. He had known a Jimin, back home. Granted, that Jimin had been a girl, two years his senior, with a round face and sun ripened skin. Nothing like the being before him now. Nothing like Death himself.
The name is not enough for this man-creature.
Still, Jeongguk nods.
“Jimin,” he echoes, in return, ignoring the icy creep freezing against his elbows where they prop him out of the snow. “Why?”
“I picked it,” Death explains mildly. His hands are still outstretched, but at least he’s stopped approaching Jeongguk. “For myself. A very long time ago.”
Unable to help himself, Jeongguk shoves himself into an upright position. The corners of his mind dance around a memory– a fire in the hearth, pale frost over the ground outside, the lilting melody of his mothers voice.
Jeongguk doesn’t want to die.
“How long ago?” He asks.
Death’s eyes find his, and once more Jeongguk is taken aback by how empty they seem, even though he knows there’s no reason for them to be anything but hollow.
“Longer,” Death answers, “than a creature like you could possibly comprehend.”
Jeongguk frowns.
“That sounds lonely,” he manages, battling past the instinctual terror that would see him frozen in place in order to struggle his way to his feet. Each motion feels as if he’s battling against a primordial law, as if his heart, were it still functional, should be rabbiting out of his chest.
In the time that he’s stood before Jeongguk, Jimin has taken on a greater corporeality. The snow which once passed through him now nestles itself into the flow of his inky hair. The edges of his robe, which once billowed, pure and white, over the battlefield, have begun to stain pink. This new solidness does nothing to temper the horror of him.
“Lonely?” Death echoes. “I do not know what that is.”
That can’t be right. It’s not. Now that Jeongguk’s looking, he can see it in Death– can see so clearly the shape of loneliness carving itself a home. And with it, he sees a pathway, an escape route.
“Surely, you must,” he protests. “All creatures grow lonely.”
He knows that he has said something wrong when Death’s expression shifts for the very first time, darkening in rage. With it comes a gust of frigid wind that flurries the snowflakes from his hair and wrings the pink stain of blood from the corners of his robes.
“You forget,” he warns lowly, “I am no creature.”
“But that doesn’t mean,” Jeongguk interjects, “that you cannot be lonely.”
It is cruel, he knows. What he is about to do. Or at least, it would be a cruel thing to do to another person, and therefore he can only assume that it is also a cruel thing to do to Death embodied before him, though no truly recognizable emotion has passed across his face.
“You must feel listless at times,” Jeongguk continues, taking a wobbling step forward though every instinct in his body screams for him to flee, “you must feel as though there is a hole in your chest, an empty space at your side even if you do not understand what is meant to occupy them.”
Nothing shifts in Death’s face, but his statuesque inflexibility alone is enough to make a shred of pity swell in Jeongguk’s chest even as he advances on wobbling legs. The sky is lightening overhead, the shadowed field too-silent around them.
“You must wonder what it is that makes us humans cling so desperately to this world, to each other…” Jeongguk trails off, eyeing Death carefully from under his lashes. “You do, don’t you?”
Shockingly, Death’s lips part.
“I—” he begins, slowly, haltingly. Jeongguk is once again struck by how cruel he is and then again by how impossible it is that Death has paused to listen to him at all.
“You must want answers,” he continues, so close now that he could tilt his chin up and press his mouth into Death’s own. “You must want to know what it’s like.”
Death blinks down at Jeongguk, eyes flicking across his face. Perhaps Jeongguk truly is arrogant enough to assume such a being could be swayed– could be tempted– by a mere mortal like himself.
Jeongguk has never been much of a flirt– nor was that what he had set out to do when he began this desperate last attempt at life. Yet somehow, between propping himself up out of the snow and now, it had seemed instinctual– right– to lower his lashes and deepen his voice and now, despite the horror gripping him, he finds himself standing as close to Death as a lover would.
A part of Jeongguk can’t believe that Death could be so foolish. He tilts his head forward, brushing teasingly past Death’s face to whisper in his ear, and as he does, his eyes flick to the horizon, to the molten rim of the world. As the first rays of the sun break across the battlefield, Jeongguk purrs a lie into Death’s ear.
“But you don’t have to be alone.”
Death makes a sound that– if he were human– Jeongguk would describe as a hitched breath. When Jeongguk leans back to scan his face, he can almost imagine that the icy composure from before has shifted slightly.
“You…” Death says slowly, dubiously, yet the fact that he has entertained Jeongguk’s clumsy seduction at all is so impossible that Jeongguk almost expects his proposition to be accepted.
And then, because Jeongguk is staring into Death's eyes, he is the first to notice the young rays of morning sun creep across the ground and paint them both in a golden halo.
Death’s eyes widen and then narrow in quick succession.
Triumph rises in Jeongguk’s throat at the sight of that expression alone. There is no question of it. Death would not be angry if the sunlight had not saved Jeongguk. He feels his lips twitch upwards at the corners, unable to restrain the sudden flood of adrenaline relief that accompanies the renewed rhythm of his heart in his ribcage. When he feels it, he gasps, stumbling backwards and pressing his palm to his chest, revelling in the slow, steady thump underneath his fingers.
If he’s being entirely honest with himself, Jeongguk had not held any hope that this mad idea of his might save him at all.
Death is flickering and phantasmal in the morning sun. Every part of him is transparent, wavering like gossamer on a breeze. Every part, except for his eyes, which are levelled at Jeongguk and burning like black fire.
Jeongguk meets those eyes and shudders.
Then Death is gone.
There is anger, at first.
Anger at the little human. So petty and so arrogant to slip through his fingers like this. Jimin’s own anger at himself too. For allowing himself to be fooled by a mortal creature, even after so long amongst them and their small, conniving ways. For allowing himself to wonder what it was that the human had spoken so convincingly about, and how it would feel.
Jimin is not quite sure what the purpose of this anger is, what it exists to push him towards, but he does know that he wants to watch that arrogance seep from the little humans face, watch that smirk fall from those cold-blushed lips, watch those eyes widen in–
In what?
At first, he’d assumed it was fear that he sought. Shock. Terror. All the typical associations that accompany his passage. But the more that he had thought about it– and Jimin will admit that he had spent more time pondering the little human than he had intended too– the more he realized that it was not quite the fear that he desired.
But what is it he wants, if not fear? If not the long shadow that has followed in his wake for a millenia, if not the trembling hands and tear filled eyes of those that see him as they realize who– what– he is.
Jimin does not know what he wants, but he knows he wants to see the little human shaken and broken apart. He wants to see him raw and bare and stripped of pride and he does not understand where these thoughts are coming from, only that they are brighter and more certain than anything he has felt in a long, long time.
It is Jeongguk’s captain who finds him, alone on the field.
He had stood alone, listless and eyes fixed on the place from which Death’s hollow visage had vanished, for far longer than was wise. The snow began again, thick fluffy flurries drifting down through the beaming of the rising sun. In this light, it glitters like jewels, a harsh opposition to the bloodied slush of the previous day.
Or was it the previous day?
Jeongguk realizes that he does not know how long it has been since he died.
There are heaps around him, mounds of bodies, limp and lifeless, piled up into the air. He counts them, one, two and three, and beyond. Too many. More than he’s ever seen after a battle. More than could be arranged in a single day.
How long has he laid here, untouched and empty on the field of battle?
How long before Death had slipped out into the snow and awoken him?
Another sudden horror grips his heart. Had Death not brushed against his cheek, would he truly be dead now? His heart had stopped in chest– of that he is certain. He’d felt it, or rather, he’d felt the absence of it.
His hand begins to rise and then he shudders and winces.
A broken arrow protrudes from his shoulder. Its shaft is splintered at the end, but the head is still lodged deep into the muscle, likely tracing over the bone.
Can he die again?
Like this? In this field? Is it possible that he could cheat death only to return to its embrace within the passage of a few moments or hours? His body hurts enough that it seems possible. When he breathes, his ribs ache. When his heart beats, his blood rushes like fire through frozen veins.
Jeongguk wavers on his feet, pulse pounding, and then a voice calls his name.
It is an odd occurrence. In the moment that he turns towards the call of his name, that moment before his death crosses before his eyes. The sight of his captain, face twisted in panic, fighting towards him in the snow. When he turns, his captain's face is the same as it had been. Something terrified and certain hidden in his eyes.
“Jeongguk,” he says, voice low.
Jeongguk feels his lips crack as they part, his tongue thick with dehydration. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to reply, but Namjoon seems to understand, rushing forward to wrap an arm over his shoulders. He’s careful to avoid the arrowhead lodged in Jeongguk's arm, but the motion, the simple act of being touched again by something living, is so unexpected it’s almost painful.
“Cap’n,” Jeongguk manages lowly, slurring his words.
“Don’t talk,” Namjoon commands, voice sharp.
Jeongguk’s vision is beginning to blur again. There's something warm and wet tracing along his ribcage, staining at the undershirt that guards his skin from the harsh biting edges of his armor.
The blackness rushes in.
II.
When the clouds– slate gray and hideous with heaping moisture– break open in snow, Jeongguk calls a halt to the training, sheathing his blade at his side. In the field before him, some forty-five recruits to the Imperial Legion of the King follow his lead, tilting their heads back in awe.
Jeongguk is certain that this is the first time for many of them. The first time seeing snow. Almost unbidden, the memory of his own first time comes sweeping across his mind. He shakes it free with a clenched jaw before it can take hold and paint the field before him– and all the men in it– limp and lifeless and red.
Two years.
Two years since that day, two years in the north, two years of winters and snow and yet he still can’t disassociate the soft fall of ice from the sky with that field of muddied slush. He know the men believe he’s called a stop to training as a sort of kindness. To give those of them who are young and southern and have yet to witness the snowfall a chance to watch it uninhibitedly.
But that is not why.
The truth is that Jeongguk can hardly bear to see it, much less listen to the ringing of steel against steel underneath of it.
It’s no matter now anyway.
The Keshig entourage arrives within the hour. The peace talks that accompany them will last for no longer than a week. It is an auxiliary discussion, and a shifting, faulty sort of truce, but there is no more training that could prepare his men anymore than what they have already prepared.
It is simply that the war had dragged on for too long.
Too many losses, on both sides. Not just in casualties, but in time, in money, in grain, and liquor and lumber. The war– a once lucrative aspirational thing– has now become an anchor upon both parties that once partook in it with such willful glee.
Jeongguk hadn’t understood this, back then. When he died upon the field, he had been a simple foot soldier. One of hundreds of young men who enlisted from the southern islands, ignorant and bolstered by the foolish hope that somehow, the war might change their lot in life. Jeongguk wonders now if he is perhaps the only one of them for which that had actually happened.
As the lone survivor of his squadron, tales had spread through whispered word and rumor. Jeongguk convalesced in ignorance, and when he finally emerged from the healers tent, the entire army had convinced themselves he was some kind of war hero.
Jeongguk was no hero, but he was proficient enough with a blade to survive the battles that followed. By the time a ceasefire was issued, almost a year after his first death, he’d managed to more than uphold the whispered exaggerations of his abilities. When the armies returned to the capital in late spring of the next year, he was assigned to train the Imperial Guard.
And now here he stands, above a field of men not so different from he had been once, with snow that he is now more than familiar with drifting down around his shoulders. Jeongguk sighs once, a gusty breath that ices into the air before him.
He turns to make his way back to the barracks. While he walks, a blaring horn sounds from the northern walls of the Palace. He tenses despite himself, pauses to force his muscles to relax, and keeps walking.
The Keshig are here.
His presence will be requested, no doubt. He wonders if the lies of his death have spread as far as enemy ranks by now. It’s not impossible. Even if they haven’t, he’s certain that his superiors will be certain it is done before the week is out.
Nothing demoralizes an army quite unlike an undying foe. Even Jeongguk himself isn’t certain that’s exactly what he is, but he supposes the truth of things isn’t what matters. Ignoring the horns heralding a once enemies approach, Jeongguk walks the rest of the way back to his chambers, a trail of hollow steps echoed into the freshly fallen snow behind him.
Really, he should have known it wouldn’t be as simple as a night of negotiations. There have been numerous factions amongst his people that viscerally protest the terms of the ceasefire, and from all reports across the border, the same is true amongst the Keshig. It was, perhaps, too much to hope for an uninterrupted night of peace talks, but Jeongguk still finds himself surprised when the first arrow whizzes out of the shadows and embeds itself in a Keshig dignitaries throat.
He turns in the direction from whence it had come, to the deep shade cloaking the corners of the hall, to find another arrow headed straight for him. Shock is like ice in his veins. Even colder– the certainty that he hasn’t enough time to stop it, nor enough to dodge out of the way. The arrowhead glints in the light, wicked sharp.
It feels exactly like waking in that field– like noting the absence of his pulse in his chest and gazing up into the indifferent face of Death embodied. Jeongguk supposes that he will be seeing that face again soon. It’s almost a surrender. His hand tightens at the hilt of his blade, even as his eyes begin to slip shut.
Then– impossibly– the tell-tale of an arrow shaft snapping in half.
Jeongguk’s eyes flash open, his own blade drawn from its sheath.
Before him stands one of the Keshig soldiers, a member of the high command if his memory serves correctly. They had been introduced with the retinue, by rank not name, so he has no way of differentiating this one from all of the others save his height and a sort of easy grace with which he turns, sabre gleaming in the torchlight.
An arrow lays snapped in half at his feet, the same arrow that had been whizzing towards Jeongguk’s face only moments earlier. Jeongguk only has the briefest moments to spare the other man a nod of thanks before the hall erupts into chaos around them.
Somehow, he finds himself following the Keshig soldier who’d stepped between him and the arrow. The other man’s form is slight, only a few inches shorter than Jeongguk himself. He wields the customary sabre of an upper-rank soldier with easy precision and Jeongguk finds himself falling into rhythm with unexpected ease. He never could have anticipated fighting at a Keshig’s side to feel so natural.
The difference between friend and foe is hard to differentiate. Jeongguk suspects the attackers must have infiltrated the hall in uniform, as he cuts down men wearing both plumed Keshig helmets and the familiar hues of his own Imperial Guard. Luckily, he doesn’t recognize any of the men who come at him, even those that wear the same uniform as his own.
From the corners of his vision he catches glimpses of the rest of the hall. The Keshig dignitaries are being ushered away by a phalanx of helmeted guards. Some of his own men do the same for the emperor and his advisors. There’s a spark of pride that accompanies that realization. They have implemented their training well.
The Keshig soldier at his side has begun to make a push for the corridors beyond the grand hall, sabre now dulled by liquid red. Jeongguk follows at his side. If they can cut a swath through any attackers outside the room, the arrival of reinforcements will be greatly hastened, though there is risk involved, too. They will be alone, once they reach the outer corridors, and outnumbered.
Beyond that, Jeongguk is uncertain if they can even communicate. Though he’s found their fighting to be remarkably synced thus far, he knows most Keshig do not speak his language, and he certainly does not speak theirs.
The corridors beyond the hall are remarkably quiet, at first. He can hear his own pulse thrumming in his ears, the ragged rasp of his companions breath, the plink of blood dropping from their blades to the polished stone beneath their feet.
Jeongguk makes his way down the hallway that leads towards the outer wings of the palace where the barracks and training fields are located. If he weren’t paying close attention, he wouldn’t even know that the Keshig soldier was with him. The other man moves with an eerie– almost inhuman– silence. Jeongguk wonders, briefly, if there's a certain technique the Keshig use for training such a tread, and then brushes the thought from his mind in favor of focusing on the rushing of footsteps approaching them.
His fingers tighten around the hilt of his blade, and he hears the faintest clinking of armor from behind him that reassures him of his Keshig companion doing the same. How odd, he thinks, to go from killing each other to fighting alongside one another. A small group of soldiers in the familiar uniforms of the Imperial Guard burst around the corner and come screeching to a halt.
Jeongguk is wavering, uncertain. He’d seen enemies inside the great hall, wearing these same uniforms. His fingers spasm around the hilt of his blade. He doesn’t recognize these men, but that doesn’t mean that they are enemies. Jeongguk has never been much for socializing. He honestly doesn’t believe he would recognize many faces outside of those of the men that he trains.
He’s been still for too long, uncertain, weighing the outcomes–
“Friend or foe?” The Keshig soldier asks, in a lightly accented but nearly perfect dialect.
Jeongguk almost jumps.
So he does speak Jeongguk’s tongue.
Jeongguk blinks, finally noticing the way that the men across from him have responded to his presence, the deferral in their stances. Even if he does not recognize them, they recognize him as a Captain of the Guard.
“The grand hall,” he directs, pointing back the way he came. “The Emperor and Keshig retinue have been removed, but attackers remain.” The men start past him on hurried feet and he barely has the wherewithal to clasp one of them on the shoulder and warn him of the archers.
The soldier takes his hurried caution with a nod and hurries after his comrades, leaving Jeongguk and the Keshig soldier, once again, alone.
Jeongguk turns to the other man, only now noting the aching strain in his muscles, the burn of a shallow cut grazing his ribs just below the edge of his armor.
He can’t make out much of the other man’s face from under his helmet, just the low gleam of eyes peering back at him.
“You speak our tongue,” Jeongguk acknowledges.
The air grows cooler, as if a gust of wind had swept in from the outside. When the Keshig soldier nods, the plume of fine horsehair on his helmet flutters with the motion.
“I speak many tongues,” he answers.
Something about his reply stops Jeongguk in his tracks. That faint hint of an accent that had rounded the syllables of his speech earlier is missing, now, and his words are crisp and perfectly enunciated.
Unbidden, Jeongguk’s eyes drop to his opponents hands. They are stained in drops of blood, loosely clasped around the hilt of his blades, pale as snow.
“You do?” Jeongguk asks slowly. Unbidden, his fingers loosen in their grip on his blade. “What is your name?”
Though he cannot see the other man’s face, Jeongguk feels a sudden certainty that the Keshig soldier is amused.
Instead of answering, the man tilts his head slightly to the side.
“Which one?” He asks.
Jeongguk knows that voice.
He– he remembers it.
He’s closed the gap between them in an instant, shoving the other man back into the tapestry lined wall behind him. A corner of Jeongguk’s brain is panicking, shrieking at him to turn again, to flee, to escape, but instead he wedges his fingers under the edge of that helmet and lifts it from the other man's head.
For a moment the hallway is perfectly silent. So quiet even, that Jeongguk almost believes his own heart has frozen in his chest again. He feels trapped, as if hoarfrost has crept across his body and forced him still and motionless. Then the silence cracks and shatters as the plumed helmet tumbles from his hands.
“You–” Jeongguk manages, stuttering, “how are you–”
Death– no Jimin– smiles.
It’s a horrible sight.
“You made me a promise, did you not?”
Jeongguk swallows, staring, and then shakes his head adamantly even though it’s true. He had promised that morning on the battlefield. He had leaned into Death’s shoulder and made a promise, and in that moment, he almost believed that he might have meant it too.
“I–” Jeongguk says, trapping his trembling hands behind his back and out of sight. “I didn’t know–”
Jimin scoffs, and Jeongguk can’t help but notice that this version of him is so much more expressive than that spectre upon the field had been.
“Of course you didn’t,” he says, “you would have never promised me anything if you knew it might be binding, would you?”
Jeongguk forces his breaths to slow, digging his nails into the flesh of his palms behind his back.
“What do you want?” He grits out.
Jimin blinks at him. The shadows of the hallway fall harshly over the deceptively delicate lines of his face and his long hair falls in messy tendrils, disturbed no doubt by Jeongguk’s clumsy removal of his helmet. Like this, Jeongguk can almost pretend that he is no more than a flesh and blood man, no different from any of the rest of them.
“You will teach me,” he says simply, “what it means to not be alone.”