Heaven's Denied

4. Lifted

"He's asleep." Seokjin could hear the smile in Jungkook's voice as he stood there, his back towards him.
"Is he?" Seokjin moved closer, an arm around Jungkook's shoulder.
"He slept happy." Seokjin could feel it. The boy affected Jungkook directly. It worried him sometimes, but he didn't think Jungkook would ever go too far. At least not without an exchange of thoughts with the other three.

"I don't know why seeing him makes me feel this happy." He sighed, looking at the silver robed entity almost helplessly. "I don't know it...maybe if...I'd been human I'd known? But like this, I don't know what I feel when I see him." He explained, eyes just as shiny as Seokjin had memorized. "I don't know what this is, Seokjin. He makes me want to reach out. Touch him. Is it normal? Am I normal?"

Seokjin smiled, looking at the boy with kind eyes. "There's nothing wrong with you, Jungkook." He heard the other entity sigh.
"I'm so...tired. I just want to feel. I sometimes remember it, the feeling...but it's so phantom. I lose it before I feel it fully."
Seokjin sighed, slowly getting nervous. He's talked to him about it before. Numerous times.

"I sometimes want to sleep too. To lie down and close my eyes and pretend that I don't hear the whole world."
He said, sitting down awkwardly. They rarely did that.

"I've been here for over centuries." Seokjin could feel the grief in his voice. "Sometimes I just want to be a normal mortal boy. To cry if I feel like it, to laugh, express, touch people."

If Jungkook were a mortal, he'd be crying hard by now. But he couldn't. "It's unfair." He said, voice low. "It's unfair that I listen to the whole world." He looked up at Seokjin, who wore a worried, sad expression on his face. "And half the world doesn't even know me. Doesn't hear me." He sighed.

"It's unfair. That the 'almighty' can't even feel."
Seokjin put a hand on his shoulder, sitting down too. "I don't know what I was thinking when I made you ask Vita for bodies, Seokjin. I know how uncomfortable it must have made you...and it's left me no better." His voice was low, now guilty too. "I thought we'd be able to feel, touch, cry." He sighed again. "Maybe laugh."

"Jungkook, no-" Seokjin started, but Jungkook closed his eyes, shaking his head. He stopped immediately, knowing it was best to only listen.

"It did us no good, did it? I still want to feel your hand on my shoulder." He looked at Seokjin's hands. "That'd make me feel so much better. I've been wanting that for hundreds of years." Seokjin felt it. The grief seeping up his insides too. His hollow insides. Jungkook sighed. "I'm fading, Seokjin." He said, looking at the other entity.

"Jungkook..." Seokjin would have been crying too if he was human, by now.

"I'm forgetting how it felt to be alive." He smiled curtly. "It's ironic. I remember being a nihilist Korean boy running from war." Seokjin closed his eyes.
"I am the war, now." He wanted to cry. How badly, only the heavens knew. On earth's sky, the moon glowed bright red.

"I'm so sorry." Seokjin said quietly, eyes still closed.
"You don't have to be, Seokjin. You must have felt the same. It's not your fault." He sighed. "It's not your fault the war killed me. And made me wake up here." He held Seokjin's hand. He couldn't feel it but he had to comfort him; he'd always been doing the same for him, too.

"We're in this together, after all." The entity smiled, tilting his head.
Seokjin reciprocated the smile, nodding. "Thank you."
"Thank YOU, Seokjin." He got up, hand still in his, even if they didn't feel it.

"Want to go help Vita write?"
"Look at you, talking like it's not fate you're willing to write but some fiction."
Jungkook smiled at that, shaking his head. His energy came visibly more positive.

"Is that a no?"
"You are one rude young entity."
Jungkook just smiled wider.

"So it's a yes?"
He said, walking towards the castle.
Seokjin shook his head, smiling as he followed. "This one, huh?"
Back on earth, what seemed to have been the bloodiest of lunar eclipses lifted.