His throat burned.
Smoke clogged every cell of his body until he fell to his knees, screams echoing out of the pits of his stomach and into the air. Each noise did a tap dance, twirling in the wind and flying to hit any ears that were in hearing distance. His wails pierced the night sky, tears falling off his face and onto the body he had in his arms.
"Help me!" was his scream, the fire brewing behind him nothing more than a bump in his brain. The scrapes on his knees and elbows were numb, as was the concussion he had. It didn't help that his face was covered in grime, blood drying up on his cracked skin.
More pleas and whimpers left his tongue. His house was burnt to a crisp, men wearing uniforms rushing around to see what they could find. The fire, the men, the guns, the bruises. None of it mattered. None of it except her.
"My baby girl," he whispered, sobbing as he held her against his chest. "Please God no, please don't do this." He held her so tightly as if that would bring her back. It didn't change that he felt no pulse no matter how much improvised CPR he attempted. Nothing worked, and it all felt like a nightmare. But the pain was too real.
Screeches ripped from his mouth and around the world, his form huddled over hers in the grass in front of his home. It was once in a clearing near the forest, but the odds were, half of the trees would get burned down from this event. It would be a story on the news, receive sympathy for 3 days, then it would be yet another story forgotten. Brushed under the rug as if this wasn't the event that would change his life.
What felt like years passed as he sat there with his hands on her body, his eyes and lips losing all feeling. There were footsteps approaching, and he found himself amazed he could hear them over the sounds spewing from his wet lungs.
He glanced up with his pooled eyes, the blurry vision he had still not blocking out the figure of a woman. She knelt and lifted his chin up. He resisted the urge to bite her fingers off, his body moving too rapidly for him to secure a solid hit.
"You're the one they're after?" she asked, him not uttering a comprehensible word. "We'll take her to our infirmary and see if we can do anything."
"She's... they..." He couldn't even choke out the words, the woman shushing him.
"We'll see what we can do." She snapped her fingers, and two men came and took the body from him. He hollered, throwing out his hands to grab her, but they took her anyway. His line of sight was blocked by the woman, and two more men came over, dragging another in between them. They tossed the stranger down by her side, and she backed away so he could get a clear view. "This is the man responsible." The sentence processed in his mind, and when it clicked, he froze.Then everything went dark.
What was despair turned to wrath that released itself in the form of hellfire. A battle cry shrieked through his figure, his fists raining down until bruises and a shade of carmine were the only two things left on his knuckles.
By the time he was finished, he didn't truly know what he did. All he knew was that the man responsible was laying still, and there was no rise and fall of his chest. Everything was happening so fast, he didn't realize he was dragged away by the woman and her men. He didn't realize he was in a car racing to what he assumed was an infirmary. He didn't realize he had killed a man in cold blood.
An eternity later, he was inside a compound with pristine walls that contrasted the mud known as his heart. His footsteps left trails of dirt in its wake, and he staggered to rush down the passageways. The woman was the only one guiding him properly, the other men carrying the body of the one he cherished most.
Men and women not in combat gear flooded the halls, gawking at the sight of the newcomer and the injured one. He ignored it and rushed to get to the infirmary. They got there in less than a minute, him bursting through the room and scowling upon seeing how tiny it was. A single bed that looked like it was stolen straight from a hospital, curtains on a rod circling around the bed, pale cabinets full of medicine lining the right side of crusting walls.
He pulled one of the dark, metal chairs up to the side of the bed and sat as they laid her down. He took her hand, but the woman came up behind him and forced him to back off as the doctor inside pulled over all his necessary tools. There was a heartbeat monitor by the side of the bed, and he hooked it up to the one laying there. A yawling beep signaled a flatline, him doubling over and burying his head against the mattress.
"Sir, please move so we can work on her," the doctor said. He did after a flicker of a pause, him biting his tongue to prevent a whimper from coming out.
Hours could have passed and he wouldn't have known. The flatline never departed his eardrums, and it circled around the depths of his mind until he realized this wasn't a nightmare. His worst fears were in front of him, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it.
The woman from before was still there, observing the whole process. By the time the doctor made the announcement he expected, he wasn't sure if he knew how to handle it. His fists were shaking, his brain a scrambled mess. The life he once had crumbled like sand through his fingertips, and the pain was a mixture of excruciating and numb at the same time.
10 minutes of silence followed. The flatline was the only sound in the room that no one moved to shut off. He stared with no emotion present in his eyes. It wasn't until the one who rescued him spoke that the silence was broken.
"I'm so sorry," the woman said, pulling up another chair and sitting next to him. "I wish there was something more we could do. No one deserves this fate. My name is Charlotte Evermore, and you can stay here as long as you'd like. We can even prepare a funeral for her, if you'd like. I know this is a horrible time, but can I please have your name? If we have your name, we can search for the ones who did this to you and why." His head twitched as he turned it to her, and their eyes locked, his voice a desperate cry as he parted his dried lips.
"Seong Jimin."
~~~
Jimin awoke with sweat covering his entire bare chest. He was in the kitchen since most of the others wanted to stay in the bedroom. Something about safety in numbers. Packs flocking together to protect one another. Jimin opted to get some space in case of situations like this, where he was probably talking in his sleep. Maybe screaming. Part of him felt awful, but he knew he couldn't stop it.
He had been trying to stop it for 5 years, but nothing ever worked.
"Someone's jumpy," a female voice said. Jimin whipped his head around to see Ariel was trying to dig through one of the top cabinets, but she was too short to reach. She was tiny for her age. He'd be surprised if she even hit 5 feet tall.
"What are you doing awake?" he asked, lowering his voice to a whisper as to not wake the others. Kayden and Asa were on watch, Charlotte, Theo, and Jericho sleeping in the other room. Jimin's watch was next with Charlotte, so the odds were he wouldn't bother trying to sleep again.
"It's hard to sleep around strangers," was her answer, her climbing up on the counter so she could reach the few bags of chips stored up there.
"Get down from there, don't hurt yourself."
Ariel stared at him while she plucked the chips off the shelf, hopping down afterwards and sitting down across from him. She was courteous enough to open the chips as quietly as she could, munching on them and wincing after each bite. Jimin averted his eyes to the others, noting how the candles illuminated their sleeping bodies. He wondered what it felt like to sleep through a night. He hadn't done that in years.
"Charlotte said not to worry when you scream," she said, Jimin bringing his gaze back to her. "Something about you having more nightmares than dreams."
"I have insomnia," he replied, and she knit her brows.
"The fuck is that?"
"Watch your mouth, no cursing around here."
"Are you trying to preserve my innocence or something? I was raised by two parents who paid attention to me maybe once every two weeks and barely remembered my name. The last thing I need is a babysitter," she said, and the bitter undertones in her voice had him scooting a bit closer to her.
"I was raised by mafia parents too," he replied, and she softened at that.
"You were?"
"It sounds a bit silly saying it out loud, but yeah. Never really had family dinners or bedtime stories, and I barely went to school."
"School? Ugh, I'm so jealous you got to go," she said, and they both softly chuckled at that.
The bunker was candlelit, but the kitchen was almost completely pitch dark. That was because the candles were placed in the bedroom area, not the kitchen. Jimin was straining to see the details of Ariel's face. What he saw were cheeks that were wider than average. They were a bit chubby despite her body remaining slim, and it reminded Jimin of what he looked like at her age. He didn't lose that baby fat until he was in his 20's, if he was being honest with himself. Even at 18 he still had puffy cheeks and eyes that swelled up in the mornings. It got to the point where he needed a spoon to massage his eyes and get the swelling down.
"My point is that I'm not trying to preserve your innocence. It's just weird for the adults to hear a kid cursing," he said.
"The adults, or you?"
Jimin's eye twitched, and he rolled over to lay on his side to get out of the conversation. "I'm going back to bed. You should do the same. Don't steal anymore snacks, we need them as much as I hate to say it."
He got the silence he was praying for, and he shut his eyes. Seconds ticked by of nothing, then, he heard a quiet sniffle. Like it was hiding from him. His eyes snapped open again, and he peeked up to see Ariel in the corner with her knees tucked to her chest. She was munching on chips while holding back tears. Jimin frowned. With her cursing and the whole situation, it was easy to forget she was only a kid. Jimin in particular wanted to forget she was a kid, so it was even easier for him.
A beat later, Jimin went back to trying to sleep. No more sniffs came, and his hand rested on the freezing floor he used as a bed. It was too quiet for comfort, and Jimin considered checking on the girl again. But he didn't. He wasn't ready.
Not yet.
~~~
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Heartless || •OG• ✔️
Mystery / Thriller|| 18+ Enemies to lovers gxb and bxb || Infamous NYC mafia leaders Charlotte and Jericho have been rivals for years. However, all of that changes when one of the leaders of their Underworld is assassinated. The rivals are forced together and must re...
