'Til We Meet Again | Taekook AU

Chapter 45

[Unedited]

**

There was no particular scene that Taehyung had in mind, when he sat down to paint the scenic landscape.

After meeting Jungkook and Jimin, and now hanging out with him, had made Taehyung miss the old days. It had brought back memories of his brother, of his best friend, and his lost lover. Maybe this was one reason why his hands had moved on their own painting a scene from his past, a scene with the past Jungkook and Taehyung in it, hiding in the old ruins on human land.

His mind hadn't wanted to think about it, and he had tried to ignore it, but his body and the muscle memory were a force that Taehyung couldn't defy. Even if his mind wanted to control everything, his hands and heart wanted something else.

When he saw the start of the painting, the mere charcoal lines of the scene had filled him with an insatiable longing. How he wished he could go back to that time and relish the last few days with his Jungkook, he wished to laugh with Jungkook just once more, he wished to speak a few words with his brother once last time before all hell broke loose over them.

His hands paused for a minute, Taehyung trying to gather his thoughts and ignore the faces that flashed in front of him – panicked guards, and women, Jungkook's bloodied face, his brother's trembling hands as they had tried to reach for him, but Taehyung had been too gone in his pain.

But they didn't know at the time, that this was just the beginning.

Nobody knew that Taehyung would try to bring him back, even Taehyung in his wildest dream hadn't thought about it, until he had gotten that particular dream.

It wasn't just an everyday dream, and maybe Taehyung had been projecting his hope and helplessness through the thin veil between reality and the dreamland. Whatever it was, his dream had shown him the path.

In the past, Taehyung wasn't the type to talk about the extent of his powers. He was...as the other deities called it, a rarity among them. Nobody from his generation had such a way of controlling their element. He might not have given birth to time, and he may not know where it came from, or how he became the manipulator of time, but he knew they both understood each other. Unlike other deities who thought of their powers as objects they were given to command over, and control, Taehyung thought of his powers as an extension of his body. He considered it a living breathing entity.

Maybe this was the reason why he had those dreams.

His own brother had no idea about them, and Taehyung never bothered to share about them.

At first he had thought the dreams were just that – senseless dreams. But they weren't...they were a definite path, leading him, making him grow to become a better version of his current self.

If someone had asked him to describe his dream, he wouldn't have been able to, because each time it was slightly different.

He was the main player in those dreams, and the wielder of time and manipulating it as he desired. Each time he would try to control the time of different things, varying from water, to trees, to stones and sometimes even animals. He would concentrate, sitting under the shade of a tree, reaching out to it, towards it's growing roots and insert a bit of his powers within it, and then he would watch in amazement how the progress stopped, how the extending limbs of the tree stopped working.

The dream in its varying situations and background, always had one thing in common – he was to use his time to control something.

The night Jungkook had died, Taehyung lost in his pain and sorrow had somehow fallen asleep, exhausted from screaming and crying and beating the ground while staring at his lover's lifeless body, he had dreamed that dream again. But this time instead of the trees or landscape in front of him, there stood darkness in front of him, and shining like a beacon of light was Jungkook, floating amidst it.